Woohoo! I'm finally getting back into this story. It feels like I might actually reach my goal for finishing this. There are sixteen chapters left, so I decided to double update to keep up before December comes and I panic. How exciting! :D
Thanks for the reviews, CheetosPotato and ScipioPB! You guys sure are quick to the punch. Thanks!
Oh, P.S. forgot to say Happy Anniversary to this story. Can't believe it's been a year already!
Emergency 101
Vaughn listlessly knocked the bubbled decal of the vending machine a few times before losing energy and using his head. He repeatedly and rhythmically dropped his forehead against the 'Out of Order' sign. "Terry… gimme a… coke…"
"Oh, hung over, are we?" The snide machine asked in a haughty, self-righteous voice.
"No…" he sniffed.
"Having too much fun, that's what it sounds like," the Coca-Cola logo reprimanded.
Vaughn blinked slowly in a daze. His nose was rosy red, and his tie was crooked. Even his silver hair seemed to be dimmed to a dull grey. "I'm sick. Give me the coke, or I'll cough on you."
"Oh," it said. "Well, that's a different story."
The coke clamored out, rolling out into the dispense tray as promised. Vaughn sluggishly bent and grabbed it. He shuffled off towards the elevator.
"Get better, son," Terry said from within the vending machine.
"Yeah, yeah…" Vaughn grumbled, smacking the up arrow.
After enduring the agonizing elevator ride, Vaughn stumbled out of the automatic doors. His head was throbbing at every little thing, and it wasn't helping that today seemed to be another noisy day. A stapler went flying over Vaughn's head, and somebody screamed. Yeah, just like any other day at the office.
"Hey, Vaughn, you're late again! You're – oh. Are you sick?" Molly's attitude took a 180 as she studied his pale face from her seat. She stood and put a hand to his forehead, which he tolerated. "Hm… you have a slight fever. Why'd you come in?"
"Out of sick days," he said, coughing into his elbow.
"Right…" she bit her lip, remembering his fishing trip back in fall. Their company wasn't so strict as to only allow one sick day, but Vaughn had played hooky multiple times, and that fishing trip was his last day to blow for the next eight months until it would reset. Molly looked around. "Is there anything I can do? Get for you?"
"Nah… It's just a cold," Vaughn sniffed again, prepared to trudge off to his desk.
"Oh, I've got a Healthy Choice soup you can have! I can make that for you. Would you like that?" Molly asked. She sounded like she was talking to a pet, but Vaughn somehow found it rather endearing.
He smiled. "Yeah, actually, that'd be great. Thanks, Molly."
"No problem! You go sit down. I'll have it at your desk in five, sir!" She saluted merrily and sped off with her microwavable, to-go cup of low sodium chicken noodle.
Vaughn did as he was told and carefully sat back into his swivel chair. He didn't have three seconds to himself to open his briefcase when Gill was briskly clipping some notecards against his desk opposite him. Vaughn hadn't been able to look at him the same since the discovery at Sully's, but he seemed to be the only one from the night who wasn't too hung over the next day to remember it. No one was asking, and Gill was pretending like nothing happened at all. Unless he genuinely forgot… though Vaughn doubted that.
"It's so selfish when people like you come into work sick," Gill said, his nose in the air but obviously trying not to breathe or else inhale Vaughn's germs. "You're a threat to us all! You should be in quarantine."
"Yeah, good morning, too, asshole," Vaughn snapped, not in the mood for his pious attitude. He roughly typed in his login and waited for his computer to load on the welcome screen. "And I wouldn't have to be here if I wasn't out of sick days."
"Then you foolishly wasted them yourself. It is no fault of mine you slacked and now karma has caught up with you," Gill shrugged, eying his own monitor with an air of smugness.
Vaughn coughed into his elbow and noticed Gill's sharp intake of breath and recoil. He grinned and coughed again, watching as Gill writhed and tried to hide behind his desk. "Yeah, I'd shut up, too."
"Got your soup! Careful – it's really hot," Molly approached and placed the cup on his desk. She popped the lid back onto it, so it was easy to drink.
"Thanks. This was really nice," Vaughn nodded sincerely, taking up the soup and holding it for the warmth. He looked to Gill's sour expression, watching Vaughn like he was ticking time bomb. "Actually, I'm feeling better already."
"What's this? Service?" Allen leered over the top of his cubicle.
"I'm sick," Vaughn repeated the news, though he didn't bother to swivel around to face him.
"Sick? Vaughn's sick?" Rod popped up next.
"You okay, man?" Dan rose from his pillow, folding his arms across it.
"I've got a tissue box you can have," Louis gifted the lavender box to him.
