The Last Death Worm of the Apocalypse (Kelly Driscoll Book 3)

by Nina Post

  “I’ll be sharing an office with you until I’m satisfied the building is on the right track. Are you familiar with the Pinnacle award?”

  Kelly despaired. Charlotte assumed she was such a stand-in prop of a manager that she didn’t even know about the Pinnacle, which rewarded the winning condo tower with a heavy crystal miniature condo replica.

  “Amenity Tower has made the ACTAE Pinnacle Award short-list every year since the building opened to residents, with the exception of a two-year period. But it’s been dropping in the ranks.” Charlotte gave her a pointed look as though Kelly was directly responsible. “Claw & Crutty is deeply concerned about the possibility of dropping off the list this year. But it would be especially insulting if Ultra-Amenity Tower came in at number one.”

  ACTAE stood for The American Council to Advance Amenities. Roger had applied every year that he was building manager. To spur enthusiasm, he would hold a Pinnacle pancake breakfast on the patio, give every resident a Pinnacle paper hat, and hold a Pinnacle karaoke night in the studio, using the wireless PA system. Photos in the north hallway commemorated all of Roger’s many events. She could be seen in one or two of them, fuzzy and in the background.

  “I understand.” Kelly flashed a polite smile, hoping it would be enough to get her out of there. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to—”

  “I’ve been looking over some of the bigger projects,” Charlotte interrupted, “and I want you to expedite this flashing project by two weeks and cut the budget by twenty-thousand dollars.”

  The flashing project was a loud, expensive, and time-consuming project that involved checking and repairing any holes, cracks, and gaps on the outer building envelope. With normal buildings, flashing repair was infrequent, occurring every ten to twenty years. Amenity Tower wasn’t so lucky. It required crews to climb all over the windows, and once a human crew got a glimpse of any residents inside, they usually fled, leaving a project started after the first apocalypse in continuous limbo.

  “The latest flashing crew quit,” Kelly said. They hadn’t liked what they saw in the windows. “I haven’t replaced them yet. Can we discuss that next week?” She got up and inched toward the door, every cell in her body yearning to be anywhere but the particular room she was in.

  “That’s one of the many matters we have to discuss. Take a seat, because we need to talk about the reserve.”

  In desperation, she glanced around as unobtrusively as possible for escape hatches or distractions: was there a fog machine and a cloak so she could obscure her exit like Bela Lugosi as Dracula? No. Could she get up to that removable ceiling panel quickly enough? No. Should she stab herself in the thigh? No. (She considered it for a few seconds longer and reluctantly decided against it.)

  “The main reason I’m here,” Charlotte said, “is because I need to know why Amenity Tower’s annual contributions to the reserve are so low.”

  If she stayed even five minutes more, she’d need fortification. In her top desk drawer was a special snack reserve. She took out a bag of Cluck Snack Cheezy Flats and held it up with a questioning look. “Do you want one?” Not that she wanted to encourage an after-work hostage picnic. But Charlotte made a face as though Kelly offered her a bag of death worm poo.

  “No, I hate salt.”

  “You hate salt?” To Kelly, that was like saying you didn’t like Golden Retrievers.

  “I’m sensitive to it.” Charlotte had physically recoiled from the snack bag, pressing herself back into her chair and moving her chair a couple of inches toward the wall. “Get it away from me. Don’t spill it!”

  “I’m not going to spill it!” She opened the bag. A couple of Cheezy Flats jettisoned out of the bag and onto a pile of papers. Charlotte emitted a brief shriek and Kelly jumped in her chair.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “Could you eat that somewhere else?”

  “Absolutely!” Her spirits lifted. Had Charlotte changed her mind? Was she free to go?

  “Well, don’t. We still have work to do. First, I have to find my lucky pen.” While Charlotte fussed around at her desk, slamming drawers and sighing, Kelly thought about the reserve.

  She knew the annual contributions were low, but Amenity Tower wasn’t typical, to say the least.

