Zombie City: Omnibus: Zombie City

Part 1

Wage Slave

Chapter 1

It was 3:37 a.m. on Saturday, and Shane was running late.

Damn, he said, looking down at his watch.  He paused his pedaling in order to tuck the watch back into his left front pocket.  And then he took hold of the handlebars with both hands again, putting a little more force into each push of his legs.

The streets were empty at this hour.  The road stretched ahead of him, lined with parked cars, punctuated by streetlights.  The only sound he could hear was the rhythmic squeaking of his bike chain.  He listened to the chain for a moment, frowning.

Gonna have to replace that chain, he said.

He looked up at the sky.  The fog was a thick blanket blocking the stars, the moon just a blur of light.

Next paycheck, he said, thinking of the chain.

At Folsom he turned left, drifted over into the bike lane.  The wet, misty air clung to his face, cold against his cheeks, but he didn't mind.  It distracted him from the throbbing pain in his head, the nagging, sick feeling in his stomach.  As hangovers went, it wasn't a bad one.  He'd had enough hangovers, especially in the past few years, to learn to deal with them.  Still, starting the work week feeling crappy was never ideal.

He pulled in a deep lungful of air, coughed it back out.  He pulled in another.

After a few blocks a thin patch in the fog revealed the moon.  It hung in the sky, round and bright, like a clean plate at the bottom of a scummy sink.  Shane glanced up at it, still pedaling, and sighed.

Be 30 next month, he said.  And what do I have to show for it?

Honey Guts, he thought.  Nothing but Honey Guts.

He frowned.  Looked at the road ahead of him.

Honey Guts, the unfinished poetry collection gathering dust on the desk in his crappy studio flat.  It was supposed to be his offering to the world, his best efforts distilled into something better than himself.  It was supposed to be a work of art, like the Beat poetry that had changed his life when he'd first come across it at age eighteen.  Back when he'd decided to come to San Francisco in the first place.

That had been almost a dozen years ago.  And now, he realized with alarm, he couldn't even remember the last time he'd sat down to write.

Shane guided the bike with his left hand on the handlebars, letting his right hand drop down to rest on his right thigh.  His right hand pushed down firmly with each stroke of that foot on the pedal, trying to squeeze a little more force into his pedaling.

How old was Ginsberg when he moved to San Francisco? Shane wondered aloud.  "How old was he when he finished Howl?  And what about Ferlinghetti?  He wrote his best stuff here, didn't he?"

There was no one there to answer his questions.  No sound except for that squeaking chain.

Shane frowned again.  Of course, when Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti moved here, there weren't any tech-worker hipsters driving up the goddamn rent.  Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti didn't even have to work.  They lived like monks, writing and drinking wine all day.

At 13th Street he swung right, taking the turn wide, letting his bike drift out into the middle of the car lane.  13th Street ran beneath the elevated Central Freeway.  He glanced up at the blue metal girders that held the freeway up, tasting the metal in the moisture-thickened air.

The sides of 13th were lined with parked vehicles—including a good number of RVs and camper vans—packed in so there was hardly room to walk between the bumpers.  And the sidewalks were occupied by tents and cardboard boxes and other improvised shelters for the homeless.  Shane held to the center of the lane, reached forward to grip the handlebars with both hands.  He watched the sides of the street, just in case someone darted out at him.  But everything was dead still, the lonely squeaking of his bike chain the only sound.

A thought came to him: "All of it, all my time and energy, goes toward making rent.  Nothing left for Honey Guts.  I came here to write, but living in the City is keeping me from writing."

He'd had the thought before.  But being on an empty street at nearly four in the morning—at the start of another work week, with nothing to show for the days off except a hangover—it gave the thought weight.  Made it seem like a revelation.

I'm almost thirty, he said to himself.  I need to get out of San Francisco.

A red light loomed ahead of him: the traffic signal at Harrison Street.  Shane looked left and right, then blew through the intersection without stopping.

Half a block later a siren split the silence.  Shane looked over his shoulder, saw a cop car coming up fast behind him, its roof lights whirling.

Dammit! he said.

He looked around quickly, thought of making a run for it.  But his head was throbbing and his stomach still felt queasy.  He was in no shape to run.

