Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

by Anthology

  “Oh.” Deidra tapped her lower lip with the end of her pen. “Anything electronic?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Cory,” Deidra said under her breath.

  Nate realized she was merely speaking out loud and not to him, yet he asked, “Who?”

  Without an answer, Deidra stormed past Nate, out of her office and into the aisle. “Cory,” she repeated as she walked. Nate followed her. At the end of the aisle a black woman with a beehive hairdo was stretching her arms.

  “Iona?” Deidra asked. “Have you seen Cory?”

  The woman gazed down the aisle and shook her head.

  The cubicles were empty, up until the third. Deidra stopped and threw her hand flat up against her nose. Nate caught the odor when he neared. Cory, a husky twenty-something man, was slumped down in his Aeron chair. He’d defecated himself when he died.

  “He had a pacemaker,” Deidre said, “an electric one. He joked that if the power ever went out he would…” She wobbled her head to the side. “He’s been right there, all night.”

  Deidra lifted her clipboard and began jotting down the details of Cory’s demise.

  Nate looked past her shoulder to Iona, who was now rolling her neck in a circle.

  He decided he wanted to get a lay of the land.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  Nate stopped two steps away and then pivoted back around.

  “Who else should be here?” he asked.

  “Most everybody goes to lunch. Jenny, Henry’s assistant, she’ll be here for sure. Maybe the marketing team on the far side.”

  Nate nodded and headed out on his mission to survey the floor. He smiled at Iona and she smiled back, but he gave her space as he rounded the corner.

  The floor was essentially a square with the elevators, stairwell, and core in the center. Nate saw the girl he thought must be Jenny sitting at the end of the aisle. She was a Native American, or Polynesian, Nate wasn’t sure. She was a big girl, heavyset, with full round cheeks, and a sad smile. A pleasant smile, but sad just the same. That was understandable. He didn’t expect to find anyone happy, or dancing. The cubicles on this side were two deep and the walls lower than where he’d been seated, chest high, but he didn’t see anyone standing in them. The glassed offices on this side were nicer, darker finished woods; they would’ve overlooked the financial district, but a fog blocked any view. The limited light, along with the dark walnut hues, gave the offices a heavy shadow. Midway across the floor he saw a silhouette. Nate stopped and peered through the glass wall. A portly man in a sport coat and tie was writing on a legal pad. He lifted his porcine head to look back at Nate.

  “Are you from downstairs?” the man asked.

  “No,” Nate said. “Are you all right?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “Sir?”

  “You’re not from downstairs?”

  Nate shook his head. “No, sir.”

  The man grunted, waved him away, and then buried his forehead in his hand. Nate watched him for a moment more and then continued toward the girl at the desk.

  “You’re Jenny?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Jenny nodded her head.

  “Is there anyone else over here?”

  She tilted her head to the office to her right. Nate leaned forward to see in. The office was three times the size of the others that he’d passed, a large suite, Henry’s office. Henry, a tall man in a pressed white shirt and tight-fitting olive green slacks, was standing arms akimbo at his windowed wall, staring out into the abyss.

  “Do you mind?” Nate asked Jenny.

  She shrugged.

  He circled her desk to the office and rattled his knuckles on Henry’s doorframe.

  The man across the office answered with a Brit accent. “How can I help you?”

  “Excuse me,” Nate said. “I was just—”

  Henry spun to face him. “Come in. Come in.”

  Nate nodded and entered the room.

  “Hi,” Nate said. “I’m—”

  Henry cut him off again. “Nathan Farthen.” Henry held up a hand to greet him. “The Ranger. I know who everyone is coming into this office.”

  “Of course. Nate is fine.”

  Henry took Nate’s hand firmly into his own. His smile was reassuring and apart from a slight shadow of a beard, he appeared to be in prime form. “Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the leather couch on the side of the suite.

  Nate lifted both of his hands. “Thank you, but…”

  “Right,” Henry said. “Me too.”

  Henry walked back over to the glass and resumed glaring into the fog.

  “EMP, you think?”

  “Yeah,” Nate said. “Something twenty-five, thirty klicks up.”