"Lemme see your throat! I know what a sore throat looks like," Luke insisted, trying to pry open his iron shut jaw.
"You can have this lollipop if you're good!" Tina held up a red sucker for him.
"Is there anything I can get for you, sir?" Basil volunteered, itching at his shock collar.
"I have a blanket you can borrow," Alice offered a plaid throw she used on her legs under her desk during the cold winter months.
"Don't you people realize you're spreading the contagion?! Get away from him, and go back to work!" Gill wailed.
Hamilton's office door opened before Vaughn could agree with Gill for once. The boss looked over everyone before him, gathered together as if they could read his mind. Or rather, his e-mail. "Why, hello, everyone! What a pleasant surprise to see everyone so on task! To the conference room! Hut, hut! We've another visitor!"
Cloaked in Alice's blanket and holding his soup, Vaughn filed into the conference room along with everyone else. Molly carried the box of tissues and a small waste basket to place next to him in case he needed it. All of the attention and care, especially from everyone in the office, was more than a little bizarre. But it was familial… in a completely dysfunctional and often creepy way.
No one was surprised to see it was Popuri yet again, but they were curious as to what for. The pinkette calmly fluffed her frizzy locks as she waited for all of the employees to find seats and make themselves comfortable.
"Oh, no! Wait, wait, wait!" Popuri suddenly called out in a Snow White-esque trill. She tittered over to Hamilton and took him by the arm before he could sit down beside Alice, who was silently holding her chest in relief. "I have a special seat for you, Mr. Hamilton!"
"Oh. How lovely! Lead on, baby cakes," Hamilton allowed himself to be escorted to the front of the room. Popuri led him to a lone chair in the corner where four pairs of handcuffs were waiting. She roughly shoved him into it, and with lightning fast reflexes, shackled his ankles and wrists to the arms and legs of the chair. Hamilton accepted this with a sense of adventure. "Ooo! This is new!"
"There!" Popuri smiled triumphantly, hands on her hips as she proudly looked over her handiwork. Hamilton attempted to move and then stand, but both actions forced him into his seat or to lean precariously forward. Popuri flipped her hair over her head and beamed at the others in the room. "Well! Now we may safely proceed!"
"I wonder if she'll let us keep that set up…" Rod whispered hopefully to Louis who shrugged in return.
Popuri wove her hands behind her back and began to pace. "You all know why I'm here today."
"Late Valentine's gift," Allen guessed. He puckered his lips.
She silently cursed for forgetting a handcuff chair for the pervy red head. She snapped her fingers. "No. Just… no. I'm here because of the recent events that took place here when your sector was trapped overnight in this office building. So! We'll be discussing what to do in an emergency."
Vaughn coughed and blew his nose. He purposely sat as close to Gill as he could get, and the blond squeaked in fear as he threw his used tissue into the trash next to his chair. Gill physically picked up his seat and hobbled further away, almost squishing Tina's toes in the process. She retaliated by elbowing him in the gut. She received a high five from Dan as Gill crippled.
"Order. First and foremost, an office needs order to function," Popuri lectured. "We keep order in emergency situations… how?"
Basil raised his hand. "Shock collars."
The severity of his tone startled her. Popuri jumped back. "Um… I was going to say… charts! We have maps posted with instructions at two places on the office floor. Can anyone tell me where those are?"
"Bathrooms. Reading material," Dan volunteered his guess.
Popuri facepalmed. She should have expected this from them. "No! There is one by the door to the stairwell, and the second is beside the elevator. Now! These charts detail the layout of the building and what to do in case of fire, power outage, or other similar emergency. What happened here on February the second was just such an emergency situation. How it was handled though… needs to be dealt with. Who can tell me what went wrong? What was the one thing that was not done correctly?"
"We didn't have an axe," Luke said this like it was the most obvious choice.
"An axe," Popuri repeated. She didn't believe this new level of stupidity.
"Yeah," Luke shrugged, hands in his pockets and slouching in his seat.
Popuri's forehead turned scarlet as her temper rose. "Why? Why?! Because… because you would need it to defend yourselves? Oh, no! I know! You want an axe so you can kill everyone. Then you would eat them to survive. Is that it? WAS THAT WHY YOU WANTED AN AXE?!"
Luke blinked at her. "Actually, I was going to say if we had an emergency axe, we could've totally gotten out of here. Broken a door or some shit."
There were nods of agreement throughout the room. They turned to her for a reaction to this sensible logic.
"No!" Popuri stomped her foot. "When you're trapped in the building overnight, you don't turn into animals and bang on the expensive glass windows, nor do you destroy the vending machine and raid it like the homeless! YOU PICK UP A PHONE."
There was a collective 'oh' of realization. Indeed, no one had thought of this solution.