Shane squeezed the brakes, pulled over to the edge of the road.  The cop car roared past, siren screaming.  He flinched, leaned away from the gust of wind shoved at him by the speeding car.  It whipped left on 11th Street, taking the corner so fast he could hear its tires squealing above the siren.

The siren faded into the distance in less than a minute, leaving the street dead still once again.  But a jittery energy coursed through Shane's arms and legs now.  Despite the cool air, he suddenly felt clammy hot.  A drop of sweat rolled over the side of his ribcage, beneath his flannel.

Damn, he said again.

He took a deep breath, lifted his left foot back onto the bike pedal.  And then he glanced over to the sidewalk, and saw something that made him forget the cop car—and the squeaking chain and Honey Guts—all together.

There was a rolled up carpet there, near a pylon supporting the freeway overhead.  And sticking out of the bottom of the carpet roll were a pair of legs.

Shane stared at the legs, his mind blank.  The traffic signal up ahead—for the intersection the cop car had just ran through—switched lights with a click, and the street was so quiet that he heard it clearly.  He shook himself a little, blinked his eyes.  He looked back at the legs.

They were dressed in slacks, a pair of polished-leather shoes covering the feet.  If it wasn't for the fresh shine on those shoes, he probably would have assumed the legs belonged to a bum.  Plenty of homeless people camped on these sidewalks, seeking the shelter of the overhead freeway.  They slept in tents and cardboard boxes to stay warm.

But no bum shine's his shoes, Shane said quietly.

The thought of homeless people made Shane realize something else.  The bums on this part of 13th normally gathered even more thickly near the freeway pylons.  But this pylon, except for the legs in the rolled up carpet, was deserted.

Shane leaned over the trunk of the car he'd stopped next to, leaned over to look at the sidewalk.  He could see scraps of trash, even a few pieces of flattened cardboard that looked like they'd served as someone's mattress not long ago.  But the only figure in the area was the man rolled up in the carpet.

I don't have time for this, Shane said.  I'm already running late for work.

And yet he found himself getting off the bike, squeezing between the parked cars, dragging the bike to the sidewalk.  He laid the bike down and took a step toward the carpet.

Hey, he said.  Hey!  Are you alright?  Do you need help?

There was no response.

Shane crouched down beside the carpet, near the end opposite the feet.  Hey! he said again, aiming the words at the opening in the roll.  He saw that the carpet was sodden, soaked with a dark liquid on this side.  Hello?

No response.

Shane looked up the sidewalk in both directions.  He got to his feet and looked up the street where the police car had gone.  The street was dead.

Never there when you actually need them, he said.  Goddamn cops. 

He crouched back down.  Hey! he said, shaking the carpet roll.  When that got no response, he gave it a good shove.  The carpet rocked toward the pylon and then rebounded, rolling toward him.  Shane stood and stepped back quickly.

And then he heard a low moan, muffled by the carpet, coming from the rolled up figure inside.

Hey! Shane shouted at the opening in the carpet.  Are you all right?

The figure moaned again.

Shane put both his hands against the rough carpet backing and started rolling the carpet away from the pylon.  It took three turns, the polished shoes flopping as they rotated, and then the carpet rolled open.  The man inside came to a rest facedown on the concrete.  His hair was greasy and dirty, bits of debris in it.  His arms and legs were limp.

Are you okay? Shane asked, hovering over the man but hesitant to touch him.

The man moaned again, and Shane took hold of his shoulder, turning him.  The man flopped over onto his back.

Aw, Christ, Shane said, stepping back.  You stink like a damn brewery.  He waved a hand in front of his face.

The man moaned again.  The front of his suit was coated with crusted red vomit.  Dried blood had clotted in the stubble under his nose.  His eyes were squeezed shut, dark bags under them as though he'd been on a bender.

So I'm gonna be late for work 'cause you can't handle your liquor, Shane said.  Why can't you crash in your own flat, like every other drunk yuppie?

And then the man opened his eyes, and Shane's words caught in his throat.

The whites of the man's eyes were so bloodshot they looked angry red.  They looked as if they'd been scrubbed raw with sand.  And the man's gaze looked so glazed and dull that Shane could see no sign of active thought behind them.  He looked like he was asleep with his eyes open.

