That was his job after all; to keep the wheel of fate spinning, to act as the hand of destiny in the lives of those down on the street below him, scurrying like ants to escape the crushing sense of futility and unworthiness that haunted them. They would not rise out of their squalor, out of the limited view in which they perceived the world around them. No, that kind of perspective was reserved for those who had climbed to the lofty heights that he had, those privileged few who were entrusted with tending the gears that drove the machinery of the world, those that kept this great glassy orb spinning in its place in the universe.
He watched and felt a surge of satisfaction that he was not one of the nameless, faceless many below him. Never would be one of them, thank the heavens.
Turning away from the window at last, 46795 crossed the room and took a seat at his desk. It was an expensive desk, the teak surface positively gleamed in the light. He allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction that his rise through the company was proceeding just as planned. A few more difficult cases and he should be primed to move up to the Executive Level on floor 88.
A few more difficult cases—like the one waiting for him now.
He opened the drawer in the center of his desk and drew forth a slim, red folder. He placed it on the desktop in front of him, opened it, and, taking a fine-tipped black marker from the inside pocket of his suit coat, wrote a single word on the tab at the top of the folder. He studied the word a moment, decided he’d performed the job to his satisfaction, and returned the pen to his pocket. The folder was then closed and returned to the desk drawer.
46795 sat back in his chair, feeling a real sense of accomplishment. The field had been plowed, the seed had been cast; now all that remained was to see if it bore fruit.
*
“Nate Benson to the Shift Manager’s office. Nate Benson, please report immediately to the Shift Manager’s office. That will be all.”
Nate stared up at the loudspeaker mounted on the wall above his head and felt the sudden urge to rip the thing from its moorings and hurl it across the room as far as it would go.
He’d been expecting the call all morning, was not, in fact, surprised that it had come, only that it had taken this long. He had no doubt what that call meant for him and his future here at General Electronics. Rumors of layoffs had been floating around for weeks and it seemed that the day had finally come; not a single one of those who’d been called throughout the morning had come back to the assembly line floor.
Nate remained still until he was certain that he had a lock on his anger, then he shut down his drill press. He took off his work gloves, shoved them in the back pocket of his coveralls, and began making his way across the floor to the steel staircase that led to the boss’ office on a platform high above the workroom floor. Most of his fellow workers studiously kept their eyes focused downward on the task in front of them, as if looking at Nate might cause them to share in his fate. But a few, George, Harris, and Daniels, for instance, caught his gaze and nodded in commiseration.
They were survivors, just as he was, veterans of the conflict that had consumed nearly an entire generation and left a third of the Earth as nothing more than a barren, decimated wasteland. What had started as a regional turf war over possession of natural resources had blossomed when the fanatics came to power, sending the religious and political ideologies of the east crashing headfirst into those of the west. Within weeks the conflict had spun out of control like a metastasizing cancer that consumed everything in its wake. For the third time in less than a century the major nations of the world found themselves embroiled in a war to end all wars. Twenty-three years later they were still feeling the fallout, both physically and figuratively. Millions had died. Entire nations were turned into twisted plains of blasted radioactive glass. Men like Nate came home to a country that saw them as nothing so much as living reminders of humanity’s capacity for murder on a grand scale, and shunned them as a result.
The Faith War left the world’s economy in shambles, with unemployment rates over twenty-five percent in even the most developed nations and inflation at an all-time high. The job market, already overburdened with too many qualified applicants for far too few jobs, was swamped by the return of thousands of trained soldiers. Nate was one of the lucky ones, landing this assembly line job after only ten months of searching. He knew guys who had been looking for two years and still hadn’t found a job.
Looks like you’re going to join them soon, he thought.
Nate knocked on the door to the boss man’s office and then waited for the muffled “Come in” to reach him before palming the lock and stepping inside.
Southwick was seated behind his desk, his fat body oozing over the sides of the suspensor chair that strained to do its job of keeping him off the floor. Flanking Southwick were two corporate security guards. Nate glanced at them as he came through the door, then dismissed them as no threat. They stood with their backs ramrod straight and their arms crossed over their chests, reducing their ability to move quickly if the situation necessitated. They scowled at him, trying to be intimidating, and Nate had to squelch the urge to laugh. After what he’d seen and done in the Arabian Desert, a couple of thugs like these two barely registered.
As usual, Southwick didn’t waste any time with pleasantries. Nate was hardly in the door before the shift boss tossed an envelope on the desk in front of him and said, “Two weeks’ pay, which is more than I would have given you. The contents of your locker will be forwarded to your last listed address.”
Nate didn’t ask why nor did he bother protesting. It wouldn’t have done any good. Southwick wasn’t the one pulling the operational strings; he just did as he was told, like all the other management hacks this far down the food chain. For Nate to keep his job he would have to talk to one of the execs back at the home office and he didn’t even know where that was, never mind who he’d need to speak to.
Besides which, they’d never listen to a guy like him.
Southwick’s next comment made that abundantly clear.
