“Owww.” Angela gingerly stepped out of bed, walking like an old woman toward the light switch at the end of the room. Plantar fasciitis plagued her, but she worked two jobs these days and one of them was intent on destroying her feet, forcing her to round up carts, load merchandise, walk the aisles, and to walk further in a day than she had in years past. She kept ice packs in the freezer, specialty ones that she’d picked up at CVS, with Velcro straps to fit around her feet. They were helping…a bit. Soldier on, like the lady of the hunt, the Greek goddess Artemis, she told herself. And what she hunted for was a way out of the rat race mess she’d found herself in.

But Angela worked two jobs so that she wouldn’t have to rely on her main one—state work—forever, and might actually get a chance to break away from it. She worked for board members appointed by the governor of California, and though she wished that her boss, a woman named Kaitlyn, was a maternal sort of figure, that just wasn’t the case. Kaitlyn was out for blood.

Angela worked for a California state agency called the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, and despite the innocuous name, the agency was involved in shady business that Angela didn’t approve of, and thus her job was in danger. Who would have thought that an office clerk could put such a fire under the feet of these powerful individuals? She touched the silver stag necklace she wore. Give me strength.

Downtown Sacramento

Angela arrived downtown about a half-hour early prior to her work day starting. She parked at the garage near the building on J Street. Her parking situation in the interior garage of the building hadn’t yet been approved by building services, not that it mattered much. As long as she got into the parking garage by 7AM, she paid the special rate and not the by-the-hour rate, and that made all the difference between survival and poverty.

Coffee was the lifeblood of office work, so Angela made her way toward the 7-Eleven that stood at the corner of the street. Its side window had been broken in the middle of the night. Downtown was a haven for crime and homelessness. Today, a man stood in front of the door to the 7-Eleven, soliciting handouts, or so Angela thought. As she passed a grimy old dollar bill into his outstretched hand, he tucked in the second and third fingers of his other hand and pretended to fly it through the air. “You gonna fall right out of the sky,” he said, walking off to some unknown destination. It was disturbing, but this sort of activity was fairly commonplace for downtown Sacramento. Angela opened the door and walked in.

As she grabbed a coffee cup, she thought about the crazy man’s words. So weird. But it was morning and she had the whole day ahead of her, and she’d rather deal with the crazies on the street than the dark-hearted people in the office, propped up on their own sense of personal superiority. Kaitlyn had come down hard on her lately, and Angela hadn’t yet gotten a hold of her union representative. She filled her coffee cup almost to the top, leaving room for creamer and sugar, which she added plenty of, stirring it into a light brown mixture and adding the plastic top to her cup. She paid for the coffee and left, walking over to the entrance to the building. She worked up on the nineteenth floor.

She’d tucked a book about zombies into her bag today. Any form of escapism would dull the pain of office work in an environment where she was surrounded by sharks, or wolves, or whatever predatory creatures you wanted to liken the board members of the office to. Angela didn’t believe in zombies, the undead coming back to life. Death was death, and it reigned over all. There was no way to make a dead circulatory system start working, to pump blood to the muscles and make them work beyond the confines of death. It was physically impossible. Fantasy and nothing more.

Mid-Flight

The plane shook with a thunder that threatened to rend the thing to pieces. “This is your captain speaking. We are experiencing some turbulence. Please remain calm.” But Angela did not like plane turbulence, and now the homeless man’s muttered words came back to her: “You gonna fall right out of the sky.” She clasped her hands together and started to pray. Whatever gods may be, help me, let me survive. Then came the next announcement: “This is your captain speaking. We’re in trouble, and we’re going down.” All around her, the passengers erupted into absolute chaos, screaming and clutching each other. And then her world went black.

When she came to, she looked around, dazed. How long have I been unconscious? She touched her forehead and then looked at her fingers. Red blood stuck to them. She was still buckled into her seat, so she undid the seatbelt and looked around. Everyone was slumped over in their seats. Are all the other passengers dead? She walked up toward the cockpit. Hopefully either the captain or the co-pilot are alive.

But when she reached the cockpit, she found the door locked from the inside and was unable to pry it open. These security measures had been implemented after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. So she walked over to the first slouched-over woman, pressing two fingers to her neck to check the woman’s pulse. But she felt none. This woman is dead. Surely they’re not all dead. But after three people were, she stopped checking.