Asleep, or dead.

Christ, man, Shane said, stepping back.  You need to get yourself sorted out.  Rehab, or something.

Abruptly, the man rolled toward Shane, his hand reaching out.

Take it easy, Shane said, stepping back.

The man lurched up onto his hands and knees, crawling toward Shane.

Hey! Shane said.  He took another step back, and bumped into something hard.  He turned his head, saw he'd backed into a parked car.

And then he felt something gripping his leg, tight around his ankle.  He looked down, trying to pull his leg free.  The man had him, and his grip held fast, despite Shane's attempt to pull his leg back.

What the hell? Shane said, getting angry again.

He felt the man pulling his ankle, drawing it toward him.  He saw the man's mouth open, teeth bared.

What the hell! Shane said, jerking his leg back again forcefully.

The man dropped onto his chest, but still he held fast.  And now his other hand came forward, reaching for the same ankle.

Shane's irritation flared into anger.  Before he could think of what he was doing, his own hands came down, shoving the man's face into the sidewalk with a crack.  The hand holding his ankle went slack.

Shane hopped back, suddenly horrified.

I'm sorry, man, he said.  I'm sorry.  Are you okay?

The man lifted his head up to look at Shane.  His lip had split like a cat's, his front teeth were broken, awash with running blood.

But his eyes were just as dead as they'd ever been.

Forget this, Shane said, backing away.  He snatched up his bike, squeezing between the bumpers of the parked cars, desperate to get back to the street.  As soon as he'd passed through, he threw his left leg over the bike, nearly losing his balance in the process.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man rising to his feet on the far side of the car.

Shane lifted his foot toward the pedal, hopping on one leg, almost losing his balance again.  The man lurched toward the gap between the car and van, and Shane put all of his weight onto the left pedal, lifting himself off the ground as the bike rolled forward.  He dropped his right foot onto the other pedal, started cranking as fast as he could.

Behind him came a moan, low and throaty and long, loud in the otherwise silent night.  Shane looked back over his shoulder, pedaling hard, and saw the dark figure of the man following him, stumbling up the middle of the street.

Chapter 2

Shane kept up his sprint , standing up and pedaling furiously, until he got to Townson Street.  At Townson he pulled up onto the sidewalk, hopped off the bike and started walking, breathing deep and trying to calm himself down.  An image of the drunk yuppie's eyes was in Shane's head, bloodshot and lifeless.  He looked around, trying to force the image out.

Although it was only a few minutes from the homeless-occupied sidewalks of 13th, Townson was a world away in terms of niceness.  The city had put a huge amount of money into renovating the first few blocks of the street, widening the sidewalks, repaving the road, even putting in a few trees and benches.  It was part of the city's bid to court new tech start-ups, and coupled with the tax breaks the city had offered to such companies, the bid had been pretty successful.  The large, red-brick buildings that lined the first few blocks of Townson now sported flashy signs for companies that hadn't even existed a few years ago.

ZapPow!, where Shane worked, was one of those companies.  It occupied the first building on the street, which it had decorated with a gigantic version of the ZapPow! company logo: a neon pink silhouette of a fluffy kitten standing on its hind legs, holding an Uzi in each hand.  The logo and company name were repeated, in smaller form, on the double smoked-glass doors of the entrance.  Shane didn't bother to look as he passed.  He hurried to the end of the building and ducked into a dead-end alley there.

Ten feet down the alley was a plain metal door.  Shane fumbled in his pocket for his keycard and dipped the card into the slot beside the door.  The lock whirred, and Shane jerked the door open.  He grabbed his bike and hurried down a short, bare-walled hallway, using his keycard again to get into the first door on the left.

A motion sensor switched the lights on, revealing a small room crowded with a large table and chairs and a row of lockers across the back wall.  Shane leaned his bike against the table and hurried to the back of the room, where the time clock sat on another, smaller table beside a little microwave.  He snatched his paper timecard from the wall holder and jammed it into the machine, letting out a breath as the machine clunked his start-time for the day.  He held the card up in the fluorescent light.

Four o' seven, he said.  More than five minutes late.  Probably get called by the boss on Monday, for that.

He dropped his timecard back into its slot in the wall-holder.  Then, on a whim, he lifted another card out of its slot and looked at it.

