02. Maintenance

A blinding headache greeted him in the morning when Light woke. He reached up and felt the lump at the back of his head. The pain made his eyes water no matter how gingerly he touched it. He glanced down at the plain pillow in its white casing—or rather, what should have been a white pillowcase. Dark brown smears confirmed his fears. With a sigh, he grabbed the corners of the case and shook the pillow free. The case was tossed into a pile in the corner of the room along with the muddy clothing from the night before. Across the room, the canvas laundry bag sat empty; the mouth of the bag looked to be frowning at him for the mess.

“I don’t need any sass from you.” Light grumbled to it. He snatched his brown leather jacket off the hook near the door and stepped outside. Moist and uncomfortable, the wetness left over from the rain lingered thickly in the air. The housing block inside the compound consisted of rows of tiny houses, a handful of one and two room bungalows like the one Light resided in, and small modular homes that were better suited for families. At eighteen, it was going to be a while before he had to worry about that. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if family life suited him at all. He liked the company of others well enough, but when it came down to it, solitude was golden.

Few people were out in the elements this morning, most opting to avoid the rain and spend more time indoors. There was plenty to be done on days like this. Unfortunately, Light didn’t have that luxury. The medical station was halfway across the compound, and it was a miserable walk in this weather. The night before, he’d been too shaken and disoriented to manage it. Maya left him to his own devices when they were safely within the confines of the compound again, without another word to him. She had a tendency to come and go as she pleased, and it didn’t bother him that she wasn’t a fan of pleasantries. Maybe that’s why they got along. Most of the time.

One doctor and two nurses took care of the compound, which consisted of a few hundred people. No matter how bad his injuries, going to the Med Center was never going to make him feel better. Maybe Lucy stayed home today. The weather’s bad enough.

No such luck. As he approached the white building, she was standing on the covered porch, looking out at the misty jungle. His heart sank, and he nearly turned on his heel and left. She noticed him and narrowed her eyes, mouth turning down in a scowl that would curdle milk.

Light dropped his gaze and walked past her, muddy boots leaving marks on the textured white steel steps. He said nothing to her, nor she to him. Lucy followed him inside the brightly lit medical station with its blue LED lights and white walls. There were private rooms in the back, but most of the space inside was open. Two dozen horizontal pods with clear polycarbonate lids, in rows of six, were the only fixtures except for the reception area, which was really just a tall counter. All of the pods were empty. Oh, great. We’re here alone. He suddenly wished Maya was there as a witness.

“What did you do this time?” Her voice was flat. She stared him down almost as if she were trying to literally burn a hole through him with her glare. Come to think of it, that’s probably exactly what she’s hoping for. Apparently, women didn’t like it when you didn’t spend time with them while dating. It was her fault for guilting me into a relationship, anyway. She can’t still be mad that I ignored her a bit...

Before he had to answer, he heard the door activate behind him. It whoosed open, and Light felt the soggy air on the back of his neck and against the legs of his khaki cargo pants.

“Is that you, Light?” Doctor Anderson came around the side of him and put a hand to the side of Light’s head, inspecting the wound. “Maya told me you’d probably be visiting today.”

“So you talked to Maya about it already.” It wasn’t a question. At least he wouldn’t have to explain it to anyone. “How bad is it?”

“Hard to tell, exactly. We’ll need to clean it to get a good look. Lucy, you can get a towel for him. He can shower here instead of walking all the way over there.” The showers and bathrooms were in a separate building from the actual houses. It made tracking water consumption easier and limited the amount of plumbing needed throughout the compound. The less they had to maintain, the better.

Lucy stomped past them and went to a big white cabinet at the back of the room. She popped it open and Light saw the rows of neatly folded linens, all stark white and crisp. She yanked a fluffy towel from the stack and swung the door shut loudly. He met her halfway, extending a hand and trying to be as pleasant to her as possible. She didn’t appreciate the gesture, and threw it at him instead. Light sighed. It’s been months, and she still can’t just let it go?

He knew where the showers were; he’d been injured enough times while working to know the drill. Light hung up his jacket on a hook outside the shower stall and stripped off the damp clothing. There was a frosted glass door between the main area and the two shower stalls, and he made sure to be far in the corner when he undressed. Being around Lucy was...awkward enough as it was. Raising his arms over his head was excruciatingly painful. He tugged it off quickly and lowered his arms. Am I that out of shape?

Light let the water run for a bit before stepping in. The steam filled the small room and eased the chill in his bones. He stood under the stream, turning his face up to it with closed eyes. An image of the garacat’s face came to his mind, and he stumbled back. He’d never been attacked by one before, and the images still haunted him. The animals were getting more aggressive, restless. Garacats weren’t even the most dangerous creature in the area. He dreaded to think of what other monsters lurked in the dark. They rarely ventured far enough outside of the compound to do any kind of research; there were probably other compounds that were for wildlife research.

