Zero day code, p.5
Zero Day Code, page 5
part #1 of End of Days Series
“What’s he want?” he asked.
Omar shrugged. “The fuck do I know? Travis wants what he wants, snowflake. Best get your ass moving.”
There weren’t many people in the warehouse who’d speak to Jonas like that, with such a disrespectful tone. He stood six-three and weighed in at 220 pounds of hard muscle and thick bone, and he would take no man’s insult. But Omar topped out the scale at 245, and although he was a little soft around the middle, he was a lifter—and almost surely a roid monster with it. Those guys always were. Dude was strong, fast and about ten years ago he’d been picked up by the 49ers as an undrafted free agent. But he’d fucked up his knee in a pre-season game and, long story short, these days he was running stowage for Amazon. Just like Jonas.
Except Omar was the supervisor, and Jonas was there to step ‘n’ fetch.
They had him on big box electronics this morning, as usual. Six long aisles of monster ass TV sets. Heavy amplifiers. Speakers as a tall as a grown man and just as heavy. All of them a fat bitch to lift and just as awkward to carry. He was already rank with sweat. There was no AC in the warehouse and the giant, slow-turning ceiling fans—seriously, they were as big as helicopter blades—simply pushed the hot air around. He didn’t really mind the work, even though it meant answering to Omar, or that shrieky bitch Yolanda when she was on roster. But man, it was a hard dollar when he knew that thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of peeps were hitting his podcast right the fuck now.
Yesterday morning’s pod, when he dropped the names of Pendleton’s victims, took a while to actually reach anyone – some bullshit problem with the internet. But the pod finally uploaded in the small hours of the morning. Jonas got up super early, hunched over the computer and watched his download count spike up and up and up. He was grinning like a fool when he waved Mikey off to work. He’d picked up another thirty thousand subscribers, and a quarter million one-off downloads.
Joe Rogan would be getting down on his creaky old knees to have The Centurion as a full-episode guest on his show now, not just a five-minute audio-only drop-in.
So fuck yeah, it was hard to focus on anything else with all that on Jonas’s mind. Even harder to put up with an ass chewing by Travis Tamoreau. But it would be a blessed relief to get out of the heat for a few minutes and there was a vending machine in the executive mezzanine where he could grab a few protein bars. He’d missed breakfast with all of the excitement, and he was angry-hungry.
“You gotta swipe me off,” he said to Omar.
The supervisor looked like he wanted to argue with that, but he waved a smart pen over the chip in Jonas’s bracelet and a small green light flashed twice. He was off the clock.
“You got ten minutes,” Omar said.
Murdoch’s stomach roiled and his temper flared again.
“Jesus Christ, Omar. It’ll take me that long to get there and back.”
“Better get running then. Clock’s ticking.”
Jonas knew what was happening. Omar was trying to haze him out. Get him to quit, probably so he could bring in a cousin or some homey and set them up with a cushy fucking gig. No hauling 55-inch Samsungs or Sony flatscreens for them. They’d be …
Omar smiled at him, and Jonas realised he’d already wasted precious seconds standing there, seething. He’d have to get Tamoreau to swipe him off the floor again if this took more than a few minutes.
“Asshole,” he muttered under his breath, but only after he’d pushed past the supervisor and was far enough gone to be sure he couldn’t be heard over the constant rumble and crash of operations in the giant warehouse.
Jonas jogged the half mile through rows of high metal shelves swarming with hundreds of worker drones. He wasn’t short of breath when he arrived at the steel staircase that climbed to the small, air-conditioned suite of offices reserved for management. All that cheap, off brand CrossFit. He’d barely raised his heartbeat with the effort, but he was sweating a lot more; enough that the deodorant he’d put on that morning wasn’t going to cut it. Not after four hours down on the floor.
Well fuck that anyway. These assholes knew they were running a sweat shop. Let them smell some honest fucking sweat from a hard-working American.