  Back in her other life, she knew about things like weapons, how to track in forests, how to find quarries using those few things they couldn’t quite give up, disappearing into disguises, and dealing with bail bondsmen. And her finances were simple: she carried cash and got paid in cash.

  In the past couple of years, she’d learned other things she never expected to learn. With a condo, each unit owner was responsible for a share of the maintenance and repair expenses for the whole building. If there wasn’t a reserve, whenever unexpected expenses came up, every inter-dimensional monster and fallen angel in Amenity Tower would get a bill for a large amount of money, which would be an unwelcome surprise for the unit owners. It would also put her in the uncomfortable position of having to collect that money.

  By establishing a reserve account, everyone paid a small amount of money each month toward building up the reserve funds so that when major repairs were needed, like after a near-apocalypse, the funds were already there.

  If ridiculous things did happen, and they always did at Amenity Tower, it could eat up repair costs that weren’t budgeted for (like monsters eating the cell phone tower or crashing into windows). That would deplete the reserves and make management and the board look bad.

  After opening every single drawer, Charlotte slapped a pen and a folder on her desk. “Right. The reserve. Why are the annual contributions so low?”

  “We had a number of unexpected repairs that”—Kelly didn’t want to say depleted—“reduced the growth rate of the reserve in an unfavorable way.” Including one that nearly destroyed the building and Pothole City, and threatened the continent, and the entire world.

  “I recommend temporarily raising the contributions from 15% to 20%.” Suck that through a milkshake straw, Charlotte. “The residents would pay about 5% more until we strengthen the reserve.”

  Charlotte smiled. Kelly wished she wouldn’t.

  “So, clearly,” she continued, “you can go back to corporate and tell them not to worry. I have a plan, and even though the process is, by necessity, a slow one, I have everything under control.”

  This was untrue. “Under control” was not a sustainable state. She was all too aware of the seething cauldron of chaos underlying her workdays, bubbling hotly and using its influence to cause a problem in the trash chute, or make the elevator get stuck on a floor, or cause two residents to suddenly engage in a blood feud over a smell.

  The size of the reserve and the extent of its growth was a sign of the health of the building and the condo association. So it made perfect sense that the Claw & Crutty management people would receive incentives based on how well the building performed financially, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t talk to the corporate office to try to negotiate her way out of this tarbaby.

  “I would love to return to corporate and tell them not to worry, Kelly, but Claw and Crutty gave me explicit instructions to stay at Amenity Tower until we see signs that the numbers are improving, so I’m not going anywhere.” Charlotte crossed her legs and settled back in her chair. “Let me tell you a little bit about how I work.”

  Kelly shifted her weight from one foot to the other, wanting to paw at the ground, rear up like a restless horse, and break through the wall.

  Maybe she could spontaneously combust.

  If there were anything in the office that could induce projectile vomiting, she would take it without hesitation.

  “There will be a forensic accounting firm working in the background,” Charlotte told her. “You won’t see them, you won’t talk to them, you won’t be working with them, but they’ll be there, doing their job.”

  “Like microbes?” She tossed the empty chip bag in the trash and yearned to be home with Af eating
dinner.

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about,” Charlotte said. Smirking a little, she added, “Unless they discover any malfeasance.”

  Her desk phone rang and Kelly lunged at it. It was extremely important to her that she pick up the phone, so she snatched the receiver like it was a grenade about to hit the floor. Adrenaline coursed through her bloodstream. “Management office.” I need an exfil.

  “Hey Kelly, this is Tom from the front desk. We have a situation here.”

  She tried to quell her enthusiasm, but probably responded as though Tom had said, Cary Grant came through a time portal from 1940 in the lobby and he’s asking for you.

  Kelly had no problem quickly assessing the situation, a crucial skill for building managers.

  The situation involved the Jackal riding his harnessed death worm in circles around the lobby, crying. His red and gold fur-lined, gladiator clog boots had little plastic spurs on the heels, and his blond hair fell in luxurious wings and waves to his shoulders.

  Residents weren’t allowed to bring death worms through the lobby, but the Jackal was probably having relationship problems.

