-:- -:- -:-
“You left the other phones at your house?”
“Along with the cars.”
The other cardboard boxes wiggled and scrapped against each other. Branoc and Garin sat in the dark inside a huge box labeled toilet paper. They constructed a false lid inside and against the front face that held many little rolls of toilet paper, they took out of other cases in the janitorial warehouse in case anyone wanted to inspect the cargo. Brett drove the delivery van with the big logo of Arnold Janitorial Supplies splashed across every side of the van.
The brakes squeaked as Brett slowed the van to a stop at the main security gate.
“You’re a new driver for Arnold. What happened to Tom?” asked the security guard.
Brett handed him his new identification card and said, “He needed a change of scenery and so has the routes to the South now. Arnold doesn’t want any of us to get bored. Tom told me a change of scenery is almost like getting a promotion.”
“Yeah, that can really help your mood,” the guard nodded, and then twisted his head, “The Arnold truck already delivered once this week.”
“Isn’t it on schedule for twice a week?”
“Nope. Once a week.”
“Well, what do I know? First day and they only told me I needed to deliver here,” Brett fumbled for the clipboard with its overflowing pages gripped under the clip. “Since I’m over here, why don’t I deliver the stuff and then I’ll deduct it from the shipment next week to keep things even? Could have been an extra order because someone did inventory and found shortages. Not like these are rocket parts. More paperwork hassle for me back at the ranch but saves a trip and no one runs out of toilet paper at an inconvenient time –”
The guard laughed, “Yeah, we don’t want any of the office girls to get upset over a paper shortage.”
“That would be the wrong kind of excitement.”
“That might be a fun story. I’ve been in this booth for twenty-five years and it’s never gotten above being dull.”
“Too much high tech security equipment – creates boredom?”
“It’s the same around here. I’ve watched those trees grow up from twigs put in when I started here. And the security cameras go from single big boxes to some the size of dimes that send signals anywhere across the grounds on a wireless network.”
“Dimes? That sounds so James Bond-ish.”
“Crazy stuff I can’t believe. My daughter is trying to get me on Faceplate. I’ve got a security job so I’m not going there.”
“Good idea –”
A semi rumbled off the street into the drive behind Brett’s truck. Heavy with guttural engine braking until the air brake system dragged the truck to a halt. The big engine chugged.
“– Got to go. That’s a delivery on the hot sheet. You know where you’re going?”
“Oh, sorry. Yeah. Right here Building HK,” Brett said.
“Stay in the designated parking spot.” He pulled off his mirrored sunglasses, “And I’m not kidding, the designated area shows where your tires go. No sloppy parking.”
Brett pushed the clutch in and shifted into second gear. The semi behind him breathed on his rear doors. The little truck lurched forward and bounced against the clutch pads but moved forward faster.
Brett opened the rear doors and backed the truck closer to the building surface door. The ring of paint on the pavement indicated the required parking location.
The door swung open and a security guard stood there with a clipboard and pen ready.
“I thought you’d have a dock for me to back against?”
“No. You’ll have to move everything through this steel man-door.”
“I have a few really big boxes that need a fork truck to move – or at least a pallet jack.”
“You have a regular hand cart?”
“Yes.”
“Break down any big packages and wheel them in.”
“Ah, ok.” Brett said. “Can you show me where this needs to go?”
“The janitor’s closet.”
“Better show me the way. This is my first delivery here. I don’t think you want me wandering around looking for it.”
“That’s right. Come with me.”
“What’s the plan here?” Garin said. “There must be a dozen cameras looking at every angle around this truck. The doors are open and they could be peering right in here.” He looked out a small hole in the box made by his pen earlier.
“No plan. I’d think boxing ourselves to fit on a hand cart but the potential for that camera and the number of boxes won’t match the shipping manifest.”
“– this cart should help with the bigger box. The night janitor will need to fill it up with paper anyway so I’ll save him some handling steps.” Brett banged through the steel door with the rattle wheeled cart.
Garin saw the utility cart had a rubberized canvas curtain around it, “Brett’s thinking. We’ve got to help though.” After Branoc peered through the small hole, he took his nails and sliced through the cardboard bottom of their hiding box.
Brett unloaded a few of the rear boxes and piled them on his hand cart exposing the big toilet paper box. Brett carefully slid the box rearward. The two vampires shuffling along inside to match. Brett dragged the box out so it set on the edge of the top of the cart and bridged to the edge of the truck deck.
“The guard at the front gate said he’s been here twenty-five years, how many for you?”
“Oh, I’ve been in this building about three years but on the complex for the last ten.”
“How does one go about getting a job? I imagine the pay is good?”
“It’s good. If you can handle mostly boring with spurts of danger.”
“That’s what I hear from the older truck drivers. Mostly dull but accidents on the highway keep you alert. Never know when someone is reading their book while driving – I’ve even seen that.” Brett reached above with his knife and opened the sealing tape on the box. He lifted out rolls from above his head and stacked them carefully on the cart. Then he stepped into the truck and got a couple of heavy boxes he pushed to the rear deck and got down to pile them on the ground. He stood on top so the boxes and his legs shadowed the whole gap on that side.
