Canni

by Daniel O'Connor

  “Oh, no,” whispered Cash.

  “They might move on,” answered Rob.

  “Maybe one just brushed against the door,” added V. Anderson.

  The rattling stopped. Dr. Chuang opened one of the desk drawers. She armed herself with a steel letter-opener. It was dull at the edges but came to a decent point. The only sounds in the room were her stealthy closing of the drawer, and the rushing respirations of the six office occupants. As they leaned against the desk, Paul put an arm around his mother. Rob’s head rested on Cash’s. He could feel her trembling. He tried to take solace in the quiet; hoping the immediate threat had subsided. As his own heart pounded, he sensed the increased pulsation in his bleeding finger.

  My bleeding finger.

  The thought engulfed him so rapidly that he was convinced he could hear his blood droplets crashing to the floor. He understood that if he was bleeding on this floor, he had also certainly bled on that floor.

  “Oh . . . my . . . G . . . ”

  The door thundered!

  Some of the captives shrieked. Then came the relentless pounding and the growls. In the hallway, the parading perm closest to the one at the door stopped and turned, as did the next and the next.

  The entire brood took notice and headed toward the office door. The initial horde, the ones who’d missed out on the security feeding and who were now stationed much further down the hall, also reversed course. They too advanced toward the alluring hinged entry, constructed from oak, adorned with a fresh crimson handprint.

  “Oh, no,” was all that Rob could muster as reality dawned. He knew that the six of them, and one heavy desk, would not be able to hold off even two or three perms, much less a horde. His body shivered as the door shuddered. His mind raced at the thought of no future with Cash. Her death had always seemed so abstract, especially at this young age. And to die like this?

  The door cracked. Screams from within the office.

  This just fed into the frenzy of the perms. The door crack quickly became a hole as a bloody fist crashed through it. Rob slammed his knife into the invading hand, more than once. It did not withdraw. Blood from the canni poured down onto the desk as more punches battered the door. Cash realized that since they’d entered the facility, there was one thing that none of them had seen.

  A fucking window.

  She turned her head, trying to scan the office walls in the darkness. A second fist crashed through the door. She ran from the desk and hit the light switch. It was temporarily blinding, but the dark no longer provided any shelter, so what was the point? The walls and everything else were flooded with light. She patted it all, in some faint hope that a window might appear. Framed certificates tumbled to the floor as did Camille on Her Death Bed. The Monet print landed on its side, against the wall, rendering Camille horizontal. Cash found a flimsy door and opened it to see a tiny closet. She closed it. As the entry door began to buckle, Cash was forced to confront reality; there were no windows anywhere.

  She rushed back, tears falling, to resume her position pushing against the desk.

  Sweat coating his face in the fluorescent light, Rob looked into her eyes. “Sweetheart, I’m going to need you to go over and get into that closet.”

  “No.”

  “You have to. Take as many of the others who will fit. I’ll fight these fuckers for as long as I can. Maybe they’ll be satisfied with me and won’t even notice that closet door.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” said Paul. “Mom, you and the other doctors go with Caroline. Go to the closet.”

  The growling head of the Golden Knights perm came forcefully through the large hole in the door. Dr. Chuang hopped on the desk and slammed her letter opener into its shattered eye socket. She shoved it through to the brain then yanked it back out. The perm fell out of view.

  “I’m not abandoning my son,” she said.

  Another canni immediately replaced the fallen one, ripping a large piece of the door away. Several distorted faces, and more bloody hands, came through. Paul took the pointed tool from his mother and flailed away, as did Rob with his kitchen knife.

  “We don’t have much time!” yelled Rob. “Get yourselves in that fucking closet!”

  None of them moved.

  “Cash,” he said, still swinging his knife, “don’t do it for me, or for yourself; get in that closet for your Uncle Reg, for Laura and Jen, for your family, please.”

  “I . . . I . . . I don’t . . . ”

  “There is a vent in the ceiling,” he said. “Paul and I would never fit through it. All of you women just might. Get a chair, stand on it, use a coin or something to unscrew the plate, try to rip it off, anything. It might collapse if you all get in it, but maybe it won’t, and you can crawl to another part of the building.”

