Bob finally knocks on Marlene’s door. “I think something’s wrong with Cayla,” he says, and she glides across the office floor to the restroom.
We can’t make out what they’re saying, other than, “Are you all right?” and Cayla’s tearful, “I can’t work with that thing around here. You have to fire him.” The rest is a low mumble. Finally Cayla bursts out in tears, and before we know it she is out the front door.
Marlene emerges a few seconds later, her face red but expressionless. “Let’s get back to work,” she says. “Everything’s fine.”
Over lunch, Bob tells us what he plans to do with the hefty settlement check from the hospital—we are awed that he still comes to work, but he says it gives him a reason to get up in the morning—when Cayla returns with a tall gray-skinned old man in a black camp shirt and white collar, Bible clutched under one arm, cane in the other. He moves slowly, the thin cane barely enough to support him, and she practically drags him to the breakroom.
“That’s him, Reverend,” she says, pointing at Bob.
“All right,” the old man says. “Let’s get this over with.” He looks around at all of us. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like everyone to join hands.” We look to Bob, not knowing what to do. He nods, and we go along with it.
The old pastor sets down his cane, draws from his breast pocket a small plastic crucifix, and holds it and the Bible at arm’s length, inches from Bob’s face. “Everybody repeat after me.” His voice is a crackly whisper. “Away, undead thing! Back to the grave!”
We repeat his words. Nothing happens.
The old man sighs. “I said, away!” He lunges a little too far the second time, and drops his Bible at Bob’s feet. Bob leans over, picks it up, dusts it off, and hands it back.
“Thank you, my boy,” the old man says. Then he turns to Cayla. “I don’t think it’s working, dear. You might need a Catholic for this sort of thing.”
Cayla grunts. “You’re the only one who’d agree to do this.”
“Well, I’m sorry, sweetie,” he says as Bob helps him into a chair. “Guess I don’t have it like I used to.”
Bob hands the old pastor a cup of coffee. “Here you go, Reverend,” he says. “Guys,” he says to all of us, “Can you give us a minute? Cayla, you stay.”
We file out, though those whose desks are near enough listen for any tidbit we can pick up.
After about ten minutes, Bob and the reverend emerge. The old man reaches out and shakes Bob’s hand. “You’re truly a miracle, son,” he says. “Best of luck in your new life.”
Bob asks Jeremy to drive the old man back to his retirement home, then turns back to the breakroom. Cayla is sitting in a corner, hands tightly folded in her lap. She stands when Bob enters.
“Stay away.” Her voice is mousey.
He approaches her like some creature in a bad movie. For a minute we think he’s regressed, and might just dig his teeth into her skull and eat her brain. Not that she’d be much of a meal. Bob stops a few feet from her, just out of arm’s reach. She goes rigid.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Cayla. I promise.” Bob’s voice is soft. Tender.
“You’re a monster.”
This is too much; a few of us shout back at her, “You’re the monster!” But Bob raises his left hand and we fall silent.
“No, Cayla. I’m just Bob. Same as ever. Maybe a little better.” He holds his hand out to her, and her face seems to soften. “How ’bout we start over?”
“Okay.” She reaches out slowly, shakes his hand, but quickly pulls it back.
“Your hand’s cold.”
“Cayla . . . ” Bob starts to say, and steps closer.
Cayla screams like she’s being stabbed in the liver, so loud it echoes in the metal beams of the building.
Marlene rushes in to save the day, of course. She points to Cayla and summons her into her office, then closes the door.
Five minutes later Cayla comes out sobbing, walking in slow motion to her desk and clearing off the crucifixes and Jesus statuettes. On her way out, she stops before Bob’s desk and glares.
“I’m sorry, Cayla,” Bob says.
She pulls a book of matches from the box, lights one, throws it at Bob. It goes out before touching him.
She lights another, flings it. He catches it gracefully, snuffs it out in his closed palm. Then Max, the security guard, steps up behind her and ushers her out.
Cayla stops once more at the door. “You people are in league with the devil!” she shouts, just as Max gives her a little shove, and then she’s gone.
The air smells faintly of smoke as we pull into the parking lot. It is early May, too soon to burn leaves, but we think nothing of it.
When Bob arrives with Charlotte on his arm, he looks like a million bucks: electric blue pinstripe suit with a black button-up shirt and no tie, hair trimmed neatly up around his ears, handlebar mustache close-cropped and sleek, bags gone from under his eyes. There is no sign of the Y-incision scar beneath his collar, as if his transformation into a new man is complete. Charlotte is giddy as she clings to his arm, the smile practically glued in place—a rarity that usually causes us unease, but this time it’s . . . nice. Comforting.
By 9:30, we hear chanting in the parking lot. We pay no attention, fixated as we are on Charlotte using her phone-sex voice on sales calls, until Roger finally gets up to investigate.
“Um, guys,” he says, peering out the glass door. “You’d better take a look.”
Outside on the sidewalk is a crowd of fifty or more, holding homemade signs that read, GOD HATES THE UNDEAD, and ZOMBIE, GO BACK TO THE GRAVE. A few hold makeshift torches—broom handles and baseball bats with flaming rags attached to them. When Bob comes over to see, they shrink back a little, point their torches like spears.
Marlene locks the door. “I’m calling the police.” She calls from Roger’s phone, then waits.
“I don’t think it is a peaceful protest,” she says. Another pause. “No, I don’t think it can wait until later.” She sighs, slams the phone down. “They’ll send someone when they can.”
A shrill, familiar voice outside echoes through a megaphone. “You know what we want,” Cayla shrieks. “Send out the zombie or we torch the building.”
Stupid Cayla, we think. This building is made of brick. Then two of her minions lay torches in front of the glass door. The clear pane blackens, then cracks, and black smoke starts seeping in under the door.
The old gold-diamond carpet begins to singe.
“Okay,” Marlene says. “Everyone out the back. Calmly.”
We rush en masse to the back exit, a metal double-door with a rusty frame and peeling brown paint, nearly trampling one another. All but Bob and Charlotte, that is, who calmly follow Marlene. But when we get there the door is hot, the smell of smoke and kerosene hanging in the air.
We panic. Anyone would.
Our eyes wander to Bob, hanging back behind the throng, holding Charlotte’s hand.
Marlene notices. “Absolutely not,” she says, voice raised just enough to cut through the noise. “We’re not sending Bob out there.”
Our shaky chatter stops. Of course not. We have a genuine miracle in our presence.
“I’m calling nine-one-one,” Marlene says, and runs to her office.
This, we know, will solve the problem. Sooner or later the firemen and cops will arrive, douse the flames, disperse the mob.
Five minutes later, they have yet to arrive—one of the drawbacks to working in a business park ten minutes outside of town.
“Maybe I should go out and talk to them,” Bob says.
“That sounds like a very bad idea, Bob,” Marlene says. She is, of course, correct.
Then someone lays a couple more torches by the front door, and the glass goes completely black. In a minute it will shatter, the mob will enter, and the whole place will burn.