Sometimes he wondered about other settlements. He knew theirs wasn’t the only one; sometimes on a clear night, he could swear he saw the lights of other compounds on the Other Half. They didn’t have contact with other settlements anymore. Years ago, sure. But nowadays each of the settlements fended for themselves.

He made quick work of washing his body, but took care with the wound at the back of his head. Though he couldn’t see it, he felt the exposed flesh and shuddered. Guess my next stop is a hair cut. Or to buy a hat.

Lucy was outside the frosted glass door, arms folded and looking impatient. Light put on the damp clothes again, but slung his jacket over one arm.

“Erm...Should I give you the towel? Or just leave it?” She almost looked amazed he’d spoken to her at all, and nearly didn’t answer.

“Just leave it,” she muttered, pushing past him and walking through the frosted door. It was cooler out here, but dry. The moisture evaporated quickly from his skin. The doctor waited patiently near the front of the room. He caught Light’s glance and patted one of the pods with a hand.

Obediently, Light approached the pod and waited for it to open. He tried to hop up into it, but his arms gave out and he nearly smashed his chin into the side. His cheeks flushed with embarrassment. He looked sheepishly at the doctor, who pretended to not have noticed it. At least one of them has some modicum of tact. Lucy was still straightening up after him in the showers, thankfully, and hadn’t seen it. On the second try, he successfully got on the puffy cushion of the horizontal pod.

The doctor closed the lid, and Light heard and felt the oxygen pumping into the casing. Doctor Anderson moved to the head of the examination pod and fiddled with the keypad. Through the casing, Light saw the holographic image of his body, though at this angle it just looked like an odd flashlight beam. The doctor zoomed in on Light’s injury, enlarged to almost the size of the pod.

After a minute or so, the pod depressurized and the casing lifted. “I know I’m fine. I just need a few stitches, right?”

“You’ve got a mild concussion, and it looks like you managed to end up with a bit of something under the skin. It looks like splinters. What on earth happened to you?”

“I thought Maya told you...”

“Apparently not everything. My daughter isn’t exactly the talkative sort. You should be more careful.” Light heard the clink of the little splinters hitting the metal bowl.

“She told me that, too.”

“She was right. You shouldn’t be off like that, so far from the perimeter.” The doctor grabbed a suture from a drawer and started working on closing up the wound.

“If I don’t someone else will. And I can’t allow anyone else to do my job for me just because it’s a little dangerous.” He winced, the sickening feeling of something tugging at his scalp was nauseating.

“You’re older than your years, Light. Sometimes I think you’re an old man trapped in a teenage body.”

“Would you really call that being trapped? Not sure that’s the word I’d use for it,” Light joked. “But when it’s my job to make sure everything runs smoothly, I take it seriously.”

“I understand. Just be careful next time. The compound would really suffer if you weren’t around anymore. I’m nearly done, by the way.” Suffer? From what, my cheery disposition? He wasn’t exactly winning any popularity contests. Not that he cared. But as the head of the maintenance crew for the compound, he had responsibilities and at times they weighed heavily on him.

“Good. I don’t know how much more of that feeling I can take.” He opened his eyes and nearly jumped out of his skin. Lucy was three feet in front of him, staring blankly. The thought of yelling at her for being creepy crossed his mind, and he immediately thought better of it. There were far too many objects within arm’s reach for her to hit him with. Not soon enough, Doctor Anderson announced he was finished. Light threw on his jacket and was out the door within seconds of getting the A-okay.

I think I’d take the garacat over Lucy any day.

Light navigated the mucky roads of the compound; none of it was paved, and puddles of murky water littered the ground. During bad weather, the few vehicles they had weren’t allowed through the streets. They had a tendency to get stuck, and it just made more work for everyone in the long run. No matter the extent of his injuries from the night before, there was work to be done. By the time he left the medical center, it was drizzling again. He’d be glad when the weather cleared up. But here, it could be minutes, or days.

The work crew had managed to clear the bulk of the kapok tree from the perimeter fence. It lay in squat pieces neatly stacked on the inside of the cement base. Light frowned at the state of the fence itself. Though still standing, there was a very large dent in the tubing that covered the cabling. To fix it, they’d have to completely remove the tubing and reshape it. The mech loader wasn’t tall enough to reach the top of the fence, or it might have been able to bend it back well enough. Never a dull day. Aside from all that, they couldn’t allow the safe zone on the other side of the barrier to diminish, either. It was far too close for comfort in some areas. It would take days to finally clear it out, but safety first.

