The Midnight Cleaning Company

Chapter 14

I leant against the bare brick walls on the other side of the room, continuously checking my wrist for my absent watch out of habit, I kept catching his eye as he glared over John's shoulder with hatred, until my scowl frightened off his gaze.

Waiting for all of the new recruits to wake became increasingly tedious. I was still filled to bursting point with energy from my prohibited feed and had no way of expending it. Standing still was maddening.
The petite scantily clad blonde who was slumped in Michael's desk chair gulped in a desperate lung-full of air and sat up. From eavesdropping on her conversation with Michael, I could tell that he too had explained quite a lot before turning her. Still she remained suspicious and looked around at us all with narrow darting eyes.
After her initial chat with Michael, he introduced her to the room while she stood next to him nodding occasionally. Her name was Natalia, she was originally from Belarus. He had met her at the strip club where she had worked until tonight. She wanted more from life than taking her clothes off for salivating idiots so acquiesced to Michael's offer. She struck me as far too serious for one so young. She never smiled but retained tightly pursed lips and a furrowed brow as if she was perpetually annoyed. This gave her a thin sour face.

One of John's recruits had woken, so John left the homeless man alone at the far end of the room to attend to him. The recruit was a giant of a man, built like a bull. His skin was a dark as onyx. His newly ice-blue eyes shone like headlights. His huge shoulders heaved when he tensed his heavily muscled arms upon seeing John. He jumped to his feet with the agility of a frightened cat and stormed up to John where he stood with their faces almost touching, like competing boxers at a weigh in. John looked minuscule in comparison as he strained his neck to hold eye contact. The huge man's big bright eyes sparkled with rage and his barrel chest heaved with each breath. John spoke to him too softly for me to hear and calmed him down, never breaking eye contact to exert his superiority. The giant nodded and sighed before walking off with John, listening intently. 

My curiosity regarding that situation was immediately forgotten when the killer bee began to stir at my desk. Her jerking movement caused a cascade of paperwork to fall onto the floor. On reflex, she picked the pages up and placed them back onto a loose pile, before looking round wondering where she was. She peered around the dim desk-lamp lit room before seeing me leaning against the brick wall. Her eyes lit up with relief. They had changed to an ice-blue like mine, but oddly still retained some specks of her original green.

I was sick of standing around waiting by the desks so I led the girl down the spiral staircase to the ground floor. She looked around at her surroundings, examining everything with the wonder and excitement of a child in a sweetshop. She wasn't nearly ready to see the disposal room yet, so I subtlety slid the door to that room shut as I walked past. We walked together through the new passageway to the adjacent warehouse that had now become an extension, still having not said a word. There was an air of the sober morning-after awkwardness of a one night stand. Neither of us wanted to be the first to break what had now become a noticeably long silence.

"You never told me your name", I said eventually.

The empty ground floor space of the office extension seemed gigantic. My voice echoed around the whole building. The girl replied with a soft voice, almost a whisper. It lent an intimacy to our conversation. We were conspirators whispering secret messages, or lovers with our heads close together on a pillow. 

"My name is Jennifer", she said with a nervous half smile.
"I prefer Killer-Bee", I teased.

She snorted with a little laugh but her smile rapidly faded. I could tell there was a lot of questions on her mind.
"I'm Fleming", I announced, thrusting out my hand. She shook it delicately.
"That's an odd name", said Killer-Bee.
"We only use one name here. My Christian name was William, but there was another with the same name turned at the same time so they used my surname. Even after the other William had died, the name stuck", I explained.
"I shall call you Will", she grinned.
"No... it's Fleming", I said.

Killer-Bee scuffed the toes of the high heels she was still wearing on the dusty stone floor and looked pensive while she thought of how best to phrase her many questions.
"Am I dead?" she eventually blurted out, abandoning the idea of subtlety.
"No", I replied, seeing her exhale with relief. "You were... but not any longer... it's complicated".
She looked even more confused. "What happens now?"
"Just do what you are told for now. We will train you in how to fight and how to clean", I responded in an attempt to comfort her.
"How to clean?" She repeated with disgust in her voice.
My laughed echoed around the empty warehouse, making me sound like an evil cartoon villain.

We heard Michael's distinctive Northern Irish voice through the passageway into the original office and so went through to investigate. He was standing halfway up the metal spiral staircase so that everyone else, who was gathered on the ground floor, could see him. The rest of the new recruits had woken now and were standing in bunches around the colleague that had turned them.
The homeless man was standing by himself behind everyone else. I approached him and Killer-Bee followed. He glared at me with the rage of a caged animal, exhibiting the bravery I had previously admired but now found irritating.
Michael began to address the gathering like a General in front of his army on parade. It was a pathetic army. Half of which was completely untrained and oblivious to what they were about to be forced to fight for, as well as every other aspect of their new life. Still Michael beamed down from his pedestal of the stairs with pride.
"By now you all know who we are and what we do", boomed Michael enigmatically.