The floor was a cheap grey carpet, stained in a few places from spilled coffee runs and that one time a new intern vomited from nerves on his first day. The walls were weak plaster, left unpainted so the company CEO could afford his daughter's extravagant sixteenth birthday. No one in the office had been invited to that party, but they all hadn't really minded at the time- or pretended not to anyways- because most of them had been new and young employees and didn't want to lose their jobs. Now they sat in the same cubicles at the same job years later, ignoring their chronic lower back pain and rolls of acquired stomach fat, and wondered if losing their job wouldn't be the best thing to happen to them this year.
At the moment, though, no one was contemplating how many more dull years till a slightly less dull retirement. At the moment, the room was at a standstill, beeping copy machines and inappropriate jokes by the water jug and all. Every plump middle-aged man and woman in the office had turned in their seat, eyes locked on the glass door that opened onto the office floor. Their old boss, Mr. Rottermore- who had suddenly “retired” three months earlier- knocked about in the outside hallway, fumbling with the handle of the glass door.
It was an unusual occurrence for work to stop on the Resources Management department floor- well, all at once anyway. The Resources Management Department manager took great pride in the 45 hard-working men and women dedicated to the honorable mission of providing enough stationary, spreadsheet copies, and pie chart presentations for the entire company all hours of the work day and the manager happily enforced this pride. It’s a heavy burden, acquiring and organizing all that paper, he liked to say, but it’s their destiny!
But now, all was quiet. Except for the occasional groan and whump as Mr. Rottermore continued to struggle stiffly with the door handle, there was no sound. No bad jokes, no Saturday night football game bets, no angry gossip whispering… Even Barry the 48-year old smoker with a voice so raspy he was nicknamed Batman, had silenced his constant choking inhales. The corpse-stiff silence enveloped the room so thickly that it was as if no one even dared to breathe.
“Hello, hello good people!” The copy room door opened and punctured the vacuum. Fresh-faced Pembleton Brooke, a naive young intern with a knack for naive young jokes, balanced a towering stack of paper as he happily trotted across the office floor to the receptionist’s desk. No one was answering his radiant grins, but he didn’t notice because he grinned so wide that he squeezed his eyes shut.
"What a beautiful morning in the office!" he announced, sighing with bubbly content.
He approached the desk of the receptionist, who was 20 years his senior. He noted she was middle-aged and flabby in the wake of motherhood and a busy career, but she was attractive enough for his purpose of pursuing a forbidden office romance. He figured he’d better greet her before he got out his “you age as gracefully as foreign cheese” pick-up line. He didn’t want to intimidate her with his charming after all.
“Jolly great weather, is it not?” he remarked. “Just jolly jolly great!”
The heavy weight of her silence was awkward and cumbersome on his shoulders. Alright, time for the big guns. He loudly cleared his throat. “You know, I know we haven’t- ah - worked together very long… and you are kind of- what’s the word? Not old, but a synonym for old... You see, you smell like cheese... wait, that’s not right-”
He was startled by the receptionist suddenly standing from her chair. What? A kiss already? He could barely contain his excitement as he pulled his new chapstick from his pocket.
The receptionist, however, paid no notice to Pembleton. Without a break in her silence, she unlocked a drawer by her feet, pulled out a photo of her three children, and dropped to her knees, bowing her head in prayer.
Pembleton faltered. “Right. Freedom of prayer. Great country we have. God bless America. Won’t bother you then.”
He shuffled away, defeated by her odd rejection. How strange… He shrugged to himself. He must look like her ex-husband.
Turning away, he eyed the desk of a sweaty and balding coffee-stained white shirt. Jim Holloway was known to sweat at all hours of the day, inside and outside, at all temperatures. In fact, he sweat so much and so often that people would often mutter “swim, Jim, swim” whenever he and his rancid body odor wafted past because he smelled like a dead fish. Still, despite his fishy smell, Pembleton pretended that Jim’s personality was worth the smell because Jim was the only one who laughed at his jokes.
He felt intimidated by the soaked shirt and chose to talk to Jim over his cubicle wall, minimizing the effect of the stink. “Jim! Holloman! The Hollo-copter! My good fellow! My great mate! Just how fine are you feeling today? Myself, I’m feeling mighty fine!”
“Jim! My man!” He nonchalantly covered his nose as he talked. “Tell me about that slamming weekend!”
Jim too paid him no attention. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times- at which Pembleton's smile opened eagerly- but then Jim just put his hand to his mouth and began biting his fingernails. What was with everyone today? the -super-enthusiastic intern wondered.
“Hollo-bro! Give me some action, man!” Pembleton clapped Jim on the shoulder, quickly wiping his hand on his pants.
Jim finally paused in his fingernail biting and gawkily whipped his head to face Pembleton. "S-s-see that g-guy at the door?” Jim whispered. "That’s our o-o-o-old boss, Mr. Ro-o-o-ottermore. He’s come back from the d-d-d-dead.”
Pembleton blinked. “What?” He glanced at the door behind him. The short and fat troll-featured man had given up on the door handle and was ramming his beer belly against the door very slowly, lumberingly dragging dirty meaty fingertips across the clean glass. 
Wow! He hadn’t even noticed! Pembleton shook his head. Sometimes he couldn’t help it; he got really caught up in his own wit sometimes. Wait, what was that Jim said? Dead? “Are you joking?”
Suddenly Jim smiled eerily. Was he serious?
No! Jim was an eerie guy! His sweat-thing had isolated him so much that he was socially inept so he often came across as creepy. Pembleton giggled. Of course Jim was joking! “Back from the dead?” Ridiculous!
“Well, well! Aren't you quite the joker! I never knew, Holloman!” He grinned. “It is certainly strange for the old chap to return from retirement, isn’t it? Might as well be a zombie, am I right?" He elbowed Jim's chubby arm and laughed again.
Jim stopped smiling. “You’ll go first I bet,” he said and moved to the fingernails of his other hand. Pembleton’s laughter halted abruptly and he shuddered at the dark cold eyes Jim had turned on him. Yeah, an eerie guy alright.
Moving away from Jim's smelly corner of the office, Pembleton ignored Jim’s foreboding words and leered mischievously at his fellow employees.
"You are all so rude,” he teased loudly, for everyone to hear. “Guess I’ll get on your boss’ good side without a single day's work! ”
Pembleton strolled cheerfully to the door and moved to opened it. Suddenly, movement exploded across the department floor.
“DON’T!”
Pembleton opened the door and grinned at the stout, overweight man swaying in the office doorway. “Hello Mr. Rottermore! My name is-”
Mr. Rottermore stumbled forward and sank his teeth into Pembleton’s neck.

"Hey! Long time no see!"
"Good mornin’! Yeah, it be a while since I last saw ya, eh? Hey, you hear ‘bout that Brooke guy?"
"The Pembleton intern, eh? Yeah,  it’s been all over my television. I gotta tell ya, my cousin knew ‘im. Said he was rocking his rocking chair on one leg, but a nice guy. They say he was the first victim of that "zombie" epidemic down in New York.”
“I’m mighty glad it hit there first. Any place as long as it’s not here!"
"Yeah. But Pembleton, he was an American, one of us! The poor sucker... Never saw it coming."