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

by Anthology

  And then the three descended the misting stairwell.

  “We have to get out of this building,” Nate said, squeezing his new two-foot heavy steel with a greater purpose than the trip up.

  “Let’s get the others and go,” Henry said.

  Nate didn’t bother to ask the other two what they thought they saw, and they didn’t ask him. Raj, he figured, was most likely in a state of shock, and Henry and he weren’t going to dwell on something they couldn’t explain. Things don’t come out of the fog, and if they do, they don’t come out of the sky on the eighty-sixth floor.

  Having been the first back into the stairwell Nate was the first to the Titan floor door. He pulled the handle open without hesitation, took two steps in, and froze. He felt the wood of Raj’s axe handle press into his back as Raj ran into him, taken by the same shock.

  The door Nate opened didn’t open to the eighty-fifth floor, not to the Marketing department, or the conference room on the other side, or to the waiting Iona, Deidra, or Lisa. The door opened to the blood-stained cafeteria and the cluster of tentacles meticulously inspecting the center of the room.

  “This can’t be,” Raj said.

  Nate pushed him back and then pivoted to get through the door. “Go, go, go.”

  They scurried down the misty stairs again, this time Henry leading the way, and when they reached the next flight, he peeked in and gave the other two a reassuring nod before fully opening the door.

  Why did the screams come afterward? Nate thought again. Now it made sense, except it didn’t make sense. They—Rob and Terry and Bruce—had probably run to escape the cafeteria and had landed back into the trap. It made sense but it didn’t make sense.

  This time they weren’t on the floor of the cafeteria, but they weren’t on the eighty-fifth floor either. The glass walls were sloped up to the open floor above and to the floor below, three flights combined, their levels intermingled.

  “Where are we?” Nate asked. “This can’t be the eighty-fourth floor.”

  “No,” Henry said. “A hundred and first. We’re on the observation level.”

  “No escape,” Raj said.

  “What’s that?” Nate asked.

  “We’re in Naraka.”

  “Naraka?”

  “Naraka is Hindi, it’s like the western purgatory, or hell. There is no escape. Our souls were sent here to make amends for our sins.”

  “You don’t seriously believe in that?” Nate asked.

  “Look.” Raj gestured over the railing to the rolling mist on the level below. The mist filled an alcove in a swirl and then dissipated, leaving in its place the blurred figure of a person, of a man or a woman, Nate couldn’t be sure. The near transparent figure appeared to wrestle with its surroundings, as if the air around it was crushing the creature. A muffled faraway scream echoed off the high-sloped glass from no particular direction, and the misting fog enveloped the shadow of a being as both faded to nothing.

  “You see?” Raj said. “You don’t have to believe.”

  ***

  The stairwell was different than the day before, the mist no longer a floating vapor, rather a hanging cloud. They didn’t have to travel far, one floor at a time was suffice to end up anywhere, and it didn’t seem to matter if they ascended or descended because the floor the door opened up to would be the luck of the draw. They went as high as the observation deck and as low as the forty-third, twenty stories at a time, never traveling more than a flight between doors. Nate and Henry were the only ones focused on their search for…well, first for a way out, and then for food, and then just searching. Nate thought he heard some people behind the doors more than once, but the floors were always empty, of people anyway. Of living people.

  They didn’t return to the cafeteria, or to the Titan offices on the eighty-fifth floor. They came across the tentacles again though, in other places, and other things, glimmers, things they didn’t stick around to investigate. Some of the floors, where the glass walls had shattered and the mist was fuller, were too unsettling to step through. Objects hung midair, suspended for no reason, not flying, not falling, simply arrested in place—a phone, trash bins, a family photo from someone’s desk hanging in an aisle, the glass punched out of the frame, all floating. And those floors—maybe due to the air, the altitude, or the pressure—were a physical struggle of vertigo and nausea.

  Raj was an incessantly chatting shadow. Repeating nonsense about Naraka and purgatory and hell and demons and apologies—Nate tuned him out and moved him along.

