by Nina Post
“Listen, there’s kind of a catastrophe out here. I want you to take what you need from the lab and get out right now, OK? You can get your things later.”
“What’s going on?”
“Apocalypse. Monsters. End of Days.”
“Oh, I see. Again?”
“Please do what I say.” She tried to picture all of the available exits and determine which one would be the least dangerous. Think, think…
“Go out the west parking garage exit and get to the SSI building as quickly as possible. Do not stay in Amenity Tower. I need someone to be with the SPs and make sure they’re all at home. Will you do that right now?”
“Well, y-yes, I suppose so. But I’m making so much progress, and—”
“You have your lab book. If you can’t go back, you can recreate everything at home. Tell me you’ll do it.”
“Yes, I can cert—”
“I have to go.” She figured it was a definite possibility that she would be devoured by an inter-dimensional monster, so she took a leap. “Love you.”
She hung up and leaned against a wall as Charlotte shrieked and completely ruined the flashing project progress that the camel spider and remora had made, per Charlotte’s insistence. She had discovered a reserve not of energy and strength, but of exhaustion and despair. She still hadn’t recovered from being fired, and from worrying about Af. She had done a pretty good job since the donut fiasco, considering, but this time was different.
Maybe if Roger were here, he could manage the hell out of the situation.
But Roger wasn’t here. She was. And he would probably be playing the guitar.
She was the manager of this building. But his songs always did have a calming effect.
She crawled over to the crowd of residents (some with death worms) hiding in the corner of the terrace while monsters zoomed overhead, thundering like fighter jets, and while Charlotte threatened residents and picked apart more of the building.
The death worms shook with fear. One passed out, or maybe it could nap anywhere, anytime. She crouched in front of the residents and did something she didn’t think she would ever do. She sang a song she made up on the spot:
I’m your manager, so I’ll fix this
I’m your manager, yes, I’m in charge
I’m your manager, and we’ll get through this
I’m your manager, yes, I’m your sarge
If the only thing she could do was calm down her residents before they were all devoured, so be it. It seemed to be working—they weren’t so rigid with fear and panic, and some of them even sang along to it. Unfortunately, they wanted her to sing it several times.
Her walkie chirped. “Yes?”
“I look in manual.” Dragomir.
“You took so long I forgot I even asked you.”
“You did not say was urgent matter.”
“It doesn’t matter. Tell me.”
“Message is not in manual.”
She pressed the edges of her nails into her forehead. “There’s nothing about it?”
“No. But I find something else, something strange.”
“What is it?”
“It says something about ‘Other’ setting on fireman’s key access,” Dragomir told her. “You know this setting?”
When the fire department needed to access the elevator, they put in a key and turned to the ‘fire dept’ setting. Another setting read ‘Other,’ which was never used. No one knew what it was.
“Yes, I’ve seen it.”
“When you move key to ‘Other,’ you can enable ‘Destroy Mode.’”
“Destroy Mode? What is that? Are you kidding me? There’s actually a Destroy Mode?”
“Is only with freight elevator. In this mode, freight elevator shoots upward at incredibly high speed and stops abruptly at the top floor. When it stops, spikes release from the roof of elevator cab and whatever is inside is crushed.”
“This is in the manual? Why would we ever use that?”
“Uhh, when corporate robot turns into giant insect monster.” He sounded impatient. He probably wanted to get back to his show.
“No, I meant, aside from that.” She realized what she was saying. “God, that’s a stupid question. This is Amenity Tower. Never mind. That information probably would have come in handy during the last time this happened.”
“Regret take all your time, if you let this,” Dragomir said.
She laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Everything. Everything is funny.”
A little more than halfway to Pothole City, Af became savagely hungry. He needed to carb up and throw in some protein. He dropped into a clearing in the woods and found a rabbit. And another rabbit. And another. Note to self: do not mention this to Kelly.
With that low-GI protein base satisfied, he continued until he saw a Denny’s.
He ambled into the kitchen. Everyone screamed and ran out, but there weren’t that many customers, anyway. He ate a short stack and a Grand Slam and a steak and eggs, all sitting hot on the ready counter, and everything on the burners.
He went out into the main restaurant, which had been abandoned, and ate everything on the plates. He lucked out with an empty table of four who had received their food and he ate all of that, including two more stacks of pancakes, and devoured hash browns, a cheese and mushroom omelet, English muffins, toast, fruit, and a gigantic banana nut muffin.
Finally sated, perhaps too much, he took one of the restaurant’s business cards so he could reimburse them later—he had ran up all sorts of debts lately—and checked his phone, tiny in his huge hand. It was so hard to operate it when he was like this.
He grabbed a fresh cloth from the kitchen and wrapped it around one of his black claws, hoping his password took. It did. Maybe this thing had voice commands, but he didn’t know if it was enabled and it wouldn’t understand him anyway. Also, if he spoke into it, his breath would incinerate the phone.
“You have nine voice messages,” the phone told him, and he got a sinking feeling. Forwarding to the last one for expediency, he heard Kelly’s message.
