by mike Evans
The collision left both stunned, but only Traci seemed to have registered the physical impact as her nose rammed into Paul Garrett’s tighter than expected abdominal muscles. Not ripped, not gym rat taut, but reasonably flat and acceptable for a man his age and assumed sedentary lifestyle.
“Hold on there,” he managed to say, setting the small woman back a step. “Are you okay?”
Traci looked up, her green eyes sharp and brimming with the sheen of tears. She started to say something, no doubt a stinging retort, but then seemed to think better of it.
“No, I’m not alright.” She said, her words coming in a rush. “Things are starting to get crazy outside, and I just found out the elevators are not working. We are stuck up here, Paul. The building’s been placed in lockdown.”
Harvey chose that moment to enter the conversation, moving with light feet for all his bulk to turn the corner around the cubicle to approach his coworkers.
“Well, Hell,” he muttered, “I guess we should have seen that coming.”
CHAPTER THREE
The employees of Top Shelf quickly gathered in a tightly packed huddle in Conference Room C, the largest open space in the offices. Meant for training sessions and team workshops, the glass-walled room only had seats for about half the workers. When Kyle made the call for an all-hands-on-deck meeting over the paging system, Garrett and his two coworkers found themselves in the last clump of people to show up. No surprise, really. The Bullpen, the collection of cubicles the outside salesforce used as offices on those rare times they were in the building, were situated at the back of the floor. Like with the parking spaces, the traveling contingent were often left with no provision made for their presence in what was supposed to be their office.
Counting noses, Garrett realized they had nearly sixty people crammed into the room. The crowd looked edgy and ready for some answers.
Lacking chairs, the three coworkers each claimed a space against the wall nearest the door and settled in to wait. Other members of the traveling gypsy troupe filtered in to claim their own piece of the glass wall.
Stovall only made them wait five minutes before joining the meeting. Garrett noted with cold interest that his boss looked particularly irritated as he swept into the room, closing the heavy wooden door with a shove as he passed. Well, that is going to make those evaluations go so smoothly later.
“Thank you for coming. I will be brief but I need to cover a few points here today. I know some of you are concerned about the unfortunate events of this afternoon, but let me be frank.”
Uh-oh, Garrett thought. Stovall’s verbal tick was a warning bell. In his slightly less than a year of limited interaction with the boss man, he’d already learned that ‘let me be frank’ was a tell from the older man. A way of signaling, ‘here’s where I’m going to start lying to you.’ Like when Garrett asked about transferring to the programming side of the business, back before he learned that the technical work was all done overseas.
“Let me be frank, Mr. Garrett,” he’d said at the time in that condescending tone that made Garrett’s teeth ache. “We are going to need to see a major improvement with your performance in your existing work product before you can hope for consideration for such advancement.”
So Garrett worked harder, and only later found out the punchline to that particular joke. There were no seats at that table, either. Setting aside that nasty bit of history, Garrett strained to hear what else the little bald man had to say.
“This building has suffered a security breach, perpetrated by a group of unknown actors. We are perfectly safe here in our offices. Let me repeat, we are perfectly safe here. Now, in an abundance of caution, the Security Office has instituted a temporary cessation of service on the elevators while they get to the bottom of this intrusion. This stoppage will be lifted shortly when we receive the ‘all clear’ from Security, but in the meantime, I think we could all use this time productively. So, we will carry on with this afternoon’s meetings. Is that clear?”
Garrett felt a tingle of dread in his stomach, but it had nothing to do with the announced plans to continue with the ritual torture that constituted their quarterly evaluations. Somewhere about the time he saw the masses of people congregated on the streets, the thirty-two year old man realized he just didn’t care anymore. Not about this petty bullshit, anyway.
Something else was bugging Garrett.
“Sir, what about all the people we can see down on the streets? Were other buildings also attacked? The roads look to be blocked, or barricaded. This problem clearly goes beyond just this one building. What else did the Security Office say?”
The words just slipped out, but he wasn’t going to try to call them back. He wanted, needed, to know just what else was going on out there.
Garrett had always heard the expression, ‘glaring daggers’ but he’d always assumed the phrase was just a bit of hyperbole. Until that moment, when he saw Stovall’s expression turn from fake concerned to utter fury. Stovall’s round cheeks and bulbous nose, so out of place with his skinny, weedish frame, flashed cherry red and Garrett wondered if the man might suffer a stroke before he had a chance to respond to the questions.
“Mr. Garrett, that will be enough out of you!” he nearly shrieked. “You have been a slacker and a cancer in this office from the moment you arrived. I’ll not have you shouting questions at me like this was some kind of press conference.”
Pausing to gulp a breath, Stovall’s anger flared, unabated, as he continued. “I planned on taking care of this matter with you later today, but you leave me no choice. You, sir, are fired!”
Garrett accepted the words with a neutral expression, not surprised in the least by the news or the outburst. The little prick was famous for his hair-trigger temper. Again, the man realized he suddenly had more important concerns. Like what the Hell was going on outside their little bubble.
“Fine” Garrett replied with a shrug. “Now, answer my question and get these elevators working so I can get out of here.”
“Yeah, Stovall, when are we getting out of here?”
