Clickers vs Zombies by Brian Keene, J.F. Gonzalez Read Free Book Online Page A

prevented this football from bouncing off you, you also shielded other members of your team. In other words, your reaction to my action benefited your team.” John regarded them. “That’s what this is all about folks. Working together toward a common goal. The common goal is the good of Sunn Advertising. Reacting against sudden actions like my tossing the football may seem like an act of self-preservation, and it is. You may perform acts of self-preservation on the job—working to get that website done before the deadline, for instance. You do it because if you don’t, you’ll get fired, right?”
    Jose Garcia, one of Sunn Advertising’s web designer’s laughed. “You got that right, bro.”
    John smiled. “So there you go. Go forth and when you get to your destination take in what’s around you. Assess it. Consider the team members you are with. Then, act accordingly.”
    Cathy wasn’t sure what to act on in this remote part of the island. John must have picked this spot on purpose just for the three of them. She glanced at Wendy, who shook her head. A silent communication seemed to pass between them. I bet Jim told that consultant that we’re his problem children , that look seemed to say. And he stuck us out here to torture us.
    Melissa glanced around at the remote section of beach. “Well, this is just stupid. I don’t know what he wants us to do here! It’s just the three of us. There’s nobody else here!”
    “He must have picked this spot for a reason,” Wendy said. She nodded out at the ocean. “Take a look, Melissa. Isn’t it beautiful?”
    Melissa glanced at the ocean and frowned. The sky had been filled with a bunch of birds earlier that day—seagulls, pigeons, crows. It was like that old Hitchcock movie, The Birds . Cathy glanced out at the ocean and saw what Wendy was getting at. The view from this end of the island, the peacefulness of this spot, the nature, it was very beautiful.
    “All I see is a bunch of sand and rocks and water,” Melissa said. She craned her neck around, looking up at the large cliff wall that rose fifty yards and ended in scrub bush above. A second path wound its way steeply up the cliff toward civilization, with residential streets, homes, and apartments. “It’s ugly down here. Why didn’t he lead us up where there’s people?”
    “He wanted us to come down here,” Cathy said, trying to wrap her mind around this exercise and what the end of this particular path meant. “He had a reason. Let’s try to figure that out.”
    “I think he wanted us to appreciate this,” Wendy said. She tilted her head in the direction of the ocean. Wendy was twenty years younger than Cathy, in her early thirties. She was short, slightly chunky in hip and bust, and wore her brown frizzy hair to mid-back. “I think that when you pluck us out of our environment, which is constantly busy, and you come to this…” She looked out at the ocean, shaking her head. “We seem to get so worked up by such trivial things at the office. You know? The kind of things that don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Who answers the phone first. Not listening to each other when one of us is trying to make a system work, or ridiculing a new process—”
    Melissa sighed. “Jesus Christ, this isn’t about the new database, is it?”
    Cathy shrugged. “Wendy has a point, Melissa. Jim hired me to create the database and you’ve been nothing but resistant to the idea. It’s made my job kinda difficult.”
    “How has it made it difficult? You’re doing such a fine job on it!”
    Cathy looked at Melissa as if she’d lost her mind. Wendy chuckled sarcastically.
    “You’re looking at me as if I’m the problem,” Melissa said, her features incredulous.
    “You hired me to create and maintain the database, correct?” Cathy asked.
    “Of course.”
    “And I did that. I also sat with you on three one-on-one training sessions to teach you how to query the database and pull the