Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters by Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, China Miéville, Joe R. Lansdale, Cherie Priest, Christopher Golden, Al Sarrantonio, David Schow, John Langan, Paul Tremblay Page B

pavement and cigarette butts and sodden pages of the Post .
    The elevators in that building were saunas, prone to breaking down. I remember thinking that I could maybe claim that I’d been stuck in one; I looked shitty enough. It was something I often thought about trying. But I figured they could check with the maintenance guys, I’d get busted, which would be even more embarrassing.
    As soon as I stepped through the door of the office I was struck by how quiet it was. To the point that I wondered if I’d somehow forgotten a day off. But Rosemary’s redecorates for every holiday known to humankind, including Arbor Day. I’d have noticed.
    I came around the corner of the first row of cubes and spotted my boss and my boss’s boss. They couldn’t miss me. I tried to brace myself, but that would have required something to brace, and I felt invertebrate.
    Neither of them said anything as I approached. Neither of them even looked up. They weren’t talking, I remember thinking they both looked sad, sore. I wondered if they’d decided to fire me.
    “Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual, actually sounding dehydrated. “Good morning.” And they each nodded slowly, but neither of them replied as I entered my cubicle. By the time my computer finished starting up, a peek over the wall revealed that they’d drifted away.
    I figured something in email might account for their behavior, but no—the company hadn’t been sold, or sued, or the server farm set on fire, there hadn’t been any layoffs. There were no new emails at all except the autogenerated one I got every Monday reminding me to update my time sheets.
    I got some coffee, read some blogs. The worst of the pounding and lurching inside faded away. By lunchtime, I was ready to risk the break room.
    As I came back along the corridor, I heard a dull hiss, the sound of something scraping over the dense industrial carpet. A moment later the receptionist, Jeannette, came around the corner pushing a box of printer paper along the floor.
    It started my brain and stomach pulsing again, the way she was bent like something out of Bosch with her knees crooked and her bowed back in the air. Normally she could lift three of those boxes. She was flushed a shade of orange I’d never seen on a human being before, beyond the worst nightmares of spray tan, and the tip of her tongue was protruding from her mouth.
    As bad off as I was, I knew I needed to help her. But before the words could wriggle down from my brain and through my clamped jaw, she fell over. Not collapsed, not fell down—fell over, to the side, stiffly.
    I knelt on the floor beside her, put my coffee against the wall—where I promptly kicked it over—and felt for her pulse. Her wrist was slick with greasy sweat and I couldn’t find it. But she was still alive, because she was still breathing, because something was making that moaning noise and pushing the horrible greenish foamy drool out.
    I couldn’t figure out what to do, and then I thought she might be contagious, and I was kneeling in now-cold coffee-damp pants on the now-cold coffee-damp rug. I reached in my pocket for my phone, but of course I’d left it in my bag, back at my desk.
    “I’m sorry,” I said to Jeanette, though I doubted she could hear me, and heaved myself back to my feet. Walking backwards, unwilling to take my eyes off her, I found myself among the cubes of the QA team.
    “Someone better call 911.” No one answered, and for a moment I wondered if I’d only thought it, but then I turned around and saw Angel slumped at her desk and Karl at his, both foaming and staring blankly, both as orange as Jeanette.
    I don’t know how I made myself reach across Karl and pick up his phone. I don’t remember what I said to the woman who answered. Sometime between when I hung up and when the EMTs arrived, I got back to my desk. I even retrieved my empty mug along the way.
    Yeah, some inspiring story of survival. Honestly, it’s probably a good