Kings of Infinite Space: A Novel (41 page)

“You’re a son of a bitch,” muttered Callie.

“What?” said Paul.

“You heard me.” She laid the sharpened pencils in a fan at her feet. “When Olivia bared my throat and Colonel handed you the knife,” Callie hissed, still watching the ceiling, “what took you so long to do something?”

“Callie, I don’t think this is the time.” The creaking in the ceiling shifted, and Paul saw one panel bulge and then another.

Callie turned on him, her eyes blazing with rage and hurt. “You had to
think
about it!” she shouted—so loudly, in fact, that all the other sounds around them—the patter of feet, the murmuring
chant, even the creaking of the ceiling above—went completely silent. She wouldn’t take her eyes off him, and in the electric stillness, Paul touched her with a trembling hand.

“Aw, honey,” he said, “I’m an intellectual. I have to think about everything.”

The ceiling above the cube gave way, several panels all at once, and in a cascade of dust and shards of tile, J.J. fell cursing into the cube, landing hard on the little heap of tumbled ring binders.

“Fuuuuck!” he shouted, throwing his arms over his face as fragments of ceiling panel pelted him. Coated in white dust and still wearing his barbecue apron, he tried to stand, but his feet kept slipping on the loose binders. Paul jumped up from under the work surface and cast about for something to defend himself with. He snatched up a big three-hole punch with a weighted base, and cocked it over his shoulder like a club.

“You faggot,” panted J.J., trying to haul himself up by the toppled bookcase. “I knew you’d be trouble the moment I saw you.

“Stay back!” cried Paul, his voice shooting up an octave. The three-hole punch rattled in his grip.

“You’re a fuckin’ dead man,” laughed J.J., finally pushing himself erect.

“He’s not the only one,” said Callie, and she launched herself from under the desk and past Paul, a sharpened pencil protruding between the fingers of each fist, an eraser braced against each palm. She swung both fists at the same time, one high and one low, then danced back, slipping on a ring binder and landing on her ass. J.J. wobbled on his feet, one pencil stuck in his right cheek, the other in his waist, just above the apron. He looked down at his punctured gut, then gingerly felt the pencil in his face. His eyes were wide, and his mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “Aw,
heck
” he said.

“Dear God!” gasped Paul, turning to gape at Callie, and at that moment the bookcase toppled over with a loud clang on top of J.J., crushing him against the scattered binders. The two pale men who had pushed it over leaped onto the flattened
bookcase as the metal boomed under them. At the same instant, two more pale men came shrieking through the air from opposite directions, soaring headfirst out of the darkness as if they’d been catapulted, their arms and legs wriggling. They tumbled into the cube; one landed on the worktable, the other crashed into the cube wall on the opposite side. The wall groaned under him and then rebounded, flinging him back into the cube on top of Callie.

Everything happened very quickly. The pale man on top of Callie leaped up immediately, shrieking and pawing at the letter opener jammed into his ear; he clawed his way up the cube wall and toppled over it into the next cubicle. Hissing and baring their teeth, the two pale men on the bookcase scuttled forward, one towards Callie, the other towards Paul. At the same moment Paul felt the blunt, cold fingers of the man on the desk behind him pawing at his head and shoulders. Callie came up from the floor with the massive stapler in her hands, and she expertly popped a lever at the hinge and cast aside the stapler’s base, swinging the upper half one-handed at the pale man approaching her. Paul twisted away from the fumblings of the man behind him, squeezed his eyes shut, and swung the three-hole punch blindly in a two-handed grip at the man before him. The punch connected with a loud
thump!
and Paul felt the shock of the impact all the way up both arms.

“I got him!” he cried, opening his eyes to see the pale man topple over the bookcase. But just then the man behind him wrapped a spiral phone cord around Paul’s neck and yanked it tight, pulling Paul right off his feet. Paul dropped the punch and scrabbled at the cord with his fingers, trying to pry it away from his windpipe.

“Callie!” he gasped, and even as his eyes bulged from his head, he saw Callie strike again and again at her adversary with the stapler, shouting with each swing. The pale man dodged, baring his jagged teeth and swinging at her with his open hands. Paul’s toes barely brushed the carpet as the cord cut deeper into his throat. Black spots spun before his eyes. Blood pounded in his ears.

