New Year's Day

  NEW YEAR’S DAY

  (HOLIDAY HORRORS #1)

  C. DENNIS MOORE

  NEW YEAR’S DAY

  C. DENNIS MOORE

  Copyright © 2013, Charles Moore

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read his work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling a friend, to help spread the word.

  Thank you for supporting this work.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Edited by Brenda Yeager

  www.cdennismoore.com

  DEDICATION

  For Kara on our second New Years together.

  I’ve always made a habit to start the new year with a day off work. It sets the tone for the year to come, a day of relaxation and rest. Except this year. For some reason our bosses had decided the first day of the year would be a great time for our usually year end inventory.

  Everyone else saw it as a bonus because it meant a longer Christmas holiday, those not working it, that is. I saw it as a pain in the ass and a disruption to my plan.

  Since there are only six of us in our department counting several thousand tons of wire, they pull people from other areas of the plant to help, and we work in teams of two, one to work the forklift and move the pallets of wire, the other to scan the tags and do the counting. These outside people see it as a vacation; they’re getting paid to do something besides their regular job. For the ones who actually work in inventory, not so much.

  So there I was, counting inventory. We were on hour four and had barely even made a dent when we broke for lunch. The company ordered two dozen pizzas and as much as I wanted to get out of there, I took my time and ate as many as I could force down, because it was warm in the break room.

  A half dozen guys were at one of the corner tables, talking about the coming year and how they hoped the economy got better and how the Chiefs were going to do and what was the best place to fish when summer finally arrived. A couple of the younger ones, the new guys who hadn’t been there long enough to avoid being volunteered for inventory because none of the union guys with seniority wanted to do it, sat by themselves talking about New Year's and who had made resolutions and who hadn’t. Seriously, I thought. People still do that?

  Tom Brooks, an old guy who’d worked there twenty years, sat alone against the wall and watched. He caught me watching and he gave me the what’s up nod. I returned it, then went back to people watching and eating pizza.

  I just wanted to be done counting and go home. But I didn’t want to leave the warm break room. My boss came in and said, “Kevin, are you almost done?”

  I nodded and said, “Only two more shelves in that rack.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna have Norma finish that. I want you to do under the roof.”

  Outside.

  I finished the slice in my hand, crust and all, making sure to chew thoroughly to promote good digestion or whatever it is, but mostly just to procrastinate, then the food was gone and there was nothing left to do but what I’d been told.

  I grabbed my scanner off the table and headed outside.

  Our company makes wire rope. We take steel rod, stretch and change it and make it into various lengths and thicknesses of wire, then put the various lengths and thicknesses into machines called stranders that take those different thicknesses and braid them into what’s called strand, or simply rope. We use spools from four and a half inches to wooden reels we call thirty-inch spools, even though they’re actually much bigger. You’ve seen them, those old wood spools broke college kids use as furniture. We sell the rope to all sorts of companies, from people who build bridges, to the military for use on aircraft carriers. It’s a pretty big deal, and not something the average person thinks about.

  I liked my job, in theory. I liked doing something I felt mattered, it gave my job a sense of purpose every morning. I wasn’t changing the world, I wasn’t making it a better, safer place (I only worked in the warehouse, tracking inventory, so I didn’t actually have a hand in the making of anything), but our reach, as a company, was wide.

  And at the end of the day, none of this idealistic bullshit meant jack when I was outside in the freezing cold with an overcast sky on the first day of the new year counting spools of wire by myself.

  There were about eighty thousand pounds of wire out there, stacked four high, which is about one and a half times my height, in row after row after row, stack after stack after stack. As soon as I saw the state of the area, I was glad I’d worn my long johns that morning because I was going to be here for a while.

  I spent the time thinking about my kids and how happy they’d been on Christmas morning a few days earlier. My wife Kathy and I had gone all out this year. We had to. The year before Kathy had been laid off and it took a few months to find another job, so I was trying to support the family on what I made, and that would have been pretty easy if I were a machine operator--the union guys start out at five dollars more an hour than what I was making, even after a decade on the job--but I was considered office staff and my pay sucked. But there was quarterly gainsharing, sometimes, a flexible schedule if something came up with one of the kids or school and I had to leave work for a little bit, and after just five years I’d got three weeks paid vacation a year. I wasn’t about to switch over to machine operator, have to join the union and give up all that seniority and be forced to work third shift, which is where all the low men went at first. So we’d struggled through last year, which meant a very meager Christmas for the kids while Kathy and I passed altogether and just focused on Carol and Sean. Kathy got a new job the following February and this Christmas we decided to make up for the previous one and had gone crazy. A little too crazy in retrospect, and as much as I hated being out here today, I knew the longer this took, the more overtime, and that was sorely needed right now. Besides, I knew in my heart, after so many previous inventories, that a week later, the time lost that day wouldn’t even matter. I’d remember it as something that had happened, but as if to someone else; the feeling of being here however many hours it took, on my feet and dead tired, would be forgotten as soon as I clocked out and headed home.