  They found a jackpot of food on a floor where the word Wonderco was painted in red across a yellow wall by the elevator, a dot-com, Nate figured, because the entire place was painted in festival colors. There were beanbags and air cushions, and a huge pantry with a dry cereal and fruit buffet where huge plastic containers of rainbow-colored Fruity Pebbles, granola, cornflakes, and M&Ms hung in a row, beside bowls of bananas, apples, and oranges. Only a few days old, the fruit was a bounty, as was the refrigerator full of Parmalat. The fridge was out but the small cartons of long life milk didn’t need refrigeration to stay fresh. In the cupboards below, Nate found five plastic wrapped yellow backpacks with the Wonderco logo printed across the top. He pulled them out, tossed them on the counter. The three feasted on the milk and fruit and cornflakes while Henry and Nate stuffed the packs with what food they could carry.

  When they were done they rested on the beanbags.

  Raj began to snore as soon as his head was down.

  “It’s the stress,” Henry said.

  “You don’t really think he’s coming back?” Nate asked.

  “Oh, no. I just meant that the stress wore on him quickly.”

  “And you?”

  Henry pursed his lips and Nate couldn’t help but think that rather than spitting out the truth, the man was sizing up an answer to fit the situation. “I think I see what you’re getting at. Who in their right mind wouldn’t be stressed? Stress can’t be avoided, but I don’t think that we, the two of us, are that different in terms of stress.”

  Nate scooted down and back into the huge beanbag pillow. He grinned at Henry and then said, “I just wanted to start my new job.”

  “I’m sure you did. But that’s what I mean. The stress is a tool, a vehicle to go forward,” Henry glanced at Raj, snorting air in through his nose, “not a place to check out.”

  “Checking out isn’t all that bad. I mean, if you can’t go back. He’s never seen anything…” Nate caught himself. He didn’t want to share too much. Not that he saw that as an issue with Henry, he just didn’t want to go there, to that place. “I’ll be glad to get out of here.”

  “I agree,” Henry said. “I’m glad we found food. I’ll feel better when we get some to the others, and best when we get out of here.”

  ***

  Not once in the next week did Nate return to the eighty-fifth floor. He, Henry, and Raj did stumble into the cafeteria on eighty-six three more times, but that was as close as they ever got to returning to the coworkers they’d left behind. When they came across the cafeteria they took what they could carry and moved on; it didn’t matter if it was a ‘blood floor.’ By this time they’d found that there were a lot of blood floors.

  More and more the stairwell doors opened to floors that were missing outer walls, entire panes of the thick glass torn from the building’s side. There were more floors where the rules of physics didn’t apply, where objects hung midair, as did the sounds of doors opening, slamming shut, of laughter, and screams, the origins of all unfound. Nate discovered these odd floors—too unsettling to enter in the first days—were good for water, because for whatever reason the faucets in the bathrooms still worked, the toilets still flushed. He became so quickly accustomed to the weird physics that he would set his things next to him in midair without even thinking about it. He’d set his razor on an invisible counter while he shaved, let his paper cutter sword suspend while he went through the drawers of a desk. He became so used to the lack
of ‘normal’ that when he was on a normal floor he would forget himself and do the same, only to find his blade or other object let loose and fall to the floor.

  They weren’t moving floor to floor as rapidly as they did the first few days. There wasn’t much point in rushing, and not every floor had food. There was a day when every door opened to mirrored sets of cubicles, row upon row of empty workspaces, and nothing else. They spent an entire day without food and water. They almost lost Raj that day, so their habits changed. If they found a floor with a pantry or any food at all, they stayed for a while.

  Raj listened and did what he was told, but no longer conversed, merely mumbled to himself, more so when he was upset. Henry was good for conversation, if there was anything to talk about, but there usually wasn’t. There hadn’t been anything new to discuss for days, days delineated by the shades of gray gleam emitting from the shrouding creamy mist.

