Insurance; chapter one

Neil Dougherty hated his job. He hated his apartment. He hated the quiet little town that he grew up in. That's where his quiet little job and quiet little apartment were. He hated his quiet little life. He scowled as he tried one more time to tie a decent knot in his tie. He hated ties and he hated the suits they adorned. Actually, he liked this suit, but he really hated this town and he really, really hated his job. Oh how he hated being an insurance agent. Most people he knew didn't want insurance. Why? Because they never needed it.

Neal wondered what day it was. They were all the same these days. Every weekday morning of the last five years. He would shit, shower, and shave while the early morning news played in the background on his pride and joy, a sixty-five-inch flat screen TV. Hanging there, it actually dwarfed the walls of the tiny apartment. It was incongruous, he thought, with the rest of the furniture. That was better than being what? What was the opposite, congruous? The rest of the furniture he had found while prowling the local Goodwill and a few yard sales. His mother said he was thrifty. His father, on the other hand, called him a skinflint. Said he was like his Grandpa Dougherty, a miserly old Irish goat. His father had made a lot of money in the insurance business, the benefit of being the only game in town, and saved a lot of money, the benefit of growing up the son of a skinflint. He also spent a lot of money, the benefit of being married to his mother. She was the head cheerleader who traded in the high school quarterback for the high school nerd. The American Express Black Card in her wallet told her it was the right decision.

During his own high school years, Neal had worked part-time for his dad in the office. It was spending money and made his dad happy enough to have bought him a relatively new car for his sixteenth. It was just a Tercel that they would affectionately call the Turd-cell, but the truth was that it was a lot nicer than his friend's old jalopies. He still drove the Tercel and it still had low miles. The benefit of being thrifty, he would say. The benefit of being cheap, his friends would claim.

He had tried to spread his wings and fly, right after graduation. It seemed to him, that he had taken every crappy job he could, in hopes that it would lead to something better. The horse stable job had led to blisters, the florist job had led to allergies, and the underage bartending gig had led to an underage DUI. His father had swept that one under the table but managed to bring it out and dust it off every Thanksgiving for the past ten years.

Growing up in a small Midwest village was bad enough, there wasn't any way he was going to live here forever. Whoever heard of a village anymore? And that is all that Kermit was. Sorry little place wasn't even big eneough to be a town. It was barely large enough to warrant a spot on the state map. On the county map it appeared a regular metropolis, and compared to a few of the neighboring villages it may as well have been. At least it had actual businesses and not just trailer parks known for their meth manufacturing. Still, that wasn't enough to keep a young man here. Not for the past five years.

Five years, he thought. Five years almost to the very day. "Five years that I'll never get back," he thought, angrily. On the bright side, he had stuck it out five years. "Give me five years," his father had said, "and I'll make something out of you." He had. An insurance agent.

He was just about ready to head out to the office. It was just a few blocks away from the crappy, cramped apartment he rented. He could afford better but, "I'm thrifty," he told himself. His father called it 'The Hovel" and never stopped by. His mom, on the other hand, stopped frequently and dropped off all sorts of goodies. Leftovers from home and brownies and chocolate cake from scratch. She insisted he was too skinny and should move back home so she could fatten him up. He hated the phrase 'fatten him up'. It made him feel like he was going to the slaughter. In truth, he was in decent shape. He had ran track in high school and still ran five miles on the weekends and on the treadmill next to his bed if the weather was inclimate. He glanced outside to gauge the weather even though the news had been on all morning. It was foggy. Not just foggy, he thought, really foggy. And I really hate fog, he thought. The weather was inclimate, he thought. He liked that term. It had always meant a day off from school. Now, it usually meant things were shitty outside.

He had never seen fog like this before. His 'hovel' was on the second floor of the unfortunately named Cox Building, but it was like looking out into a cloud. A bluish cloud that didn't seem quite right. Something about the way it moved seemed off. It seemed to be climbing the building like some fast growing vine, exploring, searching. Across Bohner Street (of course, the Cox Building was on Bohner Street) the fog looked as if it were sending out tiny tendrils to explore and try and find some opening to exploit. It was more than creepy. Neil checked his window to make sure it was shut tight and locked without even thinking of it. He felt a chill despite the fact that it was already getting warm outside. Too warm for fog, he thought. Well, it will burn off soon.