The guard said, “instead of standing on those boxes why don’t you cut open the box?”
“Have you ever seen a box of toilet paper spill out on the ground?”
“No.”
“They bounce on the ground and people worry if they are still as clean as if they used them to eat off of.”
“Yeah,” the guard laughed.
Branoc and Garin moved carefully. Using their vampire strength with Brett’s prompting they slipped under the cart’s drape without touching the ground and only barely caused the stiff cloth to flutter. Like it did in a strong breeze.
“And you’re not in a rush to leave for a big project?” Brett asked the guard.
“No.”
“Me neither. The boss told me I had better only have this one delivery as it might take most of the day, being new on the job. My first delivery on my first day.”
“They sent you here for your first delivery? Not a coffee shop or something easy?”
“No. Trial by fire he said. Good learning here, he suggested. Said if I avoided getting thrown in a holding cell for parking in the wrong spot I’d be ready for any other route he could give me.”
“You did well getting parked on the grid lines.”
“Thanks. I practiced. Why so particular about where I park – down to where the wheels go and everything?”
“Cameras from every angle.”
“I see. Or rather I should say ‘you see’.”
“You’re funny. You’ll do all right as a delivery guy.”
“Thanks.” Brett stepped off the heavy boxes and moved them back on the truck. Then he lifted the toilet paper box and pushed it back into the truck. He walked around, grabbed the handles on the cart, and rolled it carefully toward th
e building door. The guard opened the door for him and the cart only jounced a little as its big rubberized wheels rolled over the threshold. Brett stopped a few seconds watching the slim stacks of toilet paper wobble precariously. Then he continued. He started sweating from the stress of moving the cart with the heavy dead weights hiding there while seeming to push only paper products. The vampires weighed much more than their normally effortless movement made him expect. He rolled the cart along a narrow hallway of gray painted cement blocks. The wheels moved easily on the highly polished gray cement flooring. Mirrored like the burgundy coffee shop floor at his real job.
“Let me get the door,” said the guard as he stepped around Brett.
Brett didn’t expect his movement and the guard bumped his elbow, which banged the cart. Brett spread his body out to corral the stacks of rolls threatening to spill.
“Oh, sorry!”
An errant roll bounced off the cart at the corner farthest from Brett and headed for the floor.
“Got it!” said the guard. He slammed it on the top of the others like throwing down a football in the end zone.
“Whew! Thanks.”
“My fault. Let me get that door now.”
Brett wheeled the cart into the spacious janitor’s closet, “I’ve seen janitor’s closets in school and they always seemed like little closets. This one is spacious. Move some of these storage racks and put in a regular couch and television over there.”
“That would be frowned upon.”
“Yeah, I guess it would.” Brett toed the edge of the door as he walked out.
The vampires crouched in the darkness. They extracted themselves from the cart and fell back into the shadowed corners of the room away from the door. Infrared cameras, if any had been placed here, could only see their cool skin temperature as ghosts shimmering through the camera’s field of vision. Brett wheeled several more boxes with the hand cart, collected his signatures on his various forms, thanked the guard, and left.
Garin and Branoc watched the light under the door from the hall remain undisturbed for hours. The plants and labs ran three shifts and never truly shut down even on the weekends as some special processes took more than a week to set up. Once the process ran satisfactorily, they monitored it continuously until finished since the tests and experiments didn’t care about the weekends or completing at two in the morning. The facility needed people constantly tending it, which posed a problem. The facility never closed its alert eyes.
-:- Twenty-Three -:-
“We thought about preparing you some of those ground pigs that scamper about digging holes and dens in the woods and against the house. But this is more efficient, no cooking involved.” My guard shook the canister and pulled the top back on yet another energy protein drink. The chalky, sometimes chocolate, sometimes vanilla flavored drinks had become vile after a few episodes. I didn’t know how anyone consumed them. She lifted the bottom of my hood and poured the contents into my mouth. I learned from previous attempts not to fight her on this. The stuff smelled bad after a few hours on my hood.
Later that evening, as best I could tell, the door locks snapped back and the door creaked open. Chill air from the garage steps spilled across the floor and lightly caressed my ankles in frigid fingers as the door closed softly.
I moved my head to draw fresh air and I smelled the sharp edge of Claire’s cologne.
“Hello … again.”
“I need to use the restroom.” While my bottom became numb, my bladder squealed at me.
“Fun. That’s a special chair.”
I heard another metal bucket, “Oh!” I caught my breath. At least I hoped another bucket. She slid it over from somewhere behind me from the rear of the chair until it banged against the backs of the front feet of the chair.
Claire lifted my hips with my belt loops, undid the button on my jeans, and in a fluid motion slid my bottom free of my clothes. I heard another scrape and when she set me down, I sat on a toilet seat instead of the hard board of the chair that had already molded my bottom into numbness.
“I’ll return in a few minutes.” The door creaked open and slipped shut.