  Hunger wasn’t the greatest risk. There were other things they’d encountered that were far worse. There were the upper floors—that they could walk into from below—with the little bubbles of shifting reality. There was the hive floor. Spooked from a floor, they traversed the stairwell in the dark, opened a door, and were attacked by a swarm, a flock of flying blue eels. Henry, the last off the floor, took the brunt of the attack, his yellow Wonderco shoulder pack was near shredded as he squeezed out the door. Of these though, the tentacle creatures hiding, prowling in the mist were the greater risk of all. Any open windowed floor meant the potential wriggle then lash. And they weren’t all little arms like those they first saw on eighty-six. There were greater creatures out there, creatures with pipes for limbs, creatures that could smash a man to paste and then spread him jam and butter onto every surface of a room. They’d seen the remains on the blood floors and had near encounters more than once. Had seen the long arms probing through the length of a room when they peeked inside. The creatures were a constant danger. Nate, Henry, and Raj moved slowly between floors. They were prey.

  And they were on the move again, wary of whatever may be on the prowl.

  They were on one of the odd floors. There was cereal again—not in bins though—in little boxes with cartoon characters on the front. The milk cartons in the glass door cooler were foul, but they’d stretched the Parmalat and had plenty left. The next time he came across Parmalat, that was all Nate planned to carry. He was leaning back against the counter, a bowl of milk-covered Raisin Bran in his hand, his jaw machine grinding each bite. He was watching Raj.

  Raj was sitting at one of the two small café tables to the side of the pantry, twirling an apple from one hand to another with the tips of his fingers, a waxed apple that appeared as if it could’ve been plucked from the orchard that morning. Raj was mumbling almost to an audible level, but it was what Nate deemed a happy mumble. He wondered if Raj saw an apple or a ball. He’d wait a moment and then tell him to eat. Raj moved better if he ate. Henry was rifling through the pantry’s top cupboards. Nate was used to this too, Henry’s search for something more than there was to offer.

  “I’ll be,” Henry said.

  Nate’s eyes rolled far right to see what Henry had discovered. It was a forest green cube tin. “What you have there?” Nate asked, though he was already aware of what was inside. One of his buddies had a tin like that, though he stored a different loose leaf inside.

  “This,” Henry said, holding the tin high, “you cannot get stateside.” Nate noticed the tin was still plastic sealed. “Somebody brought this treasure here, special.”

  “Well, there ya go,” Nate said. “It’s yours now.”

  Henry gave the tin a closer inspection. “It’s mine now,” he agreed.

  “How you going to heat it?”

  “We’ll find a way. It won’t go to waste, I assure you. In fact, I think I may have a cup now.” He knelt down and opened a lower cupboard door. “And bingo.” He slid a full case of Sterno from the middle shelf. Nate tried to recall a smile on Henry’s face before this one. Another first.

  A crash from the outer office stole the smile from Henry. Something heavy met the floor, a phone, or perhaps a monitor. Nate froze, the plastic spoon pinched snug between his thumb and fingers, hanging three inches from his mouth. He didn’t breathe. Another crash, definitely something flung from a desk.

  Nate maneuvered the paper cereal bowl around to the counter and swapped it for his paper cutter machete.

  Raj stared at Nate in wait for instructions to flee. He no longer twirled the apple. His fingertips pressed into the table; his hands were claws.

  Henry gently, quietly, pressed the Sterno back into the cupboard.

  Nate pressed a hand forward toward Raj, and then nodded to Henry, one gesture to remain, the other to follow. Henry held a butcher knife he’d retrieved from another office pantry. Not much of an arsenal, but Nate’s plan wasn’t to fight. He just wanted to see what was out there, because if one of those tentacle creatures loomed nearby he and Henry were going the other way.

  The pantry was in the midst of a work area, two partitions and a café centrally located. The racket traveled from the other side of the partition, toward the corner. That was good. Nate wanted a peek, and if there was trouble, he’d grab Raj and head toward the stairwell door in the other direction.