Terrance Jones.  Four a.m. on the dot, every day for the past four days.  Shane shook his head, irked.  He often worked the same shift as Terrance, and he'd never seen his co-worker anytime before five in the morning.  How does he do it?

No time to wonder about it now.  The kitchen needed to be cleaned before the cook got there at six, and since Terrance was never around to help him, Shane had to do it all on his own.  To make matters worse, today Shane was running late.

The image of the drunk yuppie's dead eyes burned in Shane's brain again.  He shook his head, forcing his mind back to the work he needed to do.

He went to his locker, spun the code into the padlock, and jerked it open.  He kicked off his sneakers, reaching for a pair of coveralls hanging inside the locker, and pulled the coveralls on over his jeans, slipping his arms into the sleeves without taking off his flannel, zipping up the long zipper in the front.  He jammed his feet into his steel-toe work boots and tied up the laces, then grabbed a pair of rubber gloves, folded them together and shoved them into his left front pocket. 

The last piece of gear was the key ring.  ZapPow! prided itself on being a state-of-the-art, cutting-edge tech start-up.  But when it came to the cleaning staff, it was strictly old school: paper timecards, a clunky time clock, and the key ring.

There was a key for every janitor's closet on every floor, and in every bathroom, and for every padlock that secured something the cleaners had to use, like the trash compactor or the dumpsters in the basement.  There were so many keys that the spring in the retractable keychain couldn't cope with the weight, leaving the keys to dangle from half a foot of chain hanging out of the coil housing.

Shane picked the key ring off the locker's top shelf, slipped it through the pocket slit on the coverall's right side, and clipped it to the belt loop on his hip.  A fat wad of keys, hanging at his thigh.

Like a goddamn ball and chain, Shane muttered.

He thought of the bike ride to work that morning, before he'd found the dead-eyed yuppie.  He thought of the squeaking chain and the moon behind the blanket of fog, of Kerouac and Ferlinghetti.  He thought of Honey Guts, still unfinished, and of how he was turning thirty next month.

I'll give two weeks on Monday, when the boss is here, he said to the empty room.  "I'll save every cent I earn before my last day, won't even buy beer.  And then I'll get the hell out of San Francisco, go back to Arcata, crash on couches, and write.  Finish Honey Guts before I'm thirty one."

He nodded his head, feeling better than he'd felt in a long time.  More focused.  Stronger.

He walked back out the door of the room and turned left down the hallway, coming to the door to the ZapPow! lobby.  Even as he came near the door, Shane could hear the noise coming from the room beyond: a nonstop, blaring mix of the most up-to-the-moment popular music, an incongruous blend of heavily-produced club rap, emotionally-overwrought alternative rock, and jangling pseudo folk.  He took hold of the door handle and felt it pulsing with vibrations from the music.  He opened the door and walked through.

On the other side of the door was the ZapPow! lobby.  Smoked glass and stainless steel everywhere.  Enlarged cutouts of cartoon animals holding semi-automatic weapons—various characters from ZapPow! games—scattered around like a disorganized mob.  A circular front desk in the center of the room with a truly enormous video screen hanging from the ceiling above it.

Shane glanced up at the screen, hardly paying attention at first, intent on getting where he was going.  But a half second later something clicked in his head.  He stopped walking, raised his eyes, and stared.

There was none of the whirling motion, the frenetic jerky movements, of the ZapPow! first-person shooters.  There was none of the cartoon-ish, God's-view panoramas of the ZapPow! strategy games.

Instead there was a single static image.  The stillness of it, in a place where Shane was accustomed to seeing frantic motion, made it all the more forceful.

It was a close-up on a man's eyes, bloodshot and intense.

Chapter 3

The image of the dead -eyed yuppie slammed its way to the front of Shane's mind.  The resolve he'd felt just a moment ago seemed to vanish, and the nausea in his stomach came seeping back.

But it wasn't the yuppie's eyes up on the screen.  It was an illustration.  An exceptionally vivid illustration, but an illustration nonetheless.

Below the eyes there was a word, Voodoo, written in a font that looked like dripping blood.

Voodoo, Shane said, getting a grip on himself.  What the hell is that?