My bottom hung in the air. I could only think of spiders and bugs. It took a while but my battle with my bladder ended with noise in the metal bucket. The smell of too yellow and thick urine wafted up. Claire returned and buttoned me up and slid the bucket across the floor to a far corner.
I counted two or three days before Claire again visited me.
I flinched as she approached. She touched my shoulders when she came to my side.
“Now, that’s what I like. Your heart is speeding up in anticipation already. You’ll be a good run today. But we have to do it in separate heats.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need a proof-of-life sample first.”
And then those teeth spaded my wrist like a fresh garden. Fire coursed through my veins out of the wound and again ravishing my body. Waves of pain and fire. My body responded with adrenaline like running from wolves … or vampires. My heart hammered inside my chest like a blacksmith working steel straps and my ears went numb. I couldn’t get enough air.
A cold smooth glass edge of something pressed against the wound. I panted and heard my blood squirt into the small container. I guessed a small container from the tight high-pitched echoes coming from it. Maybe a test tubes vial. That’s as much as the doctors collected. A pause as a cap or cork plugged it and crinkling of paper wrapping it and the scratches of putting it in a cardboard box.
“Ships overnight everywhere for a flat rate,” purred Claire.
“Where are you sending that?” I already guessed.
“Garin of course.”
“That will only make him want to find me.”
“That is what we want. For him to know it’s you. I assume he’s tasted you already?”
I sat silent.
“Silent on that huh? Well, we want Garin to have more incentive in completing his project.”
“What project? That will only make him come here and rescue me.”
“A top secret project.” Claire chuckled, “I’d have to kill you if I told you.” I heard her move a step toward the door and turn, her shoe scraping on the stone, “He won’t find us here. It’s too far and hidden too well. No. He needs to perform and then we can trade. But while he resists … You’re mine.” Her feet tapped up the steps and she must have left the door slightly ajar as the cool air currents flooded again across the basement floor. She whisked back into my basement prison.
“I had one of the other girls finish delivering the box to Garin.”
“All the girls are here?”
“Oh yes. Nearly all.” Claire crouched near me.
“You said we were alone the last time.”
“I say a lot of things that suit my purposes.”
“I –” I began but fangs pierced my arm deeply like stapling my wrist to the chair’s wooden arm. The pain flushed adrenaline into my system and the sprint went long and hard. Relentlessly up a mountain for what seemed like hours but bits of my mind clung to a sense the sprint must only be going for minutes. I tasted blood in the back of my throat. Strong and metallic. We kept going. Beyond exhaustion. On and on. My heart lumped in my chest. I pulled in air with such force that the bag pressed across my mouth and I sucked air through its fibers. Yet we kept going.
Points of light drained from the back of my eyes. A black red fog filtered across my vision. I knew my body slipped and fainted. I willed it forward. Gripping the edges of the darkness with my sharp nails. Digging them in. My lips curled back from my teeth that I clenched together. The darkness came too strong. It pulled at my body. Slowly my fingers released tip by tip. We kept going. But I could not.
The cup clicked against my teeth and Claire poured the chilled water into my mouth. I drank from the iron cup in hungry gasps. Nothing tasted sweeter as my body sponged it away immediately. Thankfully, Claire gave me a second cup full.
W
hen she pulled it away, she said, “Now the real training starts. You’re one of the lucky runners that get a second wind. This will be fun for the two of us.”
I only knew she had gone when the locks snapped shut.
-:- Twenty-Four -:-
The HK lab door opened and one of the ubiquitous security guards strode in.
Reginald DeVar looked up from his microscope, “What’s up? You don’t usually barge in here in the middle of the night.”
“An urgent package came for you.”
“I don’t remember ordering anything.”
“It’s addressed to you and the delivery person at the gate demanded that you get it now or there would be a lot of problems. Something about blood products with a short shelf life.”
“It’s fortunate I wasn’t in the deeper pilot plant chambers with my bunny suit on. I’m only prepping for the next lab test.” Reginald stood up and wiped is hands on the sides of his lab coat out of habit. He pushed his wire rim glasses tighter against his face and took the package from the guard, “Uh, Thanks.”
“Sure. Good luck,” waved the guard as he walked back out. Reginald remained in the quietness of his lab again. “No sender return address. Now why didn’t the gate bomb-squad take a look at that?” He opened a bin under the makeshift desk at the side of the lab and found his large shears. He trimmed off the edges and opened the pouch. Inside laid a long thick box. He pulled it out and looked at the black marker scrawled along the top in a cursive hand that looked odd – or old, very old. Like his great-grandmother’s letters from a time when schoolchildren practiced penmanship instead of computer keyboarding. However, the strong strokes showed none of her shaky meandering hand. The black marker said, “Hello Reginald. This package came to you but it’s for your assistants.”
“I don’t have any assistants. This is my project and my lab. I can’t have any assistants mucking it up, bad enough getting the contractors to install the equipment correctly. Took them two tries to get it right.” He realized he talked to a box. He found the side flap of the clam-shell container and whisked the binding tape off with the shears.
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #1 & #2) Page 31
