The motivational poster said "TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK."
Kevin Park had been staring at it for twenty minutes, wondering if he could hang himself with his lanyard before the next icebreaker activity began.
"Alright, everyone!" Denise from HR clapped her hands with the enthusiasm of someone who'd drunk the corporate Kool-Aid and asked for seconds. "Before we move on to our trust falls, I want to remind everyone that this weekend is about synergy. About connection. About becoming the family that TechSolve truly is!"
*We're not a family,* Kevin thought. *Families don't have performance improvement plans.*
He was sitting in a conference room at the Evergreen Mountain Lodge, a "rustic retreat center" three hours from civilization. The company had rented the entire facility for its annual team-building weekend, which meant 147 employees trapped together with no escape and no cell service.
Kevin had tried to get out of it. He'd claimed food allergies, religious obligations, a dying grandmother. HR had seen through all of it.
"Ugh." The voice came from his left, where Rachel Kimâhis only friend in the development departmentâwas doodling zombies in her notebook. "Kill me now."
"Don't tempt me."
"I'm serious. If this weekend involves one more trust exercise, I'm walking into the woods and never coming back."
"There are bears in those woods."
"Bears don't make you introduce yourself with a fun fact."
Fair point.
The trust falls, mercifully, were interrupted by lunch. Kevin found a corner table and opened his sad turkey sandwich, hoping to eat in peace.
No such luck.
"Kevin!" His boss, Derek Thornton, appeared like a genie summoned by misery. Derek was forty-five, wore golf shirts to every occasion, and had never met a buzzword he didn't like. "Great to see you engaging with the team!"
Kevin was eating alone in a corner.
"Just, uh, recharging my batteries."
"That's what I like to hear! Remember, Kevin, there's no 'I' in team." Derek winked. "But there is an 'I' in 'fired,' so let's make sure we're giving 110% this weekend!"
Kevin was pretty sure that threat violated some kind of labor law, but Derek was already moving on to harass someone else.
"I hate this place," Kevin muttered.
The lights went out.
---
At first, everyone assumed it was part of the program.
"Ooh, is this an escape room?" Denise from HR sounded delighted. "I love escape rooms!"
"The power's out," someone said. "The whole building."
"That's okay! We'll just light some candles andâ"
The scream cut her off.
It came from outsideâa sound of pure terror that seemed to go on forever before abruptly stopping. The conference room went silent. Through the windows, Kevin could see figures moving in the darkness.
*Moving wrong.*
"What was that?" Rachel was at his side, her face pale. "Kevin, what the hell was that?"
Before he could answer, the windows exploded inward.
The things that came through were shaped like people but moved nothing like them. Jerky, wrong, like the signal kept cutting out. Mouths open. Eyes that tracked without seeing. Kevin had seen enough zombie movies to know exactly what this was.
He also knew that didn't make it any less impossible.
"EVERYONE OUT!" Derek Thornton, for once in his life, said something useful. "BACK DOOR, NOW!"
Chaos erupted. People screaming, tables overturning, bodies colliding in the dark. Kevin grabbed Rachel's arm and pulled her toward the emergency exit, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his teeth.
They burst into the hallway just as more windows shattered behind them. The things were everywhereâcoming through doorways, dropping from somewhere above, arms out. Kevin saw Denise from HR go down, still clutching her clipboard.
"THIS WAY!" someone shouted.
They ran. Through corridors that twisted and turned, past bodies that had stopped moving and bodies that hadn't stopped moving, until finally they burst through a fire door into the main kitchen.
Kevin slammed the door shut behind them and wedged a chair under the handle.
"Is everyone okay?" He looked around, counting heads. Eight people. Out of 147.
Eight survivors.
Derek Thornton was there, his golf shirt torn and bloody. Rachel, clutching a fire extinguisher like a weapon. Carl from accounting, who was crying. Karen from accounting, who was not crying but was demanding to know if anyone had saved the expense reports.
"Karen," Kevin said slowly. "There are zombies. Actual zombies."
"And? Those expense reports are due Monday. Just because the world is ending doesn't mean we can ignore deadlines."
Kevin opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. Some battles weren't worth fighting.
"Okay," he said instead. "We need to assess our situation. We're in a kitchen, which means we have food, water, and potentially weapons. The doors seem solid. We should be safe here forâ"
"I have a question," Derek interrupted. "As the senior leader present, shouldn't I be the one giving orders?"
"You can barely lead a conference call, Derek."
"That's... that's insubordination."
"Sue me." Kevin pulled open a drawer, looking for anything sharp. "Actually, don't. I don't think our lawyers made it."
The banging started on the door. Slow at first, then faster. More and more hands slamming against the metal.
"They know we're here," Rachel said.
"Great." Kevin found a chef's knife and tested the edge. "Here's the plan. We fortify this position, take inventory of resources, and wait for rescue."
"What if rescue doesn't come?"
"Then we figure something else out. But right now, survival is the priority. Everyone grab a weapon. Karen, you're in charge of inventory. Derek..." Kevin hesitated. "Just... try not to die. That's your only job."
"I feel like my skills are being underutilized."
"Your skills include scheduling meetings and sending passive-aggressive emails. Unless the zombies want to discuss Q3 projections, you're on bench duty."
The banging got louder. Kevin gripped his knife and looked at his team: a junior developer, an accountant who wouldn't stop crying, a woman more concerned about expense reports than the undead, and a boss whose main worry was still org chart positioning.
This was going to be a very long weekend.
