Chapter Thirteen

The freight elevator opened with an audible struggle of power cables. She expected a wide expanse of a room, but this was a smaller chamber outside of a greater entity. A locker room formed one side; on the other side, hazmat suits hung according to a person’s size and weight. The room was sterile smelling, an air freshener working overtime at the ceiling.

Douglas commanded, “Pick a locker, change, put on the hazmat suit and stand at the door marked Entry. You have fifteen minutes. Move it, people. The last thing you want to be is fired from the worst job this place has to offer. You won’t like the consequences.”

She lifted a yellow hazmat suit from the hook and picked out a locker and began to strip. She had her pants off when Douglas spoke under his breath. “Nice, very nice. You’re going to be fine, Addey.”

Fucking asshole, go blow it out your ass.

She didn’t turn around. She worked faster to change into the suit. Her world was enclosed within a gas mask. Thirty seconds, and her air intake was already stagnant and warm. Her breath kept fogging up the plastic shield over her eyes. This is going to get claustrophobic in no time.

She shoved her clothes into the locker. They had no locks, so she memorized the number 22 and hoped for the best. Perhaps people didn’t survive long enough to merit personal security, she supposed.

Douglas was roaming about the lockers, eyeing the women lasciviously.

Don’t be afraid to defend yourself…nobody will hold it against you.

She waited in line before the steel double doors with the word in dripping, spray-painted lettering over the top: Entry.

Douglas kept his mask off until the last minute before entering the next section. “Your job is to shovel what comes from the ceiling chute into the gutters. That’s it. I’ll play the radio to keep you motivated. We work for two hours, take a thirty-minute break and repeat the process. On the way in, you’ll see a chamber that looks like a shower stall. This will spray you with a cleaning solution at high pressure. There’s a break room nearby right before you reach the showers. There’s food, drinks—alcohol included—and a place to sit down and watch TV or read or sleep.”

He disengaged the lock belonging to the final door between them and their job. “Follow me.”

The first area was the break room. Another group of workers hung out in their underclothes, exhaustion printed on their faces. They smoked and ate, or slept on furniture. The place reeked of desperation and broken hope.

There was an itch behind her eyes; she wanted to cry. It would be easy to fold to her emotions, but the looming shape of the showers and the strange fence barrier looming in the distance snapped her from that option. The showers had high-pressure hoses from top to bottom. She watched a group stand in place as they were doused. Next, they walked past wet tiles up to a scary perimeter fence. A security guard stood, bored and indifferent to them. He was older, maybe in his sixties. He chewed on a wet cigar and wore a headphone set. His job was to survey the row of ten TV monitors around him for anything suspicious.

Douglas asked the man, bending down to his level, “Everything safe, Andy?”

“They’re still dead,” Andy griped, pointing at the screens. “And I’m still alive.”

Andy looked at them, his face unchanging. “Newbies, huh? This is a helluva place to start working.”

“I started here.”

Andy yukked it up at Douglas’s expense. “You stupid shit, and you’re still here!”

He unlocked the gate. A machine conveyor pulled it open. Douglas walked in, ushering them to follow. “Come on, people. Move.”

The area was now a concrete square surrounded by twelve-foot-high fences. They stood on a raised platform. She couldn’t see to the bottom, they were so high up. The walls in the far distance beyond the gates were concrete and painted black, the walls themselves at least twelve feet from their standing position.

The stench was awful, the air thick enough to leave condensation on their faceplates. Her father had worked at a meat-packing plant for five years before quitting. The only part of his work uniform he’d brought home were his boots. They stank of concentrated beef, a sickly sweet smell, and this stench was far advanced. Flies buzzed below by the thousands, a constant background din. There were movements from below, a constant shuffle, like hundreds of feet tramping in mud puddles.

Gutters were carved out of the concrete floor, each slit five feet from the other. A metal slide extended from each slit. The opening was large enough for a person to slip through. Blood caked the gutter slits in a thick gruel paste. Flies and worms and maggots writhed in the mess. She turned her head away when she caught the human head wedged in the corner. Male or female, it was impossible to distinguish. The pulped skin was mostly peeled from the skeleton.

Jesus Christ.

Douglas’s mask was on, his words were muffled. “Okay people, there’s the rack of shovels. Take one. Stay clear of the dumping zone.”

The dumping zone was blocked off by a hip-high fence with caution tape, orange cones and blinking lights. It was fifteen by twenty feet. Over the dumping zone, on the ceiling, a square tube that resembled a giant air duct was aimed at the concrete. A digital clock on the wall counted off from ten seconds.

“Don’t move, people.”

Nine, eight, seven, six…

The air duct grumbled like a beast dislodging phlegm from its throat.

Five, four, three, two, one…

Blood dripped down by the gallon. Addey’s body was doused from head to foot from the splashes, as was everybody else. And then the load arrived: WHOMP! It was spit out in a compressed pink, red and purple square. The concussion rattled their feet. The landing loosened the compressed material. It slithered against the walls of the fence, a slippery, wet noodle sound. Human organs, muscle tissue, flesh, arms, legs and heads in various stages of decay unfolded. Worms and maggots stewed in the mess in heavy masses. There was an audible group sigh of repugnance. Disbelief locked Addey in place. There had to be dozens mixed into that square. How many of them were shot from the ceiling a day?