He turned back to the enormous TV and began flipping through channels to see if there were any late breaking weather reports. Or accidents, he thought without knowing why. There weren't and when he turned back to the window, it was all but gone. Just a few fine wisps lingering down along the edges of the old brick buildings that lined Bohner Street. His thoughts of 'odd' and 'where had it gone?" were quickly displaced by a "Shit, I'm late." He grabbed his compulsory polyester jacket and car keys. He glanced around the room for anything he might be forgetting, and with a crazy pirouette, he headed out the door to face the day.

It was early but warm and sunny. He decided to walk the three blocks or so to the office, but remembering he was running late, took the car instead. After getting in, getting out, and finding a parking space, it probably wasn't any faster than running. He could always drive home at lunch, then walk back, stopping to grab a bite at the cafe next door. He noticed, as he pulled away from the curb, there was still some of that crazy blue fog lingering along the gutter. It was receding, almost as if some giant unseen vacuum was sucking it up. He had never seen fog "burn off" like that.

He made a left onto Main Street and headed toward the office. It was on his right, on the corner of Main and Walnut. There was a public parking area behind the office. It had once been the site of a meat packing company, back around the turn of the century. The last turn, that was. It had had many reincarnations since then, including a flea market, a doctor's office, and for one week, a discotheque. Now it was gone and in its place, a parking lot.

Every morning he made the right on Walnut and parked in the village's little lot. He would then cut up the alley that separated his office building from the one next door that housed the cafhe usually ate at. This morning he considered parking in front. One of his father's cardinal rules was to never park in front. Those spaces were for the customers. His father wouldn't be in today. Since he had recently joined the "semi-retired" he only made appearances on Tuesday and half days on Thursday and Fridays. And of course, whenever he damn well felt like it, he would remind his employees. Still, Neal gave it careful consideration before taking the space closest to the intersection. A day like today, Neal decide, he would most definitely be on the golf course. He again thought of the strange blue fog and wondered if it had reached all the way out to Raccoon Run Golf Course. He imagined his father wearing outlandish plaid pants stomping around the parking lot and waiting for the heavy fog to dissipate.

He hadn't noticed, until after he had parked and got out of the car, that the town seemed almost deserted. It wasn't a thriving metropolis by any stretch of the imagination, but there was usually more business on a Wednesday morning than this. A few years back, the town fathers or village elders or high muckety-mucks, had called a meeting to discuss the future of Kermit. Ever since the Army Corps of Engineers had dug a lake for no practical purpose back in the 70's, the town had been cut off from the interstate. Cut off from civilization. Cut off from progress and quickly becoming the Town That Time Forgot. So they had reinvented Kermit as an antiquing mecca and arts and crafts paradise. It wasn't any of those things, but the main street was now full of little shops that were normally livelier than this morning would indicate. Neal regarded the lack of cars and people as no more than a curiosity not worthy of a second thought.

He walked toward the door proclaiming Dougherty Insurance Agency in a preposterous old-timey script, twirling his keys around his finger. He locked his car doors with the key fob, pausing momentarily for the tell-tale beep, then continued on to unlock the office door. He again paused with the door open wide. Something wasn't right. There was a definite odor about the office that shouldn't be there. Some old buildings have their own particular musty smells but this was the smell of decay and rot. Maybe a rat, he thought. The building was old and occasionally some critter would crawl into its nooks and crannies and breathe its last. He would have to call Pete, the weird pest control guy.

He propped the door open to air it out some, using a little wooden wedge for a doorstop, and clicked on the lights. The fluorescent bulbs protested momentarily then finally lit up the small office. Four desks were crammed in there with Neal's dad's office in the back, behind the door marked Private. There were two agents besides himself and the desk closest to the door belonged to Magdalena Bukowski, the secretary cum receptionist cum mother hen. Her husband Albert was chief of police in Kermit and the primary reason that his long ago DUI had gone away.