Popuri cleared her throat, gaining back some of her temper. "No one bothered to call. There was power. Oh, we got the electric bill from your little sleepover! Not a call to headquarters, not to the snow plow patrol, not even the police."
Vaughn decided to start balling up unused tissues and tossed them at Gill to freak him out. Mission accomplished, as Gill was furiously dodging them thinking them germ bombs and looking quite disheveled from the work out.
As they were wondering if Popuri had some sort of personal vendetta against them, she balled her fists and grabbed a stack of flyers from atop her briefcase. "Now! We're going to review proper emergency procedure. What is the first thing you do in an earthquake?"
Luke was unfortunately the first to speak. "Get the emergency axe from—"
"THERE IS NO AXE!" She shrilled, throwing the papers at him and scattering them down and around like rain atop his head.
"I think we broke her…" Alice whispered to Allen who solemnly agreed.
"We are going to simulate a simple fire drill. Everyone get into a single file line, and we will proceed to the first floor. Where do we line up once outside according to our emergency procedure chart?" She asked. Her eyes though said 'get this wrong, and I'll eat you whole.' No one answered.
"Personally," Hamilton piped up from the corner. His cuffs rattled. "I would free me first… before proceeding… down the stairs."
"Off we go! Up, up, up!" Popuri cheerily coached them like an elementary school teacher. Though to her defense, there was really no other way to treat this group. "We will lead by example!"
"Will you be okay?" Molly asked, helping Vaughn to his feet.
"I'm not dying… Though I'd like to convince Gill it's terminal and extremely contagious, it's just a cold," he answered, his smile stretching at her excessive worry.
Molly hummed under her breath as they all trooped down the stairs. They had to leave their coats behind since it was taking too long jumbling by the door. Molly was already holding her shoulders in anticipation for the cold. "This is a really bad time to ask you this…"
"You're calling in a favor. That's your favor voice," Vaughn accused, their voices echoing in the stairwell along with their chatty co-workers and all of their stomping shoes.
"I have a favor voice?" Molly asked wryly, surprised to discover this.
"Go ahead…" he rolled his eyes.
She wrung her hands and focused on her marching feet. "Well… it's about my cat. Remember how you said you'd help me bury him?"
"Yeah…" Vaughn remembered how awkward that had been. He frowned and tugged Alice's blanket closer around his shoulders. "But I thought you cremated him. You going to bury ashes?"
"No! Not exactly…" she admitted.
They reached the lobby, and everyone already outside was whining about the freezing air. The second they passed the door, a nasty wind rocketed by them like a roller coaster. Hair was thrown in the wild torrent, and talking became nearly impossible without shouting over the rush.
"I want to spread his ashes!" Molly called, holding her hair away from her mouth. "In the park! But it doesn't have to be soon! Just whenever you're better!"
"Isn't that illegal?" Vaughn asked, his voice weaker and hoarse from his cold.
"Kind of!" Molly shouted back as they passed the parked cars and meandered their way to the sidewalk. "But who's it hurting?"
"I don't know!" Vaughn shrugged sarcastically. "The kids who eat from the sandbox, not knowing they're eating cat!"
"Oh, please! Why would I put him in a sandbox?!"
"He was a cat, wasn't he?!"
"What are you two talking about?!" Rod looked between them, only hearing half of the conversation from behind them.
"See?!" Popuri screamed from the front, holding onto her skirt. A truck whizzed by, causing even more wind and nearly throwing her skirt straight into her face. "This is where you should be in case of a fire!"
"I'd love a fire right about now!" Tina hugged her bare shoulders, teeth chattering.
"We forgot Mr. Hamilton!" Gill reminded.
"All according to plan!" Popuri attempted to check something off of her lecture paper, but it was torn from her and went careening off into the street.
"We're going to catch pneumonia!" Gill insisted, arms tight across his torso.
"Nope, just you!" Vaughn said, wiping his sick hand up and down his arm. Gill squeaked like a mouse and whipped out a little bottle of hand sanitizer. He proceeded to bathe himself with it.
Popuri suddenly screamed and fell backwards. Everyone gathered around her in a circle, looking much like predators over prey.
"An emergency situation!" Tina gasped.
"We have to do something!" Louis panicked.
"Let's practice CPR!" Allen was somehow still suave in below zero.
"No! No CPR!" Popuri shrieked, lying flat on her back. "I just slipped on the ice, you dolts!"
"She's delirious!" Luke shouted.
"She needs oxygen!"
"Someone get a defibrillator!"
"We need to build a shelter!"
"Let's use our body heat to prevent hypothermia!"
"Oh my God…" Popuri mumbled to herself, a hand over her face as she ruefully admitted it. "What I would give for an axe."