“It’s about time I got to fire your sorry ass. You go anywhere but straight through the back door and I’ll have you arrested for trespassing and thrown into a hole so dark you won’t remember what the light of day even looks like,” Southwick sneered. “You hearing me, Cutter?”
Nate was in the process of turning away when the insult stopped him cold.
The end of the war had dumped thousands of troops onto an already overburdened job market. Someone higher up the food chain had recognized that leaving hardened men who’d just been through hell and back without anything to do was a sure recipe for disaster, so the government fast tracked applications from veterans over those from civilians, even those with more experience or training in the job. This, of course, generated a wave of resentment among the civilians and lines were drawn in the sand.
Violence broke out on more than one occasion, usually started by hot-headed civilians and normally ended by grim-faced ex-soldiers who were more than happy to take out some of their frustrations on those who didn’t know well enough to leave things alone. Insults were tossed back and forth from both sides of the conflict, “Cutter” being one of them, a term meant to describe anyone who “cut the line,” so to speak and received benefits for which they weren’t actually entitled. It wasn’t the strongest of insults—there were far worse ones being bandied about— but it was an insult nonetheless.
Normally Nate’s desire to keep his job would have kept him from reacting, but Southwick himself just relieved the ex-soldier of that particular burden. Nate turned around to face his former employer, a grin spreading across his face as he realized he was no longer constrained by the need to behave.
“What did you say?” he asked.
Southwick either thought he was safe with his guards beside him or he’d forgotten the basic rule of the jungle—always know who the predator is and who is the prey—for he grinned up at Nate.
“I said get the fuck out of my office,
Cutter scum!”
Nate wasn’t the type to let an insult go by without answering it. All the crap he’d taken from Southwick during his time here welled up in the back of his mind and he decided it was time to teach the fat fuck a lesson about respecting his betters. Nate was still smiling politely when he threw himself across the top of the desk and slammed into Southwick, driving the man and his ridiculous floating chair into the tiled floor beneath their feet before the bodyguards realized what was happening. By the time their brains had caught up with the action going on in front of them, Nate had already landed several good blows to Southwick’s face with his thick fist, smashing the man’s nose and fracturing at least the left cheekbone, possibly the right as well. By the time the guards managed to drag Nate off of his former boss, the other man was lying bloody and unconscious on the floor.
There won’t be any more layoffs today, Nate thought, just before the guard on his left drew his stun baton, jammed it in Nate’s ribs, and pulled the trigger. Even the stun charge that shot through his frame and froze him into immobility couldn’t wipe the smile of satisfaction off his face.
*
Lisa refused to come down and bail him out, so Nate was forced to use the services of one of the bondsman that set up shop across the street from the lock-up. The interest the sonofabitch was charging was outrageous, but what choice did he have? If he didn’t make bail he’d sit inside the cell and rot for a few weeks before they brought his case before a judge. Nate knew he’d end up getting in trouble if he stayed on the inside. There were plenty of gangs who would shank a veteran just for the hell of it and Nate would have no choice but to kill anyone who came after him. That would add years to whatever sentence the judge would give him for assault against Southwick. So he paid the fee, ignoring the bondsman’s vulpine grin as he did, then waited the requisite twenty-four hours for the paperwork to be processed. He kept to himself and made it through the evening without incident. Late the next day he went home, only to receive the second surprise in what was turning out to be a pretty shitty week.
The apartment was empty.
Not just empty as in “Lisa wasn’t home,” but more like “Lisa had cleared out and taken all their shit with her” empty.
He stood in the doorway, staring across the living room, now stripped of its furniture, and into the kitchen where only the built-in appliances still remained. She’d taken everything that wasn’t bolted down, including the refrigerator.
He walked into the apartment and over to the tiny bedroom they’d shared as a couple. What little clothing he owned was still on the shelves in the closet, along with the box containing a few mementos from his time in the service, but that was about it.
She hadn’t even left a note saying goodbye.
First his job. Then his girl. Could it get any worse?
A vision of the Waste flashed before his eyes, stretches of desert sand broken every few yards by the burning hulks of assault vehicles and the broken bodies of the dead.
Yes, he supposed it could, indeed, get worse. The thought helped prompt his decision to get out of there before things actually did. He had better things to do than to wait around for bad luck to find him.
Like getting drunk and forgetting it all.
He turned on his heel and walked out of the apartment, pulling the door shut behind as he went. He didn’t bother locking it, as there wasn’t anything to steal. If anybody was desperate enough to swipe his dirty laundry, they were welcome to it.
Nate took the lift down to street level, crossed the cracked plasticrete floor of the lobby, and stepped out into the night. Turning left, he headed down the block and slipped into the first bar he could find.
Two hours later Nate was just knocking back his fifth—or was it sixth?—synthetic whiskey of the night when someone slid into the booth across from him uninvited. He looked up, angry at the intrusion, and was just a hairsbreadth shy of telling the newcomer to fuck off and leave him alone when he realized he knew the squat, dark-haired man now seated across from him.