Elnett Satin and Pestilence
he second-floor terrace situation was not good. Kelly pictured the next engineering report, when Amenity Tower hired a team of engineering consultants to help them identify structural defects. They would probably give the Association’s money back.
Some of the monsters chose to fly elsewhere over Pothole City, but most of them stayed near where they came in. The high-pitched shrieking made her wish for those big, airport-control ear protection things. Charlotte expressed her aggression, breaking windows and eating the glass like it was nothing more than fudge, as though realizing how much she loved to eat glass. Since most of the residents had come down for the holiday party and the fit and show, she hoped there was no one in those particular units.
Kelly’s phone vibrated, and she hoped it was Af, but she used her walkie so much she picked that up instead, by habit, and said “Hi,” realizing it was the wrong thing. She fumbled for her phone, but it was only Coleman Grether, manager of Ultra-Amenity Tower. During the weekend, she had her work extension forwarded to her cell phone.
“This is Coleman Grether, property manager of Ultra-Amenity Tower!” he shouted over the crashing and yelling in the background.
“What can I do for you?” she asked, facetiously.
“I don’t know if you’re aware of this, and I don’t know how to put this without sounding crazy, but, uh, monsters are destroying my building!”
“Oh? What kind of monsters?” she said, enjoying it ever so slightly.
“What kind? Does it matter? I don’t know… big ones! Some are as big as that statue in front of the federal building and some of them are flying and I don’t know what to—”
“How did you know to call us?” she asked. “You didn’t know there was a condo building here, but now you’re calling us?” She didn’t think he knew that Giselle Cashman was actually the building ma
nager of Amenity Tower, but couldn’t resist prodding him.
“Of course I know there’s a condo building there! Everyone knows about your building! Look, I need your help!” Ah, so he lied. ‘Amenity Tower? What’s that? Never heard of it.’
“Have you evacuated the building?” she asked.
“What? Uh… yes! Yes!”
“Everyone’s out?”
“Yes! What’s happening?”
“That’s hard to explain,” she said. “Let me call you back.”
“No, wai—”
If those monsters didn’t kill Raum and the rest of them, she would. They probably stuffed the suggestion box to make her think that a death worm lap pool was the most popular desired amenity. If she had verified that with residents in person, they wouldn’t have even thought of it.
When she realized the board had probably stopped her amenity survey from going out to residents in the first place, she almost crushed her phone. Maybe they had paid off one of the maintenance or engineering staff to not put the papers under each resident’s door.
Her mind turned around all the possibilities. Maybe the board created the zombie infection to distract her from learning that the residents hadn’t actually received, let alone sent in the amenity survey, and from realizing their plan.
Raum had probably used reverse psychology on her to make her think that he and some of the rest of the board were against creating that particular amenity. It was too expensive, it would take too long, the death worms wouldn’t use it, no one bought death worms anymore, a lethal death worm virus had spread, the gefilte fish suspension would be too hard to get, blah blah blah.
All those offhand comments they’d made to her as she zoomed by, focused on something else.
She’d gotten fired over their amenity, which turned out to be the loophole that would open their world to other dimensions. Fired. Even if that didn’t actually stick, and even if it was unjustified, it was still a terrible experience that she never wanted to go through again.
She got her walkie. “Pedro, you there? Pedro? Could you bring me anything from the mail room that could be used as a weapon? Bring it to the terrace doors, but don’t come outside. Thanks.”
She thought for a second and switched it on again. “Dragomir?”
“Yes, what is it.” Dragomir’s voice: a bleak, dry land, with tumbleweeds rolling through.
“Can you go up to the roof and somehow direct a hose from the boiler and a hose from the chiller, one at a time, and spray it down on Charlotte? She’s on the patio. Can’t miss her.”
“I want raise.” Totally deadpan. What was he doing, watching TV?
Kelly closed her eyes. “We’ll talk about it later, if we get through this.” Dragomir hung up. She wasn’t sure if that meant he would help her or not. She presumed the former.
Charlotte caught a monster the size of an eighteen-wheeler truck, mid-air, ripped it in two, and ate one of the halves, throwing the other half contemptuously to the ground. She could eat glass, but not that part of a monster from another dimension, evidently.
Residents screamed and ran to avoid being crushed by the falling front half of the monster, which rippled the limestone tiles of the patio floor, bounced the grills, and uprooted trees.
Pedro waved to her from the patio doors. She threw a big rock at one of the streetlights and smashed the light to make more darkness for cover. More glass for Charlotte to eat. Pedro handed her a big staple gun.
“Thank you. Now go home.” She took the gun.
For a moment, she thought that they would definitely have to issue a special assessment again, that the reserve would require a special assessment and a fundraising effort, and that they were definitely not going to be in the running for the Pinnacle award despite the new death worm lap pool.
In the distance, strolling behind Amenity Tower and close to Ultra-Amenity Tower, she noticed something that could easily be Godzilla’s illegitimate offspring with a giant octopus.
She didn’t have long to wonder where it was going or what it was doing because it climbed Ultra-Amenity Tower and wrapped its tentacles around the top floors like it was trying to mate with it, and gently thrusted its body against the top few floors of the building. At first it moved slowly, but the action increased in speed.