Moisture beaded on his forearms, giving his black tribal tattoos a glistening appearance, as if they’d been freshly painted on. His beard, kept short for safety on the floor, itched terribly, and he wiped a hand across his forehead and back through the top thatch of thick red-brown hair he’d inherited from his Irish grandmother. It came away wet and he wiped the sweat on his jeans before pressing the buzzer outside the entrance to the office suite.
You didn’t get in without the right swipe card, or a buzz-through from Cindy on the front desk. Jonas wasn’t often called upstairs, but he always made sure to charm the shit out of Cindy. She was grossly obese and ugly as a hat full of puckered assholes, but he knew from his time as a lawyer that the front desk bitch was often the true power in any business. You got them on side, and you had a mighty ally.
“Hey there, Cindysaurus.”
His ally wouldn’t look at him this morning. She blushed when he used her pet-name and muttered that he should go straight through to Mister Tamoreau’s office. Jonas’s skin tingled in the air conditioning which, felt even cooler than it had just a second ago. An autonomic response, he knew. Blood rushing away from the surface of his body because of a perceived threat. He was annoyed with himself for reacting like that, but he also knew that you couldn’t just turn off a couple of million years of evolution. A lot of idiots these days thought you could, but that’s why they were idiots.
“Thanks Cindy,” he said, keeping it light and stepping around the reception desk which guarded the inner sanctum of centre management.
Jonas had no idea what sort of shit was about to go down, but he thought he could smell it coming for him. Travis Tamoreau was a snippy little shit and nobody ever got called to his office for a compliment. Jonas settled his nerves with a few breaths. He reminded himself that he was twice the size of the shift manager, and way more than twice the man. He needed this job for now, but he did not need to grovel for it. He had a voice now. He had options.
Tamoreau’s office was an unremarkable plywood box two doors down the hallway from Cindy. The centre manager, Nadine, this Jewish bitch who always gave you the impression that you smelled bad, was up in Seattle, where she spent as much time as possible, leaving ops on the floor to her deputy, Tamoreau. Jonas rapped on his office door and waited to be summoned. Tamoreau was that sort of boss. He looked up from his laptop, saw Jonas, went back to the screen where Very Important Stuff was obviously happening. He kept typing just long enough for it to become uncomfortable. Jonas was definitely gonna need another swipe off for his bracelet, but Tamoreau didn’t care. He kept working that keyboard.
Probably refining his profile on Grindr, Jonas thought, with a private smirk.
The centre’s deputy ops manager was a fastidious dresser. French cuffs, Italian silk ties, Hugo Boss suits always cut so tightly the fabric looked like it could scream. He was fit. Jonas would give him that. But it was the taut and nervy muscle tone of the niche queen spin class addict. Half an hour in the box at CrossFit would probably kill him. Fuck, there were chicks in Jonas’ gym who could probably kill him by grabbing a wedgie and tossing Tamoreau around like a human kettle bell.
Jonas, trying not to snicker at the idea, contented himself with imagining this guy trying to flip a truck tire the length of the box. Dude would totally ruin his manicure. He wondered how many new subscribers he had to the pod since he checked it earlier that morning.
Tamoreau finished whatever he was doing on the laptop, shut the lid and gestured to a moulded plastic chair in front of his desk. Except for this guy’s outfit and cologne, everything in the office looked like it had been bought at a government auction. Even the laptop was some low budget shitbox from Dell.
“Sit down, Murdoch,” Tamoreau said.
A sit down meeting? Jonas was definitely gonna need another swipe off for his bracelet.
He took the chair, which was slightly cracked where one of the legs flowed into the plastic seat. It put him on edge, waiting for the thing to collapse under his weight. He leaned forward an inch and casually braced his legs, ready to stand up if the chair did suddenly give way.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I’ve had a complaint,” Tamoreau said. “Sexual harassment.”
“Well maybe you should keep your hands to yourself,” Jonas grinned. It was his boyish grin. The one which had been getting him out of trouble all his life.
Tamoreau did not return the smile.
“Two female stowers have made written complaints about you commenting on their appearance. Their supervisor corroborates the accounts.”
Time stopped for a whole second, before accelerating back into motion.