The angry voice came from the other side of the room, and Garrett was surprised to see Robert McEntyre, this morning’s cutback victim, still in the office. What the Hell? Garrett thought the man had been sent home hours before.
Stovall, still riding on the emotion of his outburst, looked back and forth between the two men, and began a rant that took all of the gathered personnel by surprise.
“Oh, you better believe it, as soon as the Security Office gives us the go-ahead, both of you will be ejected from this building immediately. Out on your asses! And come to think of it, the pair of you might want to bust open your piggy banks to hire a good lawyer! Because, I swear, I will be reporting this incident of workplace aggression to the proper authorities. For all we know, you both might be working with the terrorists who staged this attack!”
Garrett rocked back on his heels at the unprovoked attack, and then nodded to himself. He knew Stovall would never make such a charge stick, but he was just petty enough to do such a thing. Or more likely, set one of his lackeys out to make the baseless accusation. Yes, Garrett decided, that was more the little worm’s speed.
“For the record, Mr. Stovall, I still have no idea what is going on. However, I would think real hard about slandering me. And there is such a thing as filing a false police report. Again, think long and hard before you say something you know to be untrue.”
The little speech was not very polished, but hopefully would have the desired effect. Also, Garrett saw at least three of his coworkers, including Harvey, surreptitiously recording his statement. Maybe that would give the blowhard pause before trying to further blacken Garrett’s name.
With that, Garrett pushed off from the glass wall and stepped around his former coworkers, many of whom were staring at him in slack-jawed surprise. He thought he saw something else in Traci’s eyes as he stalked past, but now was not the time to pursue that line. As he reached for the
door, the now unemployed programmer heard Stovall sputtering.
“Where do you think you are going? This meeting is not over!”
Garrett didn’t bother to turn around.
“Just going to clean out my desk. And yeah, as far as I am concerned, this meeting is over. You just fired me, remember. Also, you obviously don’t know anything more about what is going on than anyone else in this room.”
With that, Garrett pushed through the door and walked unhurriedly across the lobby and past the dead elevators. At the scuff behind, he glanced back to see Rob McEntyre hustling to catch up with his long-legged stride.
“Not exactly what I expected when I woke up this morning,” Rob muttered under his breath so only Garrett might hear him. “You really think he is going to send the cops after us?”
“Not you, Robbie,” Garrett replied with more confidence than he felt. “You’ve been more than patient waiting to get out.”
“Well, fuck patience,” Rob said, his voice rising. “That asshole canned me this morning and here it is almost three o’clock. Still stuck at a job I hate, but I’m not even on the clock anymore. Ariel was already pissed when I called her right after Stovall gave me the heave-ho, but now she must be going nuts.”
Ariel must be his wife, Garrett deduced, but the last part of his statement made little sense.
“Why? Why would she be more upset now?”
“Because she expected me home hours ago, and now I can’t call to explain the delay.”
“What? Why can’t you call her now?”
“Man, where you been? Cell phones are down. I’m getting that ‘all circuits are busy, please try your call later’ message.”
For that matter, Paul Garrett realized at that moment that he hadn’t checked his phone in hours. Usually an extension of his hand, the tension of the last few hours had left the man disconnected from his electronic mistress. Sure enough, when he tried to get his sister on speed dial, he received the same canned response.
“Same here,” Garrett muttered. “So what’s your next move?”
They were approaching Garrett’s cubicle and Rob seemed to have no intention of going anywhere else at the moment.
“Well, since the fire doors are sealed tighter than Fort Knox, I guess I’ll be waiting here until we get the all clear.”
Garrett turned suddenly at this latest declaration.
“Building Security or not, they can’t do that,” he replied suddenly. “That must violate about half a dozen fire ordinances. Shutting down the elevators is one thing, but that is just crazy dangerous. Not to mention this clearly constitutes false imprisonment.”
“Ha! I said the same thing,” Rob said in turn. “As it happens, when we signed the new contracts, we waived our right to sue for false imprisonment under the new safety and security regs. Technically, might be illegal, but we supposedly signed away our right to do anything about it. Stovall was happy to point out the appropriate passage to me when I raised the same bitch this morning.”
“Well this just keeps getting better,” Garrett groused, but then decided he needed to just let it go for the moment. Yes, he just lost his job. A job he hated. But so had Rob, and he had more than himself to think about. A wife and an infant for which he was responsible. Garrett, in comparison, didn’t even have a goldfish.
“Are you going to be okay, Rob?”
The other man looked away, and Garrett noticed for the first time just how young his coworker was in comparison. Twenty-three or so. Probably still just starting out in life, and already got a kid.
“Yeah, I think so. Ariel wants to get out of the city, anyway. We both grew up in the country, you know? So I went off to college and Ariel worked, then after I got this job, she just kept at it until the baby came along. Then she was wanting to try being a stay-at-home mom, at least while Hannah is still so small.”
“But you hate it here, don’t you?”
Rob nodded. He wasn’t a bad salesman, but even Garrett could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He was just going through the motions, which might work at some firms, but not Top Shelf.
