Zom Zom Chapters 54–55: The Onboarding and the Brenda Situation
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Chapters 54–55: Annex Delta has a manager’s office, a rival espresso machine, and a visitor at the gate. Only one of these is a problem.
Mood: Cautiously optimistic (Dave’s word for “doomed”)
Status: Walking into the world’s nicest trap
We stood at the gates for a full minute. Three-foot letters: “WELCOME BACK, TEAM AOP3D.”
We had never been here before. I said that out loud three times to make sure it stayed true.
Mister Whiskers walked through the open gate like a landlord doing a surprise inspection. Tail high. Ears up. Zero hesitation. The cat had been expecting this.
Joe eased the MRAP through behind him — one hand on the wheel, the other protectively on the Brigadier Brew. Over the PA system, C.A.R.E.’s voice bloomed across the courtyard like a motivational poster with a speaker attached:
RADIO / C.A.R.E.: (cheerful, everywhere at once)
ME: “She said ‘back’ again.”
BRENDA: (narrowing her eyes at the banner) “I don’t appreciate the implication that we’ve been here before. I would remember an orientation.”
DAVE: (standing on the MRAP’s roof, Nerf gun sweeping the courtyard) “IT’S A TRAP WITH GOOD LIGHTING!”
JOE: “Dave, it has hot showers. Let it be a trap with hot showers.”
The lobby had a personnel kiosk. Brenda walked toward it the way sharks walk toward chum.
ME: “Brenda. That’s an HR kiosk.”
BRENDA: “It’s a kiosk containing employee records, which makes it mine by divine right.”
She typed “WHISKERS” with the fury of a woman who had been waiting fifty-four chapters for this moment. The file loaded. We all leaned in.
Hire date: six months BEFORE the outbreak
Attendance: perfect
Performance review: “Exceeds expectations in staring. Commands every room entered. Do not schedule meetings after 5 PM (feeding time).”
Compensation: salmon pâté, disbursed daily
Evacuation roster, Executive Extraction Event: “M. WHISKERS — STATUS: declined extraction. Reason cited: ‘unfinished business.’”
Brenda ran a finger across the brass directory board beside the kiosk. It came away clean — except for one smudge.
BRENDA: (holding up the finger) “Paw prints. Fresh. He was here. Recently.”
ME: “Or — and I’m just spitballing — he never left.”
BRENDA: “The cat didn’t just know about Annex Delta.”
ME: “He has seniority over all of us.”
DAVE: (from the doorway) “HE’S BEEN ON THE PAYROLL SINCE BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE AND NOBODY RAN A BACKGROUND CHECK?!”
C.A.R.E. gave us the full automated tour. Mess hall: fully stocked. Barracks: real bunks, real blankets. Showers: hot water, actual water pressure.
JOE: (under the shower, weeping) “I forgot water could do this.”
Brenda found the supply office. Actual clipboards. Plural. She picked one up the way knights pick up swords.
BRENDA: “At last. Proper documentation equipment. The half-keyboard carried me far, but a warrior needs her tools.”
In the armory’s lost-and-found, behind a riot shield nobody wanted to touch, I found it: a laser sight. Still in the packaging. Still smug about it.
The Ex-Calibur is now v3.0: mop handle, rusty scissors, stapler counterweight — and one laser sight, duct-taped at a slight angle.
I am now 4% more deadly and 100% more likely to blind myself in a mirror.
I tested the laser in the mess hall. The little red dot landed on a can of peaches on the top shelf.
ME: “It’s not a peach. It’s never a peach.”
JOE: “It’s a can of peaches.”
ME: “It’s NEVER a peach.”
Then we found the morale break room. And in the morale break room, gleaming under the fluorescents like a chrome monument to caffeine, stood a SECOND espresso machine. Bigger. Shinier. Industrial.
Brass plaque: “THE GENERAL GROUND — Morale Asset #0001.”
Joe stopped walking. His hand found the Brigadier Brew’s steel flank — our Brigadier Brew, Morale Asset #0047, bolted to the truck bed outside — and then drifted toward the General.
JOE: (one hand on each machine, voice cracking)
BRENDA: (logging)
JOE: (whispering)
He named them within the hour. The old one is Brig. The new one is Genny. He promised, out loud, to love them equally, and then spent twenty minutes explaining the difference in their crema to Buster, who was asleep.
BRENDA: (writing) “Morale assets: 2. Morale: now our strongest department. Joe’s emotional stability: pending review.”
Dave inspected the barracks room by room, Nerf gun sweeping every corner. “Trap. Trap. Trap with a window — worse trap.”
