F.J.S.A-M.P. - Working Title (Non-related)

[blarg]

Very well written Rance! Kudos. I didn't find an error, i'm sure there's probably just one somewhere but i'm not a grammar nazi xD

Is this what your story is:
Guy comes to school planning to shoot some people. Suddenly zombie like things start happening and before long he finds himself trying to escape the school?

If you plan on adding any characters you definately should add a base support character- someone who is much better at doing things instead of panicking, or just do it solo- or a girl perhaps... hahaha. But hell, i'm sure no matter how you write this out it'll be good... (Damn my college applications and kick-boxing making me have no time to write )


P.S. The beginning is quite a bit confusing... just thought i should point that out.

~blarg

[Dawes]

Blarg,

You've got the general idea! There are definitely going to be more characters -- Paul's a wussy little bitch -- but he's just the one I wanted it to start with. As the story goes along, you'll find out more as to exactly why he was going to do what he was planning to do, and there are going to be other characters that get incorporated. I was actually intending to get the next vignette up tonight, and though I'm five pages into it, it's getting late, and I'm not seeing it getting completed and posted tonight.

I intend for there to be a lot of rapid scene-changes in it that eventually all come together near its end. I'll also take a look at the beginning! I don't mind that the beginning comes across a bit confusing, as the whole fucked-up ordeal of what happened to Paul just prior to the reader joining him is not something I want them to know until later on. I'll try to make it a little more exact, though!

Thanks for your critique, blarg! I hope you continue to enjoy it. I should have the next part (which I imagine will be a bit slower and less eventful, being that it's starting off with a new character) up tomorrow night, and I'm going to try to hold to that!

[Dawes]

Sorry it took me two days to post this -- it turned out to be longer than I thought. In this vignette, we're introduced to a new character whose path will eventually cross others'. It's a little long and may even be a bit boring, but every story needs a bit of exposition. I'll be working in the future on getting the pacing to be more functional.

__________________________________________

March 11, 2009.
9:02 A.M.

No man or woman lies solely responsible for the horrors. But for not acting fast enough to preserve our fellow humans in a time of need? We are all equally burdened.




The D. E. Edinborough Multi-Service Center was the liver and kidneys of Brasswick. It took care of all of the unpleasant-but-required responsibilities the administrative buildings – the heart and brain – were too pretty to do. It was a squat, four-leveled building in the middle of town, squeezed between the home of the local paper and a professional building. Along with the district courts, its resident lawyers and probation agents ushered in a constantly ebbing tide of the vastly unwashed, doing between them the dirty work to which most towns avoided bringing attention.

Sybil had called the building her workplace for going on twelve years, an honor met with a parking pass and a positive reputation among Brasswick's token junkies and troublemakers. Her own office on the second floor and access to a bathroom (with a marginally responsible custodian) were perks that she hadn't really obtained until about three years in. For her, the weekdays were an exercise of constant repetition – check into the office around quarter after seven, be in court by eight, and usually be done for the morning around eleven for a quick lunch and an afternoon of clients, phone-calls, and investigation reports.

In Brasswick, the work of an assistant public defender was not often a job that merited being too proud of one's law degree, but it was reliable work and a steady paycheck, and that was all Sybil honestly cared about.

She was sitting behind her desk – an old metal beast that screamed of her agency's joke of a budget – when the intercom on her desk phone rang. She pushed several files aside and answered. “This is Sybil.”

“Got a real winner up here asking to see you,” whispered the receptionist on the other end, speaking as quiet as she could into the phone. The “real winner” must have been standing right in front of her. “Want me to send her back to your office?”

“She a client?”

“Dressed like one, which means–”

“-she looks like shit,” Sybil said, completing the sentence.

“You got it. Then again, I guess if I were a drug-addict, I wouldn't give a damn about how I looked either, and I'd match dirty jeans with a wrinkly blouse, too.”

Sybil chuckled. “Must have been a big day for her, then. Dress to impress. What's her name?”

“Meredith Hines,” the receptionist said, and Sybil let out an audible moan, as if they very name brought to image its owner's awful fashion sense. “You want her, or are you heading back into court in a bit?”