The other two desks belonged to Englebert Linden and Richard Foss. Linden was a scarecrow of a man. He only worked part time as he was currently in his seventh summer of college pursuing an ever elusive two-year degree. Richard Foss was Neal's brother-in-law and de facto boss when Donal Dougherty was out of the office enjoying his semi-retirement. Linden was all right, Neal supposed, but Richard was a giant pain in the ass.

Neal's sister, Emily, was a slightly prettier version of Olive Oyl and Dick Floss, as he was known in high school, was the only boy who had ever asked her out. They were both three years older and had got married three weeks after graduation. Had to get married. Olive Oyl was gaining weight and Bluto was the proud papa.

Back then Richard was known as that big dumb Foss kid and his potential earnings were meager at best. So rather than see his homely daughter impoverished, Donal Dougherty stepped in and gave Richard a job. A career, it would seem. By means of seniority and more mouths to feed, Richard had been promoted to vice-president. Donal had wanted that for his only son, but Neal had fought him for years and had only come into the fold recently. Donal secretly wished his son-in-law would have that inevitable heart attack and with the help of a boob job maybe his daughter could remarry back into the human race.

Because he lived closest, and more importantly, because his father had ordained it, Neal was the first one in. He opened up, turned on the lights and adjusted the thermostat. He would make coffee, check the copier for paper and ink, and empty the trash if forgot from the previous day. Maggie would be in next and immediately go to work. She was cheerful and had the kind of pleasant face only chubby girls ever had, not quite pretty but not wholly unattractive. Englebert would drag in or not, depending on his schedule. He would flop into his chair and moan about the disadvantages this world had heaped upon him. He would threaten that one day when he had obtained his degree from Southwestern State Community College, things would be different. Then it would be Richard. Dick Floss. He would be eating a banana, or an orange, or a muffin and looking like some great ape. The day would drag on with mind-numbing monotony and end with Neal at home, collapsing on the couch, turning on his big TV, and ruminating about his oh so dull and humdrum existence.

Right on time, Maggie Bukowski came bustling into the office prattling on a mile a minute in her inimitably cheerful manner. She smiled and waved the best she could with one arm holding a bundle of files and the other snaked through the straps of the largest purse Neal had ever seen. Maggie was a woman from a bygone age, a modern incarnation of Donna Reed. She always wore a dress and makeup and her hair was always styled, thanks to Wanda of Wanda's Hair-do Shoppe. Her husband Al was a lump of a man and considered himself most fortunate for having landed such a beauty. They were truly happily married. Once in a while life does work out, Neal told himself. At least for other people.

She dropped the stack of files on the desk and a flurry of loose papers flew about. She then set her purse in her seat and began rummaging about in the depths of that gunny sack of a purse. "I wonder where everybody's got to?" she said into the bag. "I took MacArthur in this morning and crossed Apple, Plum, and Cherry Streets because I hate that new light at Main and Oak and I didn't see a soul the whole way. As a matter of fact, I only passed one car all the way in from Lakeview Acres. Must have been some lunatic, they were honking their horn and flashing their lights like crazy.

"Yes," Neal agreed. "It certainly is a quiet morning."

"Must be that fog this morning. Strangest thing I ever saw." She pulled out a pair white sneakers from the bottomless bag. Neal always marveled at the endless assortment of things she would produce from that giant handbag over the course of a day. She sat down and began to exchange the sneakers for high heels she currently had strapped to her oddly small feet. Neal wondered silently how she managed to balance her girth on those tiny things. He also wondered if the heels of her dress shoes left tiny little divots when she walked.

"Yep." Neal nodded still thinking mostly about her feet. "I've never seen fog like that before, I don't think."

Maggie looked at him curiously. "It was foggy all the way up here in town?"

Neal continued nodding. "Yep. Real thick too. And blue or at least blue-gray. Came all the way up to my second story window."