  Tom staggered toward her with his short, herky-jerky stride from the parcel receiving room, where they kept boxes and larger parcels for residents and lockers for the employees.

  “What’s going on?” Kelly asked under her breath.

  “I don’t know,” Tom whispered. “He had an argument with Elysia, who left the building in a huff and hailed a cab.”

  “How long has he been at it?”

  “A while. I gave him a little time, considering I had a… a thing with Elysia before he started seeing her, and before, you know… this.” Tom indicated the eggs he carried on his back. “But he’s not stopping, and I’m off shift soon, and Pedro’s on front desk.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  Kelly approached the Jackal. She perched on the edge of the sofa and waited for him to circle around again. The Jackal made a few more rounds and stopped. The fireplace and the Amenity Tower Christmas tree glowed behind him. Nothing said Christmas like a jackal with lustrous blond hair riding a death worm.

  She was tired and wanted to go home, and the only thing she could think to say was, “Remember when you hired me to take that cowboy painting from your ex’s apartment?” That painting hung in her office in the SSI building, and she loved it.

  The Jackal wiped his nose with a paw. “The Melancholy Cowboy? Yeah. Everything always falls apart, doesn’t it?” He barked a bitter laugh. “No matter what you do.”

  She wasn’t sure if ‘it’ referred to melancholy or something else. “Yeah. Things can even fall apart for a cowboy. Sometimes all you can do is put on your sunglasses and ride a roller coaster. What’s going on?”

  He fidgeted with the reins. “Elysia canceled our trip to Barcelona.”

  “Why?” She had no idea the Jackal and Elysia were going on a trip to Barcelona. She hoped the Jackal hadn’t said anything to Raum and the rest of the board, because they loathed hearing about non-bound residents taking vacations. Raum assumed everyone wanted to rub it in their faces.

  The Jackal sighed.

  “Don’t be coy,” she said. Since she came to Pothole City to get back his painting, she had a certain affection for the Jackal because she wouldn’t have met Af otherwise, and wouldn’t have met Tubiel and the rest of the SPs. And wouldn’t have found her father. And probably wouldn’t have found out who killed her family.

  But her affection for him didn’t necessarily mean the Jackal didn’t have to follow the rules and regulations, which stated that death worms were not allowed in the lobby.

  The Jackal made a listless gesture toward the window that looked out to the massive Christmas tree across the street. “Elysia shares custody of three Peruvian death worms with her ex, Brad, who moved from Amenity Tower to Ultra-Amenity Tower.”

  She had heard that Peruvian death worms were at least triple the size of the typical Abyssinian death worm like the Jackal’s and had a softer, more luxurious fur.

  The Jackal glanced down at the worm. “Not this one, though. This one’s all mine. The ex, Brad,” the Jackal said the name as though referring to an old potato he found at the back of the fridge, “doesn’t trust us to watch the death worms for even a day. He calls to check up on them constantly. When we do watch them, Brad has all these draconian rules: we can’t leave doors open, can’t have certain food in the house, can’t leave them for more than three hours, and about a hundred more.

  “Elysia is so anxious about Brad’s rules that she’s in a bad mood all the time. She snaps at me about the slightest thing, and I…” the Jackal’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. “She’s too emotionally involved with him. They’re always on the phone, arguing about the death worms. It stresses me out, and it makes us fight. It is wrecking my skin. I haven’t been sleeping well, my stomach feels like a blender, and I’m eating too many carbs. Like, if you put a carb in front of me, I will eat it. I had a whole doughnut this morning! Now Elysia cancels the trip I’d been looking forward to for two months. All that packing strategy, figuring out what I’m going to wear hour by hour, for nothing!”

  “Because of the death worms?”

  The Jackal nodded. “One of them got a muscle injury and needed round-the-clock palliative care, and Elysia said… she said…” the Jackal took a hitching breath. “That it wouldn’t be fair to Brad to ask him to take care of the worms while we’re in Barcelona. So she canceled the trip! How is that fair?!”

