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This is a short horror, comedy story. About zombies on a subway. Sort of...It's also a love story. Sort of...
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Incident Report/Word
WORD COUNT: 3,779
INCIDENT REPORT
BY
JENNIFER WORD
1
Incident Report/Word
“There are zombies chasing me!” The lady screamed.
That’s how it all started. I’m not kidding. We had just
pulled into the Sierra Madre Station. The doors opened, and
the lady jumped in, howling her head off. She was all
sweaty and her face was pink. She kept heaving and trying
to catch her breath.
I remember looking around at the other passengers.
They all had the same look on their faces, which I imagine
is the exact same look I had on my face. As I looked at
each person around me, our eyes locked for a short moment,
and one guy even laughed and shook his head. When he smiled
he had dimples in his cheeks, and I remember thinking he was
actually pretty cute. Everyone had that expression on their
face. That, ‘Yeah, right,’ look.
Then suddenly there was a loud scream from out on the
platform, and the lady who was heaving let out a loud
‘squawk!’ Then she fainted dead away. Probably the shock
from all that running, then suddenly stopping. Her lungs
couldn’t get caught up, and her brain just said, ‘Okay,
that’s it, we’re done for a while.’
The scream came again, and I looked around at all the
faces in the car once more. Again, even without words, I
could read everyone’s thoughts, just from the looks on their
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faces, and their physical reactions. Everyone still had
that smile on their face (it had only been a few seconds
since the lady first came on board), only now the smiles
looked frozen, plastered on. No one moved. People’s
shoulders and torsos went rigid. Then slowly, the smiles
began to fade and fall away, being replaced by a new
expression of dawning horror and complete disbelief.
Everyone’s face seemed to be saying, ‘Wait, really?
Could it really be true?’ Then the wave began. That’s
really the only way I know how to describe what happened
next. It was like one of those waves people are always
starting in stadiums, only this one was a panic wave. It
started in the back of the car, furthest from me, and worked
its way up to where I also sat, frozen, unbelieving.
People began to stand up, some of them craning their
necks, trying to see out the Amtrak windows. Some looked
like they still didn’t believe, while others looked like
they believed fully with no doubt or reserve at all.
Somewhere out on the platform, the screaming continued. It
was shrill and high. It was another lady. In the car, the
first lady lay crumpled on the floor. No one went to help
her. Everyone ignored her and rushed to the windows to see
what the hell was going on.
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Incident Report/Word
I still didn’t believe. And even if I had, I couldn’t
have made it to a window to see. Not then. In a matter of
about two seconds, there were too many people crammed up
against the windows for me to even hope to get a good look.
Instead I settled on watching the faces of the ones who were
watching. That’s when I started to believe.
One lady looking on put her hands to her mouth and just
started biting her fingers. It would have been comical,
except for the fact that I had to watch a slow, steady
trickle of yellow liquid appear on the floor at her feet and
begin to spread outward around her black boots. I watched
in disgust as the puddle slowly spread until it reached the
unconscious lady’s hair and tangle into it. I’m sure I must
have grimaced then.
“Holy Shit!” A black man yelled. “Holy fuckin’ shit!”
“Oh my God,” a teenage girl said. She began to cry,
but all I could think about was wondering why she wasn’t in
school at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday.
“It’s eating her!” The girl said, her voice high and
warbly. “It, it’s eating her!”
Then everyone screamed as the loudspeaker dinged its
warning to stand back, because the doors were closing. The
‘pee lady’ stepped back too quickly, and tripped on the
unconscious lady. She fell backwards silently, hit her head
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on the floor with a loud, sick thud, and I watched as a new
puddle of liquid began to spread around her head. This time
it was red.
The subway began to move then. Everyone was still
standing. Several people fell into their seats. Others
frantically grabbed at the ropes above them, or the poles
next to them, for balance. I finally stood then. I don’t
know why, but everyone looked at me. I was the only one
moving at the moment. I didn’t want to be near the two
unconscious ladies anymore.