  He walked lightly yet held his blade high, ready to swing heavy. He approached the end of the pantry, prepared to round the corner, and then leaned forward, the cutter high behind his ear.

  Another crash.

  Nate froze.

  He sucked a silent breath through his nose, and let his weight rest on his forward left foot. He leaned further in.

  He expected to see the wavering mist, the fog, coursing across the carpeted floor, over the work tables, exploring, and from the thick creamy cotton haze a tentacle, probing, prowling.

  But when Nate leaned forward that’s not what he found.

  There was no mist stealing in from the corner of the floor, no break in the outer wall they’d missed, no tentacle exploring the surface of the tables.

  There was something else.

  There was someone else, a woman in a black dress. She was straightening the fabric, stretching the hem of the material down, and then she began to rake her fingers through her hair.

  Slowly he lowered the cutter to his side and rolled his head around his neck, in awe of the stranger. Henry joined him by his side, and he too stilled upon seeing the woman.

  “Terry?” Henry asked. But the Marketeer in the cocktail dress said nothing.

  ***

  Nate had spent a day with Terry. That was all, one day, a lifetime ago. But once Henry mentioned her name, he recognized the young woman—her hourglass body, jet-black hair up in a bun before, now fallen to her shoulders. Her arms floated away from her hair and face, as if she was unaware of their presence. She didn’t set eyes on them. Nate was deciding if she was catatonic, as Raj had become. It was possible she’d been alone since leaving the eighty-fifth floor. Or maybe this was a ruse and she was aiming to flee.

  She may’ve been ignoring them altogether, unsure if they were even real.

  A rattle to Nate’s right caused her to stiffen.

  He swung his head in time to see a pencil cup fall to the carpeted floor and gently roll to a stop.

  She wasn’t ignoring them. There was something else on the floor, hidden from where Nate stood.

  Nate’s eyes darted to either side of the room and then he slowly cranked his neck to peek toward the stairwell.

  Slinking over the plain table desks was a single probing tentacle. He marveled at how long the arm must be, extending forty feet at least, yet only the fine tip explored the surface of the table, delicately swiveling around the lamp, the phone, sliding an abandoned legal pad to the edge and onto the floor with the cup.

  The tentacle reached back to the exits, yet he saw no trace of mist to detail exactly from where the creature was entering. They could possibly go to the wall. This was an open floor with no outer suites and o
n arrival they’d found no glass disturbed—but that may’ve changed. Maybe they could wait it out, keep moving around the edges, outmaneuver the probing arm and make their exit in a loop. But there may be another and they would succumb to a trap.

  A flush of heat filled Nate as his blood began to pump adrenalin.

  He glanced at Henry. The Brit gave a nod down the aisle toward the stairwell, and Nate was glad for it. Best to scope the way out first. He repeated his gestures to Raj and Henry—remain and follow—and then he began to heel-toe forward, his cutter raised high in his leading right hand, poised to strike.

  With a few short steps he was parallel to the tip of the creature.

  Nate gave a hard look at the rows of tiny serrated suction cups lining the bottom half of the wriggling limb. The blood red tentacle appeared not to notice him.

  He glanced back at Terry. She was watching his progression. The light behind her eyes let him know she was still very much there. He gave her a soft smile and she responded in kind. On that sole day they spent in the conference room she’d only had a stern look on her face. Annoyed her phone wasn’t working, that her plans were disturbed, that she was forced into the company of the others. The face she wore now was of a changed woman. Nate peeked to the tentacle, back to her, and signaled with his free hand for her to come. He sent the same signal to Raj and then raised his index finger to his mouth.

  Henry stopped so that Terry and Raj could slip into line while Nate led the way.

  And the way was slow. The four continued to the exit, Nate, Terry, Raj, and Henry silently hugging the shadowed wall as they went. Breathing as lightly as possible, taking gentle steps as the red writhing rope width of monster flesh running beside them continued to slither further into the room.

  When Nate reached the edge of the interior wall, he saw the entry point of the invading beast. The incredibly lengthy probe stemmed from a misty floor vent.