by M.F. Soriano
Chapter 4
Shane wiped his thumb on the leg of his coveralls, cleaning off the blood. Then he looked over at Terrance’s locker. It looked normal from where he was, but when he got closer he saw that the lock had blood on it, too.
“What the fuck is going on?” he muttered to himself.
He dropped Terrance’s time card back into its slot on the rack. Then he pulled the rubber gloves from his pocket and slipped them on. He reached for the lock, took hold of it, tried to pull it open. The lock didn’t budge, but the blood smeared onto the fingers of his gloves, vivid red against the bright yellow.
Shane looked around the room again. Everything looked normal. He walked around the table to the door, reached for the door handle. And saw that the handle had blood on it too.
A little glimmer of feeling was coming to life in Shane’s stomach, where the nausea had been. But this wasn’t nausea, or anything as familiar as that.
It was worry.
Shane took hold of the door handle, jerked the door open. He stuck his head into the hallway and looked both directions, giving it more attention than he had on his angry march through a minute ago. The white walls and linoleum were glaringly bright under the fluorescent lights. On the floor, just in front of the doorway, there was a drop of blood. It was perfectly round and brilliantly red, so bright it almost seemed to glow.
There was another drop of blood a few feet down the hall, toward the ZapPow! lobby. A few feet past that, a pair of drops—little twin points of red. And the handle on the lobby door was likewise touched with blood.
Shane opened the door cautiously, looked into the lobby. The cartoon cutouts faced the front door, the Voodoo eyes glared down from the screen. But there was no sign of Terrance or anybody else, and the carpet was too dark to show blood traces.
He stepped into the lobby, nerves tingling. He walked to the circular reception desk, leaned over it to see if anyone was hiding there. Nobody was.
He walked through the tunnel and into the main floor area. The tables were still littered with red Voodoo cans. The chairs were still pulled here and there, disorganized.
“I’d have seen him if he went to the cafeteria,” Shane said to himself.
He walked to the elevator, at the right side of the room. There was a smear of blood on the call button. He pressed the button, part of his mind fascinated by the way the button light illuminated the blood smeared over it, making the red glow.
The elevator dinged, the doors opened. Shane stepped inside, turned to look at the buttons for the floors. A smear of blood marked the button for the fifth floor, at the very top of the building.
“Bingo,” Shane murmured.
He pressed the button, stepped back from the doors. The elevator went up, fast and smooth. It gave a cheery ding when it reached the fifth floor.
The doors opened, and there was Terrance.
In the dim emergency lights of the building, he looked almost like a silhouette, a dark-skinned figure laid atop a white leather couch to the right of the elevator doors. His work boots were propped up on one of the couch’s armrests. His right arm was draped over his eyes. His left arm dangled off the side of the couch, hand hanging just above the floor.
The sleeve on that arm had been pushed back above his elbow, revealing a tattoo of a pitbull’s head with the words “Oaktown Dogg Pound” written beneath it. And below the tattoo, wrapped around his forearm and held in place with duct tape, was a dark-colored towel.
“Terrance!” Shane said, hurrying toward the couch. “Hey Terrance, are you alright?”
Terrance let out a groan, moved his right arm slightly to glance at Shane with one eye.
“Shane, bro,” he said quietly. “Crazy Shane.” And then he winced, let his arm move back into place, covering both eyes.
“Terrance, what happened?”
Terrance shook his head, eyes still covered. He rolled onto his side, facing the back of the couch. His left arm brushed against the couch’s white leather, leaving a dark-colored streak. Blood. Lots of blood. So much that it made the sodden towel wrapped around Terrance’s forearm look burgundy, though Shane recognized it as a cleaning rag, and cleaning rags came white.
Terrance let out another groan, wedged his face into the place where the back of the couch met the seat cushions.
Shane reached out, put his hand on his co-worker’s shoulder, gave him a gentle shake. He could feel heat coming through the fabric of the coveralls. Terrance was burning up.
“You look like shit, man. We need to get you to a hospital.”
Terrence shook his head, face still hidden in the couch cushions.