An Unknown Location

She’d survived the plane crash somehow, but now she was all alone in a frozen wasteland, and she’d heard that wolves lived here. She had no time to mourn her fate. She had to focus on her own survival above all else.

She saw nothing but snow around her. She looked over at the remains of the plane and considered using that shell for shelter, but she shuddered at the thought of seeing all those dead bodies in there.

She looked around and saw eight pure white wolves circling around her, and she feared for her life. Their eyes seemed to glow yellow, and Angela knew that looking into the eyes of a wild animal was the same as issuing a challenge. But these wolves were no different than the predators she’d encountered in the office, and none of them would get the best of her.

And so she stood her ground. Come and get me.

One of the wolves—the largest one, which she could only assume was the pack leader—snarled and showed his teeth. The articles she’d read suggested that now was the time to avoid making eye contact and to lower her head, bowing slowly, submissively, and to back away slowly. But there was no guarantee that this insane plan would even work anyway. Still, she knew better than to run. She was a strong runner, but the plantar fasciitis would eventually get the better of her, and the wolf pack would outrun and kill her. Angela knew that she’d have to take on the leader first. The other wolves began to snarl and lunge as well, feeding off the energy of the others. The pack worked itself into a frenzy. Angela took off her hoodie, though she hated to do so, in the midst of the biting cold.

She dropped her backpack behind her. Then she took a lighter from her pocket and set her hoodie on fire, letting the flames start eating it up, before throwing it onto the pack leader. The pack leader whimpered, fought with the fiery garment, and then backed away. In the confusion, she had time to grab other garments and do the same, each time, picking a new target, and expanding her circle of territory.

“You’re not going to kill me, you beasts!” she shouted. The article she’d read had actually suggested laying down, playing dead, covering her face and throat, and expecting to take a couple bites. That wasn’t how she saw herself going down. She loved animals, but she put that part of herself away. These are not animals, she told herself. These are monsters who want to kill you. She continued to stand her ground. I am the hunter, here.

All of a sudden, the ground began to shake. This was not part of Angela’s plan. What in the world was going on? The wolves looked alarmed, as though unsure what to do. For a moment, she saw the ground begin to open up, and she was swallowed up into this great maul, the wolves too, all down into the ground of a great cavern covered by and surrounded by snow at the ground level, which was now above her head. She landed roughly on her right leg and couldn’t put any pressure on it. She was pretty sure it was broken. Around her, in the cave, the wolves lay dead. She looked around, not seeing her backpack.

The cave walls were painted with strange, glowing symbols. What is this place? She saw no tunnels leading into or out of this place. So how did anyone get in or out of here? I’m going to die here in this place in the wilderness, surrounded by the bodies of wolves I haven’t killed, who would have killed me if they could. Can life get any worse? Perhaps she shouldn’t have tempted fate. She knew the answer to that question. No matter how bad things seemed to be, they could always get worse. They could always get worse.

***

Night fell, and Angela could see the stars up through that hole in the ground, but she also saw the bright, full moon. She felt the dull ache of hunger in her stomach, but that was nothing compared to the pain in her broken leg. She just wanted to lay there and die, the pain was so bad. She packed snow over her broken leg and had managed to lay it out flat in front of her as she sat back against the rock wall. There was nothing to eat down here except for rotting wolf meat, and she had no blade to get at it with, no fire to cook it over, and no way to make one unless she could find that stupid lighter.

Her head throbbed, and those strange sigils on the walls looked like they glowed even brighter in the dark. Or maybe she was seeing things. She wondered what they were, who wrote them, and what they meant. And then she saw one of the wolves’ bodies begin to twitch. And she shuddered. There’s no way that actually happened. She watched for a good long while; she had no way of keeping track of time down there in the hole, but it seemed like forever that she watched. And the dead wolf body was just that: only so much rotting meat laying on a heap of snow.

She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. When she woke, it was morning and the bright sun streamed in from above, tempting her to move. And she tried to, and the pain in her leg was somehow, miraculously, gone. She wiggled her toes; no pain. She moved her foot from side to side; no pain. Then she slowly lifted herself up, free to explore her surroundings at last. Her backpack had to be around here somewhere. As she stood, she looked around and spotted the bodies of seven wolves. Then she saw her backpack laying over in the corner. She walked over to it. Today would be the day to take stock of her resources, find out what she had to work with, and make a plan to get herself out of here. After all, it was only a hole in the ground, not her tomb.