Then, just as he was about to lose consciousness, he heard—one, two, three times—the very satisfying
ka-chunk
of the stapler, and the accompanying squeal of the pale man, and the thump of his body hitting the floor. Down the darkening cone of his vision, Paul saw Callie reach towards him, snatch something off the desktop, and then brandish a pair of scissors. She snipped the phone cord around his neck, and it whipped away. She jammed the scissors upward, and as Paul landed gasping on the floor, he heard the squeal and crash of the pale man on the desktop.

“C’mon!” cried Callie, and she dragged the gagging Paul to his feet. She pressed the bloodied scissors into his hand and snatched up the stapler again for herself, and she tugged him by his shirt over the rattling bookcase and into the aisle. In the intersection of the aisles they glanced either way to see little knots of crouching pale men, clustered together, swinging their arms and chanting. Flecks of spittle flew from their gaping mouths. Callie started up the aisle towards Rick’s office, and Paul walked backwards behind her, waving the scissors in his trembling hand as the two knots of pale men came together in the intersection and crept after them. In the open space by the fax machine, Callie stopped and Paul backed into her. The men behind them paused just out of reach. Paul glanced over his shoulder to see another knot of men between them and the exit, crouching low, their teeth gnashing, their fingers brushing the carpet, murmuring,
“Are we not men? Are we not men? Are we not men?”

“Paul! Callie!” someone shouted in a muffled voice, and through the window of the door Paul saw the bushy eyebrows and thick moustache of Preston. He pounded on the door and gestured over his head, pointing to his right. “Rick’s office!” he shouted. “Get inside Rick’s office!”

The pounding stopped and Preston disappeared from the window. The pale men on either side crept closer, swaying and muttering,
“Are we not men? Are we not men?”
Boy G loomed out of the middle of the group by the exit, spreading his arms
wide like a revivalist preacher. He spread his jaws wide and snarled like a beast.

“If we go into Rick’s office,” Callie said, her voice shaking, “we’ll never get out again.”

The two of them wheeled slowly, back to back, brandishing the stapler and the scissors. “Maybe we could smash the window,” Paul said, but before Callie could answer, something crashed loudly into the fax machine and tumbled into the aisle. A computer monitor rocked onto its side at Paul’s feet, its screen shattered. A moment later a metal filing cabinet drawer, full of files, crashed into the wall of Colonel’s cube and rebounded into the aisle, making the clutch of pale men fall back. Paul and Callie looked up. The narrow, twilight space between the cube horizon and the ceiling was filled with flying objects, all headed in their direction: another drawer, an office chair with its wheels spinning, a keyboard trailing its creamy cord. A water cooler bottle tumbled end over end, spilling water in a wide arc. At the same time a hail of smaller objects began to pelt Paul and Callie: staplers, tape dispensers, a Rolodex, computer mice, cell phones. Callie crouched as low as she could; a coffee mug half full of cold coffee hit Paul between his shoulder blades.

“Goddammit!” shouted Callie, and she ran through the barrage of ring binders and pen cups and hard hats into Rick’s office; Paul was a half step behind her. The pale men on either side rushed after them, and Paul slammed the door in their faces. But it didn’t have a lock, so he dropped his scissors and planted his back against the door, digging his heels into the carpet. The bright security lights in the corners of the courtyard filled Rick’s office with a harsh, bleaching light, throwing the stark shadows of the dying oak’s branches across the walls and desk and carpet. Paul saw Preston in the courtyard below, prowling the deck on the balls of his feet, holding his semiautomatic pistol at his shoulder in a two-handed grip. When he saw Callie and Paul through the window, he waved them towards the courtyard and shouted something. Callie dropped
her stapler, snatched up the chair next to the little table, and slung it as hard as she could against the window. But the window didn’t break, it only thrummed, making the office hum with a deep bass note like the inside of a bell. At the same moment Paul felt a steady, almost irresistible pressure against the door at his back.

“Hurry!” he cried, and Callie shouted wordlessly and whanged the chair against the window again. Still nothing happened; the bass thrumming only deepened. Callie hadn’t even chipped the glass. She roared in frustration, hurling the chair over her head at the glass. It bounded back at her, and she batted it aside, then she slid over Rick’s desktop on her hip. She tried to lift his high-backed office chair, but it twisted from her grasp and crashed to the floor.

