Undeath by Chocolate

Charlie and the Zombie Factory - Chapter 8

The pointer tilted up. The tip punctured through Jacqueline's neck and ripped open a hole six inches wide. Blood gushed out of the wound. She howled.

The pointer slid through my hands when it hit. I tripped at the impact and landed on the floor on all fours. The wind knocked out of me.

Jacqueline's blood rained down and spattered on my clean, white jumpsuit. Disgust filled me, but I had to keep battling.

Jacqueline, even with her severe injury, grabbed at me. Her grip like iron. The three others behind her pressed to get at me. Their snarling and snapping mouths like piranhas. I had the distinct fear that they wanted to consume me. Not just kill me, but eat me bit by bit, piece by piece, until nothing was left.

I pulled out of Jacqueline's grip. My strength was superhuman. Either adrenaline or the Magnum Bar worked in my favor.

I glanced at the wall clock. Five minutes until time was up.

I left my pointer on the ground and ran to the back wall behind the podium. At least I had something between them and me. I backed into the screen. It flipped up into its holder with a zing. Behind the screen a door was revealed.

God, please, let this door open. Please, please, please.

I turned the knob.

Someone grabbed at my shoulder.

I burst through the door into an office area. Lights blazing. Desks empty. Cool air conditioned air wafted into the room through a big vent. The vent sat above a bank of windows that looked into a part of the factory we had not seen on our tour. Steaming vats poured chocolate into molds, robotically controlled, not a person in sight. I wondered where the office workers were. White walls, floors and ceiling glowed under the LED lighting in the factory.

My four adversaries were seconds behind me. I forgot about the empty room, the missing workers and focused on finding a weapon. I grabbed a letter opener and a stapler. The first things I saw on the desk closest to me. I put space between me and the creatures and got behind the last row of desks closest to the windows.

I wondered if I would be a creature like them soon. Had Mr. Zago done an experiment on us? Was this all a trick of some kind? Was he a sick lunatic, separated from humanity for so long, that he'd turned into a murderer?

Harold stumbled toward me first. I rolled an office chair his way with a brutal amount of force from my newly stronger body. Maybe somehow I'd escaped the horrible changes that had overcome the other salespeople because I'd only consumed a partial bar and only reaped the benefits instead.

The chair hit his legs, spun, and Harold fell into it. The spinning chair knocked Devon and Agnes to the floor. Injured Jacqueline, an oozing red hole in her throat and slower moving than the other three, lunged for me. I swung the letter opener down into her skull, my grip sure. I hit bone and flesh, but the letter opener was stronger than it looked. The metal blade hit home, sinking deep into her brain.

Jacqueline let out a grunt and crumpled into an unmoving heap. I kicked her with my booted foot. She didn't move.

One down. Three to go.

At least I'd figured out how to kill these nightmare creatures.

Agnes came at me first. I threw the stapler at her to give me some time. It beaned her square in the nose. I'd never been good at throwing things, so my accuracy defied logic. (Perhaps another benefit of the Magnum Bar?) Her glasses flew off her face. Blood spurted from her nostrils. She continued toward me as if nothing had happened.

I pawed through drawers, looking for other sharp objects like the letter opener. Most desks were covered in papers and folders and had keyboards and computers on them. I swept off each desk as I walked down the row to make it more difficult for my adversaries to follow me.

Devon tripped over the pile of computer equipment and fell into one of the plate glass windows. The glass shattered. Devon fell on the shards of glass sticking out of the casing. He stood, his torso riddled with glass. Blood leaked out everywhere.

I backed into a wall of cabinets. Harold had found his footing and had made it through the maze I'd left for them. I pulled open cabinet doors and drawers as I moved away from the three remaining adversaries, hoping to find something to stop them.

The glint of a pair of scissors caught my eye. I grabbed them and jabbed the blade directly into Harold's left eye. It popped like a grape. Blood and clear fluid oozed out. My stomach roiled in revulsion. I knew I had to sink the blade further. I leaned in, pushing on it with all my weight behind it.

The scissors pressed easily into the soft brain matter behind the eye.

I wanted to vomit.

Harold collapsed to the floor. A pool of watery red blood formed around his head.

Agnes came at me next. Her nose squashed flat. Her eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed. Her white jumpsuit had become a mottled mess of blood, black ooze and melted chocolate. Most likely from the stack of Zig-Zag Magnum Bars she'd consumed.

The EnergyMagnum Bars I'd barely touched.

It dawned on me that perhaps the warning in the materials we'd been given should have been adhered to: only one bar per 24 hour period. That's what the instructions had said. I'd been the only one, it seemed, who took time to read them.

Could Zago Chocolates' Zig-Zag Magnum Bars have done this to my fellow competitors?

I shoved the explanation aside. I had no time to go through the facts and come to a logical conclusion. I was on the run for my life. The factory seemed devoid of human life. I was completely on my own.

Agnes bore down on me. Her mouth full of biting teeth, her fingernails ready to scratch and rip me to shreds. I reached for anything within range to do damage to the fiend. A filing cabinet stood at the end of a row of desks. I gritted my teeth, dug deep for a burst of new-found energy, and shoved at it with all my might. It toppled like an anvil on Wile E. Coyote's head.

Squash.

More blood. More gore.

In the bright LED lights, the blood pouring from Agnes's crushed head looked garish and unreal. Her legs twitched a few times and then stilled.

Sweat dripped down my brow. Although the air conditioning blasted full force, battling the undead can really take it out of a person.

My gaze centered on my last target: Devon.

He remained trapped by the broken window, unable to navigate the pile of monitors, keyboards and folders jammed with papers that I'd left in his path.

He snarled and snapped his jaws at me.

I grabbed a heavy metal wastebasket and threw it at him over two rows of desks with every ounce of unusual extra strength I had.

I beaned him right in the chest, toppling him backwards and out the broken window.

He landed on the factory floor below with a solid ka-thunk.

I raced to the open hole in the window and took a look.

Devon's arms and legs were at impossible angles, his head nothing more than a smashed tomato of red on the concrete below.

A door to the left of the bank of windows popped open. Robot Zago grinned from the other side.