"That's weird." She pulled an egg sandwich from the bag and began to nibble thoughtfully. "I don't think I've ever seen fog in town before. Out by the lake where me and Al live, sure. All the time. Never all the way up here in Kermit though. And it was kinda blue wasn't it"

All of a sudden, Englebert Linden fell into the office, by way of careening off of the open door. He hit the floor like a bunch of sticks, skinny arms and legs flailing. He tried to get to his feet but slipped on the papers that had fallen from Maggie's stack and fell back on his butt. He then quickly scrambled across the floor on all fours like a crab. He pulled his chair out from his desk and took its place, pulling his knees up to his ears.

"Hey there, Bert. Everything all right this morning?" Neal asked looking at Maggie who just shrugged and ate her egg sandwich.

"No," he shrieked in a voice way too high for even him. "They're coming. Hide you fools."

Neal fought back a laugh and asked, "Who or what are you hiding from, Bert?"

"Zombies," he screeched an octave higher.

Neal laughed a big braying "Hah" and Maggie snorted and chewed egg and bread sprayed all over her desk. "Zombies?" they asked in unison, Neal bending over to look at Englebert and Maggie rummaging around in her bag for a napkin.

"Fucking zombies," the man under the desk insisted. "Lock the doors and hide you idiots, before it's too late."

"C'mon, Bert," Neal coaxed. "Get out from under the desk and let's get you sorted out. Want some coffee?"

"Fuck you and fuck your coffee."

Neal was losing his patience now. Englebert wasn't the kind of guy to pull a practical joke, not of this sort. He would have never guessed him to be the kind to have a nervous breakdown, but what else could it be? He bent lower and offered the frightened man a helping hand when the sound of breaking glass turned him around. Maggie screamed and fell backward out of her chair, her tiny feet pointing straight up. Englebert screamed at that, not even knowing what was happening. Neal would have screamed if his brain would have accepted what his eyes said was here.

Picking himself up from the floor was Mohandas Vemulakonda, the proprietor of The Flying Carpet Cafnext door. As he stood, bits of broken glass from the shattered office door dropped to the carpet. His turban sat askew and there were some small cuts on his face. But it was his eyes that had stopped Neal cold. They were white, milky white, and they seemed to be leaking. There was fluid running down his cheeks, into his beard. His mouth was opened and spittle was flying with each of his heavy breaths.

"Mr. Vemulakonda? Are you OK?" Neal asked gently, knowing things were most definitely not. "Mohandas, are you feeling all right?"

As if to answer, the Indian cafowner snarled or screamed or growled. Neal didn't know which, but he did know Mr. Vemulakonda had never made that noise before. "He's a zombie," Englebert began to shout. "Kill him before he gets us. Kill him."

"I'm not killing anybody," Neal shouted in return. In the back of his mind, he was wondering how he would even go about such a thing. Mr. Vemulakonda was not a large man but he was just an insurance agent for Christ sakes. "He's just sick." Very fucking sick, he thought.

Before anyone could do anything, Richard appeared in the doorway. Dick Floss to save the day. "What the fuck happened to the door?" he demanded. Then looking at Vemulakonda, who had turned to face the new arrival, "You fucking towelhead, If you broke my..."

He never finished that or any other sentence. Vemulakonda had snatched him by the head and drove him back outside onto the sidewalk. Foss weighed two hundred and fifty pounds naked on his bathroom scales, but the man who ran the cafwith his younger brother had thrown him down like he was a child. Now straddling him on the sidewalk he began to beat his head against the concrete planter that housed a pear tree. When the town fathers had reinvented Kermit, they had decided to adorn Main Street with concrete planters holding fruit trees that in turn held twinkling lights during the Christmas season. The last thing Richard Foss seen was that pear tree. Blood splattered and flowed freely from his head. With each blow against the planter, Neal could hear the bone break and splinter. Richard's legs shook spasmodically. Then he lay still.

Mr. Mohandas Vemulakonda had been demoted from a 'him' to an 'it' as the shrieking man under the desk screamed: "Kill it, kill it." The cry was then taking up by Maggie, peering over her desktop. Neal looked around wildly for some weapon. "How? With what?" he was screaming back. Neal now felt that he had a moral and possibly legal obligation to stop the man that sold him his tuna melts and BLTs, but how?