Jonas was confused and genuinely at a loss. He was always very careful to keep his opinions to himself at work. His opinions, after all, were dangerous. So, as much as he thought Cindy out there in reception looked like a beached whale, or Yolanda had a face like a smashed crab, he would never…
“The stowers claim you were offline when you harassed them.”
Jonas felt his scalp prickle and his balls actually move as though trying to contract into his body. All the triumphs of the morning were forgotten.
This wasn’t about him telling his bro Eightball that Yolanda got the super’s gig because her ass wouldn’t fit between the stacks.
This was about the two Dutch girls hired on last week. Pure bred smokin’ hotties, the pair of them, and fashwave fans with it. Or at least he’d thought so. Coming back from what was laughably called his lunch break, Jonas had diverted to help them move a pallet of sous vide machines when they were falling behind on their quota. He’d complemented one of the girls, Anya or Anika or something, on her musical taste. Bitch’s tits were really filling out a Xurious tee-shirt.
Was that it?
That was all it took? Being nice to someone?
“Look, I er…” he started, but Tamoreau held up one hand. His cufflinks looked like they’d cost more than Jonas made in a month.
“I’m not interested in reasons, excuses or justifications. The company has a zero-tolerance policy for harassment.”
“But I didn’t harass anyone,” Jonas protested. And he hadn’t either. If Jonas Murdoch harassed you, nobody would be in any doubt about it, least of all him. “Is this about those Dutch chicks? Came on last week? All I did was help them keep up and… and… I dunno, one of them had a cool tee shirt. You don’t see a lot of Xurious fans in the wild. I told her she looked cool and she was cool. Xurious is awesome, man.”
Tamoreau’s face took on a baffled expression, but it was fleeting. He shook off his disorientation, literally, blinking a couple of times and shaking his head as if he’d just walked into a spider web. He opened a drawer and took out a manila folder. It was thin. Five or six sheets of paper nestled inside. Jonas saw that three of the sheets were covered in blocks of text and had been signed. Statements? Two others looked like spreadsheets for a box ticking exercise.
“Is it the case that on Wednesday last week, at or about thirteen hundred and thirty hours, that’s 1.30 PM, you were offline from your assigned sector?”
“I know what thirteen-thirty hours means, Travis. And I told you, I was helping the new girls. They were having trouble keeping up. Everyone has trouble when they start. And if they don’t pick it up, you fire them. Or the labour hire firm does.”
The fuse on his temper was burning hot now. He couldn’t believe they were going to do him this way. It had to be Yolanda and Omar. They cooked this shit up for sure.
“So you can confirm you were offline outside of your lunch break?” Tamoreau continued.
“I can confirm I was ahead of my quota. I’m always ahead my quota.”
“We’re not here to discuss that,” Tamoreau said sharply. “We’re talking about your behaviour, your attitude and your treatment of your fellow workers and line management. It has been an ongoing issue. This is not the first complaint.”
The fuse burned brighter and faster.
“Oh so you’re suddenly concerned about the workers now, Travis? You gonna stop docking us for the time we gotta stand in line waiting for a full body search to check that we’re not stealing some two-dollar Chinese USB cable? Every time we go to the can?”
The fuse was short now.
“You gonna tell that asshole Omar to stop bitching out everyone who takes more than ten minutes for their totally fucking unpaid half-hour lunch break?”
The fuse burned down to detonation.
“You should be begging me to work here, not fucking with me so Yolanda can sneak in some bestie as an affirmative action hire.”
Jonas stood up so quickly that the cheap plastic chair flew across the room and struck a filing cabinet behind him with a dull, metallic crash.
Tamoreau paled. His vice stammered.
“You… you need to calm down, or I’ll have to call security.”
“Call ‘em,” Jonas barked. “See if I care. See if they can get here before I get across that fucking desk to you.”
Tamoreau’s face completely drained of colour and his hand reached for the phone next to his laptop.
He never made it.
Not because of Jonas.
The alarms that went off all over the warehouse stopped him dead.