“Small case-load today, so I’m done in court until tomorrow. I had court with her this morning, which puts lying out of the question. Go ahead and send her back.”

Sybil clapped the phone back down on the receiver and shuffled a few manila folders aside, less out of sympathy for privacy and more because Sybil didn't want Meredith – one of her regulars – to recognize any of the names and ask about any of her delinquent friends.

“Come on in,” Sybil said when she heard a knock on her office door, but her visitor had already had the door halfway open. She had claimed the seat across from Sybil's desk as her own before she even had a chance to stand and extend a hand. The girl – because “woman” was a relative term – brought with her the sweeping aroma of stale cigarette smoke and the cheap, knock-off perfume she had tried to cover up the smell with. Her black hair was caught up underneath a faded woolen cap, and her clothing looked as if it hadn't seen a washer in quite a few wearings. The blouse belonged to another outfit; the jeans belonged in the trash. Meredith Hines, whose sallow face was an art-house of acne scars and lines that she shouldn't have gotten for at least another twenty-five years, flashed a victory grin at Sybil from across the desk and clicked a piece of gum in her teeth. She, however, did not say anything for several moments. Sybil cleared her throat to stagger the silence. “I hope you didn't come back up here looking for me to file an appeal, because between you and me, Meredith, what you got is a lot better deal than you should have walked out of there with.”

“Can't I come up and just say 'thank you'?” the girl clucked, slapping a palm on the armrest of her chair. “My mom might have been a hooker, but she at least taught me a few things right.”

“Small favors,” Sybil mumbled.

“If that's a lawyer joke, you might need to explain it.”

“It's a figure of speech, that's all,” said Sybil, waving a hand. “So what's up? I know you, Meredith, and believe me, I don't think it's like you to want to spend more time in this courthouse than you have to.”

“You a fuckin' psychic?” the girl laughed, flashing a line of dull teeth. “Judge Smitts was in a great mood today, wasn't she? I went into that room sweatin' like a dog. And you, you were a fuckin' lifesaver! I didn't think I was going to slide with anything but time, and you got that shit dropped down to–.... to what do they call it?”

“The stet docket.”

Meredith snapped her fingers. “That's it. So what does that mean again?”

“It means don't do anything idiotic for a whole year, and they'll trash the case.”

“I can't keep this shit straight,” the girl said, “but either way, you kicked ass, so I owe you.”

Whenever I need a nice bag of crack, I'll be sure to ring you up, Sybil thought, brushing the side of her pen-point along her legal pad, filling in imaginary boxes. “It wasn't my doing as much as it was that Smitts was in a tip-top mood, so put credit where credit is due. I think there might actually be a heart in her somewhere.”

Meredith's laughter was obnoxious and all too frequent, and when she was done finding humor in Sybil's remark, she crossed her hands in front of her. Her fingers tap-tap-tapped on her pantleg. “I don't think that shit would've gone down like it did if I was fighting a possession charge on my own.”

“I'm a constitutional right, not a member of the holy trinity. No offense, Meredith, but even though I appreciate you taking the time to come up here and say thanks, I'm getting this really odd feeling that that's not the only reason you're up here.”

“'Course it ain't,” said the girl, sliding down in the faux leather chair to maneuver her thin hand into her jeans-pocket. She managed to produce a rolled-up envelope full of paper and tossed it haphazardly on Sybil's desk, knocking over a small jar full of paper clips.

“Another case?”

“Just a violation of probation.”

“For what?”

“I pissed dirty,” Meredith said tilting her head backwards to peer out the window.

“I wouldn't have guessed,” Sybil said, and then added more rigidly: “Meredith, when are you going to give me – and yourself – a break from this lifestyle?”

“What lifestyle?” Meredith said. When she smiled, Sybil saw the faded piece of blue gum squeezing around the girl’s teeth like badly laid caulking on a sloppy brick wall. “Innocent until proven guilty, right? I don’t live no different than anybody else, not even you.”

“The more you prescribe to that lie, the sooner it might come true,” Sybil mumbled. “Look, I’ll pick you up on this, but you have to promise me—“ she raised the envelope and shook it at Meredith, “—that you’re going to lay low and not catch anymore charges for awhile. Personally, I don’t care how you live your life, but I pride myself on a pretty solid reputation, and the government doesn’t pay up enough for me to blatantly tell lies.” Meredith did not respond, which gave Sybil enough time to unfold the envelope and slide out the probation report. She skimmed over it and shook her head.