  The Jackal put his paws over his eyes, let out a hiccuping sob, and looked at her tearfully. “Even though Brad called from his vacation to tell Elysia that she had to buy things from WormSmart!”

  The death worm nudged her shin.

  “You know that death worms aren’t allowed in the lobby,” she said as kindly as you can say something like that. She stroked the top of the death worm’s white fur.

  The Jackal sniffled. “I know. Though my horse, Elnett Satin, was an exception.”

  “He shouldn’t have been. Roger did you a huge favor. But Claw and Crutty cracked down on that after he got, um, promoted.” Kelly started to get up. “Wait, isn’t your horse named Pestilence?”

  “I have two white horses in a stable in the fifth-level parking garage. Pestilence, and Elnett Satin, after my favorite hairspray.”

  Kelly stood. “Roger let you get away with murder.”

  The Jackal grabbed her arm. “Could you come over later to watch a movie or something?”

  “Sorry, I can’t. I’ve got to get home.” Maybe she’d never get to leave the building. Maybe this was some kind of hell dimension.

  “I understand,” the Jackal said with a sad look. “You’re a good couple, you and Af. Boring, but good.”

  “Thank you?”

  He hung his head. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  Her heart went out to him, but she didn’t know what to do. “I’ll have someone stop by and check on you later. But for now, why don’t you take—” Kelly glanced at the worm.

  “Björn.” He sounded dejected.

  “Why don’t you take Björn home and go watch TV in the club room.” She wanted the Jackal to get back to insouciantly tossing his gorgeous head of blond hair and strutting through the halls like everyone in the building belonged in his harem. Nothing felt right otherwise.

  On her way out, she asked Tom to ask Pedro to check on the Jackal in a couple of hours and mentioned he might find him in the club room, probably watching reruns of What’s On Your Mind.

  Death Worm Wish List

  f didn’t think he belonged at Amenity Tower. He questioned whether he belonged in Pothole City and whether he should keep being human.

  He was tired of thoughtless, even hostile neighbors. Residents who were there when Roger still served as manager knew, for the most part, how to behave in a community; Roger had trained them. But residents who were new and/or antisocial by nature could cause a ton of hassle and make his life miserable. All it
took was one bad neighbor to ruin his days or nights or both.

  One would think he would love having neighbors. After all, he had spent hundreds of years bound to a gold urn at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and Abaddon, aka Don, bound him for another thousand years to a Ms. Pac Man game in a movie theater in Erie, Pennsylvania, thinking the game wasn’t winnable until some kid reached the kill screen and released him. That was a long time, even for an angel, but it didn’t mean he enjoyed having neighbors, at least not longer than a few months, when the novelty curdled.

  He wished he could live at Kelly’s and not stay in Amenity Tower. On top of that, he still had no idea why he ended up bound here with Raum and the rest of the board. It bothered him, of course, but he tried not to think about it, so he wrote his product reviews (with video) and essays that dove deep into the cultural significance of things most people took for granted.

  He hated the inevitable fact that whenever one annoying thing or neighbor went away, it was replaced by another or three more.

  He hated the noise of the leaf blowers and hedge trimmers, even forty stories down. He hated the constant construction, thanks to Raum and the rest of the board causing total mayhem in the city with their ill-considered loopholes.

  He hated serving on the board, even as member-at-large, with his fellow bound angels, with their power struggles and territorial fiefdoms. Raum and the rest of them made more and more demands of him over time, even though he had never wanted to get involved with the board in the first place, and when they weren’t planning the end of days and their own freedom, they were obsessed with meaningless matters.

  He couldn’t leave the building, he didn’t know why, and it wore on him.

  He felt like Kelly deserved more.

  He felt trapped in a cycle of futility and frustration.

  And in a clearly misguided way to help with his stress, he had the brilliant idea of buying a pure-bred, hypoallergenic, Norwegian death worm from a death wormery in the West Loop. A Norwegian death worm, with its sable-like fur, made an Abyssinian death worm seem like a nutria.