Free Deadlocked by A. R. Wise Page A

over the divider.
    “What are they doing?” asked Gloria. “Why are they doing that?”
    Barry turned off his monitor, but the sound continued to wail through his speakers. He scurried to turn them off and eventually had to rip them away from his desk. The cord whipped out from behind his computer tower. He held the speakers and stared up at me, his face drained of color and his eyes wide and unblinking.
    “What happened?” I asked. “I didn’t see. What happened?”
    Jerry had his hands on his head and sounded like he was going to hyperventilate as he stumbled through the crowd and fell back against the wall outside the cubicle. James and Marcia announced they were going home and Jerry just nodded his acceptance.   Work was officially over.
    “What happened?” I asked again as I went out into the hall.
    Gloria came out of Barry’s cubicle and steadied herself against the threshold. “They were killing each other.”
    “What?”
    “The kids…” she couldn’t continue.
    “They didn’t just kill each other,” said Barry. “They were eating each other.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Yeah, Dave, I saw one bite another girl on the neck. He ripped that little girl’s throat out. He fucking ate her throat, man.”
    Gloria said something about this being the end times, but I ignored her when I heard sirens outside. This would've been part of the normal ambiance of working in the city ten minutes ago, but now it terrified us. I ran to the floor to ceiling windows that lined our third floor office.
    The street below was packed with people that milled about like normal. The traffic was bad, as it always was, but no one seemed to move faster than you would expect on a normal Wednesday morning. Most of them were on cell phones, but there was nothing unusual about that. No one was acting as if there was anything wrong at all.
    “What’s going on?” asked Barry as he came up behind me.
    “Nothing from what I can tell,” I said and turned away from the window. “Are you sure you saw what you said? On that bus?”
    Barry nodded. “It’s pretty hard to not see something like that. I can’t stop seeing it. It just keeps replaying over and over in my head.”
    “Can I get everyone’s attention?” Jerry stood in front of the large whiteboard where the employees gathered each morning for their sales meeting. His voice was more timid than usual and his hands shook as he waved them in the air to get our attention. “We’re calling it a day. We want everyone to head on home. We’ll send out an email about how we’re going to move forward. Go be with your families until we can get this straightened out.”
    “Do they know what’s going on?” asked Eugene, the IT manager, as he stuck his head out of his dark corner office.
    “I don’t know,” said Jerry.
    “They said people are going insane." Gloria was on her cell phone. “My husband’s watching the news. He says they're telling people to stay away from hospitals.”
    “What hospital?” I asked.
    “What hospital?” Gloria asked her husband. She repeated his reply, “All hospitals.”
    “What the fuck?” Barry shook his head in disbelief.
    Gloria continued, “Stay home. Come home now.” Gloria then directly responded to her husband, “I will, just tell me what they’re saying. I’m telling everyone here. What else are they saying?” She continued her announcement, “Stay in your homes, lock the doors and windows, and keep watching CNN.”
    “Always worth keeping viewers, I guess." Barry smirked and patted me on the shoulder.
    “I’m going to need a ride home,” I said.
    “Yeah, no problem. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
    I glanced at my watch and realized that Laura would be leaving to pick me up soon. I tried to call her on my cell, but the service was dead. “I can’t get through.”
    “Let me try mine." Barry couldn’t get through either.
    I was about to tell him to leave without me when my phone rang. I looked at the caller