Just Another Day at the Office: A Walking Dead Short by Robert Kirkman, Jay Bonansinga

 
    At exactly 4:34 P . M . Central Standard Time, on a crisp evening in November—the same night that Major Gene Gavin’s tenure as ersatz leader of Woodbury is terminated with extreme prejudice—the leading edge of the zombie throng arrives at the outer fence a mile west of the town square. Like a flimsy breakwater holding back a tsunami, the wooden barricade begins to collapse under the collective weight of innumerable dead things dumbly bumping into it, clawing at it, aimlessly rubbing along its seams.
    Inside the fence, people scatter. The noise of wood giving in—a sick cracking sound—drifts out over the rooftops. Screams ring out.
    All at once the entire south edge of the fence goes down, a great and massive THUD that rattles the very foundation of the town, ripping moorings from the ground in giant clumps and raising a storm cloud of dust.
    A moment later, the dust cloud belches out shambling figures of all varieties. They emerge like phantoms from the fog. Ragged arms akimbo, grotesque bobbleheads lolling, mouths working busily, they slowly fan out toward all quarters. Doors slam. Rifle barrels protrude from second-floor windows, spitting fire and cordite. Folks dive for cover. The noise of scattered gunfire crackles from all directions as the zombie horde moves in.
    Some of the biters drag mangled, putrefied legs along like balls and chains. Others hobble toward doorways with eviscerated guts hanging from their stomach cavities. One of the old men loitering outside the courthouse is caught in a dead-end alley, quickly surrounded by the onslaught, and when he tries to push his way to daylight he trips and twists his ankle. The zombies descend upon him.
    High-pitched girlish screams erupt from the old codger as a pair of zombies tear into him—one on his left flank, chewing through the soiled gabardine of his pants, into his thick buttocks, and straight through to the bone underneath; the other on his jugular, opening an artery and slurping at the garish fountain of blood.
    Within seconds the old man is reduced to a quivering mass of flesh, twitching and gurgling, as the monsters share his face.

    In no time at all, the town is overrun. Every doorway, every alley, every courtyard, every lawn, every sidewalk, every square, every playground, every parking lot, every nook and cranny piles up with reeking clusters of walking dead. They bump into one another and claw at windows and groan their atonal chorus of bloodlust. Some of them go down in bursts of gunfire, their brain matter airbrushing swaths of brick walls and boarded doors. Others take errant bullets in their lower extremities and chest cavities and keep on going, flinching at the wounds as a horse might jerk at a fly. The townspeople quickly run out of bullets.
    The stench rises like a storm front, choking the afternoon with its acrid mixture of pus and shit and rancid proteins. The collective clamor of a thousand cadaverous vocal cords, their dissonant moaning like the buzzing of a vast hive, drowns every other sound.
    Amidst this carnival of carnage, a little human boy, lost and alone, wanders a deserted back street on the northeast corner of town. Maybe five or six years old, dressed in a Thomas the Tank Engine sweat suit, barefoot, holding a moth-eaten blanket to his cheek, sucking his thumb, stupefied with terror, he aimlessly wanders. A casual observer might think he is sleepwalking.
    A shadowy gang of dead appears behind him. Three adults in shredded clothing and mangled faces and four teenage creatures with necks bent hideously, they lock their pewter-colored eyes on the tiny human.
    The boy continues on, barely noticing the zombies slowly gaining on him. Separated from his caretakers, dazed senseless, the child just keeps on walking and sucking his thumb and pressing the blanket to his cheek.
    He reaches a desolate intersection and pauses. As though waking from a nightmare, he blinks suddenly and looks around. He hears languid footsteps and