Snarling, she charged and I swung again, this time breaking her nose. Thick brown blood sprayed out with every snort and hiss. She came back at me like I hadn’t even hit her. With no time to swing, I shoved the hinged end of the plastic sign forward as hard as I could, karate-chopping her in the throat. The force knocked her back just enough for me to get solidly onto the balls of my feet.
Having her windpipe crushed put an end to the animal sounds and stopped her from spraying any more blood. Yet, even though she clearly couldn’t breathe, she came at me again like she didn’t even need air.
Terror froze my muscles.
My instructor had said a throat chop would take down an assailant in mere seconds. Yet, it had done nothing to stop a desk jockey from Accounting.
With the pounding and growling escalating from the bathroom stall a few feet away, I started swinging the sign relentlessly at Melanie’s head. My heart pounded and my breaths came in gulps, yet Melanie kept on coming at me.
When she moved to pounce, I slammed the sign into her temple, causing her to misjudge her attack, and she head butted the wall instead. She turned around. Her forehead was a bloody mess, and she still didn’t seem fazed.
“What the hell?” I asked breathlessly and swung again. The now-bloody sign’s corner nailed her in the eye, knocking an eyeball out of its socket. Another hit made her eyeball swing until it finally flew free and bounced off the wall. I swung again and again and again, my blows echoed by whoever was pounding on the stall door.
Bones crunched, and Melanie collapsed face-forward onto the floor.
More of that gelatinous coffee-colored blood trickled from her head and pooled on the floor. I hit her with the sign one more time to make sure she wasn’t playing possum, and I was about to kick her when the stall door swung open and Julie, the new girl, tumbled onto the floor. She looked up at me with that same sickly, ravenous look.
“Agh!” I smacked her in the face with the sign, and ran out of the bathroom, throwing the sign at her before I yanked the door open.
And I found myself in utter chaos.
I flattened against the wall in the corner where I’d come across Melanie earlier. Copies of my meeting agenda still littered the floor. Cubicle city was generally a quiet place except for the white noise piped in, but now people were running, shouting, and screaming. The pounding of work shoes across hollow floors echoed around me. Over a nearby cubicle wall, I watched as one man tackled another to the ground, his mouth clamping onto his victim’s throat. The other man screamed. Red dots splattered the beige fabric walls.
I’d like to think that it was because I was in shock that I didn’t run to help. But to be honest, I was scared shitless. Still watching the wall where the men went down, I ducked and crabbed down the hall, trying to ignore the anguished screams, focused only on avoiding the crazies. When the man’s screams abruptly stopped, something in my brain kicked me into gear, and I took off running toward my cubicle.
A hand reached out for me, and I twisted away. The work alarms blared. Phones were ringing everywhere. There were more screams and shouts in every direction. Some were begging for help, others were crying.
“Calm down! It will be okay!” a woman yelled from her desk. The next second, bloodied hands grabbed her and yanked her down as she let out an earsplitting scream.
Someone ran into me and I jumped back to find Alan from my team. He looked behind him before looking at me, his eyes wide. “This shit’s fucked up. I’m outta here,” he said under his breath as he headed past me.
Biting my lip, I glanced down the direction of my cube a dozen long feet away, where my bag and car keys waited in a drawer, and then turned back to Alan. “Wait up,” I called out. “I’m coming, too.”
He kept moving, and I sprinted to catch up. He slowed down, looking to the right, and I tugged him to the left. “This way.”
We ran in the opposite direction of the mass exodus heading toward the main elevators. Alan hit the down button at the rarely used back bay of elevators. While we waited, a terrifying image shot through my mind of Melanie jumping out from the small six-by-six compartment.