  Dr. Papperello-Venito dropped her mop handle, grabbed a chair and hopped on it, fumbling through her lab coat pocket for a coin. The entry door was falling apart, the cognac desk being shoved further into the room. Cash ran, not to the closet or the chair, but toward the back wall, black Sharpie marker from the desk in hand. She touched the felt tip to the area from which the painting had fallen.

  Rob, with a clattering canni hanging onto his left arm as he stabbed its head with his right, had a final declaration.

  “Have a beautiful life, Cash. I love you.”

  Dr. Papperello-Venito was having no luck using a dime as a screwdriver.

  “Shit,” she cried as she tried to pull the plate cover off the ceiling vent. Her fingers bled as she tried to wedge them under the edges.

  The first perm was fully within the office. Rob and Paul shanked it in tandem as the second climbed in. Dr. Chuang picked up the fallen mop handle and thrust it like a spear at the invaders. Figuring that light gave them no advantage, V. Anderson went to the wall switch and slammed them off. She still gripped her jagged keys between her fingers like a poor man’s Wolverine, pondering whether to use them to fight or to sever her own jugular. She thought that if she was to never see her husband and children again, maybe, despite her scientific mind, she might soon be reunited somewhere, somehow, with the brother she’d just buried. Her boss now hung from the overhead vent plate, which remained securely attached. The last thing V saw before the room went dark was Cash’s unfinished Sharpie graffiti.

  cure 4 canni is

  The third and fourth perms blasted in. Twenty more battled to be next. Just as darkness seized the office, save for a scintillating stream from the shattered, canni-filled door, Dr.Papperello-Venito was blasted from her vent-hang. She fell to the floor, driven down by a choking nebula of murky smog pouring from the overhead duct system from which she’d just disengaged.

  A grand bonfire of skunks.

  It filled the room in seconds. Smoke was prominent in the hallway as well. This was a monumental and dedicated onslaught of prime marijuana, far beyond anything ever witnessed by Cheech or Chong. The sudden absence of light combined with the eruption of burning cannabis inflicted a level of disorientation on the perms and humans alike. Some hit the floor, others walked into walls. But two . . . two kept stabbing.

  Nostrils smoldered. It was like inhaling thorny chunks of pungent, baked earth. Visibility quickly approached zero within the office. The dominant sound was that of dry, barking coughs. The six humans knew to get as close to the floor as possible for the freshest air; the perms did not.

  Cash had already dropped the Sharpie. She clearly heard the hacking of coughs and knives. A strange calm overtook her despite the deadly anarchic state of affairs. She felt anesthetized and prepared to succumb. Her hope was that if the perms got her now, she’d welcome death from a benumbed cloud of unconsciousness.

  Heaven was cold, wet, and shrill with maddening cacophony.

  That was the initial estimation as surmised when Cash opened her eyes. She shivered under the pelting rain. Lights flashed then died, only to resurrect. Some type of torturous dog whistle gnawed at her ears. She could focus neither her vision nor her tools of reason.<
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  Next, she turned her head. The strobe effect teased her as it would light her locale for just seconds at a time. She fought to get to her knees, head whirling, thoughts scattered.

  Bodies were everywhere, many covered in blood, now diluted, and covering the soaked floor in a pinkish glaze.

  Fire sprinklers.

  Now she was gaining some clarity. The overhead smoke detectors had kicked in. The flashing lights were part of the deal as was that fucking pig squeal of an alarm. She knew that Rob and her friends were within that grotesque paperchain of humanity, but was he, or any of them, alive?

  The smoke remained in the air but had ceased its invasion. Still unable to stand, Cash took to crawling. Watery blood stuck to her hands and knees. With each lifeless figure she encountered, the initial goal was to discern them as friend or foe, then determine, in the former case, if they were alive, and in the latter, to hope to God not.

  This was more difficult in practice because Cash was stoned out of her ass.

