“Pardon?”
“I said, I’ll take the hit,” I said as I thought fast.
Frank frowned. "That makes no damn sense.”
“It’s the new job. I’m just excited to take on new challenges and opportunities,” I said trying to sound the way I figured the nerds talked to their managers.
I had to fight from grinning because there was no way in hell Frank was going to go all the way down to L-5 to check up on me.
“Why do I have a feeling that moving you down there is a big mistake?”
“Frank. I swear I won’t let you down.”
“Good idea, because if you do, I’ll fire your ass.”
I nodded and turned away before I could say something really stupid.
I headed to the janitor closet, and tried to get excited about going to a new location.
Any excitement I felt was going to be short-lived at best.
2
I referred to the lower levels as Creepsville because I suspected that they did some shady shit down there. At least, that’s how we talk about them, and when I say “we” I mean me and the other janitors. But it was Friday night, and most everyone had been smart enough to take the night off, or had called out. I wished I could have called out, but if I didn’t go to work, I didn’t get paid.
Since they docked me an hour I planned to fuck around for exactly sixty minutes.
I checked out a badge for L-5, and then headed for the elevator, all under the watchful eye of Frank. I kept my head down as I departed Frank’s disapproving stare and his little head shake. Fuck you, Frank. I’m a grown-ass adult and I hate being treated like a kid. What had happened wasn’t my fault.
One of the day time janitors, a man named Hector, pushed his cart into the janitor’s room, and then right up to the wall, as he hummed a little tune that I didn’t recognize.
“Hey, man.” I greeted Hector.
“Watch out for Frank, bro. He’s got a real bug up his ass,” Hector said.
I liked Hector. We’d been out for a beer together a couple of times, and he was a blunt guy. He often teased me about my messy hair. I often teased him about his green card status. That joke had been funny a few years ago, but the last time I’d brought it up he had looked less than amused, and had actually glanced over his shoulder, so I’d never brought that up again.
“That asshole docked me an hour for being late,” I said with a frown.
“You know how to fix that?”
I shrugged.
“Get your ass to work on time.” Hector roared with laughter.
“It wasn’t my fault. Jesus.”
“Whatever, man. This job blows, anyway. I might go and work for my cousin down in Miami. He’s got a bait shop and the fishermen are in and out all day,” Hector said.
“So the bait shop is kind of like your wife?”
Hector’s eyes clenched for a second, and I thought I’d pushed it too far. Then he leaned his head back and broke into a deep laugh.
“That was a good one. A real good one,” he said and then punched me in the shoulder hard enough that I would probably have a bruise. I would punch him back but he’s about six inches taller than me, and looks like he could take a bear.
I grinned back at Hector and rubbed my shoulder.
“Okay, man. Have a good night. I gotta go because my car broke down and I had to make some other arrangements. You know how it is.” Hector turned and went down the stark white hallway.
“Sorry to hear that. Can you get home?”
“I got this. See, my other ride is,” he turned to meet my eyes, “your mom.”
Hector pointed his fingers at me like they were pistols and opened fire.
“Son of a bitch.” I chuckled.
* * *
I headed for Creepsville with my loaded cart. Broom, check. Mop, check. Buckets and bottles of cleaning supplies and disinfectants, check. I hoped the crew from last night had done a good job so I didn’t have to spend my shift cleaning the place, and therefore didn’t have to work too hard. At least it was Friday. I planned to get away with a little bit of slacking.
The elevator doors whispered open. I pushed my cart in, flashed my temporary badge over the reader, and then punched the button near the bottom of the panel. There were a few more levels, but I would never get down there because it required some kind of security clearance. I probably wouldn’t pass. I didn’t even have a passport.
“Last stop of the day, Creepsville,” I muttered as the door closed, and the elevator descended.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my vape pen, triggered the button, and took a good long puff. One thing I liked about this place was the heavy ventilation. I blew a stream of fog at the ceiling and it was whisked away like there was a vacuum cleaner up there. I got in one more hit before the elevator reached my floor. I should have added a small bottle of cheap-ass bourbon to my night. That would have made it worth coming in on a Friday.
The doors whisked open and I pushed my cart into the long hallway.
I started in the women’s bathroom because it was the furthest away from the elevator and the stairs, and thus I was more likely to know if Frank came down to check on me. I figured I had at least an hour before he got off his fat ass.
I put the “wet floor” warning sign in front of the door and pulled it shut. Then I went to the last stall, sat down, and hit my vape pen a few times. I pulled out my cell phone, but there was barely a signal down here. It was few years old, but it could still play Candy Crush for a few rounds. I spent the next half hour dinking around. Dock me an hour’s pay, huh?
My phone buzzed. I took it out and found a picture from Jessica. She had her hair up, sweatshirt on, and she was in bed. Was she in a frisky mood? I texted her to find out. The cell phone coverage down here sucked, but at least I could still text.
Show me what’s under your shirt.
Show me you got a real job and you’re serious about us and maybe I will.
I took a picture of a sanitary napkin disposal on the wall and sent it to Jessica.
God that’s gross. You’re gross. Where are you?