I made my way past everyone, towards the other end of
the car. As luck would have it, this was closest to the
‘dimple guy.’ I stopped in front of him. He only stared at
me.
“Do you mind if I sit down next to you?” I asked. I
felt completely stupid. The guy only nodded his consent.
No one spoke for what felt like forever. Then the
black guy spoke, making several people jump.
“Is she dead?” He asked.
“Which one?” A Chinese guy said.
“The one who’s bleeding,” the black guy answered,
sounding annoyed.
“How the hell should I know?” Chinese guy yelled back.
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Incident Report/Word
“Check her pulse,” Mr. Dimple said. His voice was soft
and gentle, but it carried through the car. I felt warm all
over.
“You have to check her pulse,” Dimples said.
No one moved. Everyone just stared at Mr. Dimple.
After several seconds, he sighed heavily and stood up. I
watched him walk over to the bleeding lady. He gently
stooped down and placed two fingers at her neck. His back
was facing me, but I could see his fingers at her neck. I
was in love.
Mr. Dimples stood up and faced the black guy and the
Chinese guy. His eyes darted back and forth between them.
“She’s not dead. She has a pulse.”
Mr. Dimples walked back over to me and sat down. He
didn’t look at me. He didn’t see me smile at him, trying to
comfort him.
“What’s your name?” I asked, feeling extremely shy.
“Devon,” he answered, almost like it was a question.
“Are you a doctor?” I asked.
“No,” Devon smiled. “I saw that on TV,” he laughed.
“Oh,” and suddenly I was laughing too.
“This isn’t funny,” the black guy said, walking over.
“I can’t help it,” I laughed. Devon laughed harder.
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“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Black guy said. His
eyes were round and huge. They kept darting back and forth
between me and Devon. The two of us just cascaded into more
gales of uncontrollable, shaking hysterics. Devon grabbed
onto my shoulder and buried his face there. Tears began to
stream down my own face. My stomach was beginning to hurt,
and I was having trouble breathing.
“Jesus, you two are looney, you know that?” Black guy
said.
“What’s-your-name?” I managed to choke out.
The black guy only stared at me for several moments,
seeming not to comprehend my question. Then he seemed to
soften a bit.
“Eric,” he said. Then he shook his head and a smile
broke out on his face. A big, beautiful smile.
Eric turned to the Chinese man. He put his hand out
offering for him to shake it. The Chinese man looked
baffled.
“I’m Eric, my man,” Eric said. “What’s yours?”
“Mine?” Chinese said.
“Your name, bro,” Eric said.
“Oh. It’s Randall.”
Silence filled the car. It hung on the air like thick,
acrid smoke. Then Eric began to laugh, large tears suddenly
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squirting down his own cheeks. Devon had stopped laughing,
but his face remained buried in my shoulder. I could feel
his body still spasming.
“You’re name is Randall?” Eric said. His voice was
suddenly very high. He sounded like a woman, almost. The
teenage girl, who I had forgotten all about, suddenly
giggled.
“My name is Kate,” she said.
“I’m Maggie,” I answered her.
Devon pulled his face from out of my shoulder and
looked at me with an apology. I smiled at him. He smiled
back.
“What about the other lady?” Kate asked. She motioned
past the ‘pee lady,’ who was really now the ‘blood lady,’ to
the original lady. The one who seemed to mark the start of
the whole mess.
Devon moved to get up, but I pulled on his arm. For
some reason, I didn’t want him to go back over there. He
looked at me questioning. I only shrugged.
“Sh-she passed out, right?” Kate said.
“It was shock,” Eric said. “Had to be. I mean, no
wonder.”
“Did you see?” Randall said. “Did you see what
happened on the platform?”
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Everyone nodded, except me. I was the only one who
hadn’t seen. A Latino guy spoke then. He had a thick
accent.
“She said it was zombies, man.”
“Nah,” Eric said. “Gotta be some other explanation.”
“Well, how else do you explain it, huh?” Latino yelled.