He looked up at the glaring eyes for a few more seconds, wondering.  And then a flash of anger took hold of him, irritation at being so easily rattled, at being stopped in his tracks by an overdone drawing.  He was already running late.  He had to get the kitchen clean in less than two hours.

Shane dropped his eyes from the screen, resumed his passage across the room.

At the far side of the lobby a tunnel passed through the wall.  The tunnel was about eight feet tall and ten yards long, lit inside with pink neon rings.  Except for the obnoxious color, it looked like something out of Star Wars.

Shane walked through the tunnel and into the main area of the building, a cavernous space that had probably been some sort of factory before ZapPow! got the lease and started its renovations.  Now, with the main overhead lights shut off for the night and the only illumination coming from the sparse emergency bulbs, it felt sort of like a massive canyon.  The ceiling soared five stories above the ground level, and each story had its own floor, a wide platform running along the rear and side walls, behind a guardrail.

The ground floor, where he stood, was an open area primarily used for press events and ZapPow! employee meetings.  Another giant screen hung from the wall on the left, at the back of a low stage faced by several rows of chairs.  Shane glanced to that screen now, saw the same glaring eyes he'd seen on the screen in the lobby—though the eyes here were superimposed on a ZapPow! pink background, and the words "ZapPow! welcomes Voodoo, the next level in energy drinks!" showed in that same blood-splatter font.

The rest of the ground floor had been laid out as a conference area, with expensive rolling chairs surrounding large tables, the walls lined with couches.  Dozens of empty tallboy cans, painted the same blood-red of the Voodoo words, littered the tables.  Dozens more overflowed from the numerous trash bins.

Shane strode across the room, picking up an empty Voodoo can on the way.  He lifted the can near his face, trying to get a good view in the dim light.  The blood-splatter Voodoo at the top, the glaring eyes below, and at the bottom a slogan: It's Black Magic!  He turned the can in his hand.  There wasn't a bar code or a nutrition label, which seemed strange—didn't the FDA require that stuff?  Instead, the back of the can sported a paragraph of hype.

Voodoo is the next level in energy drinks, the words said.  A proprietary blend of taurine, ginseng, caffeine, acai, and the sacred herb Mucuna—traditionally used by Voodoo priests to enhance concentration and focus.  Drink it, and feel the Magic!

All this crap tastes like cat piss to me, Shane muttered, tossing the can in a wastebasket near the end of another table.

He dropped down the stairwell at the back of the room, pulling on his rubber gloves and heading for the cafeteria and the kitchen in the basement.  It looked as bad as he'd ever seen it: the kitchen destroyed—flour on the walls, sauce dried to crust on the counters and floors, the sink brimming with dirty dishes—and the cafeteria in a similar state to the conference area on the ground floor, with every table covered by empty cans of Voodoo.

Shane surveyed the mess, letting irritation harden his resolve.

Two weeks, he said.  Two weeks, saving every penny.

And then he threw himself into the work.

For an hour and a half he mopped floors, scrubbed counters, and washed dishes.  He cleared and wiped down tables, cleaned out the microwave, sprayed every surface with sanitizer.  He emptied the trash cans into a cart, replaced the bin bags, took the full bags to the compactor.  He did all of it at a frenzied pace, focused on the task, mind empty of everything else.  By the time he was dropping the last floor mat into place in the kitchen, he was breathing hard, his back sore, his hair wet with sweat.  He felt his blood running, felt wired from the manic pace.

Shane wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm, and took the steps back up to the ground floor two at a time.

It looked exactly the same as it had looked an hour and a half ago—the tables littered with red cans, the trash bins overflowing, the chairs dragged here and there instead of being pushed back into place.

Exactly the same.  Not a single thing had been done.

Where the hell is Terrance? Shane growled to himself.

His frenzied rush through the kitchen cleaning had managed to make up some lost time, but there was still a lot of work to do.  If Terrance didn't show up, he'd have to bust his ass all day, and skip lunch and all his breaks, just to do a minimal cleaning of the rest of the building.

Dammit! he said, striding across the room, using his agitation to quicken his steps.  He passed through the tunnel, crossed the lobby, opened the door to the hall with a key from the key ring, and went back to the cleaning staff lounge.