  It probably took about two hours to count everything out there, then to make another sweep to make sure I hadn’t missed a stray spool set off by itself somewhere. When I was satisfied I’d got everything, I headed back into the building and straight up to the locker room where the men’s room was located. And the heater.

  I stood under the hot air heater for a few minutes, warming my face and hands, shaking off the cold, then went to the urinal.

  Business done, I went down to find my boss and see where he wanted me next.

  The warehouse floor was strangely quiet. The droning roar of forklifts, the constant BEEP of the scanner as it read another bar code, the chatter of the vacationers. It was all quiet.

  And I didn’t see anyone around.

  Maybe they had finished early and gathered in the office to wait for me before running the final count numbers? I should be so lucky.

  I peeked in the office window, but there was no one there. I looked up and down the aisles for someone, anyone. Just one more person out here still counting to let me know I hadn’t stepped into the Twilight Zone because this huge quiet, empty building was definitely creepy as hell. I figured I’d check the break room. Maybe something was going on I should have been told about, but everyone had forgotten about me?

  I opened the break room door and stepped into a slaughterhouse.

  Half a dozen bodies lay massacred across
the floor. Blood filled the air, covered the floor in a thick pool, some of it splashed on the walls. I noticed Norma was one of the dead. At a table at the back of the room, where Tom Brooks had been sitting earlier, there was Brooks still. And at the table next to him was a machine operator I didn’t know. At the next table, another machine operator. At the next table was a guy I thought was a forklift driver named Alan. One of the foremen sat at the corner table.

  Everyone sat with their arms on the tables, hands together.

  I started to ask what the fuck, then felt a flat black thud against the back of my head before I blacked out and hit the floor.

  * * *

  I came to a few minutes later. I hadn’t been out long, just long enough to be tied up. I realized quickly why everyone had their hands on the tables; our wrists had been bound with a small gauge wire. Thin enough to be pliable, but strong enough that we couldn’t snap it.

  My head was killing me. I didn’t know what I’d been hit with, but damn. I blinked several times, trying to get my eyes to focus. I looked over at everyone along the back wall with me, just sitting there, watching the front of the room near the door. I looked over to see what was going on and that’s when my confusion level jumped about ten degrees.

  One of the new guys I’d noticed during lunch stood at the front of the room. Kneeling in front of him was Todd Hooper, the plant manager. There were only a few people above him on the corporate ladder and a lot of us wondered how he held his job at all because this dude was not the sharpest tool.

  I had no use for the guy, personally. He was a tall, skinny beanpole who kept his short hair short and always in place. He had a fair amount of scruff on his face to help him fit in around here, but the cleaned and pressed suits, even without the jacket and with the sleeves rolled up, spoke of a deliberate disconnect from the common folk. I’d walked past his house once, not knowing it was his, and saw him and his kids out in the yard throwing a football back and forth. In the front yard. Standing on that immaculately groomed lawn. I bet even his rain gutters were spotless. This was clearly a guy who had a very old-fashioned view of the American Dream, part of which included making sure everyone knew he was living it.

  Of all the people who worked at our plant, he was the one I was least surprised to find on his knees with a gun leveled at his forehead. However, the fact that anyone in our plant was on his knees with a gun leveled at his forehead was a mindfuck. Stuff like this happens to other people. On the news. In small towns you’ve never heard of.

  Then I realized we were a bunch of other people living in a small town no one had ever heard of.

  Todd was saying something, but it was so fast and panicked, I couldn’t understand him. Something about spending time with his family? Not taking things so seriously? Enjoying life more?

  The kid holding the gun shook his head and said, “That’s about the lamest one so far, Todd. I think you’re making that up. I think you’re doing what you always do, trying to project an image of the put-upon hero so we, the ones you know are beneath you, will come to see you as just one of the guys and maybe then you’ll get some acceptance. But the truth is, dude, you are not one of us. You don’t even know what we do down here. We all see you, though, Mr. Perfectly Dressed and Groomed. You’ve never had a speck of dirt under those fingernails. In fact, let me see your nails.”

  Todd Hooper looked confused, but terrified, and he held up a hand to the kid. The kid inspected it, then laughed.

  “I knew it. You get those done by professionals, don’t you? That looks too good to have been done in a messy bathroom with a pair of cheap one-dollar clippers. So, tell me again how your life is so stressful and you’ve resolved this year to take more time for you, to enjoy life again?”

  I had no idea what the hell was going on, but a look at the others along the wall showed they were more terrified than confused. I’d definitely missed something here. Hell, the bodies on the floor gave testament to that.

  Todd sputtered something I still couldn’t make out. He was about to shit himself, it looked like. I didn’t blame him.