“That thing was eating a lady! Eating her!”
“There’s gotta be another explanation,” Eric yelled.
“Other than zombies. I mean, come on people. This is real
life. This is fucking L.A.”
“Well, what then?” Kate said. “Why would someone do
that……At an Amtrak station?”
“Jesus, lady, don’t you know nothing,” Latino said.
“This is how it starts. I knew it, I fucking knew it.” He
was now talking to himself.
“Knew what?” Eric said. “This is how what starts?”
“2012, dude,” Latino said.
There was a collective groan from everyone on the
train. Even Kate shook her head and released a small,
“Jesus,” under her breath.
“Hey, don’t laugh,” Latino said. “My cousin studied
this shit. He knows all about it. Whatever is supposed to
happen, is already under way. So this is it, huh? Gotta
be."
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“What’s your name, dude,” Randall said, easy enough. He
was smiling.
“Rafael,” Latino answered, sounding extremely
defensive.
“Okay, well, Rafael? Let’s just focus on the problem
at hand, hmm?” Randall looked at everyone then. “We appear
to have a slight problem on our hands.”
“A slight problem?” A man in a suit said.
He’d been sitting in the far corner with a briefcase
and a newspaper the entire time. I hadn’t given him much
notice. No one had. He stood up then and addressed
everyone. His eyes were narrowed down into slits. He had
salt-and-pepper hair. He seemed shrewd and sharp. I could
immediately picture him in a huge meeting, where everyone
was listening to whatever he might be saying in complete and
utter rapture.
“That guy could sell shit on a stick, I bet,” I said to
Devon, who snorted his approval.
“My name is Mr. Betterman,” (I kid you not, that was
his name), he said. “And saying that we have a slight
problem? Well, I’d say that’s a slight understatement.”
“Way to keep everyone calm, Mister,” Randall said. He
sounded hurt.
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“Well, while you all were so concerned with the lady
who hit her head, I was a bit more interested in the woman
who came on board screaming that there are zombies outside,”
Mr. Betterman said. “Point in fact, we all witnessed what
appeared to indeed be a zombie, feasting on a waiting
passenger.”
“Look, like I said,” Eric said, “There’s gotta be
another explanation for all this.”
“Like what?” Rafael said.
“Let’s hear it,” Randall overlapped.
“Occam’s Razor,” Mr. Betterman said. “The simplest
explanation is usually the correct one.”
“Oh, and zombies are simple?” Randall said.
“A woman ran on board screaming there were zombies.
Then she fainted. Then we all witnessed a carnivorous human
devouring another living human being,” Mr. Betterman said.
“Who wants to come up with another explanation using random
information not already related to the topic, hmm?”
“Huh?” Randall said. No one else spoke. More silence.
“Okay then,” Mr. Betterman said. “Because while
everyone else was busy playing the name game, I was busy
playing the save-my-ass game. I was busy asking myself,
‘why was this woman running from a zombie?’ What events
unfolded in her life, prior to her entering our subway car,
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that allowed her to reach the conclusion that a zombie was
chasing her?”
“Dude, what the fuck?” Rafael frowned.
I put my hand on Devon’s arm then and squeezed. For
some reason my heart began to beat a little faster.
“No one bothered looking at this woman, did they?” Mr.
Betterman said.
I looked at Mr. Betterman and for a moment our eyes
locked. He was grimacing. He shook his head, and I felt
like he was my father, reprimanding me. Although he’d said
nothing, I could read his thoughts. Or felt as though I
could, anyhow.
“She passed out, from the shock,” I said.
“No, she did not,” Mr. Betterman said.
He reached down, gingerly and used his newspaper to
push the woman’s skirt up a few inches, revealing her knees.
“Hey, don’t be a pervert,” Randall said.
“Shut up,” Rafael said, walking over. He looked very
interested.
On her leg, just above the woman’s left knee, the milky
white skin broke and gave way to mangled flesh. Rafael
stared at it intensely, his face full of fascination. Mr.