  Don’t wake a fucking Canni.

  It was her way of focusing. She sloshed through the water and smoke, gingerly trying to avoid any meaningful contact with a body until she could see it clearly. The first three were all perms; one obviously dead with the letter opener deep into its throat. Cash came upon Dr. Papperello-Venito, supine, sprinkler rain falling into her open mouth. Leaning in, she listened for breaths, but the shrieking alarm made it impossible. Cash steadied herself, tilted her head, and watched to see the doctor’s chest rise with each inhalation. What she didn’t notice was the canni rising to its feet behind her.

  She crawled on, looking for Rob. She found his kitchen knife stuck deep into the ear of a big rancher type who sported a horseshoe print shirt and a colossal belt buckle. As she creeped along, the scent of the cannabis began to lessen, replaced by the potent stench of human waste that came packaged with every perm.

  There was Rob, face down, the emergency lights flashing on his left cheek. He looked pale and there was definitely blood seeping from his nose. She scurried over a couple of perms to get to him, abandoning all reason. The figure that stood unseen behind her took a first step. It was a female, probably late twenties; her top half was adorned only by a bra, with a black pleated shirt below. Shit slithered down her legs.

  Cash reached her fallen boyfriend.

  “Rob!” she clamored into his ear, trying to rise above the alarm but not wake the deadened. Getting no response, she grabbed his head. There was a wound on his chin. Looked like a bite. She’d seen those before.

  “Wake up!” she exclaimed, tapping his cheek.

  The bra-clad woman behind her took another wobbly step.

  Rob’s eyelid lifted just a bit.

  “Cash?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Be quiet. There are Cannis all around, passed out. You okay, babe?”

  “Uh, what?”

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  “My face hurts. My hands, too. Also, I might be completely fucking fried.”

  She smiled, “Me too.”

  Rob’s eyelid lifted the rest of the way. His iris slid over, changing focal power to absorb the image behind his girl. The wobbly woman encroached, eyes wide. He tried to get to his feet.

  Beating him to it was Dr. Papperello-Venito, who had apparently become reacquainted with that mop handle. She rose as tottering as the others but with the mental clarity to bombard the shirtless female across the back and head with that wooden stick. Blow after blow walloped, pummeling her to the floor. The doctor’s tattered blouse would rise each time she hoisted the weapon, revealing a Minnesota Vikings tattoo just above her right hip. The mop handle finally snapped in two, and the White House doctor continued pounding with the shortened piece that remained in her grip. The battered woman staggered to her feet and ambled out through the hallway passage where the office door once stood.

  Papperello-Venito held the base of the mop handle high and, as water drenched her from above, unleashed a deafening wail that vanquished even the din of the fire alarm.

  Rob was on his feet when he looked at his left hand. His pinky and ring finger were gone, blood pouring from the stumps. Unaware, Cash moved to comfort Dr. Papperello-Venito and take the jagged handle from her possession.

  “It’s okay, doctor,” she said.

  “Time is racing,” was her reply, mascara dripping from her eyes.

  “You’re having a bad trip, doc. You did good. We’re all pretty high. We’re gonna try to get out of here, okay?”

  “Time is fast . . . but the clock is slow.”

  Others were stirring now, friends and foes alike. Dr. Anderson sat up as did the stranger beside her. Rob, holding his hand up to have gravity slow the bleeding, noticed that Paul was almost on top of his mother. He’d probably passed out while fighting for her life. There was a sizable gash across her forehead. Paul grunted as he came to. He had several long scratches down his face.

  “This blows,” was all he could muster.

  “We’ll need to wrap that hand, Rob,” said Cash, trying desperately to appear calm as she noticed it. “Let’s see if those fingers are on the floor anywhere.”

  “Nah,” replied Rob. “If they’re floating around in this blood and canni shit, I don’t want ‘em.”

  Dr. Anderson sat staring at the strange young man beside her. He gazed back, directly into her eyes. Minutes before, he’d wanted nothing more than to devour her; now, he quietly rose to his feet and walked out through the shattered door.

