Michael looked down at the table, sweating freely, his face turned ghostly white. Kyle looked as if he were ready to drag our friend out of his chair and beat him to a pulp. I didn’t know what to think. Part of me wanted to believe that what this psycho man said was just a lie, but Michael’s reaction reaffirmed that it wasn’t.
“So my question for you, sir, is where is my friend Michael? Because you and I both know, you’re not Michael Hoskins.”
Chapter 21
Twenty God damn years.
“Michael Hoskins was a rotten son-of-a–bitch,” our friend Michael, or whatever his name was, said from behind the bars.
We had been escorted by the black troopers to a cozy jail cell, complete with metal beds, metal toilets, and no privacy. There was only a back wall. The other three walls were nothing but bars.
“People were pawns to him. He treated everybody like shit. His family hated him. His friends were scared of him. He was a womanizer, and his wife knew it.
His tickets for this place didn’t even include his wife and three kids. They were for him, and whoever he needed to get him to this place. Can you believe that? He left his family to die!” Michael was pacing the cell rapidly in anger.
“I was an accountant in his building. We were all told that if we left early, then we’d be fired. You know, during that first day when the news reports first started to hit. I had a wife and kid; they needed me to be employed. Things were bad enough in this economy without being unemployed as well. That bastard actually had one of the interns from the third flood standing by the elevator, writing down people’s names as they left early that day. They knew they’d be fired, but they left anyway. They were smarter than I was. Many of us stayed, and most of us probably died!”
He stopped for several moments, panting for air. He curled up on the metal bed that protruded from the concrete wall.
I was in a separate cell across from him. Kyle was in the cell next to me. There was another man next to Kyle. He was lying on the bed, and had not said anything since we arrived.
Staring off into space, Michael continued in a distant voice.
“The Internet had basically jammed up in the building. I really couldn’t see what was going on. I would have left. Seriously, I would have tried to get home. I really didn’t understand how bad it was. I was in the middle of a cube farm, and nowhere near a window.”
I knew the cube farm well. They were the norm for the modern businessman in the twenty-first century. The mention of them made my stomach queasy. Michael continued endlessly, rambling on. I was glaring at him from my cell, livid with the shit that he’d pulled over on us. He was up pacing around, my eyes following him accusingly.
“I knew he had some sort of backup. He trusted me with his personal accounts. Every month I would see a bill come through for a company called Avalon. The name Gordon Green was all over it. Evacuation Emergency Contingency Fund. That was the name of the fund where the dollars came from to pay for it. We were a public company. It took some fancy accounting to make sure nobody could trace that personal expenditure back to him. I was good at it. I was always good at erasing financial problems. That’s why he liked me.”
Again, he paused, sticking his arms through the cell bars, never making eye contact with us. I guess he felt like he owed us an explanation.
“I got a call late in the day.” His voice was low, almost pitiful. “My wife had told me that Toby had been bitten by one of those things and was burning up with a fever. She begged me to get home. I told her I’d be off of work in an hour. I was on the phone with her when Toby turned and went after her. She dropped the phone.” Tears began streaming down his cheeks like little rivers.
I managed a look at Kyle. If what he was now saying was the truth, this was some intense shit. We both knew that much. Everybody has someone they want to get back to.
“I remember screaming for her over the phone,” Michael blurted emotionally. “I was in the middle of the cube farm, screaming for her. I felt stupid, screaming like that. What would everybody think? She never picked the phone back up. That’s when I stood up, and saw that I was the last person there. I was so caught up on my work, so intent on making Michael happy, I let my family die! All for him. All in the name of Michael Hoskins.” The name was spat with such vehemence that it gave me the chills.
“He deserved what he got,” Michael grumbled wiping impatiently to dry his cheeks.
I could see him clenching his fists. There was a look of pure hatred in his eyes.
“When I started towards his office, I had not intended to do what I did. There was no malice, no preconceived notions. I just wanted to tell him what he had done. Tell him that I could not get home to my family now. I wanted him to understand.” Michael’s voice was low, slightly hoarse from regret and sorrow. He was taking in deep breaths, his chest heaving slowly as he tried to steady himself.
“His door was open. I stepped in, not knocking. I had worked there for twenty years. Every time I entered his office, I had knocked on that door. Unaware that I was there, he continued to fill up a metal briefcase with some sort of documents and cash that he was pulling from a wall safe. I got his attention. He was surprised to see me, and asked what the hell I was still in the office for.” Michael threw up his arms in furious exasperation. He asked the question again, and then let out a short roar.
“What was I still in the office for? I guess I didn’t get the fucking memo to leave. I restrained myself, and told him that I was just finishing up the day. But I was shaking so hard. I was so pissed that I couldn’t see straight. Maybe it was something in my voice, or maybe the look in my face. Either way, that’s when he knew he was in trouble. He knew it before I did. The real Hoskins stopped what he was doing and looked at me. His puffy, red-rimmed eyes had a way of making you believe him.
“You’ve been a good worker. A loyal servant to this company. Hoskins told me. Don’t ruin a ten year career over one bad day.”
“Twenty, I had reminded him.”
“What?”
“Twenty Goddamn years, I said. I’ve been here for twenty Goddamn years.”
I had often wondered what I would be like after twenty years on the work force. I had done it for maybe ten after college and was already going a bit nuts. Double it… and you turn into this guy. I watched Michael shake his head deliberately.
“When I charged him, he crouched down in a low center of gravity sort of position. He had apparently been trained in some sort of martial art. Using my own momentum, he flung me up into the air. I landed stomach first onto his oversized desk, knocking paper, pens and the metal briefcase on the floor. He stood over me, saying, that I was weak and pathetic. He started in on me about how I was always doing what I was told, not standing up for myself. That was the real reason why I would never amount to anything, because I was afraid to take chances. That bastard said that I had a sad existence. Can you believe that son-of-a-bitch?”
Michael looked at me in outraged disbelief; all I could do was stare at him. I hated my fat bastard boss, but his piece of rotten shit boss sounded like a genuine scumbag. Michael held the bars of his cell in a death grip, his remaining knuckles bright white.
“It was the last thing that bastard said to me,” he snarled.
“I had a pen in my hand. I’ve thought about this since that day. I like to think that it was a BIC, and not a real expensive pen. I would just relish in the thought that I took that son-of-a-bitch out with the cheapest pen on the planet. I like to think that he was killed buy something cheap and disposable.