“You tested positive for opiates?” Sybil crammed the paperwork back in the envelope.

“Getting adventurous, huh?”

“There’s no saying the test is right.”

“Either way,” Sybil reminded her client, “don’t go getting yourself into any other trouble, or you might as well go into this next one without—“ Sybil was about to finish her sentence when her desk began to hum and something in the upper drawer vibrated vigorously.

“What'cha got in there?” Meredith said, wriggling her eyebrows, grinning in ways that made Sybil think of a starving shark.

Sybil dug her cell-phone out of her desk and looked at the name and number that flashed on the soft-lit screen. She furrowed her brow and said to Meredith, “I need to take this.” Her gaze ran towards the door twice, asking without words for her client to give her a moment of privacy.

Meredith looked up at the door, then back at Sybil. She pulled the woolen cap down over her ears and mocked a salute before she slipped out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her. Sybil tossed her hair to the side and put the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi, there. Is this Sybil?”

So glad you introduced yourself, Sybil thought, but then said, “It is. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. This is Jeannie, up at Brasswick High. I think I met you at the Parent-Teacher meeting a few weeks ago?” the feminine voice said, and Sybil thought she could hear the woman’s jowls on the other side of the phone.

“Yes, of course.” I have no clue who the hell you are.

“I mean, I’m not a teacher,” the woman laughed. “I’m the nurse. I wanted to call you about your daughter. I’m afraid she’s not feeling too well today.”

“Oh? She was a little slow to get up this morning, but she never said anything.”

“Well, she threw up during homeroom,” the nurse assured her. “Her temperature’s over a hundred, and we’re obligated to send students home who are displaying signs of a heavy fever.”

In the background on the other side of the phone, as if she were across the room from the nurse – Sybil envisioned her daughter sitting on the edge of one of those vinyl cots, a plastic bag clenched in her hands – Sybil heard her daughter say, “I have to go back to class and turn something in!” She sounded impatient, fidgety. Sybil believed she had raised the only child in the world who would whine about turning in an assignment, even if she was puking her guts up.

“Alright,” Sybil told the nurse. “I’ll be there in about an hour, hour-and-a-half. Is that too long?”

“No, not at all. I’ll just send her to her first and second periods, and if the Pep Rally they're having later this morning starts before you get here, I'll keep her in my office. Otherwise, we can call her up when you get here.”

“Sounds great. I’ll be there shortly. Thanks, Jeannie.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Sybil turned her cellular phone off. Instead of returning it to her desk, she tossed it into her purse. She properly aligned some of her desktop accoutrements and stood. Her office – which was a rather empty little cubby, save for her law degrees hanging on the wall and a shelf overflowing with books she had referenced over and over again – was small enough to cross in just a few steps. She grabbed her black winter coat from the hangar, gathered her purse, and locked the door to her office behind her.

“Got a date?” asked Meredith, who stood just across from her door, a foot up on the brick wall, her face even more pale in the fluorescent overhead lighting. “It’s too early for lunch. Don’t you worry,” she said, winking. “I won’t tell anybody.” Meredith already had a cigarette in her hand, waiting to be lit.

“You just worry about keeping your nose clean, Miss Hines,” Sybil suggested, sliding a pair of leather gloves onto her hands.

“No problem.” Meredith stared at Sybil as she pulled the gloves on and quirked an eyebrow. “Ain’t it too warm for gloves?”

I’m not too interested in shaking your hand without some protection. “I get cold easily,” Sybil said. “Call me closer to the court-date, and we’ll figure out when we’ll meet up and what I’m going to have to do to keep your ass out of lockup.”
Just as Sybil predicted, Meredith thrust out her hand, and Sybil reciprocated with a single, sharp shake.

“See you soon, boss-lady,” Meredith said, turning on her heel and holding a hand up in a nonchalant wave. The unlit cigarette bounced between her lips. She had a constant, shit-eating smile plastered on her face, the kind that said to Sybil, “I only smile at you when your presence benefits me.” Hell, Meredith was probably going to shoot up, hit a pipe, or roll a joint the minute she got back to her car – or maybe all three – just to put her nose in the air towards the instructions Sybil had given her.