"You have to shoot them in the head," Linden was informing him even as he tried to get further under the desk. "Shoot them in the head," echoed Maggie even though she would be the first to admit that she wasn't up on current practices regarding the killing of zombies.

"With what, a staple gun?" asked Neal now starting to feel panicky. He knew his father used to keep a gun in the office. Donal Dougherty had always been a hunter, but he had begun collecting pistols when Neal was still little. Now that conceal and carry permits were allowed, he had been among the first in the county to obtain one. Neal knew it would be locked up if there was even one here and the keys were in the now limp body of his brother-in-law. The thing that had been Mohandas Vemulakonda, apparently satisfied now that Richard's head was crushed like a melon, rose to his feet to face Neal.

"Fuck me sideways," Neal said throwing aside the staple gun that he had subconsciously picked up. He began to grab random objects, consider their value in a life and death situation, and then discard them when they didn't measure up. He was quickly finding that office supplies were woefully lacking in their lethal capabilities. Then he remembered the bat.

Richard kept a baseball bat and several old gloves beside his desk. He played softball on the weekends with a few other high school jocks desperate to reclaim their former glory. He rolled over Richard's desk and began to look furiously for the bat. It had fallen down and rolled under the desk. While he was reaching for it, he saw Vemulakonda watching him. He wasn't moving other than his chest heaving up and down as he breathed laboriously. His eyes were slowly clearing of their milky film and slobber was running freely down his blood splattered chin.

"Mr. Vemulakonda can you hear me?" he pleaded. The crazed man began slowly walking towards him. "Don't come any closer," Neal warned.

"Kill it," demanded Linden from under his desk. "Hit that fucker," screamed Maggie from as far under her own desk as her bulk would allow.

Neal closed his eyes and swung. The bat connected with nothing but air and he spun completely around. Vemulakonda growled and snapped his jaws at him. From behind the desk, Neal was too far away. He could wait for his target to come nearer or... Suddenly Vemulakonda turned towards Linden cowering under his desk.

The blood soaked cafowner sniffed the air in an eerily animal-like manner and snapped his jaws. The primeval lizard brain at work. "Get out of there," he yelled at Englebert, knowing that it was a hopeless thought. Englebert Linden had already urinated all over his cheap suit and was prepared to do even more in the way of relieving himself of this morning's stress.

Neal knew it was up to him to stop this madman. When his back was completely turned to him, Neal slowly climbed up on the desk. His slick dress shoes slipped a little on the papers strewn across the late Dick Floss' desk. Neal wasn't sure what his next move would be even as he executed it. Gripping the bat with both hands, he swung it overhead at Vemulakonda's still crooked turban. Not taking into consideration the added height from standing on the desk, Neal swung the bat into the acoustic ceiling.

Vemulakonda turned back to face him, adding a snarl and two more jaw snaps for emphasis. Neal frantically pulled at the bat, trying to free it from the ceiling. The thing, or whatever he had become, made a grab for Neal's legs. He jumped back off the desk and landed in the office chair. It shot backwards, away from the desk, pitching Neal forward. Still clutching the bat, which came free of the ceiling tiles, Neal's chest landed with a thud on the desk, and the baseball bat landed with a sickening whack on the turban. The Indian, caught in mid growl, promptly bit his tongue off.

The breath knocked out of him, Neal rolled off the desk and found himself face to face with Vemulakonda. He was sitting beside Linden's desk, legs splayed out and his hands in his lap. His head was on his chest. He could have been taking a nap, but the blood soaked turban, and the severed tongue, said differently. Under the force of the bat, his head broke open like an egg and blood now covered his white eyes and foaming mouth and formed little rivulets down his white dress shirt.

With the threat now gone, Maggie got to her tiny feet. "Is he dead?" she asked. "As a doornail," Neal replied. Linden crawled away from his desk. The carpet under his desk had been soaked in piss and now blood was added to the mix. Neal poked at the dead man with the tip of the bat. "What the fuck was that all about?' he asked no one in particular.