The neighbors across the street drove their suv straight through their garage door and tore off down the street. That was about a half hour ago. Some of the zombies shambling outside used to be my neighbors. I recognized Steve by his lawnmowing pants, army green cargos, with one of the pockets torn and dangling. It was the only way to tell him apart from the others, half his face is stripped of skin, the other side stained brown with dried blood, or the remnants of someone's bowels.

That sound earlier was, in fact, screams. They accompanied a bullhorn or megaphone or whatever the hell those things are called. The voice boomed across the neighborhood from the big nursing home nearby. Come and get it, it said. More screams. The doctors must have been cleaning house, or constructing a diversion to escape the back way.

My stomach turned inside out at that. The office is ripe with my hot vomit. That must have been when the dead found my office door. I could hear them sniffing around by the carpet. There's a gap--just next to the file cabinet I've got shoved there--where I've seen fingers, caked with blood and torn open to bone. They dart in and out of that rectangle, almost sexually. The thought makes me gag.

I've given up hiding at the window. I just sit here and watch and listen. There's something coming down the street. I can hear it in the distance. It sounds like a vehicle.

I'm going out on the roof.