“Come on, man. You need a doctor.”
He waited a moment, and then shook Terrance again. Insistently.
Terrence shifted, pushed himself up with his right hand. He swung his feet to the floor, bringing his hands to his face.
“I’m cool, man,” he said, face still in his hands. “I’m cool. Don’t need no doctor.”
“Bullshit. You’re burning up, and you’re bleeding all over the place.”
“Naw, ain’t nuthin’. Had a scrap with some crazy whiteboy outside. Fucker came at me in the alley, bit me an everything. But I busted his ass good.”
A thought flashed into Shane’s head.
“Was he a yuppie dude?” Shane said. “In a suit?”
“Naw. Fuckin’ hipster whiteboy. Wearing a hoodie and those bitch-ass tight, high-water pants. Probably worked in this fucking building, fuckin’ ZapPow! drone.”
Shane let out a breath. Not the same guy he’d seen on 13th.
“He bit you?” he said.
“Yeah, man!”
Terrance dropped his hands from his face, tugged the duct tape loose from the rag. He unrolled the rag, showing a crescent-shaped wound, still oozing blood.
“You’re probably gonna need stitches for that,” Shane said. “You oughta go to the hospital.”
“Fuck the hospital, man!” Terrance said, raising his face to look Shane in the eyes. “You know how much my copay is? Forty-five fucking dollars! It’s just a fuckin’ scratch.” His eyes dropped back to his hands, which he clenched to fists. “Fuckin’ cracker-ass hipster’s the one gonna need a doctor. I busted his ass, good.”
Shane looked at his co-worker for a moment, saying nothing.
“Just a bit hyped, you know,” Terrance said. “Adrenaline and all that. I’ll be cool in a minute.”
“Alright,” Shane said, “fine. But you can’t stay up here. Why’d you come to the CEO’s floor anyway?”
“Fucker never shows up before noon, man. You know that. And he might not even come in on a weekend at all. Meanwhile all these fuckin’ hipster drones show up bright and early. Might even be a few of them on the other floors, right now, after that product launch last night, getting all juiced on some bullshit energy drink. These fuckin’ yuppie hipsters love their fuckin’ jobs more than anything else.”
Shane nodded his head. He’d had the same thoughts himself. The tech workers wore hoodies and blue jeans, but they were the same as the old-school yuppies in their suits and ties. They all lived to work. They all put their careers at the center of their lives.
Actually, Shane thought, the tech-worker hipsters were worse than the yuppies, pretending to be into underground art and writing and music. At least the yuppies had the decency to act disdainful toward the culture they were destroying. The hipsters didn’t even seem to realize that by giving all of their creative energies and time to the big-money tech start-ups, they were furthering a San Francisco that left no room for people who wanted to focus their lives on something other than being part of Forbes magazine’s hot new company to watch.
Terrance dropped his face back into his hands, rubbed at his eyes. “I’ll be cool in a minute,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.” He pulled a smart phone from his pocket, glanced at its screen. “It’s almost six. Fuckin’ drones
’ll start showing up pretty soon. If you get started on the main floor, I’ll start up here and work down to meet you.”
Shane thought of how he’d already had to clean the kitchen and cafeteria on his own, suddenly irritated again. The clock was ticking, and there was still plenty of work to do.
“Alright,” Shane said. “Whatever. But don’t forget to clean this fucking couch. Gonna stain if you don’t get that blood off it, soon.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ worry ‘bout me,” Terrance said, glaring. “I’ma handle it. You acting like you never had a slow day. Don’t remember couple months back? We went out after work, you called in sick next day? Fuckin’ Death Kitten 7 game release, and I had to clean the ground floor on my own? You forgetting that? Give a brother a break, man.”
Shane closed his mouth, dipped his head once in assent.
“You got a point,” he said. “I’ll start on the ground floor. But don’t wait too long to clean this couch.”
He stood up, walked back to the elevator. He jabbed the call button with two stiff fingers, and then realized he still had blood on his rubber gloves, and he’d just marked the button with it.
“Fuck,” he muttered, wiping the blood away with his sleeve.