The lights flickered on as he entered the room.  Everything looked untouched since he'd clocked in almost two hours ago.  He glanced at the phone mounted on the wall by the time clock table, saw that its message light wasn't blinking.  Terrance hadn't called in sick, then.

He went to the timecards, and pulled Terrance's card from the rack.  He looked at the card, and for a moment the room seemed to spin around him.

Terrance's card showed a start time for today: four a.m., on the dot.

But I was here, Shane mumbled, and he hadn't clocked in yet.

Another sudden flood of rage took hold of Shane, and it was all he could do to keep from crushing the timecard into a ball.  Instead, he threw it across the room with all of his might.  The card flew a half dozen feet, and then flipped and tumbled to the floor beside the table.

God damn it! Shane shouted.

For a moment he looked around, desperate to get his hands on something he could break.  He looked at the phone, he looked at the time clock.  He gritted his teeth and clenched his hands to fists and squeezed so hard that his whole body started to shake.

This goddamn wage-slave job is going to drive me crazy! he hissed through his clenched teeth.

A wave of heat washed over him, and then faded, taking most of the rage with it.  He closed his eyes and pulled in a few deep breaths, and then relaxed his hands, letting his arms hang heavy at his sides.

Maybe I should walk out, he murmured, eyes closed.  Just quit, here and now, and not have to clean up all of the mess.

But the thought of his nearly-empty bank account came to him.

Shane shook his head.  Two weeks, he said, saving every damned penny.

He walked over to Terrance's time card, bent down to pick it up.

And froze with his hand just a few inches away.

The card had fallen face down, and on its back side was a red fingerprint.

He picked the card up, puzzled.  He brushed his thumb over the fingerprint, smearing it.

It was blood.  And it was fresh.

Chapter 4

Shane wiped his thumb on the leg of his coveralls, cleaning off the blood.  Then he looked over at Terrance's locker.  It looked normal from where he was, but when he got closer he saw that the lock had blood on it, too.

What the hell is going on? he muttered to himself.

He dropped Terrance's time card back into its slot on the rack.  Then he pulled the rubber gloves from his pocket and slipped them on.  He reached for the lock, took hold of it, tried to pull it open.  The lock didn't budge, but the blood smeared onto the fingers of his gloves, vivid red against the bright yellow.

Shane looked around the room again.  Everything looked normal.  He walked around the table to the door, reached for the door handle.  And saw that the handle had blood on it too.

A little glimmer of feeling was coming to life in Shane's stomach, where the nausea had been.  But this wasn't nausea, or anything as familiar as that.

It was worry.

Shane took hold of the door handle, jerked the door open.  He stuck his head into the hallway and looked both directions, giving it more attention than he had on his angry march through a minute ago.  The white walls and linoleum were glaringly bright under the fluorescent lights.  On the floor, just in front of the doorway, there was a drop of blood.  It was perfectly round and brilliantly red, so bright it almost seemed to glow.

There was another drop of blood a few feet down the hall toward the ZapPow! lobby.  A few feet past that, a pair of drops—little twin points of red.  And the handle on the lobby door was likewise touched with blood.

Shane opened the door cautiously, looked into the lobby.  The cartoon cutouts faced the front door, the Voodoo eyes glared down from the screen.  But there was no sign of Terrance or anybody else, and the carpet was too dark to show blood traces.

He stepped into the lobby, nerves tingling.  He walked to the circular reception desk, leaned over it to see if anyone was hiding there.  Nobody was.

He walked through the tunnel and into the main floor area.  The tables were still littered with red Voodoo cans.  The chairs were still pulled here and there, disorganized.

I'd have seen him if he went to the cafeteria, Shane said to himself.

He walked to the elevator, at the right side of the room.  There was a smear of blood on the call button.  He pressed the button, part of his mind fascinated by the way the button light illuminated the blood smeared over it, making the red glow.

The elevator dinged, the doors opened.  Shane stepped inside, turned to look at the buttons for the floors.  A smear of blood marked the button for the fifth floor, at the very top of the building.

Bingo, Shane murmured.

He pressed the button, stepped back from the doors.  The elevator went up, fast and smooth.  It gave a cheery ding when it reached the fifth floor.

The doors opened, and there was Terrance.