In the lady’s bathroom. See. I’m serious about my job. Serious enough to clean up this kind of crap.
It doesn’t look like you’re cleaning up crap. It looks like you’re perving out.
Do you want to do something tomorrow?
I have to get some sleep because I’m working two jobs tomorrow.
So that’s a no?
It’s going to be a no until you get a decent job and go back to school.
I’ll take you to school, if you know what I mean. I took a picture of my grinning mug and fired it back.
I think we should see other people. I’m going to bed. BBFN
Wait. What?
After five or six minutes of staring at my phone I assumed she hadn’t been kidding. I sent her a message again asking if she was serious, but she didn’t answer.
“This day keeps getting better and better,” I muttered and then hit my vape pipe, hard.
I almost dropped my phone when someone banged on the door.
“Hello. I need to use the bathroom,” A woman with a distinctly British accent yelled.
“Shit,” I muttered, stood up, and waved my hands around in an attempt to get rid of the plume of lemon-lime vape fog.
I dropped my phone, spun to pick it up, put the device in my pocket, and pushed the cart toward the door. “Just a second!”
“God. Hurry, please.”
“Use the men’s!” I suggested.
“Already thought of that but it smells quite foul,” she said in her lilting voice. “There was a man in there a few minutes ago and he must have eaten some bad chicken, or perhaps a burrito constructed entirely of rancid beans.”
"In a second, just a minute.” I panicked.
I spun the top off some bleach and splashed a little on the floor to cover the smell of my vape pen while I waved my hands wildly over my head in an attempt to dissipate the
fog.
Why were the nerds still here on a Friday night? This place was supposed to be dead. Not only that but some guy had been busy stinking up the place.
I tossed a rag on the cleaning fluid to soak it up. Most of the vape cloud had been sucked into the vents but enough remained to make me look guilty.
“Listen, I’m terribly sorry to do this.” She pushed the door open and stopped in the entryway.
“Sorry for the delay,” I offered with a shrug.
“Good lord. It smells of bleach. Are you cleaning in here or dyeing your hair?” She brushed past me.
Miss British lady wore a white lab coat over grey slacks, and a white shirt under the coat. She had green eyes and light brown hair in a tight bun. But she had sharp cheekbones and the haircut suited her in sort of a Kiera Knightly way. She was pretty, I won’t lie, but all of those nerd clothes didn’t really give me any kind of idea what shape the bod was in.
She stopped at the stall and unbuttoned her pants.
“Shoo.” She waved her hand at me.
“Yeah. Right. Sorry,” I said as I pushed my cart out the door and let it swing shut. “I didn’t know anyone was down here today.”
“I am. Bit of an emergency,” she said as the door closed. “Were you smoking in here?”
“Smoking? No. Probably the smell of some of the cleaning chemicals,” I said as I leaned back against the wall.
“Is that so?” she called back. “I didn’t mention a smell. I was concerned about the actual smoke.”
“It’s not smoke,” I said which wasn’t a lie.
“What’s your name?” she yelled.
“What?”
Oh shit. I pushed the cart away from the wall and trundled down the passageway at speed. I needed to find an office or a room to duck into. The problem was that I didn’t know where my badge would allow me passage, and I had never been down here before.
I tried a door at random, but the card reader flashed red. I attempted the next door and got the same response.
“Hello?” The woman called out louder this time, followed by her shoes tapping on the linoleum floor.
Shit!
The next door’s reader didn’t change color, but the door opened. I didn’t stop to wonder why, instead I opened the door with my hip and pulled my cart in after. The door closed, and I sighed with relief. That’s just what I needed, to be reported for smoking in the girls’ bathroom. All I had to do was hunker down for ten or fifteen minutes, and then make my exit. She would forget about me and go back to work, or go home. I guess I could just say fuck it and go home if I told Frank I was sick.
The room was illuminated by a bunch of computers. Keyboards and mice sat on desktops littered with cups, pens, pencils, notebooks, and coffee mugs. A large glass room stood at one end. There was a door, but the glass was reinforced with something that looked like chicken wire. No fancy self starter overhead lights in here? Fucking nerds.
I might not be the sharpest tack, but I’m sure I shouldn’t have access to this room. As long as the doctor lady didn’t come to find me, I was doing okay.
Something thumped in the other room and I almost jumped out of my skin.
I approached the glass door and peered inside, but it was too dark to make out any distinct shapes. Something lurked in there. I pressed my forehead against the glass hoping to figure out what was in the room.
“What a weird place,” I muttered.
There was no doorknob on the thick glass door, and there didn’t seem to be any way to get in there.
Then something actually moved in the glass room.
“What in the hell?”
The shape unfolded. First it was a lump on the ground, then it rose, and a pair of legs appeared, then arms, and finally a head. The man, or woman, stretched, but they had their back to me, and they seemed to be secured to something. Then, with a powerful shrug, the figure turned to look at me.
I wanted to run. This was none of my business. I shouldn’t be here investigating whatever weird shit was going on here.
