Everyone's Favorite Girl (16 page)

“I’ll come see you tonight,” I said, not even sure if I meant it.

“Please,” he said.

I replayed that word in my head as I rode the elevator back down to Level A.  Shaky, tired,
old
-sounding.  He must have lived in misery this past month.

Back in the warehouse, I was somewhat surprised to find all the girls sitting
on their pallets, many of them hugging their pillows, their only belongings.  They gave off the same vibe Patton did: exhaustion, gloom, numbness.

I didn’t even have to call their attention.  They were all watching me.  Not a whisper arose.

“Girls,” I said, “I want you all to lie down and go back to sleep.  I’ll wake you up at ten, we’ll have a short work day, and then you’ll all get to go back to your rooms.”

A wave of murmurs spread throughout the crowd.  “Really?” and “Oh
my gosh” and other squeals of excitement.  Mostly I heard, “Patton!”

When
the buzz settled, I said, “Things are going to be okay now, I promise.  Get some sleep, girls.”

As I turned away, the eldest Flora, who
sat near the front with some of the youngest girls, stood facing the group and held up three fingers, then two, then one.  When she dropped her hand, she spun around to face me and all the girls chimed at once, “Thank you Melissa!”

~ ~ ~ ~

With all the girls sleeping in a cluster in the corner of the warehouse, I expected silence to ensue, but slowly it dawned on me that I could still hear activity somewhere at the other end.

I followed the sound through a few aisles and then through a wide open doorway into a smaller room with what I can only describe as equipment for an industrial laboratory.
  Here I found half a dozen men and women in lab coats and goggles, scampering around with clipboards, and two older men with clean, brand-new tool belts around their waists, though they were dressed for the office.  I’d be surprised if either of them had touched any of their tools today.

A buzzer went off and a conveyor belt rolled a barrel out from a big metal box.  Where it came to a stop, two men stood on a small platform to hoist the barrel onto a pallet.  This completed the pallet, so one of the men jumped down off the platform and moved it with the forklift.  Six pallets were already lined up by the entrance.  This made seven.

One of the lab techs approached me holding a small notebook and pen.  When he began to scribble instead of speak, I realized it was Damien, the mute who I’d last seen masturbating on the lobby floor the night Patton and I returned to the ruins of Indianapolis.

Damien held up his notebook and I read:

Hello Melissa.

Production has begun.

Please send workers to

move pallets.

“Damien,” I said, noting how surprised he looked that I remembered his name, “I sent the girls back to bed until ten.  They’re dog-tired and they’re going to need a good breakfast before they start work.  Why don’t you guys just do your thing until you don’t have any room left, and then take a break?  I’ll order breakfast.  We’ll all sit down together to eat.”

Damien scribbled again, held it up:

Will there be pancakes?

I laughed out loud, and Damien’s tiny lips curled up at the corners.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

~ ~ ~ ~

I ordered so much food it took Liu, Sean, and Sean’s guards to deliver it all in one load.  Liu tried to stick around, eager to be surrounded by young, pretty Favorite Girls—eager to get all that attention.  I had to shoo her away, which took some insistence.  It was quarter till ten, almost time to wake the girls.

When she finally stormed o
ff, I used the device from Flora’s arm to spike a glass pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice with the Love Drug.

Then I walked across the warehouse to the lab and instructed Damien to halt production and report to the break room.

Damien shook his head and began to scribble in his notebook, but I turned away and went back to wait on them.  I began to fear they were ignoring me, but halfway back to the break room I heard machines shutting down one by one, rendering what I thought was a silent air completely dead.

By the time I got close enough to smell the food, I heard their footsteps.  Fast-paced.  They were trying to catch up with me for fear of being considered tardy.

The six lab techs filed in one by one, four men and two women, all young.  Behind Damien, who entered last, came the two men with tool belts over their dress pants.

“Who are you guys?” I asked.

One of them smiled and cocked his chin out arrogantly.  “I’m Grey,” he said.  “This is Eddie.  We built this lab.”

“You mean you read off assembly instructions and watched these guys build it?”

The two girls smiled timidly, staring down at the platters of hot, fragrant food.

“Supervising a project like this—”

“You two can go.  You’re no longer needed.”

The s
mile persisted.  “You don’t mind if we have breakfast first.”

Mr. Grey would not fall from grace.  Neither would his quiet friend.  We seemed to have a lot of their type in this company.  Just another James.  Just another wannabe Sean.

“This is a staff meeting, so no, you can’t have breakfast.  Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“I’ll be telling James about this,” Grey said.

“Do that,” I said.  “Right now, actually, and when you’re done send him down here.  But you two stay gone.  You don’t work down here anymore.”

With that, they left.

The lab techs just stood there, waiting for me to tell them what to do.  I was beginning to wonder if I even needed to drug them.

“Good morning everyone.  I think I’ve met you all before, but in case not my name is Melissa and I’m going to be running things down here from now on.  First order of business, let’s eat some
freakin’ food.”

I’d set up the disposable plates, silverware, and napkins at the end of the table near the door
.  I stood at the other end, where I’d lined up 2-liters of soda, half-gallons of milk, and a few different blends of juices.

Damien was first in line.
  When he approached me with a plate domed over with pancakes, he held up his notebook to show me the note he’d scribbled earlier:

When you shut down

you
lose a full batch.

