by Matt Nord

Created on: December 21, 2009

It would figure that I would get trapped in a mop closet during the zombie apocalypse. How could it not have happened this way? After countless hours of research and study and preparation. Thousands of dollars spent on equipment, weapons and dried and canned food. Planning on how to turn my house into a fortress in short minutes should the uprising occur. All the survivalist manuals read and seminars gone to. Escape routes from the house and scouting out possible “safe houses” around town. All safely across town, through them. The best laid plans of mice and men. “And janitors,” I grimly said to myself.

I had seen the first one only seconds before it took a huge bite of flesh out of my employee’s neck. It must’ve gotten his jugular, because as it pulled away, veins stuck between some of it’s broken teeth, the blood sprayed across the hall to the other wall. The shock was almost too much for me, because my first thought was “Boy, that’s going to be a pain in the ass to clean up.”

I snapped back to reality as I heard a deep moan coming from behind me down the other end of the hallway. Luckily, it was far enough away that I was able to run to the mop closet and shut and lock the door before it could reach me. I had thought briefly about trying to save Nate, but I’d seen enough movies to know that even if he didn’t die from blood lose, which he almost certainly had, he’d have inevitably come back as one of them.

So here I sit in the mop closet. The smell of cleaning chemicals is almost overwhelming. It wasn’t so bad when I’d come in at night to clean. All I’d do is grab the cleaning kit and fill up the mop bucket with the door open. Now, I’d filled up that same mop bucket with what would come to be my drinking water. Even after rinsing it out several times, I could still taste the mop soap as I drank. The smell was starting to give me a massive headache.

That, coupled with the realization of my lack of food, brought me to the conclusion that I couldn’t stay here for too long. Also, if the two creatures outside knew I was here, they’d no doubt attract the attention of others. If these two got in, they’d have inevitably infected others that were in the building. The sounds of moans coming from outside the door confirmed this. I could distinctly make out more than two different “voices.”

I couldn’t survive long on the Tootsie Rolls and suckers I’d snagged from the candy dish on the secretary’s desk. And, again, there were the gathering creatures outside the door. I’d have to make a break for it. Scanning around for a weapon, my eyes fell on a toolbox the building manager must have left. I opened it and inside I saw what might as well have been the Holy Grail to me right then. A 20 ounce claw hammer, an eight inch Craftsman Phillips screwdriver, and a twelve inch crowbar. I’d been thinking that if there was a God that he’d definitely had a sense of humor. A janitor trapped in his mop closet. What a fitting tomb. Now I was thanking Him for the little things.

I could only hope that my wife was at the house, safe with our two sons. She’d humored me about the zombie survival interest. It started as a hobby. Then it became more. I wonder what she thought about it now. I just had to make it past them, to the van and then pray that the streets weren’t too overrun. Of course, they wouldn’t necessarily be the problem. It would be the idiots out there that were all panicking, causing just as much havoc as the rising dead. Well, no more wasting time. I picked up the crowbar and reached for the doorknob.

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