In the dim emergency lights of the building, he looked almost like a shadow, a dark-skinned figure laid atop a white leather couch to the right of the elevator doors.  His work boots were propped up on one of the couch's armrests.  His right arm was draped over his eyes.  His left arm dangled off the side of the couch, hand hanging just above the floor.

The sleeve on that arm had been pushed back above his elbow, revealing a tattoo of a pitbull's head with the words Oaktown Dogg Pound written beneath it.  And below the tattoo, wrapped around his forearm and held in place with duct tape, was a dark-colored towel.

Terrance, Shane said, hurrying toward the couch.  Hey Terrance, are you alright?

Terrance let out a groan, moved his right arm slightly to glance at Shane with one eye.

Shane, bro, he said quietly.  Crazy Shane.  And then he winced, letting his arm move back into place, covering both eyes.

Terrance, what happened?

Terrance shook his head, eyes still covered.  He rolled onto his side, facing the back of the couch.  His left arm brushed against the couch's white leather, leaving a dark-colored streak.  Blood.  Lots of blood.  So much that it made the sodden towel wrapped around Terrance's forearm look burgundy, though Shane recognized it as a cleaning rag, and cleaning rags came white.

Terrance let out another groan, wedged his face into the place where the back of the couch met the seat cushions.

Shane reached out, put his hand on his co-worker's shoulder, gave him a gentle shake.  He could feel heat coming through the fabric of the coveralls.  Terrance was burning up.

You look like crap, man.  We need to get you to a hospital.

Terrence shook his head, face still hidden in the couch cushions.

Come on, man.  You need a doctor.

He waited a moment, and then shook Terrance again.  Insistently.

Terrence shifted, pushed himself up with his right hand.  He swung his feet to the floor, bringing his hands to his face.

I'm cool, man, he said, face still in his hands.  I'm cool.  Don't need no doctor.

Bull.  You're burning up, and you're bleeding all over the place.

Naw, ain't nuthin'.  Had a scrap with some crazy whiteboy outside.  Bastard came at me in the alley, bit me an everything.  But I busted his ass good.

A thought flashed into Shane's head.

Was he a yuppie dude? Shane said.  In a suit?

"Naw.  Goddamn hipster whiteboy.  Wearing a hoodie and those gay-ass high-water pants.  Probably worked in this here building, damn ZapPow! drone."

Shane let out a breath.  Not the same guy he'd seen on 13th.

He bit you? he said.

Yeah, man!

Terrance dropped his hands from his face, tugged the duct tape loose from the rag.  He unrolled the rag, showing a crescent-shaped wound, still oozing blood.

You're probably gonna need stitches for that, Shane said.  You oughta go to the hospital.

Forget the hospital, man! Terrance said, raising his face to look Shane in the eyes.  You know how much my co-pay is?  Forty-five goddamn dollars!  It's just a goddamn scratch.  His eyes dropped back to his hands, which he clenched to fists.  Goddamn cracker-ass hipster's the one gonna need a doctor.  I busted his ass, good.

Shane looked at his co-worker for a moment, saying nothing.

Just a bit hyped, you know, Terrance said.  Adrenaline and all that.  I'll be cool in a minute.

Alright, Shane said, fine.  But you can't stay up here.  Why'd you come to the CEO's floor anyway?

Bastard never shows up before noon, man.  You know that.  And he might not even come in on a weekend at all.  Meanwhile all these damn hipster drones show up bright and early.  Might even be a few of them on the other floors, right now, after that product launch last night, getting all juiced on some tweaker energy drink.  These goddamn yuppie hipsters love their jobs more than anything else.

Shane nodded his head.  He'd had the same thoughts himself.

Terrance dropped his face back into his hands, rubbed at his eyes.  I'll be cool in a minute, he said.  Don't worry about me.  He pulled a smartphone from his pocket, glanced at its screen.  It's almost six.  Hipster drones'll start showing up pretty soon.  If you get started on the main floor, I'll start up here and work down to meet you.

Shane thought of how he'd already had to clean the kitchen and cafeteria on his own, suddenly irritated again.  The clock was ticking, and there was still plenty of work to do.

All right, Shane said.  Whatever.  But don't forget to clean this couch.  Gonna stain if you don't get that blood off it, soon.

