James Hynes: Kings of Infinite Space

“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.