The soles of Paul’s feet burned across the carpet. Over his shoulder he saw pale fingers curled around the edge of the door, and the chant came through,
“Are we not men? Are we not men?”

“Callie!” cried Paul, and Callie cast about frantically and grabbed Rick’s computer monitor with both hands, yanking it out to the limit of its connecting cords, then with a mighty effort wrenching it free, the cords flailing wildly like snakes. Paul whined with exertion and dug his toes into the carpet, and Callie hoisted the monitor over her head with both hands like a caveman flinging a boulder and heaved it at the doorway. But the shot went wild, and Paul ducked as the monitor crashed against the edge of the door and then landed with a crunch in the middle of the floor. He was propelled forward onto his knees, and the door slammed open against the wall.

“Are we not men?”
chanted the mob of pale faces in the harsh light, but right in front, wedged together in the doorway, were Colonel and Olivia Haddock. Colonel’s tie was loose, his shirt front streaked with grime and damp, his forearm wrapped in a towel that was soaked with blood. His eyes were wild and his chest heaved; one shoulder was crushed against the doorjamb, the other arm propped across the door, blocking Olivia. Her eyes were cold and furious; the tiara was gone and her hair awry. Her red velvet homecoming gown was ruined, soaked and
stained, clinging to her like wet terry cloth. She clawed at Colonel’s arm, trying to get into the room, while behind them the faces of the pale men bobbed and swayed.

“You got one last chance, Professor,” gasped Colonel. He stared at Paul almost as if he couldn’t see him, and Paul scrambled to his feet, dancing around the shattered monitor in the center of the office. Callie snatched Rick’s desk lamp off the desk, yanked its plug out of the power strip, and began to hammer at the glass behind the desk with the weighted base of the lamp, grunting with each blow. Paul glanced back and saw Preston below in the courtyard pointing his pistol at the window with one hand, and waving Paul and Callie away with the other.

“Get back!” Paul heard him shout, but then Preston glanced up and leaped aside at the last minute as a pale man landed
plop
on the deck from above. From opposite sides of the glass, Paul, Callie, and Preston saw pale men scuttling along the roofline of the courtyard, beyond the glare of the security lights. Several had already made the leap down to the deck, and Preston grasped his weapon with both hands, jerking it from side to side as he was backed up against the trunk of the dying oak by three crouching pale men. Another pale man had leaped into the upper branches of the tree, and he swung like a spider downward, limb by limb, hand over hand, towards Preston.

“Paul, you got . . . ten seconds . . . to kill her,” panted Colonel, his arm trembling under the pressure of Olivia and the pale homeless men behind him. “I can’t . . . hold them . . . any longer.”

Olivia’s mouth was cursing silently, spittle flying from her lips. Some of the homeless men were already reaching over Colonel’s head or trying to crawl between his legs. Over his own head Paul heard the sickening creak of the ceiling, and he saw bulges moving from panel to panel. One of the panels over the desk started to slide away.

Paul snatched Rick’s phone off the desk and yanked the cord free in one go. He twirled the handset at the end of its cord like a bola, glancing from the door to the ceiling. Callie put her back into the corner of the two windows and squeezed the neck
of the lamp. Paul met her gaze for an instant. “I love you,” he almost said, but he didn’t think she’d want to hear it just at the moment. Instead, he turned towards the door, swinging the handset faster. “Come and get me,” he said.

Colonel shook his head. “You’re a fool,” he said, and slowly relaxed his arm. Olivia crouched, gathering her sodden skirt in one hand. Pale hands reached above and around Colonel and Olivia. Boy G’s savagely smiling face appeared in the gap over the desk.

Then everyone—Colonel, Olivia, the pale men in the doorway, Boy G, even Callie and Paul—was frozen in place by a long, murderous hiss. The temperature in the room dropped drastically, as if an arctic wind had blown through, and the skin of Paul’s arm started out in goose pimples. Standing on the corner of Rick’s desk, hissing evilly at the doorway, was Charlotte, her black jaws wide, her ears back. Her fur bristled, and her tail stood erect. Her back arched like a cardboard Halloween cutout.

Colonel and Olivia recoiled in the doorway, and the pale men behind them shrank back, moaning in unison, a long, diminuendo “Ohhhhhhhhhhh!” Charlotte lifted her black gaze to the ceiling and hissed again, and Boy G’s face retreated into the darkness.