She couldn’t resist. She called the number that Grether had called her on.
“Hello?” he shouted.
With no small amount of pleasure, she said, “A Godzilla-squid monster is humping your building. Thought you should know.”
“It’s humping it?”
Innocently, she added, “Is that a new amenity? How does that work, exactly?”
The top two floors of the building crumbled under the pressure of the monster’s eager exertion.
Grether let out an agonized yell. “The amenity floors! Those monsters destroyed my amenity floors!”
“I want you to go into Pothole City Donuts, then into our lobby,” she said. “Take the elevator down one floor. Call me when you get there.”
He called ten minutes later.
“Where are you?” she said.
“I’m in the underground walkway next to this, um… this pool? It’s long, it kind of smells weird… it’s glowing…”
“It’s what?”
“It smells weird!”
“No, it’s glowing?”
“Yeah, uh…” he swallowed. “It’s glowing.”
She had toyed with him enough. “I want you to go out the west exit of the parking garage you see right there, run to the end of the block heading west, and get to the tall, art-deco building on the right side of the street. You can’t miss it.”
“Then what?”
“Ring the bell and tell them Kelly sent you.”
“Tell who?”
“You’ll see.”
“Elysiaaaa!” the Jackal yelled.
Kelly ran toward the green sea slug quivering in Charlotte’s path and tried to grab her to get out of the way, but it was nearly impossible to get purchase and after attempting some different angles, she finally picked her up like a stack of wood and ran with her toward the doors.
The Jackal took Elysia from her—not an easy task, considering Elysia was a tall, slippery blob and the Jackal was diminutive—and rushed her into the club room.
Outside, Charlotte howled, and one of the picture windows in the club room, as yet miraculously intact, shattered.
“That’s it, I’m getting my horses,” the Jackal said.
“Elnett Satin and Pestilence?” she said.
The Jackal beamed at her. “You remembered their names!”
“Take someone with you.” She looked around and saw the moth resident with a wasp head and yellow, crocheted antennae warmers hiding in the kitchen. “Her. Him?” In her defense, they had only recently moved in.
“OK,” the Jackal assented and looked to Elysia as she rippled a brighter green. “She says thank you.” Elysia generated orange polka dots and tilted her head back and forth. “Oh, and says that you’re a good manager.”
Kelly grinned. “Thanks, Elysia.”
Elysia waddled off. She gestured to the Jackal. “What happened with you two?”
“We broke up. But it’s civil.”
“That’s good.” She paused. “By the way, I saw Brad at Ultra-Amenity Tower.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. He seemed like a jerk.”
The Jackal snorted a laugh.
Charlotte smashed a few more windows and Kelly saw Dragomir on the edge of the roof. He aimed some kind of fire hose at Charlotte’s head and deluged her with steaming hot water, to no result except the most minor irritation on Charlotte’s part.
He disappeared and came back with another hose and sprayed freezing water.
Nothing. If anything, it seemed that Charlotte found it refreshing.
Kelly switched on her walkie. “Thanks for tr—” She stopped abruptly when some kind of grotesque, black winged creature, like a rat with enorm
ous bat wings, picked up one of the other building engineers in his claws and disappeared into the dark sky to the west, its wings flapping loudly, like someone hitting a wet sheet on a clothesline with a baseball bat.
“I have much work to do in this building,” Dragomir said over the walkie. “This does not help. Also, he owed me money.”
He clicked off.
Kelly wanted to try Af’s phone again but didn’t see the point. He wasn’t going to pick up. Maybe he never wanted to see her again. Maybe he hated being bound to Amenity Tower so much that he wasn’t going to come back this time.
Charlotte reached an arm into the window of the automat, shattering the glass, and pulled out a massive vending machine that she raised high and threw at a few residents hiding behind one of the concrete planters. The residents ran for the far corner of the patio and pressed against the wall as the limestone tiles gave way to a huge pit in the ground. The vending machine stuck out of the ground, its front smashed in. Residents scrambled to collect the candy and bags of chips and scurried back into hiding.
“It’s kind of funny that she was so concerned about strengthening the reserve,” Kelly said to Tom. “Rubbing my face in that special assessment we had to do after the last time this happened. And now this.” She thought for a second. “Go to the storage room with me. But first, round up a few people and get all of the luggage carts you can.”
“What are you going to do?” Tom asked her.
“I’m going to get every single bag of Cluck Snack Max Sodium Mix and take them up to the seventh-floor balcony. They’re like those big bags of mulch you get from the garden store, so I need as many carts as we can get.”
Cluck Snack had a product similar to their dry mix, used for creatures with incredibly high sodium requirements, like certain SPs. It had approximately five thousand times the amount of sodium in regular table salt and was used for certain specially-labeled salty Cluck Snack products.
Kelly took the elevator down to the first underground level, glancing at the lap pool but first opening the door to the storage room to make sure her father wasn’t still in there. He tended to be both stubborn and single-mindedly focused on his process, but he wasn’t there, to her relief.