Then again, most all of the clients were like that. “Untrustworthy” or “unreliable” were words usually too good to describe them. “Pieces-of-shit” usually fit better.

Sybil made her way through the brick corridor that led down to her office, and when she came to the waiting room, where a wrinkled maintenance-man stood on a paint-splattered ladder while replacing one of the light-tubes, she said to the receptionist, “I’m heading home for the day.”

The secretary raised her gray eyebrows and looked up from her paper and over her thin glasses. “Everything alright? One of the other lawyers went home a little while ago, said she wasn’t feeling well. Is something going around?”

“If it is, I haven’t gotten it yet,” said Sybil, readjusting her purse on her shoulder. “School called, and I have to go pick up my daughter. Would you mind sending the boss an e-mail just to let her know? And if any of my clients call, put them through to my voicemail.”

“No problem, Sybil.”

“Thanks.”

Sybil left the office and took the elevator – which for some reason always smelled like a curious mixture of body-odor and popcorn – down to the first floor, where she tried to keep her head down as she sifted her way through the courthouse traffic. People of all sorts listlessly meandered back and forth, some whispering to one another, others accompanying men and women in suits whose pride spared them no drop of the chin. Monday through Friday, the Edinborough Multi-Service Center was a social hurricane as defendants – most of them repeat visitors – hustled about to find their courtrooms and their attorneys, none of whom ever looked thrilled to see their clients.

One of the largest problems with being an assistant public defender was the amount of notoriety it brought Sybil. After a few years, clients who couldn't afford private attorneys were ringing her up and asking about her, wanting her to represent them. Her job brought with it mostly lower-profile cases, and she secretly yearned for a chance to dig her nails into a more voluptuous case, into something juicier, fatter, and more prone to spotlight. The right defense attorney could knead any murder into a media carnival and bring with it more public notice and work credibility.

Until then, she was left striding through the courthouse with her collar up and her chin down, trying to look unassuming so that no passers-by tried to grab her by the arm and ask for legal advice. She clutched her purse close to her. She lightened her step, walking on the balls of her pumps to avoid clapping the heels against the floor. Doing that made her feel inconspicuous, invisible.

She shouldered her way through a small group of young men, and was just about to reach the front door when a riot of confusion broke out behind her, and the milling crowd of people waiting to find their courtrooms bulged near where a pair of doors led to one of the rooms. Heads all turned to catch a glimpse of the sudden action, and even Sybil, with her gloves pressed against the tinted glass of the courthouse's front entrance, turned to look.

Two black-suited officers slammed out into the lobby from one of the courtrooms, and both of them had faces flushed from exertion. They leaned in close to each other, hauling something that Sybil could not see through the bodies. “Move. Move,” snarled one of the cops, who did not hesitate in pushing a throng of bug-eyed onlookers to the side as he assisted his partner. As they zig-zagged their way through the crowd, which began to part as they swam through it, Sybil saw that they each clutched the arms and the greasy mane of a thrashing, struggling man clutched between them. A thin line of spittle hung from his chin. For some reason, Sybil focused on his eyes as they came closer, and they were white – milky-frothy-smooth cake-icing white – and nothing but. Stringy red vessels bulged at their corners, as if he were straining as hard as he could to roll his eyes not just up into his head, but into his brain.

“Doors,” one of the cops gasped – the thinner one, whose belt did not squeeze him so much – and he looked up at Sybil as they approached her. “Ma'am, if you could please–“

He needed not even complete the sentence. Sybil leaned into the door and thrust it open, stepping out onto the sidewalk. She pulled it the rest of the way open with her. A sharp wind greeted her, snapping the lapels of her jacket against her cheeks, making it just that much harder for her to wrench the door open.

The two police officers spun the rest of the way through the doors, bringing their spitting, flailing victim with them. He wore a pair of wrinkled khakis, the knees of which became suddenly red with blood as he was wrenched across the ground, skinning his knees and tearing the fabric out of his trousers. His shoe-tips bounced along the concrete, and when the officers had dragged him clear, one of them dropped a knee on his back and pulled the man's arm at a sharp angle behind him, cramming one of the pudgy wrists into a pair of handcuffs.