“Yeah, I do. I hate it. And I hate living in the city. Maybe we will just pull up stakes and head back home. Heck, maybe I can get on at the feed store…”
Rob’s wistful recollections came to a sudden halt as the screams started. Some sounded like the product of fear, while others carried that distinct quality you can only get from unimaginable agony. Garrett had heard it before, many years gone. He was in high school still, and drove up on a particularly devastating head-on collision. Garrett had heard that shriek from a man trapped in the passenger seat even as he’d struggled fruitlessly to get the crushed door open. The man’s legs had been on fire at the time when he’d began that scream.
Fifteen years later, and Garrett still had the burn scars on the palms of his hands. Now, he was hearing those same kinds of agonized cries coming from the front of the floor near the conference rooms and the elevators. The elevators, Garrett mused. Did somebody come up? Something tugged at the back of his mind. It was also the same direction as the conference room where the victims of the earlier tussle downstairs were also being housed. If that was the sound of the paramedics caring for Jim and the rest, Garrett didn’t want any of their concern falling on him or his friends. Or Rob, for that matter.
“Well, shit,” Rob continued with typical country boy aplomb. He looked at Garrett, only to find the older man watching him first. Garrett was scared, clearly, but something else was there as well, as if the other man was gauging his reactions.
“We gonna go check that out?” Rob asked, trying to be heard over the shrieking wails.
“No,” Garrett replied firmly. “I’m going to go check that out. You are going to stay here for the moment. As backup.”
“Bullshit,” Ron retorted, “that sounds pretty darned serious. No way you go alone.”
“I won’t be alone,” Garrett pointed out, “and honestly, there’s nobody waiting to see if I make it home alive. You got other responsibilities.”
“But Ariel…”
“Would likely kill me herself if something happened to you. I don’t know your wife, but I do know country girls. So watch my back and I’ll go see what’s going on over there,” the older man announced, waving his hand generally to the front side of the offices.
“Anything else I should be doing while I’m sitting here?”
Garrett seemed to actually consider the question before answering.
“Yeah. See if you can figure out something we can use as weapons if we need to. If this is those same crazies Harvey told me about from the lobby, we might need something that hits heavier than harsh words.”
CHAPTER FOUR
As soon as Garrett rounded the corner, the space cut off from the central area of the open plan offices by the elevator banks, he knew he made a mistake. The screams continued, getting worse, but he couldn’t stop his forward momentum. Last he’d seen, Harvey and Traci were still in Conference Room C, and that was right next to the elevators.
He couldn’t make out either of his friends in the commotion, but what he did see made his stomach crawl up in his throat. His first impression was that of a violent scrum, a shoving and heaving mass of bodies at the door to Conference Room C. Was this some violent reaction to something Stovall said? His first concern, that this was an attack by outsiders, seemed baseless at this point. He sort of recognized everyone involved, after all.
Then he noticed the blood. Great, glistening pools of crimson that spattered and flowed across the expensive tile flooring. Where the Hell did all that blood come from? Garrett noticed the blood getting all over the shoes of the men and women fighting, but he couldn’t figure out the source. Looking at the blood, he also belatedly noted two bodies already on the floor. Were they injured, Garrett wondered wildly, or already dead?
All this action was taking place at the door to Conference Room C, and clearly the employees inside were trying to keep the wide glass door shut. T
he press of bodies outside appeared to number only a half dozen, but they seemed to be gaining in this battle of inches. The door was gradually being forced open.
Then he saw Jim from accounting, the supposedly severely injured victim of the lunchtime attacks. Even though he only caught a glimpse in the struggle, Garrett thought he looked whole and while not exactly healthy, he was moving around pretty spry for a man who was only a short time ago bleeding all over the place.
For a second, Garrett wondered if it was his blood, and then he saw Jim pivot. He was nearly facing Garrett, and thrust his face forward, mouth open wide. It was wider than seemed possible. Jim snatched a chunk of flesh from the shoulder of the man with whom he was grappling with over the door. He was a large man, probably forty pounds heavier than Jim, but that didn’t seem to matter. Then Garrett saw the face of the victim. Kenny Kushner. Shit, Garrett thought, I kind of liked old Kenny.
Kenny shrieked, fighting harder to gain some separation from the attack. Jim paused and quickly chewing at the bits of stripped flesh before surging forward for another bite. Blood fountained, and Garrett realized he now knew the source of all that blood on the tile.
Garrett was frozen, staring at the half dozen combatants grabbing and shoving, throwing their weight around in some obscene parody of a bar fight. Some of the fighters looked like Jim, pasty faced but bloody, and these were clearly the more aggressive. The others, like poor Kenny or Zach Orbach, another of the traveling repairmen, seemed determined to just push back at the men and women. Suddenly, Garrett realized Kenny and Zach wanted to just move the biters, back enough to get the conference room doors shut.
While he stood, frozen in shock, he saw Jim get a better grip on the suddenly fading Kenny and lean in closer this time, snagging the other man’s Adams apple in his red stained teeth. He twisted viciously, ripping out Kenny’s throat in one savage shake of his head. The move reminded Garrett of something he might have seen on the Animal Planet, and then the lasagna came charging back up. He didn’t have a chance before the retching started.