  “And the tremor?”

  “It must have been large. Megaton.”

  Henry nodded in thought. Then he added. “I was concerned about the fog,” he said, twirling his fingers up and around, “but this building is wired with sensors and Geigers, they’d be going berserk if there was any fallout or radioactive residue.”

  “Except for the EMP.”

  Henry shrugged, widened his eyes, and nodded. “Except for the EMP. There is that, could’ve knocked the sensors out.”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  Henry continued to stare into the mist.

  “I wouldn’t worry about contamination though,” Nate added.

  Henry veered back toward him. “No?”

  “Doesn’t work that way…If it was even a nuke.”

  “Right.” The smile returned. “What’s next, do you suppose?”

  “Hold tight.”

  Deidra tapped on the doorframe. Iona was behind her as well as a skinny young Indian man in khakis and a polo shirt. “Henry,” she said.

  “Yes, Deidra?”

  “Cory is dead.”

  Henry gave Nate a side glance before addressing her. “His pacemaker,” he said. “And the others? How many others are on the floor?”

  Nate noted Henry didn’t mention the past twenty-four hours, not the EMP, not the prolonged darkness that followed, not the black raccoon circles surrounding Deidra’s eyes. He was a leader going forward.

  Deidra lifted her clipboard and pen and began to list the names. “There are ten of us altogether. Mister Farther, myself, Cory, deceased, Iona, Bruce—he’s in his office—Raj, Jenny, Lisa, Terry, and Rob, back in Marketing, and you. Everyone else appears to be off the floor.”

  “Ten souls,” Henry said, his words seemed to drift with some second intent, some memory. Nate wondered if Henry too was a veteran of some war, some other place. “Well, why don’t you round everybody up? We’ll move into the conference room for lunch. If anyone has anything left from yesterday, they should bring it. I believe we have crisps and such in the break room and I’ll spring for the soda machine. We’ll sit tight, and help will be along soon.”

  ***

  Without the rumble of elevator bay, the hum of the computers, desk fans, heating and cooling units, or any other electrical device on the high floor, the smallest of sounds became amplified. A bubble surging to the surface of the water cooler was thunderous, the carbonation release from an uncapped seltzer could be heard in every corner of the office. Without the forced air circulation the same was true for smell. The aroma of potato chips and pretzels, long since devoured, lingered in the foil bags they were packaged in. After a few short days on the floor, the odors of their own clothes were inescapable. Nate’s new Men’s Wearhouse khakis reeked of the sweet scent of sweat, a smell he could no longer ignore.

  They’d all done their best to stay fresh. The women dabbed cologne. Ironically, Jenny and Iona appeared no different than they had the day before. Jenny, preferring her own desk, went back there in the morning to knit. It could’ve been another normal day. Lisa and Terry, the young women from Marketing, were dressed for after-work cocktail hour, so they merel
y appeared to have stayed out late and not made it home before coming in to the office. Poor Deidra showed the brunt of forty-eight hours on the floor. Her attempts to clean away the raccoon mascara left ten years on her face that weren’t there before. She did her best to busy herself until it was too dark to work, yet Nate heard her whimpers deep into the night.

  The others pretended not to notice.

  What couldn’t be ignored was the need for food. They’d cleared the snacks from the pantry and had now gone a day without eating.

  They were expecting the cavalry at any time, but no one came before nightfall, and as midday rolled around relief was still nowhere in sight.

  Nate was up for food, but he wasn’t hungry, not much. Bruce, on the other hand, was in the midst of some ‘sugar situation.’ That’s what Iona called it when he wandered off. “He’s got the ‘sugar,’ ” she said.

  Nate was familiar with the term. His grandmother said ‘the sugar’ when she spoke of diabetes. Grandpa had ‘the sugar’ too. And it was a safe bet that Bruce, five-nine, age fifty, and two hundred and thirty or so pounds had Type Two, a real safe bet. Where the others were either disregarding or in distress of their situation, Bruce was angry, frustrated, and more focused on the time creep the incident would put on his project. Nate’s impression was that Bruce was an ass, though the others appeared unfazed by his demeanor—to them Bruce was just being Bruce. Some agreed with his reasoning when he argued that they should head to the cafeteria, one flight above.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said. “There’s a ton of food just over our heads.”

