Downturn

Today the CDC announced revised self-isolation guidance for government and private employers. Self-isolation is now optional, and employers may grant or not grant it to symptomatic employees as they see fit. Virologists across the country are protesting these new regulations, stating this will only open the door for increased infections and chances for the virus to mutate into more virulent strains. This news comes amid the city-wide healthcare and public transportation workers' strike over last week's decision by the mayor's office to eliminate masking and social distancing mandates under pressure from anti-mask protests. In other news, NIH officials have stated that there is no evidence that the Omega variant is behind the increased strength and aggression of patients and any studies with these findings have yet to be peer-reviewed.

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"Are you kidding me?" Lexi screamed into the phone.

"I'm sorry, Alexandra, but you're out of PTO."

"If I don't have any time off left, why can't I just work remotely? I'm not even sure if I can get to work since public transportation isn't running."

"Company policy states that remote work is only allowed under extenuating circumstances. According to the decision matrix, your situation does not warrant authorization to work remotely."

Lexi sighed and said, "Fine, see you in a couple of hours." She hung up the phone and added, "Dickhead. Can't fucking believe they're pulling this shit now." If it wasn't so hard to find a job that paid her enough to make rent and student loan payments, she would have told Richard and Penetech to get fucked a long time ago. Lexi got off of the couch and walked to the bathroom. If she wanted to be at work on time, she'd have to leave now. As she brushed her teeth, she checked the rideshare app on her phone. The wait time for a ride was three hours.

"Jesus Christ," she mumbled around a mouth full of toothpaste. She couldn't believe that this pandemic was almost three years old now. During the early days, when everything was shut down and she worked remotely, she hoped that some semblance of normalcy would soon return. Infections were going down, then the vaccine was released. Things were looking okay. Now, the virus has mutated so many times that the vaccine is practically useless. And her idiot boss doesn't want anyone working remotely because he needs some way to justify his useless existence.

Lexi tied the laces on her running shoes and shoved her work shoes into her bag as she walked out of her apartment. She figured that if she had to walk the twenty blocks to work, she might as well be comfortable while she did it. She locked her apartment door behind her and walked down the hall toward the stairwell. Through the thin apartment doors and walls, she heard the cacophony of sick people coughing, and, in some cases, screaming. As she walked down the stairs, she heard a banging sound, like a bulldozer was tearing through the apartment, followed by a woman screaming. Lexi fingered her phone, about to call the police, but the screaming stopped. Probably for the best, since she couldn't afford to be late again. The best-case scenario was that Richard would write her up again. Maybe even give her one of his verbal mentoring sessions taken from whatever bullshit management book he's currently reading. The worst-case scenario was that she would be fired.

The street outside her apartment building, normally filled with cars and people, was empty. Lexi wondered why the wait time for a ride was so long if the city looked deserted. In the distance, Lexi heard a rapid popping that sounded somewhat like gunfire. She walked down the empty, trash-strewn street. Ahead, a homeless person's body was lying in the middle of the road. At first, she thought they were dead, but as she walked past, she heard a low groaning and coughing. There was no way she could pretend this would solve itself. Richard could go fuck himself if he thought she'd ignore this to get to work on time.

Lexi unlocked her phone and dialed 911. The phone rang twice, then disconnected. The words No Service flashed on the top corner of her screen. "Fucking great," she muttered as she put the phone back in her coat pocket. She'd just make a stop at the store down the street and ask them to call it in on their landline. As she walked toward the store, she heard more popping in the distance. This time, it was a little louder, and Lexi wondered if the sound was getting closer. Or if she was getting closer to it.

The bell on the door jingled as she opened it and stepped through. The cashier was sitting on a stool, with her body propped up against the wall.

"Help you?" She mumbled through the cloth mask on her face. Her eyes were watery and bloodshot, and she was sweating profusely despite shaking as if she were freezing.

"Hi," Lexi said as she subconsciously touched the straps of her own mask. "There's someone a block from here, laying in the street - ."

"Yeah, we know," the cashier said, cutting her off. "We called the paramedics an hour ago. They're on their way."

Lexi shook her head and left the store. This was getting ridiculous. Now they had people who were sick as fuck working, risking their lives for their shitty minimum wage job. Lexi wouldn't be surprised if she heard the lady inside had died at some point. Shit, if she stayed in the store any longer, she might have dropped dead while ringing Lexi up.

Lexi walked to the corner and turned right, toward downtown and where she worked. As she got closer, the popping sounds intensified. By now, Lexi was convinced it was gunfire. She also thought she heard a faint rumbling sound coming from the same direction. It sounded somewhat like animals growling. She passed an alley and heard scraping sounds coming from behind a dumpster. Probably just rats, her mind told her unconvincingly as she continued walking. It sounded bigger.

As Lexi passed another alley, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned, facing a woman dressed in business attire. Her skin was a grayish color and hung off her face as if she was wearing a Halloween mask. Her eyes were red, except for the black circles where her irises should have been. The woman's arms hung down at her side, and there was something in her right hand. A severed arm. The woman stared back at Lexi with a vacant look on her face.