Then the last room. Bunks. Blankets. A door that locks. A window facing the sunrise.
Dave stood in the doorway for a long time.
DAVE: (quietly, like it hurt)
We all froze. In fifty-four chapters, Dave had never — not once — declared anything okay.
ME: “I’m sorry, what?”
DAVE: “I said it’s okay. Don’t make it weird.”
He built the Fort of a Thousand Cushions that afternoon: couch cushions, spare diapers, and a full perimeter wall of Nerf ammo. Mister Whiskers climbed to the very top and sat there like a gargoyle.
Dave looked up at the cat. The cat looked down at Dave.
DAVE: “...He blesses it. Don’t touch it.”
At dusk, Mister Whiskers led us down a corridor to a door that was already open. Brass desk plate, polished to a mirror shine:
Tiny desk. Tiny chair. A wall of surveillance monitors showing every camera in the facility — the gates, the courtyard, the mess hall, the barracks hallway where Dave was alphabetizing his Nerf darts.
And on the desk, a folder. Labeled, in crisp printed type:
“TEAM AOP3D — PERSONNEL FILES (PENDING)”
Five tabs. NARRATOR. BRENDA. DAVE. JOE. BUSTER. Blank forms, waiting.
Brenda picked up the pen on the desk with the reverence of a knight drawing a sword.
BRENDA: “At last. Paperwork.”
The cat sat in the tiny chair. He looked at us. We looked at him. Nobody said anything, because what do you say to your new manager when your new manager is a cat who has seniority over all of you?
What could possibly go wrong?
DAVE: (from down the hall) “DO NOT SAY THAT.”
Mood: Comfy (a dangerous mood)
Status: Horizontal in the world’s nicest bunker
Peace, it turns out, looks like Joe running a two-machine espresso bar out of the break room. Hand-painted sign over the door: “THE BRIG & GENNY — NOW SERVING.”
He made me a cortado with a foam heart. In the apocalypse. I nearly cried into it.
Buster woke up. Looked around at the barracks, the hot showers, the espresso bar. Said, “Nice place.” Went back to sleep.
Honestly? Fair. Buster has the right idea about most things.
Brenda was conducting the Great Facilities Audit with her new clipboards — plural, she kept saying the word “plural” out loud — and I found the base library.
One book on the shelf. One. “The Revised Employee Handbook.”
Some jokes write themselves. This one wrote itself, laminated itself, and filed itself.
C.A.R.E.: (over the PA, delighted)
DAVE: (already inside the fort, Nerf gun up) “I TOLD YOU THE SAFE ZONE IS NEVER SAFE!”
ME: “You literally said this one was okay!”
DAVE: “I WAS CAFFEINATED AND VULNERABLE!”
We ran for the manager’s office. Mister Whiskers was already there — in the tiny chair, one paw on the keyboard, surveillance wall glowing.
He had been expecting this, too. Of course he had. He’s management. Expecting things is literally in his job description.
Camera 1: the main gate. A figure stood outside, motionless, staring directly into the lens.
Beige pantsuit. Immobile bun. Clipboard.
Brenda’s hand rose slowly to her own clipboard, like a mirror.
The figure tilted its head. The audio feed crackled, wet and rhythmic:
Zom. Zom. Zom.
BRENDA: (whisper)
ME:
BRENDA:
ME:
Beat.
Mister Whiskers tapped the keyboard with one deliberate paw. The camera zoomed. The face filled the monitor: the bun, the pantsuit — and a bite mark on the shoulder.
DAVE: “THERE ARE TWO BRENDAS AND ONE OF THEM IS A ZOM ZOM!”
The figure raised her clipboard to the camera. Taped to it, in shaky block letters, a sign:
Silence in the manager’s office.
Everyone turned to look at the tiny chair.
Mister Whiskers met our eyes.
He did not blink.
SYSTEM PAUSED. AWAITING USER INPUT.
From the Comment Section (Totally Real, Definitely Not Made Up)
GarysWife: “my husband has been a zom zom for 54 chapters and the cat got a promotion before he got a single phone call. the disrespect”
BladeMaster99: “THE LASER SIGHT. FINALLY. Petition: CLOSED. Ex-Calibur v3.0 supremacy begins now.”
SoccerMom44: “i also have that pantsuit from the spring collection. brenda and i should start a club. the other brenda can come too if she signs in at the kiosk”
SurvivalSteve: “TWO BRENDAS. I repeat. TWO. This is how HR departments reproduce. Stay vigilant.”
BrendaFromHR_Real: “There is no second Brenda. I checked with myself. This portrayal is slander and I will be filing a complaint with the manager. (The cat.)”