Betterman looked up at Rafael, nodding. Rafael shook his
head.
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“She’s been bitten,” Mr. Betterman said. “She’s
infected.”
“Wait, what?” Kate said.
“Hey, you don’t know that,” Eric said. “This ain’t
Dawn of the Dead, you know?”
The train was beginning to slow down again. We were
coming up to the next stop. We’d reached Alameda. The
loudspeakers began their dinging again. Everyone groaned.
“We have to tell the driver,” I said. “That woman
needs to go to a hospital.”
“She’s infected!” Rafael said. “We have to kill her!”
“What?” Kate began to cry in her seat.
“Well, fuck you all,” Randall said. “This is my stop.”
“Wait, you’re getting off?” Eric said. “What if
there’s more of them outside?”
“There are no such things as zombies,” Randall yelled.
“You said so yourself.”
“No I didn’t,” Eric argued.
“You said there had to be another explanation,” Randall
said.
“Well, some crazy shit is going on,” Eric yelled. “I’m
not saying it’s zombies, I’m not saying it ain’t. Either
way, you sure you wanna get off this train?”
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Everyone stared at Randall, waiting. Randall
swallowed, hard. He looked around at everyone, thinking.
Finally he spoke, just as the train came to a complete stop.
“I-I don’t know what the hell is going on. But I know
I can’t stay on this fucking train all God damned day, now
can I? And not with her!” Randall pointed to the bitten
lady. “I’m sorry. I wish you all the best of luck, but I’m
getting off.”
The doors opened. Everyone rushed over to look. A
woman got on, took one look at the two women lying
unconscious on the floor, and quickly got off again.
Randall peered out at the platform for a few more seconds.
Then he turned and smiled at everyone, shrugging.
“Good luck,” he said. Then he walked off the train.
“We need to tell the driver there’s an injured
passenger,” I said.
“Maggie’s right,” Devon said. He took my hand and
squeezed it. “Pull the cord.”
Eric pulled the emergency cord. We all knew this meant
the train would not be moving on again. We were stuck. An
alarm began to buzz, low. Still it was annoying.
“Ungh.” The pee lady was stirring. Perfect timing.
She sat up, slowly, holding the back of her head in her
hands.
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Incident Report/Word
“What…what happened?”
“You fell. Hit your head,” Eric said.
He helped her to her feet, where she swayed. Eric
walked her over to an empty seat, on the other side of the
car, across from Mr. Betterman. The woman pulled her hands
away and stared at the blood.
“Oh my God,” she said.
“Hey,” Rafael said, walking over to Mr. Betterman.
“You sure you wanna stay over here, so close to the infected
lady?”
“Who’s infected?” Pee lady said, sounding offended.
“Sorry ma’am, not you,” Rafael said. “Her.” He
pointed.
“What’s she infected with?” Pee lady said, sounding
woozy. No one answered.
Just then the driver appeared inside the car. He took
one look at the woman on the floor and pulled his walkie
talkie out from his back pocket.
“Central, this is 1080 at station 4D. We need medical,
over. What happened?”
The driver looked around at everyone. No one said
anything. He looked at the pee woman, who had blood on her
hands.
“Ma’am, can you tell me what happened?”
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Pee woman shook her head. I wondered if hitting her
head had given her amnesia. Then I wondered what the hell we
were all going to tell him. I decided the simple truth was
best. That and no one else had bothered to speak up. I
cleared my throat, then explained everything the best I
could. When I was done, the driver only stared at me. Then
he looked around at everyone else. Then back at me.
“Did you hit your head, too?” The driver asked me. I
shook my head.
“It’s true,” Rafael said, nodding. I smiled at him.
Devon was still holding my hand. It was so warm.
“Okay,” the driver said. “Well, I’m going to need
everyone to fill out an incident report.”
“Are you serious?” Eric said. “An incident report?”
“All incidents that take place on the subway have to be
documented,” the driver said. “Especially ones that involve
injuries. I need everyone here to fill out a report that
clearly states that this woman was not injured on this
subway car. For liability reasons.”
