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 fuckers 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. But he couldn’t see anything past 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.
“Fuck it,” 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. It never took its eyes from him, never raised a hand to wave, never made any movement at all.
“Well fuck you, then,” Shane muttered under his breath. “Fucking stuck-up hipster, yuppie asshole.”
He kicked the vacuum back on, started pushing it across the floor again, though this time he didn’t run. Even if he ran, there wasn’t enough time to vacuum the whole floor. More than two and a half hours had passed since he’d clocked in, and there were still four floors to go, each needing to be vacuumed, each needing its trash cans emptied, each with two bathrooms that had to be cleaned. Hardly more than a quarter of the workday was done, and Shane was already far enough behind that he’d have to spend the rest of the day playing catch up. He couldn’t do it all anymore. He’d have to focus on the obvious stuff, get it done as quickly as possible, and move on.
He glanced back up at the third floor railing. The figure had disappeared.
Shane pushed the vacuum around the main floor, eyes scanning for dirty spots. His headache had gotten worse, a throbbing in his temples, especially sharp above his left eye. He found himself squinting that eye, squeezing it shut tight, as if that would push the pain back. His mouth was dry, the sweat coating his sides felt thick and sticky. He found himself longing for a beer.
By seven o’clock he’d finished spot-cleaning with the vacuum, he’d wiped down the tables, put the chairs in order. He locked the vacuum and cart back in the janitor’s closet, went to the elevator, and hit the button for the second floor.
The majority of the ZapPow! employees were divided into three main teams, with a team for each of the second through fourth floors. Each team worked on separate projects, and competition between the teams was encouraged, with teams vying to finish projects early, and striving to create the most commercially successful games.
The team that occupied the second floor was the newest of the three—labeled Team Noob by the others—and hadn’t yet produced an especially profitable game. Their one completed project—a strategy game titled FuzzFest, in which players assumed the role of pet shop owners who bred cats for pit fighting—hadn’t been a commercial failure, but it hadn’t achieved the success enjoyed by projects created by the longer-existing teams. That lack of instant dominance, coupled with their status as the newest team, made Team Noob the underdogs in the building. They were hungry for respect, and it wasn’t uncommon to find noobs pulling all-nighters, desperate to stay ahead of schedule.
Today was no exception. As the elevator doors opened, Shane saw that several noobs had worked through the night. One, wearing a black hoodie, was slumped over a desk in one of the rows in the center of the floor. His face rested on his keyboard between his arms. His screen was opened to an animation program showing a blood-splattered cat swinging a chainsaw, again and again in an endless loop.
Another worker, this one wearing a red and green flannel, had made it to a couch near the elevator. Now he sprawled there like a broken doll, one leg dangling toward the floor.
In a cubicle along the back wall a third noob hunched in his chair, facing a screen filled with lines of code. He was dressed in a polo shirt, white with black stripes. His ears were covered with headphones, and the screen’s light illuminated his face with a sickly shade of green.
Numerous Voodoo cans were scattered around each of the noobs, as if they’d tried to use the energy drinks to fuel their all-nighter. Shane sighed, went to the janitor’s closet, hand fishing for his keychain. He opened the door and grabbed several trash bags, stuffing all but one in his pocket. The last bag he whipped open, and then he started filling it with red cans of Voodoo.
The noob on the couch remained motionless as Shane collected the empty cans near him, so still that Shane couldn
’t even tell if the guy was breathing. The noob sprawled over his keyboard didn’t move either, though Shane couldn’t see how the guy could sleep with all those keyboard keys pressing into his face.
Shane tied off the bag, left it there in the aisle. He pulled another bag from his pocket, whipped it open. He made his way toward the cubicles along the back wall, went to the cubicle with the guy facing the screen of code. He squeezed around the guy, grabbing cans. Seven of them, around this one guy. Had he drank them all himself?
Shane paused beside the guy, leaned over the desk to look at the guy’s face. He was slumped in his office chair, hands resting limply in his lap. His shoulders drooped, his head hanging forward until his forehead nearly touched the screen. And his eyes were open, staring, unfocused.
Dead.