The Most Uncommon Cold I - Life in the Time of Zombies by Jeffrey Littorno Page A

holding my breath and listening for any sound. The door made a slight click as I closed it, but that was the only sound in the room. Still holding my breath, I crept toward the wall on the right. I froze as my shoes squeaked on the linoleum. The shadow on the wall seemed to freeze right along with me. Everything stayed absolutely still like that for several seconds.  Then the shape on the wall began to move once more, and there was a soft scratching sound like a mailbox being opened.  I slowly and breathlessly moved up to the corner of the last large cabinet and stuck my head around the corner.  What I saw caused me to snort.
     Near the end of the row of mailboxes, a chubby older woman with curly black hair I had passed a few times in the hallway stood hunched over in front of an open box staring inside. However, that is not what startled me. The chubby older woman with curly black hair was totally naked.   At the sound of my snort, the woman turned toward me.  She appeared to have trouble focusing on me and was instead staring at the wall behind me.
         “I ’m waiting for a letter from my grandbabies.  It should have been here by now,” she muttered to herself. 
         Before I could make any comment, the woman turned back to the mailbox, opened it, and peered inside once more.
         “Is there someone I can call for you?”  I asked as I stepped closer. 
         She made no response, and I figured that the woman might be hard of hearing.  I slowly reached forward to touch her lightly on the shoulder in order to get her attention.  Any amusement I might have felt moments earlier was instantly gone as I felt her cold skin.  It was not like the coolness you might feel on the flesh of someone who has been outside on a cold winter day.  The coldness of the woman’s flesh was like that of something lacking the heat of life, like something that had no chance of ever being warm again.  
       As soon as I touched her shoulder, her head whipped around to stare at me with pale, blank eyes.   
         “I ’m waiting for a letter from my grandbabies.  It should have been here by now,” she repeated.
         “Is there someone I can call for you?”  I repeated.
         Without saying anything to me, the chubby, naked, older woman with curly black hair turned back to open the mailbox and peered inside.
         Maybe it was heartless and inhumane to leave her like that, but I had other concerns just then, and I promised my conscience that I would check back on her right after I looked for Bonnie’s car in the garage.  So I backed away from her and didn’t turn around until my back pressed against the door.  I spun around and threw the door open in one move.  The white door marked “Garage” was directly ahead, and I charged through it without any thought. My only concern was simply the need to be away from that place with the naked woman.
         The garage was cold.  The shock o f the temperature may have helped me to come to terms with everything I had seen thus far in the day.  Whatever the cause, I found myself once again doing a sort of inventory of all the strange things I had seen.  
         It was certainly some weird shit, but I told myself that there had to be some key to it all.  There had to be some way to make sense of everything.  I refused to believe that there was not some logical reason behind the seemingly illogical things I had seen.  Dead people coming back. Half-eaten corpses  dragging themselves after me.  People in airports taking bites out of one another. All at once, the only rational explanation fell on top of me, and the weight of the realization knocked the wind out of me.
         The only truly rational explanation was that I was hallucinating. This whole experience had to be just some sort of flashback brought on by the assortment of drugs I had taken as a college student.  It was just as possible that, at this precise