“Wait, there’s zombies out there, and you’re worried
about Amtrak getting sued?” Eric said.
“Hey, I don’t know a God damned thing about any God
damn zombies, all right?” The driver said.
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“There was an attack at the last station,” Kate said.
“Just call them up. All hell was breaking loose when we
left there, right guys?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Rafael said. “It was only the one
lady. And she got ate, so…”
“But, someone must have seen her there,” Kate said.
“Other people will have happened upon her body by now.”
“Look, I don’t know nothing about any damn body, or any
damn zombies at the freakin’ Sierra Madre stop, okay?” The
driver said. “What I do know, is that I have a schedule to
keep. I need to get this train moving again. To do that,
you all need to simply fill out an incident report, and we
can all be on our way.”
Everyone looked around at one another. Ten seconds
later, a paramedic team came on board and loaded the zombie
lady onto a stretcher.
“Do you need medical?” The driver asked the pee lady.
She shook her head. The driver nodded.
“Just make sure you put that in your report. I offered
you medical and you refused.”
The driver went with the paramedics as they exited the
train. Once again, silence filled the car. I turned and
looked at Devon, worried. Devon only smiled, those dimples
appearing, making my heart melt.
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“Do you remember anything?” Eric asked the pee lady.
The pee lady only shook her head. Her face looked
fearful, however. I wondered if she really did remember,
and just didn’t want to say. Mr. Betterman only shook his
head. He sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his
chest.
A few minutes later, the driver reappeared with a stack
of papers and some pencils. He handed them out to everyone.
“Okay, just fill these out for me, please. Make sure
you mention that the lady was already hurt before she got on
the train, okay?”
Everyone filled out their incident report. Then we
handed them back to the driver. Once he’d collected them
all, he left. Within two minutes we were moving again.
“What do you think is going to happen next?” Rafael
said. No one answered. Mr. Betterman had gone back to
reading his newspaper.
At the next stop, Rafael got off. He waved to everyone,
told us all to ‘take care,’ then simply left. At the stop
after that, Mr. Betterman got off. He didn’t say anything to
anyone. Kate got off at Santa Ana. Pee woman got off at
Alamos. She also said nothing before leaving.
Eric came over and sat down across from me and Devon
then. We were the only three left. New people came on and
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filled the seats of the others who exited. They had no
idea. Eric smiled.
“Helluva day, huh?” Eric shook his head. “My stop is
the next one.”
We rode in silence after that. When the train stopped
again, Eric stood up, still smiling. He paused before
getting off though, looking back at me and Devon.
“Still don’t believe in zombies, you know?” Eric shook
his head and got off.
As the train began to move again, I looked at Devon.
We’d been holding hands the entire time.
“Which stop is yours?” I asked.
“Whichever one you’re getting off at,” Devon said.
“I’m supposed to have lunch with my friend,” I said,
feeling shy.
Devon only looked at me, his eyebrows raised, his smile
bringing up those beautiful dimples again.
“So, have lunch with your friend,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “I will.”
We rode on in silence for several minutes,
intermittently looking at each other, smiling, then looking
away. Eric was right. It was a helluva day. Suddenly I
frowned.
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“What did you say on your incident report?” I asked
then.
“You mean, did I put down that I saw a zombie chomping
on a lady on the Sierra Madre platform? And did I put that
another lady came on board who appeared to have been bitten
by the same zombie?” Devon said.
I nodded my head, feeling stupid. Devon only smiled
and squeezed my hand more tightly. My heart burst with joy.
“On my incident report, I wrote I didn’t see or hear
anything,” Devon said. “I was too busy checking out a cute
brunette.”
“You did not write that,” I said, laughing.
“I did,” Devon said, laughing back. “Why? What did you
write?”
I only looked at Devon and smiled. It was far too
early in the relationship to do so, but I didn’t care. I
leaned over and lightly brushed my lips against his. I
never did get around to telling him what I wrote on my
incident report.
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