Death Role 9, The Call Center
The Call Center
The endless ringing and the auto-connection of the phone line had already begun to drive Rose crazy. She wasn’t cut out for working in a call center and hoped to be leaving the job soon.The one saving grace was the rare conversations she had with bonafide crazy people. Folks who wanted to buy phone lines for their cats, elderly citizens wanting a bit of company to fight back their loneliness, and the dirty perverts who talked about sex in phone terms.
She returned from lunch and donned her headset.
The day had begun like any other, slow and uninteresting. But halfway through her shift the callers had started to change. It was as though all completely insane people never woke up before noon and when they did, they called her.
Almost immediately after signing on, a call came in. Her computer pulled open the related account automatically and Rose did a quick scan of the profile notes for any red flags.
“Thank you for calling Midway Connected, this is Rose. How may I assist you today?” she spewed robotically.
“Rose, a lovely name,” a male caller said.
“Thank you. To whom am I speaking?” The account said Adam Barnum, but training dictated that she ask.
“I thought I was Adam, but I think I’m changing into someone else,” the man said.
Another one on drugs. How do they even find our number? Rose thought. “How may I assist you today?” she asked once more, still politely but with a smidgen of impatience.
The man gave a long, drawn out sigh. Rose watched as the seconds added up on her call time, something they were supposed to keep at a minimum. “Well, Rose,” Adam finally said, “you can start by getting this thing THE FUCK out of me!”
Even though she was certain the caller had said something was inside of him, she stuck to her script. “Sir, if you can give me more information on the issue you are facing, I’d be glad to help.”
“It started in my fingers and I can feel it moving through my body, like a wave. Like a mother fucking wave! I’m losing control of things. Like, I think I just pissed myself.”
“This isn’t emergency services and I can’t transfer you. Please hang up and dial 911, sir,” Rose added the sir for good measure because some of her calls would be recorded for quality monitoring. A hallucinating man wouldn’t cost her this job, no matter how shitty it was.
“I’m going to stay on the line with you because my fingers don’t work anymore so I can’t call anyone else. It’s in my chest now. This feeling. This thing. Please don’t hang up.”
Rose hoped this call was being recorded. It was the strangest one she’d ever had. “Do you need an ambulance? I could have someone send one.”
“No, I just…I need you to stay…on the…” The man’s voice trailed off and Rose heard the phone clatter as, she assumed, it hit the floor.
She ended the call and spun around in her chair. “Is anyone else getting weird calls?” she asked the sea of cubicles behind her. Those that weren’t busy with customers responded in turn.
“A man just witnessed a shooting while I was changing his cell phone plan,” a fellow employee answered.
“A women asked me if I could track her husband’s cell phone inside of their house because she was hiding from him and needed to know if she could escape,” the woman across the row from Rose said. “That’s pretty odd.”
“Why aren’t they calling the police?” Rose wondered aloud.
“An old lady I talked to said the lines were busy. She couldn’t get through,” another co-worker offered.
At that moment Rose’s manager came running into the room. A bloody napkin was wrapped around his right hand and he gripped it tightly. Blood ringed the cuffs of his shirt sleeves.
Rose ran to him. “Russell, what happened?”
He made his way to the unoccupied cubicle next to hers and sat in the chair there. “A man in the parking lot bit me. Can you get the first aid kit from the break room?”
She did as he asked and they wrapped it in gauze and tape, but the wound looked like it needed the help of a doctor and stitches.
“You should go to the hospital,” she said as she closed the kit. Blood had already begun to soak through the thin gauze.
“The blood will clot soon. I’m going to sit here for a bit longer. You can get back on the phone.” Russell leaned forward in the chair, rested his head on the desk and closed his eyes.
Reluctantly, Rose returned to work. She wasn’t too concerned about Russell, but she did think that something was very wrong outside the walls of the call center. It seemed unfair to sit on a phone while others were clearly struggling to survive.
Her phone rang and she picked up the call. Again the customers profile popped up on Rose’s computer screen. The center took calls from all over the state, but the address on file for this phone number was in her city. She gave her usual greeting, but no words were returned from the other end of the line, only sobbing.
Rose was thinking of something to say to comfort the caller, but nothing, not even a scripted response came to mind. Then, a shadow appeared above her. In the screen of her computer she could see Russell’s reflection. He was standing right behind her. Too close to her.
He reached for her clumsily with his pale and bloodied hands. She moved to duck under the desk but the cord of her headset kept her from making any progress. Still the caller weeped in her ears.
“Help me!” she screamed to the room, to the caller.
To her coworkers, her cries were lost amidst the chaos they were hearing in their own headsets.
To the caller, she now was not alone in dying.
For Valentines Day, myself and nearly 30 other authors are offering e-books for just 99 cents! We are also hanging out on Facebook, offering prizes and extras here: Eat Your Heart Out events page
For a complete list of the books plus links to purchase, you can visit the Indie Author Events website post here: http://indieauthorevent.co/eat-heart/
Both When the Dead and The Spread are on sale, so please check them out if you’ve been thinking about it!
I will also be posting valentines cards with quotes from the books and accompanying questions that you can answer for a chance to win some cool prizes.
I’ve been a bit behind on updating the blog here and, to be honest, on interacting with the world. But some exciting things have happened and plenty more is around the bend! What are these things you ask?
Roms, Bombs & Zoms
Evil Girlfriend Media has released the second anthology in the Three Little Words collection. I made the submission deadline and my piece was selected, along with 20 other authors. That shaved-headed chick on the cover is also ME. Paperback and kindle versions available here.
My story is entitled “I’ll Come Back” and it follows a woman to war against a zombie horde while her lover holds down the farm.
Zombiepalooza Radio
Tonight. At 9:15pm (PST) I’ll be chatting with Jackie Chin about my books and an upcoming author event. Tune in here. You can also like the FB page here.
Eat Your Heart Out Author Extravaganza
30 authors on Valentine’s Day will hang out, chat, over prizes AND ebooks for only 99 cents. Join the event here.
Both When the Dead and The Spread: A Zombie Short Story Collection ebooks will be on sale for .99.
Crypticon Seattle 2014
Becky and I are signing up for our table tonight! We are so excited to return for another amazing convention. The guest list is incredible and I’m working on a new novel that I aim to finish in time.
I also submitted a story to the Crypticon Writing Contest put on by Blysster Press. My submission is called “Mirielle” and it is my first non-zombie story.
Death Role
I will continue to write and share fan chapters in the Death Role series. I may even offer the thank you again to new likers of the FB page during Crypticon this year.
There’s more, but I’m running out of time before I get on the radio! Come listen in, see us at Crypticon and stay tuned.