  “I understand what you’re saying,” I finally made out. “I know none of the guys trust me because I’m the Company. But I need this job just as bad as anyone else. Maybe even more. I work so hard to make so much because I’m in debt up to my eyes. It’s hard living the high life all the time. I had a heart attack at my last job before I overworked myself. My marriage has almost ended twice in the last five years. I want to take things easier, I want to see my family more. I just don’t know how to suddenly go from the man in charge to the man getting by.”

  The kid nodded along with Todd, then regarded the rest of us tied up at the tables and said, “That’s a good story. But I’m only letting one person go, Todd. I want to make sure the person who makes it out sticks to their plan and does what they said they would. And really, if you think about it, I bet you’re insured out the ass. Your family’d probably be pretty well off if you were gone, wouldn’t they? I’m just helping them out.”

  He pulled the trigger, put a bullet into Todd Hooper’s brain, and Todd just fell, as if someone had killed the electricity that powered him.

  I still didn’t know what the kid was talking about. He shoved Todd out of the way, then went to the first table and hauled the foreman sitting there out to the middle of the floor, forcing him to his knees.

  “You know the drill by now,” he said, putting his gun to the foreman’s head. “It’s the first of the year and you’ve got this chance to improve your life. What do you resolve?”

  Holy fuck, I thought. That’s what all this was over? He was slaughtering people because he didn’t like their resolutions?

  The jaded part of me wanted to speak up and tell him just how stupid this was. But the husband and father side of me said shut the fuck up and come up with something quick so you make it through this.

  I started thinking.

  The foreman, Hector, an overweight slob bastard whom I couldn’t stand--he was a close talker, always right in your face, and thought everyone around him was deaf so he yelled every word. And he smelled like garlic--said, “I decided to lose fifty pounds and change my diet. I picked out a walking trail near my house, and I’m gonna head there every Tuesday and Thursday after work, then again on Saturday.”

  “No Sunday?” the kid asked.

  “Um . . . that’s when I watch football,” the foreman, Hector, confessed, which made the kid chuckle and shake his head. Hector was confused by the chuckle, and he chuckled along and said, “Hey, go Chiefs, right?”

  “Yeah, go Chiefs,” the kid said, then aimed his gun and said, “I hate football,” and he fired.

  Hector went down just as quickly as Todd.

  The kid looked over at the rest of us.

  “He was doing really well,” he said. “He sounded like he actually had a goal and a plan to reach it. But then he lets himself get sidetracked so he can sit on his ass and watch a sport he was never fit enough to play himself. Then he’d come in here on Monday morning and go on and on and on just like the rest of you about how terrible ‘we’ did. Like he was on the fucking team. Ridiculous.”

  The kid shook his head and then it finally hit me: his name was Bill. I didn’t know his last name, but at least I could stop thinking of him as that kid.

  Bill pulled out a chair and sat down. He looked tired, like all the shooting had taken it out of him. I glanced at the others, but they were all watching Bill.

  I wanted to get Tom Brooks’s attention and give him the WTF eye roll. It seemed important, like if I knew he was in this with me I wouldn’t feel so isolated. Obviously, I could see he was in it with me, but I was beginning to learn that nothing will cut you off from your fellow man quite like a gun to your head while they’re safely on the sidelines. If he pulled me up front, were any of them going to stand up for me? They hadn’t for Todd, or Hector. I was in this alone, just like they were. Tom was staring at Bill, as if studying his every move.

 
I hoped he wasn’t planning on doing anything stupid.

  Fuck it, the more of them go, the better my chances for being the one he spares. I felt like an ass for thinking it, but who wouldn’t in the same position?

  We all watch those movies where someone gets singled out, they’ve got a gun aimed at them and we think if that was me, I wouldn’t puss out. If he’s going to shoot me, I’m going out on my feet, like a man.

  But when Bill got up and walked toward me, grabbed the wires around my wrists and hauled me out to the middle of the floor, being a man was the last thing on my mind, dying with dignity was a foreign concept, and staring this kid down defiantly was not going to happen, period.

  “Dude, what the fuck,” I said. “Wait up, what the hell is going on?” He shoved me to my knees and raised the gun. “What the fuck, man? I didn’t even do anything; I was outside counting.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said. “You weren’t here. I had forgotten about you at first, thought I had everyone in here already. Doesn’t that suck, knowing you’re that forgettable to a man who planned this to the last detail?”

  Obviously not the last one, I didn’t say. But like it mattered; I was still bound and on the floor.

  “I just want to know what’s going on, that’s it.”

  My first thought was he had been the subject of too many “new guy” pranks and had decided he’d had enough, but I’d gone through the same shit ten years ago and it wasn’t that bad.

  “Today’s New Year’s Day,” he said, his tone suggesting that should be explanation enough.

  “Okay?” I replied.

  “The first day of the year.”