The man’s eyes were coated in some kind of goo. He opened his mouth and yelled. I couldn’t make out the words but I was sure he needed help. I looked around frantically for a way to open the door. What kind of maniacs were running this place? Sure, I could make some jokes about them keeping me locked up in Creepsville, but that was a long way from what they were doing to this poor guy.
I knew I should turn around, leave the room, run the right the hell back upstairs, and go find some help. I could drag Frank down here, but then he’d probably fire me because I was in a room I wasn’t supposed to be in. I could go and try to find that doctor lady, but she would probably get me fired for smoking.
That left me very few options. My back broke out in chills and I shivered as the man moved in the room.
“Oh, the hell with this!” I said.
But he drew my attention because I swear he was looking at me even with all of that stuff on his eyes. He reached for his neck and pulled at something, like he was struggling.
I took out my vape pen as I stared at the poor man, took a full hit, cranked up the voltage, and took another. Then I grabbed a rag off my cart and blew into it so as to stifle the smoke. Look, don’t judge me yet, okay? My mind wasn’t really up to ‘people chained to chairs’ just yet. I needed a few more hours, and few more Red Bulls first.
With all of those buttons, switches, and computers, surely there was an easy way into that little room. See, I couldn’t let that guy stew in there. We worked next to the CDC but this wasn’t the same thing, not by a long shot. They did drug testing here and, as far as I knew, that didn’t include testing stuff on unwilling victims. Maybe he needed to go to the hospital. I could take him and get out of some work for the next few hours.
Then I found it. A small plastic case that almost blended into the window. I leaned over, popped it open, and found a couple of buttons.
“I’m gonna get you out of there, man,” I said as I banged on the door.
I hit one of the buttons and it turned yellow and then green. Something snapped inside of the room, and suddenly the guy could move around a little better. He launched himself at the door and hit it hard enough to rattle the frame. I backed up and wondered if I had made a mistake.
The other door slammed open and in marched Frank with the female doctor right behind.
“That’s him,” the lady doctor yelled and pointed at me.
“What are you doing, Turner?” Frank demanded.
“Hey, Frank. They have some guy trapped in here. I think he needs to go to the hospital. He’s all beat up and he can’t see,” I said hoping to divert attention away from my screw ups, and point out Abraxin’s illegal activity. “You can’t just lock a guy up like that.”
“What the shit-biscuit is going on here?” Frank looked between me and the British lady.
“Get away from the kennel!”
Kennel, did she say kennel? Like the place you keep a pet? Between that revelation and the two of them shouting, it was almost enough to make me want to cover my head with my arms and call it a day.
“That guy’s locked in there! What are you people doing?” I roared at them both.
They shut up, but not for long. The man with the weird eyes hit the door again but this time it cracked. He backed up and launched himself again in an apparent rage, his mouth open in a soundless roar. The door cracked open a half inch and air rushed into the room.
“No, no, no!” the lady doctor yelled. “Everyone out!”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I moved past Frank and the British lady like my ass was on fire. The crazy guy in the cage bellowed something incomprehensible and then smashed right through the door.
“We can’t let him get out!” doctor lady cried.
“Yup.” I nodded.
I ran into my janitor cart and sent it careening into the hallway, where it promptly crashed into the wall. I was right behind the cart and almost tripped over it as the damn thing reboun
ded. Then it was a quick sprint down the hallway and to the elevator where I slapped my security card over the reader so fast it would have made your head spin. The victim crashed through the door and barreled straight into the wall so hard he should have knocked himself out. Instead, he bashed against my janitor supplies.
The trio smashed into each other twenty or thirty feet behind me. Frank tried to keep the crazy guy with the gummed-up eyes at arm's length. Crazy guy tried to rip Frank in half. The doctor struck at the man, but he ignored her blows. She yelled something, but I couldn’t make it out. Might have been a name, might have been a curse word in British. ‘Lat’ something or other.
The elevator dinged.
I looked at the door as it opened. Then back at the combatants. I didn’t want to think of myself as a chicken shit, but this was some rich asshole crap. In other words, no one paid me enough to get involved. Plus I could give a rip about Frank. The doctor, well, she was cute and all, but all I knew about her was that she had tried to get me in trouble.
“Easy, man. Easy!” I yelled as I tried to reason with him as I advanced back down the hallway.
“Idiot. Letting him out like that!” she shouted to me as she whacked him over the head with a bucket from my cart.
“He’s a human being and he shouldn’t be locked up while you people do some freaky drug testing!”
Frank got to his feet, snarled a the crazy dude, and then grabbed him by the shirt, and soon had the guy against the wall.
I ran back to my cart, grabbed a mop, spun it around, and slapped the smelly mop head into the crazy man’s mouth. The guy smacked it aside, reared back his head, and howled like a psychotic dog afflicted with rabies. Crazy man needed some CBD oil or something to calm his ass down. Of course, I’d be pissed, too, if I was stuck in a little tiny room and chained to the wall, but at least offer a word of thanks to your rescuer.
A tooth-rattling alarm sounded, then it somehow got louder. Ceiling lights flashed to life like strobe lights in hell.
Dawn of the Rage Apocalypse Page 2