  “He’s got a point,” Rob said. Rob was the Marketing VP and even without corporate experience, Nate was able to size him up. He’d met a dozen Robs before, either in the form of a salesman or lawyer, oily con men that never seemed to commit to one side or the other, always working their own agenda a thin layer behind those trust me eyes. And Rob had the works. Nate supposed that was the difference between sales and marketing, between a five-digit and a six-digit payroll. Rob’s slacks and monogrammed shirt certainly weren’t from Men’s Wearhouse, and there was enough product in his hair and Van Dyke beard to keep him quaffed for a week, less the two days they’d already spent on the floor. “How about,” Rob said, “Bruce and I run upstairs, see what we can find. And then we bring it back down here. That way if anyone comes along, you’ll be waiting.”

  Henry nodded and Nate didn’t bother to answer.

  “I’ll help,” Terry, one of Rob’s Marketeers, added. From the little black cocktail dress she was wearing and the way she kept her gaze on Rob, Nate assumed her job was to stick close to him.

  Everyone agreed, and nothing more was said until after they left the floor through Marketing. The hair on his neck rose and he thought he perceived a slight pressure change as he watched the fire door to the stairwell open.

  That’s when Iona began to talk about Bruce and ‘the sugar.’ Nate lifted himself out of the pleather-cushioned chair, his seat for the past hour, and moved over to the glass wall. Henry was staring out again, Bruce’s moment of distraction having passed, but he gave the man space.

  There wasn’t anything new to see out in the creamy fog, and there wasn’t too much to be said.

  But Nate didn’t stand there long.

  From above their heads came a crash, a loud smash that on the all-too-silent floor mimicked thunder, and outside of the window, though he couldn’t be sure, Nate saw several shards of glass. He was not sure, because they didn’t drop, they didn’t fall, rather they held just beyond clarity in the mist, allowing only brief glints.

  He would’ve examined them more, except he was forced to look up, look up at the source of the severe set of thumps that followed the crash. The foam and plastic ceiling tiles that shielded the now dark lights bounced in their frames with each solid thud, as if a huge hammer was pounding the floor above.

  THUMP, THUMP.

  “What’s happening?” Deidra asked, already showing signs of an understandable panic.

  THUMP, THUMP.

  “Gas line,” Henry said. His head pivoted to Nate for a confirmation to his guess.

  THUMP, THUMP.

  “Yeah,” Nate said. “Something’s under pressure. Something on the end of a line.” He said it, but he wasn’t sure. It made sense. “The group may've jarred something.”

  THUMP, THUMP.

  Deidra eased up. “Jarred something?” she asked.

  THUMP, THUMP.

  Henry and Nate simultaneously met eyes. “A fire,” Henry said, and began to move toward the door.

  “Where’s the extinguisher?” Nate asked.

  “By the door,” Henry said. “Raj, you come with us. Lisa,” he said, quickly scanning the other women, “you stay down here.”

  “A fire?” Iona asked.

  “A flash fire,” Nate said. “Probably happened when they opened the door, blew out the wall.”

  “Listen,” Raj said.

  The men froze.

  “It’s stopped,” he added.

  “That may be a good thing,” Nate said, and continued out of the lounge.

  Then, without warning, came the screams. Nate had heard many screams, too many to count. He only counted the firsts. Horrid pleas, heinous situations, but these were different. These were a first.

  Then the shrieks shifted to the conference room and Nate spun back to see who was breaking down. Deidra had her hand flat against the side of her head. Lisa and Iona were already on her, trying to calm her down. Whether the cavalry came in five minutes or five hours, Deidra was never going to be the same.

  Raj’s jaw was agape.

  “Let’s go,” Nate said.