Charlie “Two-Fingers” Vantolini.
They’d served together in A Company shortly after the fall of Syria, when Charlie had been transferred into Nate’s platoon after a rocket attack had blown their communications sergeant into a thousand little pieces. Charlie’s nickname had been well-established by then, a result of the body parts he’d lost when an enemy bullet tore through his hand during the Battle of Al-Gahad, and he’d been received by the rest of the team with, if not enthusiasm, then at least acceptance. He wasn’t fresh meat and for that they were thankful; at least someone else wouldn’t go home in a quick-grown casket because Two Fingers had fucked up without knowing any better, as typically happened when the squad got a newbie.
Nate hadn’t seen Charlie in close to two years and blinked up at him now, his alcohol-fuzzed mind trying to reconcile the sudden intersection of his old life with this one but failing miserably. Two Fingers Vantolini was probably the last person Nate would have expected to run into in a place like this. Not because he didn’t like to drink; no, ole Two Fingers could knock it back with the best of them just fine. It was simply because Nate thought Charlie was dead. That was, in fact, the thought that tumbled out of his mouth thirty seconds later when his lips finally decided to follow the commands his mind was shouting down to them.
“Thought you were dead.”
Charlie cocked his head to one side and stared at him unblinkingly. A sudden memory flashed across Nate’s mind; a view of Charlie looking down at a wounded enemy soldier with exactly the same expression just before he causally lifted his gun and shot the man through the head. “Do I look dead to you?”
No, not dead, Nate thought. Scared. You look scared. Charlie was putting on his usual tough-talking wise guy exterior, but with a flash of clarity Nate saw beneath it all, saw the truth of the matter staring him right in the face. A thin sheen of sweat covered Charlie’s forehead and the hand resting on the table before him trembled just enough to be noticeable if you were looking for it. For all his bravado, in that moment Charlie looked like nothing more than a little kid who was stuck staring at his half-opened closet door in the middle of the night, convinced that he’d just seen it move of its own accord.
For an instant Nate wanted to get up and run away, just get the hell out of there as fast as he could, before Charlie had a chance to say anything.
Then his old squad mate smiled his old devil-may-care grin and whatever crazy thoughts Nate had been having vanished as quickly as they had come.
He grinned back at his one-time squad mate. “Two-Fingers Vantolini, live and in living color. What the hell are you doing in this shithole?”
Charlie’s gaze lost some of its intensity and he signaled the waitress for another round of drinks. He looked back at Nate.
“I hear you’re looking for work.”
Nate frowned as the warning bells in the back of his head went off, telling him something wasn’t right here. Something was off. How the hell had word that he was out of a job gotten out so fast? He’d only been unemployed since yesterday. Or was that the day before? Given the number of drinks he’d had he couldn’t be sure …
“I could be,” he answered, the question making him uncomfortable for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “You got something?”
Charlie glanced around, as if making sure they weren’t being observed, and then slid something small and white across the table to Nate.
It was a business card, white with black lettering.
Limbus, Inc.
Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?
Call us. We employ. 1-800-555-0606
Jobs for your specific talents!
Nate stared at it. Limbus? What the hell kind of name was that?
He looked up to ask Charlie that very same question, only to discover the seat opposite him was now empty.
Where the hell did he go?
Looking around he caught a glimpse of his old squad mate pushing his wa
y through the crowd near the door, clearly in a hurry to leave. For a moment Nate considered going after him, even got so far as pushing himself up and out of his booth, but when the room started spinning with just that little bit of physical effort, he decided the best course of action was to put his ass back in his seat and finish his drink.
He shoved the card in the pocket of his pants and raised his hand to signal the waitress for another round.
*
Nate was lying in a puddle of his own vomit when he awoke after his four-day bender. The stench drove him up off the living room floor and sent him stumbling to the bathroom where he fell to his knees just in time to retch miserably into the toilet bowl. The bile burned his throat; his stomach had already emptied itself hours before. Now there was nothing left to come up but his own sense of shame and that seemed to have firmly wrapped itself around his spine with no intention of letting go.
He had only the vaguest recollection of the last several days. He remembered going for a drink after finally getting out on bail, but everything after that was pretty much a blur. Apparently, he’d managed to achieve his goal of drinking enough to briefly forget his problems, and then some.
He spat several times to clear this mouth, then pulled himself to his feet through sheer force of will and leaned over the sink. He turned the faucet on, waited for the rusty tinge to clear itself from the running water, then bent down to drink from the tap, the cool water a welcome balm to his ravaged esophagus.
He straightened up, being careful to avoid glancing in the mirror as he did so; he didn’t much like what he saw in it these days. His physical decline had started long before he’d lost his job. The lean, mean, fighting machine was gone and in its place was some sorry fuck that Nate didn’t even recognize, never mind like. Looking into that pathetic loser’s eyes after waking up in a puddle of vomit was not the way he’d intended to start his day, thank you very much.
Limbus, Inc. Page 13