Interlude
Lu Huang woke, as always, well before dawn. He rekindled the coals in the kitchen hearth, boiled water, and carefully measured a small handful of dry green leaves into the same ceramic pot in which he’d been brewing his morning tea for over thirty years. It was identical to the pot he’d used for twenty years before that, but he had broken the earlier pot after stubbing his toe on a small rock, which had definitely not been sticking up out of the rammed earth floor of his hut when he’d blown out the candle the previous night. Probably the goat had dug it up, looking for something to eat.
The goat was also long gone. It went into a cook pot many years after its trickery with the treacherous, toe-stubbing rock in the kitchen. It was an old beast by then, tough and stringy even after many long hours of simmering over the coals in a blood soup, but Lu Huang had savoured every bite. Digging holes in Mr. Huang’s earthen floor was not the least of that diabolical animal’s many sins and it was good to have revenge at last.
Shuffling about in the deep darkness before the first hint of daybreak, Lu Huang was surprised to find himself missing the animal. But perhaps it was not so surprising. As the end of his life drew near, Lu Huang found himself missing the old ways and things ever more painfully. There was his wife, dead of the wasting sickness before he had even stubbed his toe and dropped that old tea pot. His children, moved away to Shenzen and raising a child of their own now. He was a spoiled little dumpling of a boy whom Mr Huang might see but once a year—if his feckless son could be bothered to make the two-day train journey to their home province, far from the bright lights of the seaboard cities. Lu Huang missed the life of the village, which was a good deal smaller than it had once been. He missed his friends who were dying even faster than he, or moving away as the river dried up and the soil turned grey.
He missed the soil of his youth.
It had been a deeply fertile here on the banks of the river, almost chocolatey brown earth; good for all manner of vegetables and even fruit in the short summer months.
Lu Huang shook his old head, muttering darkly. Summer seemed to get longer each year. Longer and hotter, and less agreeable to the fragile peach trees for which the valley of Lo Pung had been famous since the days of the Yuan Dynasty. Lu Huang did not grow peaches himself. He preferred the steady work of market gardening, raising multiple crops of bokchoi and snake beans every year. Unfortunately, the valley’s famously rich soil, and predictable seasons of rain and flood, were not as they had once been. Not nearly so rich. And not at all predictable, unless you were to predict that nothing would go well and only the worst of the fates were to be relied upon. Lu Huang wore a pained expression as he brewed his tea.
As the tea steeped, he unwrapped the small rice puddings he had made for himself the previous day. He ate them with his fingers because nobody was watching, and in truth there was nobody left to care enough for Lu Huang for him to care either. A rooster crowed somewhere nearby, calling forth a reply from a barking dog, but that was the only sound for miles around. He was alone at this hour. He was always alone.
When the tea had drawn its full strength, the old farmer poured a cup for himself and savoured the steam rising from the heavy mug. When you had so little to enjoy in the world, it was important to take what comfort you could from the simpler pleasures of life. A properly brewed cup of tea. A shoulder which was not paining you nearly so much as normal. The quiet hope that things might yet turn for the better.
The merest tincture of grey dawn had crept into the deep blackness of the dead man’s hour when Lu Huang finished his meagre breakfast. He rinsed out his tea mug in the bucket of water he’d drawn from the village well late yesterday afternoon. From a peg on the back of the kitchen door, he took down the wide brimmed straw hat that would protect him from the sun’s fierce glare in the coming hours. He stepped into the cheap sandals that waited on the back step. Closed the door behind him and took a deep breath.
He could smell diesel from the small factory which had swallowed up the farms of Xi Peng and Hua Fong two years ago, and beneath that stench, the chickenshit he spread on his own garden vegetable patch. But mostly he smelled diesel. Lu Huang had a considerable walk to the fields where he tended his crop. With there being no sense in delaying the moment, he set off. As a younger man, with a beautiful wife and a new-born son to provide for, he had run to those fields every day, covering the distance in less than ten minutes. Now he shuffled and would be lucky to arrive in less than half an hour.
It did not matter.
The fields were not going anywhere.
