Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 1

"That's right, John. You're looking at the new veep of the whole Northeast Division." Jack Tate sat behind an expansive wood desk with a giant plate glass window behind him that gave a view down on Fifth Street. It used to be a pretty good view until the Black Group Building across the street was blown up.

Jack had a fresh bullet wound in his temple, small enough to have come from a .22 or something like that, but the ragged mess on the other side of his head was anything but. He must have done it without his suit jacket on; the collar of his white shirt was deep crimson, but the gray jacket was unstained. He'd been a living, breathing, non-flesh eating Jack Tate just before lunch. I shifted in my seat.

"Uh, congratulations," I said.

"Hey thanks, man. Means a lot." He'd been under a deadline, was all I had known. I was in accounts receivable, he was my manager's manager so we passed by one another often enough. We'd actually gone to high school together, he'd graduated the year after me. I had already been working here eight years when he first started.

The past few days he had had a bewildered look, like the stress was becoming too much. His eyes were still red-rimmed and he had the faint odor of vodka on him, but he had a sparkle to him. Jack was fresh enough to not stink and if you really zoomed in on his eyes you could almost forget about the gaping head wound.

And the flies.

Nobody tells you about the flies and you never see it in the movies. Not sexy, I suppose. But almost every one of them walks around with a cloud of flies buzzing around. Jack only had a few right now, but by tomorrow morning he'd be a full-fledged, card-carrying member of the walking dead.

Jack leaned back in his high-backed leather chair and laced his fingers behind his head. There was a hole with some of the cushioning coming out by his left hand. He must have done it right there.

"How long you been working for the company, John?"

"Oh, I'm not sure. Twelve years?"

"Jeez, that's long. And you're still in A/R? Hell, I don't need to turn you; you're already dead."

"You're going to—"

"No, no, no," he said. "It's a joke. I brought you in to talk about the FOH."

"Flint Osteopathic Hospital?" I'd started to cry and Jack must have heard it in my voice.

"Stop it already." He held out the box of Kleenex on his desk and I took a few. "I'm talking about the future of humankind. I'm not gonna eatcha. Really, I'm not. Not hungry anyway."

As you all know hoi don't eat people all the time. I was surprised to learn how many have higher brain function, even the ones that sustain damage to the brain. Like Jack. In the early days even they were corralling the prols and the humans could walk around almost like nothing had happened.

"Where was I?" That's the other thing I learned. Sometimes you get confused. Throw in a non-sequitir or two and you're completely thrown. That's a bad thing.