She began emptying the contents of her bag: the zombie book, a variety of receipts, a K-cup, her wallet, a variety of pens, a movie ticket stub, and her keys. Where’s my cell phone? She’d left with her cell phone, intending to call her sister when she arrived in Alaska. Or have I forgotten it at home somewhere? She racked her brain, but couldn’t come up with an answer. At any rate, she had no way to create a fire, even though she had a little bit of paper to fuel one with. So she walked around the cave to see what she could find. It looked like an abandoned place, long abandoned. Over in one corner, she saw what looked like a small pile of items: a bone, a broken lantern, a piece of metal. The lantern held no oil and might have been lit with a candle at some point. None of these things would help her.

She tried calling out, “Help! Help!” but no one heard her. No one came. She wandered around the cave, trying to pile up rocks and climb up the walls to get out, but the hole in the ceiling was way too far up. So at last she gave up, realizing that the only thing she could do at this point would be to sit down, read her book, and try to think of a way out, or hope for some kind of miraculous rescue as she slowly died of starvation. So she took out her book and walked over to where she’d sat before, thankful that her leg now worked, but frustrated because even that didn’t save her.

Angela opened the book and started to read, but she found it difficult to focus, as she mentally replayed all of the things that had happened thus far. Only yesterday, she’d been going through her hellish existence, and that crazy person on the street had told her that her plane would crash, like some kind of derelict oracle. And sure enough, it had, but thankfully, she’d passed out somewhere between the sky and the ground. What a tragedy: all those lives lost on the plane she’d left, never to return. She put the thought out of her mind. If she ever made it back to society, she’d tell the tale of what had transpired, though it would surely prove to be little comfort to the families who’d lost their loved ones.

Get up, said a voice in her mind. She ignored it.

Instead, she started to read. But then after a while, she paused, swearing she’d heard something above, like a shuffling of snow. “Help!” she called. “Help me! Is anyone up there?”

And she shrieked as she saw a face appear above, at the opening. It was the face of the woman who’d been on the airplane, the one without a pulse. But something was wrong. Her jaw hung slack, as though unhinged. She made a strange, screeching sound instead of uttering words. “Are you okay?” Angela asked. “Are you from the plane? It’s okay if you can’t speak. I know sign language.” But the woman didn’t seem to comprehend. Soon, she saw another face appear above her. This one’s neck hung at a weird angle, as though broken. The man looked in with beady, hungry eyes.

Oh my god, they’re zombies, Angela thought. But no, that can’t be right. It’s not possible. Soon enough, another head appeared around the circle, and another, and another, until all space around the hole above her was taken up with these zombie-looking faces, none of them speaking English words, but some of them making sounds and looking like they were gesturing to each other.

She suddenly felt thankful to be in the hole, down below, where these once-humans couldn’t reach her. But then she felt a chill run down her spine, as she realized that even though the zombie humans couldn’t reach her, the wolves—if they returned to life—sure could. Were there enough stones down here in the pit to bury them before they could bring her to harm? She scrambled, thinking of what to do. She had pens, and she’d seen the Jason Bourne movies. She could use those pens to start stabbing the wolves in their carotid arteries so they could bleed out. Perhaps that would keep them from becoming zombie wolves. So she started gathering up all the pens and gathering up her courage as well. She’d already attacked the leader. That’s the one she’d start with, this time around, as well.

Hunt, fight. Artemis, give me strength.

She had four pens, not enough to leave one in each of the wolves she’d stab. Oh well. She took up the four pens and started walking toward the pack leader. Then she stopped as a shudder ran through the bodies of all seven wolves at once. They shook, kicking out their legs as though testing them for the first time. But Angela had come through so much—a plane crash, a wolf attack—surely all of these things didn’t lead to a strange death in an earthquake pit, right?

The wolves began to shake. Now’s the time to strike. Angela gripped one of the pens, leaping forward, but at the same time, the pack leader shook himself back to life and lunged. Angela screamed, falling back as the wolf pinned her to the ground, snarling, slobbering on her as she lay helpless beneath. From down here, she saw that the zombies above began to climb down into the pit. Now was the time to use those skills that the article mentioned. She put her hands up, guarding her neck, as the other wolves shook themselves to life and the other zombies above began spilling into the pit, some of them falling awkwardly and landing with a dull thud. Now she had a crowd of zombies from the plane and the whole wolf pack to contend with. She closed her eyes tightly shut. Artemis, save me.

But no one came to save her. And her screams pierced the cold night.