The violence seemed a bit unnecessary to Sybil, but she supposed she had been schooled to think that way.

“Get down on the goddamn ground,” said the cop who fastened the cuffs, digging his knee deeper into the man's spine. Sybil thought she could hear teeth chattering, and even the hollow, resonant pounding of a skull against concrete, like a basketball being dribbled across a court.

“... the fuck went on in there?” said the larger cop, who held one hand on his pistol and had knelt down to cradle the man's head to keep it from juggling itself. A drip of sweat dangled from his rounded nose.

“He just went batshit,” gasped the thin cop. “I don't know what about. He was sitting in the seats waiting to be called, I guess.”

“Did you see it better? Did he just start mauling the guy sitting next to him?”

“That's what I saw,” the thin one said again, still trying to find his breath. “Didn't even look like for any reason. Fuck, it's traffic court. Who the hell does he have a vendetta against in there? One minute, everything was quiet, and the next, he was all over that old man next to him.”

“He alright?”

“Fuck if I know. The bailiff's probably already calling an ambulance. Jesus Christ,” the cop concluded, and then he leaned down to the restrained man and asked: “What the hell were you thinking? Huh?”

Sybil heard no answer – in fact, she saw no movement in the body that indicated that the man had even cared to listen. The feet were doing a jitterbug all on their own, and beneath his that ratty, brown mop of hair, she heard labored breathing, but no words of response.

“Get your ass up,” said the thinner cop. He mumbled a series of commands into his chirping collar radio while the fatter cop – a rookie, Sybil assumed, by how he seemed a lot less interested in touching the wild man or getting whatsoever involved – began to stutter out the man's Miranda Rights. They wrenched him to his feet, and the man let his weight suspend itself entirely from their arms. It was as if everything inside of him had gone limp, and his head dangled pendulously from his neck, hair sweeping back and forth. His shoe-toes were turned inwards, and they dragged and bounced along the sidewalk with little raspy coughs.

While they conversed over the man's body about what had gone on in the courtroom to cause such a bustle – Sybil couldn't heard any of the words, exactly – she slinked back into the courthouse and forced her way through the crowd that had gathered near the windows. She nudged through them, en route to the back entrance so she could finally get to her car. She moved faster than she first thought, no longer caring for the sound her heels made. When she managed to get to the tree-shaded parking lot, she fumbled at her purse with shaking hands, trying to find her keyring.

Her breath was like a stone on the inside of her throat. As she meandered her way to her car, there was a tightness in her chest that made her suddenly want to unbotton her jacket just to loosen any any kind of tension she could. Her pulse felt like the earth at a horse-race, thrumming all throughout her veins. When she found her silver Cavalier, she stood uneasily at the driver's side and desperately tried to unlock it. It took her a moment. Little white spots flared in her vision. Every breath she pushed out seemed to give her less room in her lungs, less capacity, as if she were choking on the very air itself. When she got the car door open, she threw her purse in and all but collapsed into the driver's seat. She stripped her gloves off. Sybil yanked open her purse and a little pocket just on the inside. Her fingers clamped around a tiny plastic nozzle and the metal tube it was attached to.

When she managed to stuff the inhaler in her mouth, she squeezed it and sucked in a sudden burst. Her airways opened like a broken dam. As her breathing became more normal, she leaned her head forward against the steering wheel, dropped the inhaler in her lap, and clutched at the bottom of the wheel with both hands.

Fucking asthma, she thought. Stupid fucking asthma.

When her heart-rate slowed and her chest became light once more, she stuffed the inhaler into her purse. Stress in the courtroom, she was used to. Read enough law books, litigate enough cases, have enough experience, and there's always a reason for any crime or always a retort to offer against a prosecutor. Every trial was old hat, like a play performed each night but presented all out of order. The cues were always there, and so were the lines – she just needed to find them. After awhile, that kind of stress vanished, and while she still pursued her job with a fiery passion, it required less energy and more rote rehearsal.

