Zombies in the Break Room!

And, An Announcement

Photo by kate.sade on Unsplash

Stuart wasn’t happy with his work. He didn’t hate it, exactly; he could certainly think of jobs he would have hated to do, such as mucking out the insides of Port-a-Potties. On the other hand, Stuart didn’t really enjoy his work either. What he really wanted to do, his absolute dream job, was to be an astronaut. But, alas, while C’s may get degrees they do not get you into NASA, and so Stuart had wound up working for the Edison Mutual Cape Insurance Company. He arrived every morning punctually at 8, made the appropriate entry on his timesheet, worked through the morning at his cubicle, took a thirty-minute lunch break, worked more in the afternoon, and left at precisely 4:30. Nothing interesting ever happened, to him, anyway, not to his customers. But he’d always stayed out of it. Until today.

His phone blerped noisily on his desk. Stuart answered with the slogan he had come to loathe. “EMCIC, we pay for justice, this is Stuart, how may I help you?”

He listened briefly. “I see. Your car was damaged during the ZPA? Well, ma’am, as you know the city government has set up an agency to deal with that so if you-….yes….I see….Oh. Gaseous Girl’s flame-blasts melted your windshield, not the zombie penguins. Well, yes, your policy would ordinarily cover that, but unfortunately your coverage does have an apocalypse exemption, and the Zombie Penguin Apocalypse does fall under that category. However, I can send you Form 11A-57B-2, which you can fill out and return to the ZPA Recovery office and they should address your concern. Yes, ma’am. Okay. You have a nice day now.”

Stuart hung up, opened a file on his computer, and printed out the appropriate form. This wasn’t the first ZPA claim he’d encountered. As it inched out of his printer, he heard a clatter out in the corridor beyond his cubicle. Mildly curious, Stuart checked his watch. It was time for lunch anyway. He picked up the usual Pop-Tarts package he had brought for lunch and headed for the break room. He opened the glass door, and gasped.

He’d worked with Linda several times before; they weren’t terribly close friends, but they weren’t mortal enemies either. She usually went out to McDonald’s for lunch. Now, she was crouched over a tuna fish sandwich which Stuart was pretty sure belonged to Clarice in Legal. Her clothes were bedraggled and torn, her hair was wild and dirty, and her face had an odd gray look to it. Also, she was tearing into the sandwich like she hadn’t eaten in years. “Um…” Stuart ventured. “Linda?”

She looked up, startled at the sound. Her wide eyes focused on him. Then she let out a horrible moan and began shuffling towards him, arms extended. “Urrrrrrrg…”

Stuart was completely nonplussed. He knew about zombies, of course, the human and the penguin kind. His cousin Jack worked for a company that specialized in zombie insurance. Jack had passed along a few pointers on how to defeat the undead. Double-tap, in the head, end of zombie. That said, Stuart had never expected to be fighting off a zombie attack in his staid and orderly workplace. How had this happened? There hadn’t been a zombie infection in weeks, not since the ZPA had died down! How-and then he didn’t have time for thinking about that any more, because Linda was still advancing towards him. Stuart didn’t have a weapon handy, other than his own mild little superpower, and while being able to telekinetically control Post-It notes was useful in its way, the worst he could do to Linda would be to give her a paper cut. Paper cuts were worse than useless against zombies. So, Stuart did the next best thing: he ran screaming.

Linda went shuffling after him, still emitting the trademark zombie moan. Stuart had run off so fast he hadn’t seen that there was another person in the break room. Admiral Zombie looked ecstatically upon her creation. “Meh, heh, heh!” she cackled. “My Zombification Ray works! It really works!” She gave the shiny metal device an almost loving caress. “Oh, it’s beautiful! And with it I shall destroy the world! Muwahahahaha!”

Her evil laugh was quite well done (she’d put in a good bit of practice). Unfortunately, it was a bit too loud. Stuart, frantically jamming the elevator button in his haste to get away, heard it. He even recognized it; as an employee of a cape insurance company, he was reasonably familiar with all the city’s villains, since he usually got called in to pay for their damages.

All at once Stuart suddenly realized that he could stop her. She wasn’t a zombie, after all, she was a person, and people could get stopped by paper-cuts! Stuart, in his first-ever burst of heroism, started back towards the break room. Unfortunately, he had forgotten about Linda. “URRRRRRG!” she howled, shambling towards him. Stuart backpedaled frantically, but stumbled up against the copier. He had nowhere else to run. She was coming on fast towards him, now, and Stuart had a fleeting sense of relief that his own zombie insurance premiums were all paid up, and then-and then a mighty fight knocked Linda aside like a bowling pin. “Apologies for our late arrival!” Captain Happily Married exclaimed. “We had to arrange a babysitter!”

Stuart blurted something unintelligible and pointed. Everyone turned to see Admiral Zombie standing with her new Zombification Ray trained right on them. “You!” she cried dramatically. “You can’t stop me now! Not when I have this!” Admiral Zombie waved the Ray aloft.

“Sure we can,”  Super Soccer Mom said. “You know I can connect to electronics with my mind, right?”

“What?” said Admiral Zombie.

The Zombification Ray was indeed a highly advanced piece of technology. Alas, it was also highly breakable. Super Soccer Mom hacked into it and smashed it into bits in the time it took for Admiral Zombie to realize she should’ve done a lot more research on the city’s heroes before taking off on her villainous plan. Linda gave a shudder, and then returned right back to normal, as everyone does who’s been temporarily zombified in a superhero story.

Admiral Zombie still had one trick up her sleeve. “A grenade!” she announced in wild desperation, whipping it out of her pocket. “And I’ll set it off if you don’t-OW!”

A magenta Post-It note had just sliced across her nose. She yelped, and dropped the grenade. Captain Happily Married dove for it, covering it with his nigh-invulnerable self. It exploded with a loud whoompf, but the Captain absorbed most of the force, with the exception of the carpet, which was pretty well scorched. Then Captain Happily Married rose, dusted the ash off his shoulder, and slugged Admiral Zombie so hard that she flew back into the break room and smashed up against the microwave. “Looks like your time is up!” he announced.

“Quite,” Super Soccer Mom said. “Nice job with the Post-It note,” she remarked as an aside to Stuart. “Have you ever considered fighting crime yourself?”

Stuart opened his mouth to answer, swayed a bit, and fainted.

And so the world was saved once again.

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Hello, readers:

The announcement I promised in the subtitle is that with this little story, the Ask the Captain section of the ‘Stack is coming to a close; from now on all stories featuring the superheroes of Edison City will be featured in the Edison City Index, sent out under the Tales of Edison City newsletter. I’ll still be writing fiction on Fridays, though; in the new year I’ll have a new section entirely devoted to angel stories, which means more of everyone’s favorite, Boston Saint Mike.

I hope you have a happy Christmas, and a good holiday season,

Michael