She forgot to buy the coffee. She could have kicked herself for forgetting, but it wasn’t terribly surprising that she did. The morning had progressed in anything but a smooth manner from the time her alarm went off to her approach to the office park now. The dog had chewed up her favorite pair of pumps in the night. Her kids were uncooperative about getting around and ready this morning. Her car had argued with her about whether or not it was going to start up today. And traffic was plain bonkers, as usual.
She forgot to buy the coffee, and now the office zombies were going to be clamoring for her brains, instead. She almost turned back around and ran back for the coffee, even though she knew it would make her terribly late. Well, the zombies were just going to have to make do with office brew today.
She pushed through the office doors — and bumped into Chad straightaway. Terrific.
“No coffee?” he asked. His eyebrows went up at the query, and his eyes widened with concern. “What about the zombies?”
“Leave them to me,” she said. “It’s my fault there’s no coffee this morning.”
Chad put his hands up. “Okay,” he said, “but I don’t want to see the break room painted in your brains this morning. You’re one of my favorite co-workers.”
She smiled at that. “Thanks, Chad, but I don’t intend to feed the local undead anytime soon.”
She brushed past him and headed straight for the break room. Fortunately, they had an old coffee pot and some even older coffee grounds. It wasn’t ideal, but it might just be enough to fend off the ravening hordes.
Only, when she got to the break room, one of the office zombies was already there.
“Sheila!” she said.
“No coffee?” Sheila moaned. She was slightly hunched over and staggered as she turned, consequences of her condition. Her skin was grey and lifeless, and her hair had fallen out in clumps before so that she looked like something an animal had chewed up and spat out.
“I forgot,” she said, “but look!” She held up the ancient bag of coffee grounds. “I’m going to make coffee for the whole office!”
“Ok,” Sheila replied. “But if you think that’s going to make up for missing out on fresh drip, you’ve got another thing coming.” At that Sheila reached up and patted her on the head. “Nom nom,” Sheila added.
She suppressed a shiver at that but moved quickly to the coffee pot and began filling it with water from the tap. Within minutes she had a fresh pot of coffee brewing, the scent of which drew the other office zombies to the break room.
“That stuff?” exclaimed Robert. “I’d rather eat my own arm.” He looked down. His left arm was missing. “Which I guess I already have.”
“Relax, Robert,” she said. “This may not be the good stuff, but it’ll still be enough so you can get your fix. No brain eating today, okay?” She worked to quash the nervous quiver in her voice. There hadn’t actually been an incident of an office zombie eating anyone’s brains in months, but she didn’t want to be the reason that record got reset to null.
She backed away while the local undead crew lined up for the coffee pot. The office zombies always got their coffee first because if they didn’t, they had a tendency to become… unruly.
“See?” she said to Chad some time later, when the zombies had all shuffled and moaned their way back to their respective cubicles. “No one got eaten today.”
“Lucky for you,” Chad replied. And then he, too, moseyed back to his desk.
She breathed a sigh of relief. Another morning salvaged — barely — by the generous application of java, even if it was ancient and moldy. She wasn’t about to pour herself a cup of that swill, though. It was alright for the undead, but for a human, it was absolute garbage.
She sighed again, then headed to her desk. Time to find out what else this day held in store for her.