Douglas explained to the dismayed crowd when the mess settled, “They’re corpses from murder scenes, leftovers of horrible car accidents, state executions, Jane and John Does and your loved ones out of caskets. Yes, get over it. It’s fucking happening, and it’s not your call. It’s not mine either. If you’re disgusted by it, shovel it down into those gutters that much faster. How else do you keep dead people happy? They eat flesh. It’s a primordial instinct. Resurrected with decaying brain matter, that’s all they can compute: eat human flesh. We’re all cavemen when it comes down to it, and they’re demented Cro-Magnons. Now get to work. The next batch is coming in,” he studied the digital clock, “twenty-five minutes. Shovel it up fast. Hurry, or else we’ll have a really big mess on our hands. You’ll be swimming in the shit if you don’t step up the work speed. Make it a game, a competition—I don’t give a fuck. Get it done!”

The group scrambled for the shovels, including Addey. She shoveled up a wad of mixed organs and dumped them down one of the four slides that channeled below them. She kept having to clear the condensation from her mask, though blood smears obscured her view.

Five minutes later, she was coated in sweat that clung to her skin in a cold gel.

I can’t keep doing this.

Eight hours a day? For how many days?

Animosity crept into her mind with the thoughts to match. Damn you, Deke. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here. High school dropout. Heroin junky. Fucking idiot.

She shoveled harder, fiercely dumping each load. She collected a mandible and a collection of tongues in one scoop, half a female torso the next time that crawled with insects and a slithering snake. The shovels penetrated wet meat in staggering unison. She breathed in the noxious odor, hoping eventually for a clean breath.

Break time was two hours away. Twenty-three minutes until the next square of compressed remains shot down.

“I can’t…do this,” she mumbled.

She was growing dizzy. She couldn’t breathe. She gasped and choked, about to hyperventilate, when a pair of hands grabbed her. “We’ve got a fainter.”

Her burning-hot breath blocked the faceplate. She couldn’t see who carried her out of the work zone and through the showers. She was pressure-hosed, pink water covering the floor and running down the drain.

“You’re going to be okay,” a man’s voice assured Addey, clutching her tight. “I have just the thing for you. This happens to all of ’em at some point. It’s no fault of your own. Death isn’t something we’re used to seeing.”

“No, it’s not,” she replied. “It’s…too much.”

“There are special ways of coping,” was his final comment.

She was carted into a room in the corner of the showers. The room was dark until an overhead lightbulb flicked on. The person removed her mask; he was Douglas. He’d already stripped from his suit. He wore only a sopping wet undershirt and a pair of boxer shorts. The room contained four lockers, one of them Douglas’s. He opened it and retrieved a vial of white powder.

“I’ve come to powder your nose.” He stuck out the tip of his tongue and bit it softly. “It’s gets your mind off of the corpses real fucking quick. What do you say?”

A surge of white-hot heat coursed up her back. Something wasn’t right. “I want to leave this island.”

“Coke will do that. Come on, I know all about you, Addey Ruanova. How else do you people work shitty jobs? You drink, you shoot up, you fuck around—we should fuck around.”

She leaned against the wall, weak in the body. The room was air-conditioned, and she breathed in as much air as she could. How did the rest of them survive? Fear, self-control or did some of them simply not care anymore?

He unzipped the back of her suit and unsnapped her bra. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”

She shook her head, unable to react quickly enough to stop him. “I don’t want you to touch me.”

“I’ll trade services. I’ve read your file. I know you. Your brother was a dope dealer. I’m sure he hooked you up. Camden, New Jersey, isn’t a walk in the park either. Piss-poor ghettos. I’m sure you’ve serviced yourself out. Imagine me as a customer, you the merchandise. You’re here forever, so why not be out of your head and feel good?”

“I said no.”

He kissed her neck. “I say yes.”

Nobody will hold it against me!

She came alive the very moment his lips touched her neck. She slammed her fist into his nose. She heard the distinct snap and shift of cartilage. Blood mushroomed from his nostrils. He stumbled three steps back and lowered to his knees, blood oozing down his face and lips.

His eyes burned into her. “You—stupid—bitch.”

He raced at her and zipped her back into the suit. “You won’t play nice, then you won’t get to play at all!”

He worked his suit back on himself, then grabbed her arm in a tight clamp. He pushed her through the door and then through the showers. “You might’ve broken my nose, but what happens to you will be worse. If you won’t be my fuck buddy, then you’ll be my example.”

She was forced back onto the work floor. Andy, the gatekeeper, opened the gates without the command being issued. A smile was in his eyes. He’d seen Douglas’s attempts at sex succeed and fail, and the man obviously enjoyed one outcome over the other.

“Show her a good time?”

“Go to hell, Andy!”

She searched for a place to run, but there were no options. As they entered the work zone, the workers were disturbed by their arrival. They watched her, nameless and faceless in their suits. Douglas twisted her arm behind her back. “Listen up, people. I tried to make this woman’s job a bit easier. All the females in the room take note: if you want hardcore narcotics, it’s perfectly legal. The cops won’t bust you. I’m your dealer. Every shift manager has access to serious shit, so if you want some, come and get it. I’m nice to you, you’re nice to me, comprehend?

“You can work the same job for months, perhaps years. I’ve supervised you bastards for nine years. Nobody’s going home. And if you think this job is bad, imagine what else you could be doing on the island complex?”

He twisted Addey’s arm. “This is Addey Ruanova. She assaulted me when I offered her drugs. When I make an offer, you be polite. She was very rude, and to assault a shift manager, that merits punishment.”

He shoved her toward the metal slide. “Down you go!”

The other workers stood by in helpless fascination.

She thrashed and tried to slip out of his hold, but it was no use. He kicked her in the back, and she tumbled to the edge. On the ground, inches from the slide, he shoved her the rest of the way down by a kick to her head. “See you in hell!”

Spinning, pivoting and speeding down the slick metal, she careened into the pit of the dead.