That made me a little nervous.  I began to wonder how much money that cost the company, what Mr. Shriver would do if he found out.  Ridiculous, when you consider I was about to do something much, much worse.

“It’s okay,” I reassured him.  “This has all been approved.”

I poured him a glass of orange juice and he walked over to a table, sat, and began dousing his pancakes with syrup.

The two girls were next.  They each had a single biscuit, a single strip of bacon, and a small handful of strawberries and blueberries.  When I handed them their orange juice, they smiled and ducked their heads and thanked me.

The remaining three young men were all quiet, antisocial types.  No eye-contact, no emotional expression.  I couldn’t tell if they were nervous, pissed off, or high as a kite.

When it came to the last one, he declined his orange juice.

“No thanks,” he said.  “Citrus upsets my stomach.  I’ll just have milk.”

“The milk is for the girls,” I said.  “You guys get orange juice.”

“Water then.”

“There’s no water either.”

He pointed.  “There’s a sink right over there.”

“You’re really going to drink tap water?”

“Yes,” he said, “if you’ll let me by.”

“You don’t need water,” I said.  “Just take the damn orange juice and stop being a baby.”

Several people laughed.  I hadn’t noticed they were all staring at me with wide eyes and open-mouthed smiles.  They’d all had their medicine.

The lab tech with stomach issues turned back and saw them
, and when his eyes met again with mine I could tell he knew what I’d done.

And that he was next.

I tossed the drink in his face and he doubled over, crying about his eyes.

But only for a moment.  He quickly stood and, with the same silly smile, began to marvel over me.

Now that I had everyone’s attention, I made my announcement:

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will
not
be producing and shipping out barrels of the Libido Drug.  Instead, we will ship out barrels full of water.”

This is normally the part when some brave and wise soul—Damien, perhaps, with his scribbling—steps up to inform me that I’m going to get us all killed, but that didn’t happen.

They all just nodded.

“If anyone comes snooping around down here, though, we tell them we’re shipping Libido.  Got it?”

“Got it,” they all chimed.

“And not a word of it to the girls,” I added.  “I’m
gonna go wake them.”

Along the way, I thought about how to tell Judy she had six more peop
le to keep drugged every day.

~ ~ ~ ~

By three o’clock, the girls and I had a semi-trailer stacked to the ceiling with barrels of water on pallets.  I told them it was time to call it a day, and I began taking them in groups up to Level D, as many as I could fit in the elevator at a time.

The older Glow Girls piled in first, pushing their way to the front of the line, wary of getting stuck in the elevator with a bunch of Frog Girls.  I preferred to surprise Patton with an assortment of them, but that was due to my prejudice, not his.  Patton loved these girls equally, no matter their behavior and personality.  After all, they
were
made to be that way.

When we reached Level D, I took the Glow Girls to the cafeteria.  After a hard day’s work even the Glow Girls, who ate like birds, were hungry.

On the third trip, a mix of Frogs, Giggles, and a few Floras, I ran into Ms. Lane at the cafeteria entrance.  She had tears streaming down her wrinkly cheeks.

“Is this permanent?” she asked.

“They still have to work in the warehouse every day,” I told her, “but now they get to come back up here when they’re done.”

She gave me a tender, bony hug and started to walk away.

“Where’s Patton?” I asked.

“In his apartment.  When the school day ends, he locks himself in there and doesn’t come out till morning.”

Disturbing, but at least it meant I could sneak all the Favorite Girls back up here and surprise him with the whole gang all at once.

The last batch was mostly preteen and early teenage Vampires and Floras, with a single ten-year-old Diamond Girl.  We barely fit, and after half a dozen trips I was quite annoyed when the elevator stopped on Level C.

As the door opened, I said, with an obvious twinge of impatience, “There’s no room, you’ll have to wait.”

I had to wedge myself between two Vampires to see who it was.

Kate, looking haggard—maybe even drunk?

The doors tried to close but she put her hand out.

“There’s no
room
, Kate.  You’ll have to wait.”

“I need on now,” she said.  “Someone can get off
and wait here.”

“Take your hand off the door.”

“No.”

Power doesn’t come with a title or a keycard.  It’s something you have to develop.  It didn’t matter that I’d been personally sanctioned by Mr. Shriver himself.  Kate would destroy herself if it meant hurting me.

Pushing my way to the doors, I lunged at Kate and threw her back so hard she landed on her ass.  I grabbed her by the hair and dragged her across the lobby kicking and screaming.

“Take the elevator to Level D and go to the cafeteria!” I called out to the girls.

I continued to yank at Kate’s hair, sometimes dragging her and sometimes just spinning her around in a circle, until the elevator closed.

“Bitch!” Kate was crying.  “Let me
go!”

I let go and she crawled away, leaving a clump of hair in my hand.

That was when I noticed I had an audience.  Lab techs, a janitor, two of the cafeteria ladies, and Sean, who stood at the back hallway entrance, hands in his pockets.

I approached him, happy to remove myself from the blubbering, screeching mess on the floor.

“What did you do to piss your brother off?” I asked him, wadding Kate’s hair into a ball.

“Nothing.”

“It wasn’t the fact that you were selling Favorite Girls for employees’ paychecks?”

He shrugged.

“What’s he got you doing now?” I asked.