Chapter 6
Shane stepped back, startled. The thought of the drunk yuppie he’d seen on 13th came rushing back. The noob’s eyes were just as raw and red, just as glazed and lifeless.
But the yuppie had been drunk. Or at least, he’d smelled like booze, and he’d been covered in crusted vomit.
The noob didn’t smell like booze. He didn’t smell like a rose, either—his stink was closer to a mix of pickles and B.O.—but there was no hint of alcohol in it.
Shane stood there for a moment, looking at the guy’s hunched back, his drooping shoulders and hanging head. He looked like he’d fallen asleep sitting up. Maybe the guy was tired enough to sleep with his eyes open?
Suddenly the noob’s shoulders lifted slightly, his head raised up a few inches as he filled his chest with a deep breath. He sighed it back out, body folding forward as if he were deflating, and his head came to rest on his keyboard.
Shane stepped backwards, carefully exiting the cubicle. He shook his head.
“They might earn five times more than me,” he said to himself, quietly, “but they’re selling their souls for their jobs. I’d never pull an all-nighter without serious compensation, but these salary-earning bastards are doing it so often that they’re turning into vegetables.”
He made his way across the floor, collecting cans as he went. The second bag filled up, and he tied it and left it in the walkway between the cubicles and the rows of desks. He opened a third bag, kept moving toward the opposite wall.
Tech start-ups were famous for being “unorthodox” work-places. Usually that meant, in practical terms, that a ping-pong table or a dartboard found its way in amongst the cubicles and desks. For Team Noob it was a pool table, tucked away in a corner near the far wall. But the eight ball had gone missing just a few weeks after the table appeared, and the cue ball had followed just a few days after that. Neither had ever been replaced, and Shane figured the missing balls meant Team Noob was more interested in the pool table as a symbol than as something they actually wanted to use.
He made his way to the table now, saw that a few cans of Voodoo had found their way amongst the colored balls littering the green felt. One of the sticks had been laid across the table, another was on the floor beneath. He snatched up the Voodoo cans, threw them in his garbage bag. And then he kneeled, reaching for the fallen cue stick.
As Shane’s fingers closed over the stick, he heard a low, throaty moan from somewhere back behind him. He straightened up quickly, cracking his head on the edge of the table. “Fuck!” he said, clutching at his head with his other hand, eyes squeezed shut from the pain.
The moan repeated, long and low. Shane got to his feet, one hand still holding the stick, his other hand holding the back of his head. He opened his eyes and looked toward the sound.
It was still dark in the building, the illumination on this floor coming primarily from the emergency lights mounted in the ceiling, and from the dim glow of the power buttons on the computers and other electrical equipment. He’d been so wrapped up in his work that he’d failed to take note of that. Normally enough workers had shown up by this time that someone had turned on the regular lights. It was past seven now, and no new ZapPow! workers had come in yet that morning, as far as Shane knew.
He looked back across the darkened floor, wondering if he’d imagined the sound. There was no obvious movement anywhere he could see, except for the flickering lights coming from one computer screen.
And then he realized which screen it was: the screen in the center of the floor, where the noob with the black hoodie had been sleeping with his face on his keyboard. The screen must have been showing that same loop of the cat swinging the chainsaw, but now the light flickered against an empty chair, shoved back from the table. The sleeping noob was gone.
Shane scanned the area with his eyes, saw a darkened figure near the end of the row, shuffling slowly toward him. It was too dim to see much at this distance, but Shane assumed it was the noob.
“Hello,” Shane said.
The figure let out a low moan in response.
“What the fuck?” Shane muttered to himself. He found his hand tightening on the pool cue, his other hand rising to join it.
“How’s it going?” Shane said. “You alright?”
The figure moaned again. He walked with a lurching step, arms hanging limply, head tilted forward so that his eyes looked out from under his brow. He was about ten paces away.
“You okay, man?” Shane said. “You feeling alright?”
The noob said nothing, just kept lurching closer, slowly eating up the distance between them.
“Listen, man,” Shane said. “I’ve had a hell of a morning, and I’m running behind. I need to get back to work.”
The noob still said nothing. He was about five steps away now, close enough for Shane to see the dull glimmer of his glazed eyes.
Shane thought of the drunken yuppie. He took a step back.
“Don’t fuck with me, man,” Shane said. “I’m not in the mood.”
The noob was so close that Shane could see the impressions the keyboard had left on his face. His hands lifted slowly, reaching toward Shane. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot to red. There was no humor in them, no sense that this was a joke.
Shane lifted the stick, pressed the thick end against the noob’s chest. He felt the noob’s weight against it, pressing forward, pushing Shane back. The noob’s arms reached toward Shane, and he took another lurching step forward.
Anger flared in Shane. He gripped the cue stick tightly with both hands, planted his feet, and shoved back.
The noob stumbled back a few paces. But as soon as he’d recovered his balance, he lurched toward Shane again. His eyes were as dead as ever.
And just like that, Shane’s rage turned into something else.
“What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” Shane said aloud, backing away.
The noob was almost on him again. Shane skirted around the pool table, putting it between himself and the noob. The noob followed around it, moving slowly, but never pausing.
Shane backed around the table until he’d come all the way around it. He kept backing away quickly, keeping his eye on the noob, heading toward the elevator.
And then he heard a moan behind him.
He looked over his shoulder, saw the noob with the green and red checkered flannel just behind him. Shane was moving too quickly to stop. He managed to turn and get the cue stick up, holding it horizontally, his hands far apart. And then he crashed into the flannel-clad noob.
The stick caught the Flannel Man across the upper chest, knocking him back. But the guy lifted his arms up, reaching for Shane, which made the shaft of the stick slide up across his throat.
Shane caught his balance, tried to back away. But Flannel Man had a hand on the right sleeve of his coveralls, and that hand gripped the fabric like a vise, pulling Shane near. Shane looked into the noob’s face, saw the same dead, bloodshot eyes, saw the lips pull back from the teeth as though the man wanted to bite.
Near panic, Shane’s foot came slamming up between the man’s legs before he’d had a chance to consider the consequences.
Nothing happened.
He felt the toe of his boot find home, felt the foot collide solidly with the noob’s crotch and bounce back. But the man’s face showed absolutely no reaction. He didn’t even lose his grip on Shane’s sleeve.
Like a pot boiling over, the panic Shane felt abruptly flooded over him. He drove the shaft of the cue hard against the man’s neck, feeling something crunch beneath the wood. The force of it made the man’s head snap forward even as his body rocked back. His fingers slipped free from Shane’s sleeve, and Shane took a lunging step forward, shoving with all his might.
The flannel-clad noob stumbled back into the railing, abruptly tipped over it, and fell.
Shane’s momentum brought him to the railing a split second later. He saw the noob
in mid-air, flipping once as he fell. He landed hard, his lower body coming down on a conference table, which snapped him back at the waist before his legs rebounded and whipped over his head. His upper body caught the arm of a chair in its descent, but the chair toppled toward the man, doing nothing to break his fall.
“Oh shit!” Shane said.
He couldn’t see the Flannel Man clearly, because the chair had fallen on top of him. But he could hear him, letting out a long moan.