  Dr. Anita Chuang moved. Her eyelids lifted.

  “Mom, you okay?” smiled Paul as he studied the injury to her forehead.

  The doctor stood up, much sooner than anyone anticipated. She wobbled and reached for her head, feeling the pain.

  “Mom!” said Paul.

  She ignored him and moved purposefully toward the back wall, stepping over bodies along the way. Her son stood and trudged toward her. Before he could reach his mother, she had summoned the strength to lift Camille on Her Death Bed and place it back on the wall where it had hung for years, now cloaking Cash’s epitaphic inscription of cure 4 canni is.

  The six of them emerged in the hallway, some bloodied, some limping, all drugged. Heads were a bit clearer but visibility was not. Smoke hung in the air, denser toward the top half of the corridor. They brought with them the knife, letter opener, and broken mop handle. Rob’s hand and Dr. Chuang’s head had been crudely bandaged in some rags found in the office closet.

  The goal was to find John G and then an exit. Their steps were measured, using each other for support, wondering how they might possibly survive another battle should there be one.

  Cash was the first to detect the group coming toward them in the distance. With the spread of smoke, she could only see their legs and feet, but even those were unclear.

  “Ahead,” she whispered. The others began to notice. V pushed those Wolverine keys back through her grazed knuckles. Rob wiped his bloodied, bitten chin and extended the arm of his three-fingered hand to move Cash behind him.

  Moving closer, it looked to be four of them approaching through the mist of marijuana. The first three wore black military grade full face gas masks. The fourth, lagging slightly behind, had no mask, in fact, he wore nothing but shoes.

  Don Russo grinned like he actually enjoyed this shit. The first to remove his mask was John G.

  “How ‘bout we all get the fuck out of here,” he said.

  Some members of the group almost collapsed with relief.

  “Johnny!” smiled Rob.

  The two remaining guerillas in this ad hoc rescue team, both packing semi-automatic handguns were Curly, the female tram operator, and the young, bearded fellow who normally manned the convenience store cash register.

  “Dude,” smiled Paul, at the sight of the counterman.

  Using his best hero voice, the store clerk responded. “They call me Huballa.”

  Grinning through his pain, Paul asked, “Who exactly are they, bro?”

/>   “Oh, you know, people in general. Co-workers, gamers.”

  “You all did this—the smoking vents?” asked V.

  “You a government lady?” inquired Russo.

  “I am.”

  “Your president owes me a fuck load of country club Mary Jane.”

  The whole group was back up in the convenience store, ravenously tearing at candy bars and potato chips. Rob turned to Huballa, who still brandished the handgun.

  “You have to remember,” said Rob, Lays crumbs falling from his lips, “there are two of your guards still down there; one with broken arms. Also, there might be a kitchen worker . . . ”

  “ . . . and some of those perms might be human again,” added Cash, with Hershey’s chocolate stuck to her teeth.

  “We’ll have a team arriving shortly,” offered Curly, hand on her holstered firearm. “We’ll get them.”

  Huballa added, “We are going to get you all medical attention, and we will then transport our Washington doctors to McCarran Airport, and all of you to wherever you choose.”

  “Don’t you have more security in other parts of the complex that could’ve come in sooner to help us?” asked Rob.

  “I can’t comment,” replied Curly.

  Don Russo leaned in to Rob, pointing the remaining half of his Twinkie. “Makes you wonder, don’t it? If they couldn’t send more help for a perm outbreak in your part of the complex, how fucked up must be whatever they are guarding in the other areas?”

  Silence.

  “Hmm,” sighed Russo. “Well, brother,” he said to Huballa, “how’s about unlocking that door so I get outside to my girl and our peeps?”

  “Done,” was the reply, as the counterman walked toward the remote locking device near the cash register.

  Rob wiped some caked blood from Cash’s cheek. She, like the rest of the group, was an unabridged mess.

  “There’s gotta be a bathroom in back. Let’s get you cleaned up. You must be freaking, baby.”

  “It’s okay. I can wait. I’ll wash when they’re taking care of your hand.”