But the incident she had just witnessed? It had stirred her, and it had stirred her hard. For some reason, she kept thinking of the man's floundering body, as if he had been seizing instead of resisting. The cops had been too harsh on him, hadn't they? What if he had a medical condition, something they didn't see or understand? She thought like an attorney, trying to find some weakness in the situation that spoke to her differently than other courtroom outbursts she had seen.

Before she delved too deep into a situation she didn't know enough about, she shook the thoughts out of her head and opened her eyes, lifting her head up to look through the windshield.

“Don't worry about it, Sybil,” she told herself as she fit the key and turned the engine. It seemed like a good time for music – get things off her mind, help her relax. She reached into her passenger seat and grabbed one of the jewel cases, flipped it open, and frowned.

“Of course,” she sighed, seeing that her daughter had taken her Billy Joel disc, and had left in its case a computer-burned CD with The ShitFits written in black marker on its front. Yet again, she mused. Stealing my music and leaving her friend's discs in here. A crime punishable by death. Sybil closed the case and opted for the radio.

Sybil pulled out of her parking spot and gingerly weaved her car through the lot, catching a glimpse of the blue-striped cop cruiser parked at the front of the courthouse. As she pulled around the building, it veered out in front of her, and she could see the silhouettes of the two officers in the front of it. In the back seat, separated from them by the tightly-linked grating, there sat the long-haired perp they had subdued, his body shifting with every light turn of the car.

When the cruiser pulled out into the main street – a one-way, littered with the usual light traffic – Sybil saw that his body swept to one side, and his head struck carelessly on the side window. One of his hands had its fingers intertwined through the grating, but that seemed the only anchor for the body. Sybil could have sworn the man looked ill, perhaps even in need of medical attention instead of incarceration.

The cruiser got lost in the flow of traffic. Sybil's attention shifted from the police and their quandary back to the task at hand: driving. She had her daughter to pick up, and once she was able to think more abstractly, she thought she might look forward to a day with her only child, pampering her, watching movies, spending that quality mom-and-daughter time that she got so little of.

That sounds nice, she thought. As she drove, she smiled.

In the back of her conscience, though, something that one of the cops had said kept replaying itself like a subliminal reminder. One minute, everything was quiet, and the next, he was all over that old man next to him.

“It's nothing, Syb,” she said, trying to ignore the fact that her hands were white-knuckled clamps on the steering wheel.

[blarg]

Oh i'm sorry, i didn't realize you updated this!!! I'll read it as soon as i'm back from The day the earth stood still!
~blarg

[blarg]

Sybil had called the building her workplace for going on twelve years,

Seems awkward....

She had claimed the seat across from Sybil's desk as her own before she even had a chance to stand and extend a hand.

Screwy pronouns, you switch who you call "she" in a bad spot

brought with her the sweeping aroma of stale cigarette smoke and the cheap, knock-off perfume she had tried to cover up the smell with.

This might be better:
"brought with her the sweeping aroma of stale cigarrette smoke layered with cheap knock-off perfume used as an attempt to cover up the stench of tobacco."

Meredith Hines, whose sallow face was an art-house of acne scars and lines that she shouldn't have gotten for at least another twenty-five years,

Maybe this???:
"that appeared a good twenty-five years early."



Good story so far. But if i might ask that you offer a reasonable explanation to the "infections" going around when the time comes. Thanks! (Those were the few mistakes i saw) i didn't really see anything else partially though because i'm really, really tired. Can't wait for more true zombie action. I admire your ability to take your time writing these scenes prior to the real action.

~blarg

[Dawes]

Blarg,

Thank you for your suggestions on the grammatical stuff! I took note of them, so that way once I go through and do another complete edit, I can pop them in there and give them a shot!

As for the explanation for the infections, that's something I've been working on and trying out for a bit. If this story comes off as intended, it's going to be one part of a larger whole that incorporates newspaper articles, research journals, and letters from various characters in the world that will reveal small pieces of the reason for the outbreak and why it was caused. I love stuff that sucks a reader in through its presentation, and I hope I can do it with this, too!

More zombie murder on the way! After all, what's a zombie story without some good old-fashioned zombie destruction?

Thank you again for your encouragement and criticism, blarg!