  Henry was already near the door, freeing the huge red canister from the fire bay. He handed Raj the axe. To his right Nate saw the huge guillotine paper cutter the Marketeers used to cut mailings and material. He levered up the two-foot blade, put his right shoe on the wooden base, and with a heave, pried it free. Then he turned to join the other two men at the stairwell door.

  He squeezed his grip onto the handle of his new machete-like blade. Henry gave him a slight nod. It hadn’t occurred to Nate until then that he was destroying company property, but in the moment, they were beyond such norms, and beyond was a place Nate was comfortable with.

  They were met with a hanging mist of white creamy haze.

  “There’s no smell to this smoke,” Raj said as the made their way up the stairwell.

  “This isn’t smoke. It’s the vapor coming down from somewhere,” Henry said. “Try not to breath it in, there’s a fire door up above.”

  “Right,” Raj said. “Will there be a blaze on the other side?”

  “Most likely not,” Nate said. “The sprinklers should’ve done their job.”

  “Without power?”

  “They don’t need power. They work off heat.”

  Henry stopped outside of the door, one hand hovering in front of it, and the other holding the extinguisher.

  “So if the fire’s out,” Raj said, “why do we need all of this?”

  “Pockets,” Nate said. “The sprinklers can’t reach everywhere.”

  “The door is cool,” Henry said. He slipped his free hand down to the handle. “That’s cool too.”

  “Does that mean we can go in?” Raj asked.

  Henry peered past Raj to Nate. Nate shrugged.

  Henry reached and began to turn the handle.

  “The screaming’s stopped,” Raj said.

  Henry glanced at Raj and then proceeded to open the door.

  “What the…” Raj said. His arms went limp beside him, the axe hung low. The raw odor of feces and the rancid mix of other inner body juices overwhelmed Raj and he lurched forward to empty his stomach. Since there was nothing there, he merely gagged hard, and then gagged again.

  Neither Nate nor Henry said anything. Henry let the extinguisher fall to the floor. There hadn’t been a fire. Nothing was burned. The place was in disarray, but there wasn’t the slig
htest sign of char. Nate could see that the far wall was different than the floor below. The glass wasn’t shattered. The walls on this level were receded. A wrap-around sky-high patio was the ceiling to the conference room below. The double doors to the patio were slid wide open to the cream fog outside, and between them, a section of the cafeteria.

  There were no signs of Rob or Bruce. No Terry in her little black dress.

  No signs except for the thinly spread, shining layer of blood and intestinal tract that was pasted across the floor, the walls, the plants, and the scattered remnants of broken chairs and tables. The section of room outside the stairwell door could’ve been the inside of a mammoth food processor left on too long. Nate had seen people blown apart, vaporized; this was not that. This was a bludgeoning. This was something ground up, chewed up, and spit back out.

  Small chunks of reddish brown flesh—parts of the body Nate couldn’t readily identify—plopped from the ceiling to the floor and landed with the squish of freshly chopped meat.

  Raj, hands on his knees, was taking deep breaths. Nate was breathing through his mouth.

  “What do you think…?” Henry began to ask.

  “I dunno,” Nate said. “An explosion of some kind.” He took a step back. “I’ve never seen a concussion that could—”

  “Why did the screams come afterward?” Raj asked. Nate and Henry both looked at the back of the man’s head, still bent forward.

  The question was a legitimate one. Why did the screams come afterward? Nate thought to himself. He gazed out toward the void of the fog. The mist, a wall of white still near the outside of the conference room window below, began to creep across the patio. Nate gave Raj’s upper arm a jab with his elbow. Again, the three said nothing. They stared at the blanket of mist slowly moving toward them, eagerly covering the floor as it went. It was through the doors and halfway across the cafeteria before they saw them, the willowy bright wriggling three-foot-long tips of the tentacle arms. One, then three, and then seven, spread across the width of the foot-high rolling fog, twirling and feeling their way forward, forward…

  “We have to go,” Nate said, and he reached for the handle behind him. With the same grip, he spun himself around, pushed the door open, and pulled himself into the stairwell. Raj and Henry were stuck to his back in their retreat and, rather than burst down the stairs, pushed their weight against the door to ensure it was secure.