Don't you worry 'bout me, Terrance said, glaring.  "I'ma handle it.  You acting like you never had a slow day.  Don't remember couple months back?  We went out after work, you called in sick next day?  Death Kitten 7 game release, and I had to clean the ground floor on my own.  You forgetting that?  Give a brother a break, man."

Shane closed his mouth, dipped his head once in assent.

You got a point, he said.  I'll start on the ground floor.  But don't wait too long to clean this couch.

He stood up, walked back to the elevator.  He jabbed the call button with two stiff fingers, and then realized he still had blood on his rubber gloves, and he'd just marked the button with it.

Dammit, he muttered, wiping the blood away with his sleeve.

Chapter 5

Shane often received notices and reminders of the importance of taking his breaks.  The notes usually reminded cleaning staff that California law required a fifteen minute break for every two hours worked, and a half hour lunch if the work-day was longer than six hours.  Today he'd already been at work for about two hours, but when the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, and he saw all of the disorganized chairs and can-littered tables, he knew he wouldn't have time to take a break and still stay on schedule.  He frowned, thinking of how often that was the case.

He needed to get this floor clean as soon as possible.  Despite it being barely six a.m. on a Saturday, he'd seen ZapPow! workers show up almost this early on other weekends.  The bastards really did live to work, as if their jobs were their whole reason for being.

Shane hurried over to the janitor closet, thumbing through the keys on his key ring.  He found his key, stabbed it into the keyhole, twisted it.  He jerked the door open and grabbed a box of trash bin liners from the shelf, dropped the box on the cart.  He pulled the cart out, wheeled it over to the nearest trash can.

And then he heard a loud crash from the third floor, as if someone had tipped over a file cabinet.

Shane froze in place, looking up at the third floor railing, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on.  He couldn't see anything beyond the rail except for a few emergency lights shining down from the bottom of the next floor up.

Maybe someone is up there, he said to himself.  Maybe they fell out of their chair, or knocked a computer off the desk.  Or maybe there was an earthquake, a tiny one, but enough to tip a stack of books off a shelf.

He looked up at the rail.  He still couldn't see anything.

Hello! he called out, aiming his voice at the third level.  Everything all right up there?

He listened carefully, but the only sound he heard was the subtle hum of the fluorescent lights.

Whatever, he said.  Be up there soon enough.  Got to get this main floor cleaned up already.

He started working on the trash.  There were ten trash bins in the room, and every bin was filled to the brim with empty, red cans of Voodoo.  Shane guessed that at least forty cans would fit in a bin, which meant at least four hundred empty cans all together.  Not to mention the several dozen cans littering the table tops, and down in the cafeteria too.  So, more than 500 cans of Voodoo were drank at last night's event, which worked out to one for every ZapPow! employee, and second cans for some.  It took Shane three trips to the blue recycling dumpster to dispose of all the bags.

He glanced at a clock on the wall when he'd finally finished with that job, saw that it was already half past six.  He hurried to the janitor's closet, pulled the vacuum out, attached an extension cord to it, and plugged the cord into the wall socket.  Then he turned it on, and ran it across the room—literally ran it, arm stretched out, feet jogging across the carpet, trying to make up time.

He reached the far end of the room and turned to run back the way he'd come.  But when he turned he noticed something at the upper edge of his vision.  Something up on the third floor.

It startled Shane enough to make him stumble.  He caught himself, stopped and looked up.

Someone was up there, standing at the railing, watching him.

Shane looked up at the person for a moment, vacuum still roaring, trying to make out who it was.  But the person was backlit by the emergency lights, just a featureless silhouette standing at the railing, motionless.

Shane lifted a hand, waved.

The figure made no movement.  It stood completely still, hands hanging limp at its sides.  Despite its proximity to the railing, it didn't rest its hands there, or lean forward against it.

Shane kicked the power switch on the vacuum, turning it off.  He raised his hand again.

Hello, he said loudly, hand still raised.

The figure made no response.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, Shane started to feel uncomfortable.  He dropped his hand, looked around the main floor.  No one else was there.  He looked back up at the third floor railing.  The figure was still standing there, watching him.

He watched the figure for another half minute.