Lexi stood frozen in place, staring back at the woman. A smile crept across the woman's face and rivulets of dark red blood poured out, revealing a mouth full of sharp, jagged teeth. She let out a bestial growl and leaped towards Lexi. Lexi ran, but the businesswoman was already on top of her before she had the chance to move. The woman grabbed her foot, and Lexi tumbled to the concrete sidewalk. Lexi threw her arms around the base of a light post just as the woman grabbed her leg again and yanked her back with unworldly strength. With her free foot, she kicked the woman in the face as hard as she could, sending her sprawling backward. Lexi jumped up and sprinted down the sidewalk as the businesswoman was shaking off the blow to her head. Lexi passed another alley, thankfully deserted, and turned into it, almost tripping on garbage strewn across the asphalt.

She heard sounds behind her, vicious snarling and banging sounds. The alley ended at a chain-link fence. "Fuck," she muttered, as she turned around. The businesswoman blocked the other end of the alley, crouched as if she were about to pounce. In the corner of her eye, Lexi saw a length of wood leaning against the side of a building. An old two by four. She grabbed the board as the woman jumped towards her, clearing nearly the entire length of the alley in one leap. Lexi swung the piece of wood just as the woman was upon her, connecting with the side of her head. The clash sent shock waves from her hands, through her arms, and into her shoulders. The businesswoman spun around, almost in a complete circle, flinging strings of blood and brain matter in a wide arc around her. She fell to the ground with a meaty thud as her head smashed against the asphalt surface of the alley.

Lexi stood in the alley, two by four at the ready, eyes glued on the woman, but she lay motionless on the ground. Lexi doubted she would ever move again since Lexi's hit had caved in the woman's head. She began shaking. It started as a slight tremble but quickly resonated throughout her whole body. She dropped the board onto the ground, and it rattled onto the pavement. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound escaped. Then, a sound like a whisper escaped from her lips. Finally, the full scream came, a deep growl filled with anger and fear and anguish, amplified by the adrenaline coursing through her body. She stared at the woman's body for an indeterminate amount of time, until some of her senses returned to her.

Lexi picked the board up off the ground and looked around to get her bearings. Once she determined which way her building was, she left the alley and jogged down the street. She could already make out the top of the skyscrapers poking above the low-rise apartment buildings comprising this part of the city. As she got closer to her building, the sounds of gunfire and growling became so loud, they started hurting her ears. Finally, she made it to the intersection with the street her building was on, but she felt that something was wrong as she approached.

She reached the corner and saw that security had made a makeshift perimeter in front of the entrance with destroyed cars and panels of chain-link fencing normally seen around construction sites. Behind the barrier were a group of Penetech security officers, armed with automatic weapons, watching a crowd of people dressed in uniforms further past the entrance. It was a group of transportation workers who were on strike. However, they weren't picketing. They were engaged in a vicious battle with a small group of police officers.

One panicked-looking police officer was lying on the sidewalk in a corner where two buildings met. He fired his pistol at a group of transportation workers, as they dashed across the street toward him. Lexi heard the metallic click announcing that the cop was out of ammunition. As his shaking hands struggled to switch out the magazine, the transportation workers pounced. The group tore him apart amidst a chorus of animalistic growling and moist tearing and chewing sounds. A cloud of the man's blood formed over the area.

Two other police officers hunkered down behind an overturned car, shooting at another group with shotguns. One officer shot a transportation worker in the chest, knocking him to the ground. However, the worker jumped up and pounced on the cop, tearing her apart. The other officer had about the same luck. He appeared to have run out of ammunition, and the monsters killed him while trying to put shells into his shotgun. The Penetech security officers watched the entire scene unfold impassively.

The transportation workers made quick work of the police officers, leaving nothing but a puddle of blood and a scattering of bones. They turned their attention towards Penetech security, somehow sensing their presence. The group ran down the street toward the fortified entrance. A machine gun positioned on the roof of the overhang above the entrance came alive, sending a fiery barrage of death at the transportation workers. The group stopped in their tracks when they met this wall of devastation. Another cloud of blood-red mist hung over the part of the street where the group met the machine gun fire, slowly settling on the pile of broken bodies in the street.

Lexi crept from behind the mailbox from where she had been watching the events unfold. She fingered the slick surface of her company ID card as she approached the barrier. She raised her hands above her head with her ID dangling down from one of them.

"HALT!" One of the security officers shouted. Lexi stopped, her body quivering.

"GET ON YOUR KNEES!" Lexi followed this instruction, along with subsequent ones, until she was lying facedown in the middle of the street. She heard a clinking sound approach her, and she saw two pairs of black leather boots approach. One stood a few steps away from her while the other took her ID, patted her down, and pricked her finger to harvest a few drops of blood to test.

"Base camp, Alpha Two One. One pax for quarantine, over," she heard one security officer say into his radio after a long pause.

"Alpha Two One, base camp. Copy one pax for quarantine. Proceed to checkpoint one, over." The radio chirped back.

"WILCO, out." Lexi sighed, relief washing over her, as the security officers hauled her up. She wasn't sure when was the last time she was this glad to be at work.

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In other news, a month has passed since the Omega pandemic raged across the world, and the country is slowly crawling out of the economic downturn caused by a quarter of the population becoming infected. However, thanks to the federal government's emergency legislation allowing companies increased control over employees, the stock market is up today for the first time since Omega's appearance. Penetech Industries, the company that took the revolutionary step in housing its workers in corporate-controlled dormitories for a low monthly fee, announced today that they are developing a serum that will decrease the aggression of people infected with Omega, while keeping the more positive aspects of infection, such as the increased strength and endurance. Industry experts state that these traits have transference into the manual labor sector and should increase productivity tenfold.

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Originally published on Medium.