You should have thought of that before you nearly let a garacat tear you apart. Light pushed the thought aside; there was no time for his inner monologue. He brandished the bulky radio from his bag and twisted the power dial. It crackled to life, and he squeezed the transmit button. “I need the work crew for the fence out here. We’ll also need the laser cutters, a rope and harness, and will someone bring me a hat?” He wiped his soggy hair back from his forehead and pulled his brown leather jacket tighter around him. It wasn’t going to be fun doing this without using the loader, but rules were rules. The last thing they needed was for the loader to slip in the muck and damage it somehow.

It took fifteen minutes for the crew to get there without vehicles. They looked as unhappy as he felt to be out in the rain. The faster this gets done, the faster you can go home, he told them. He glanced at the sky hopefully, but saw no sign of clear skies in the distance.

“Who wants to take point? I’d volunteer, but I’m a big banged up at the moment,” he admitted. Light detested sending others to do jobs he was capable of, like checking the meters at the power station. But in his present condition, he knew he’d do more harm than good. If he fell and broke his neck fixing the fence, the compound would be screwed.

“Do you have a minute?” He hadn’t seen Maya approach, being too busy with hands on his hips examining the damage to the perimeter fence. He turned when he heard her voice. She’d been smart enough to wear a wide brimmed canvas hat, the string tucked behind her ears and under her chin. Her black hair was tied back in a loose ponytail that curled around her shoulder and down her front.

“What do you need? I’m a bit busy at the moment, as you can obviously see.” She knew better than to bother him while he was working. They had an understanding to stay out of each others’ way. Her impromptu visit to his site was irritating.

“You know, you’re pretty ungrateful for someone who wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t come after you. Have I told you what an idiot you are? I wanted to make sure to say it after you went to the med center, so in case you had some kind of concussion or brain damage, it would be all patched up and you’d know what I’m telling you.”

Light sighed and turned away from the fence, walking a few paces away as to be out of earshot but still within line of sight in case he needed to help with anything. “What is it?”

“You can’t go out like that again. You can’t just walk out of the perimeter and do as you please. It’s dangerous. You don’t have the training for that. You can’t defend yourself. If you’d just let me...”

“This again? No, thanks. I don’t need to carry a gun.”

“Then I can’t allow you to go outside without a member of the security team present. You’re the head tech, Light. You aren’t expendable. No one here is. But especially not you.” Her deepset brown eyes looked at him with...concern? It wasn’t anger. Light was used to seeing the anger. This was unsettling, whatever it was. On the fence, one of his technicians was strapped into the belted harness. Another worker threw the rope up over the top cable in the section next to the damaged one. One end of the rope was tied to the harness, and the tech began climbing. It was slow going. The tube-covered cables were a foot in diameter, and slick with rain. The steel post embedded deep into the concrete and ground below was little help.

Light focused again on Maya. “You can’t just come around to my work site barking orders at me. The security team has better things to do than come along on a picnic to the power station with me. Besides, I was already back at the compound when that garacat attacked, not out in the middle of nowhere. If your team wants to help, you can get in that little box,” he pointed to the guard tower a hundred feet away along the wall, “and act as a lookout. You know, do YOUR job, so I can do mine. The maintenance team is going to be outside resetting the buffer zone.”

Maya’s nostrils flared, and for a brief moment, Light thought she was going to throw a punch at him. Instead, she turned on her heel, splashing mud up in a spray that hit his khaki pants. She was retreating quickly, and Light noticed her unclipping the radio on her belt. Maya began shouting into it, kicking the mud as she went along.

The technician on the fence was nearly halfway up. She was a good worker, and thankfully not afraid of heights. It was going smoothly as could be expected. She reached the top and swung a leg up over the cabling, wrapping her body around the steel pole. The laser cutter flared up in her hands, and she pulled the welding mask down over her face. Everything by the book. Everything to standard. Safety first. The rest of the team was far back. When the cable and tubing came down, it was suicide to be anywhere below it. She melted quickly through the connector rods, and called loudly to the team to look out.

The twang of the cabling coming free from its housing made Light’s skin crawl. It was the sound of death, and vulnerability. The faster they got this fixed, the better. This way, as soon as the weather cleared, they’d be able to use the loader to hoist the whole thing up and set it back in place quickly. The housing for the cables, the large tube, slid down the open end of the cable and slammed into the wet ground with so much force that Light felt the vibrations of the metal through his shoes. The other benefit to doing this while its still raining. The housing, though large, was immeasurably important and somewhat delicate. The soft ground took the impact that otherwise would have bent the housing further out of sorts.

Light’s radio crackled, muffled by the crashing and pinging of rain on the metal perimeter fence. When he finally realized he was missing a transmission, he wiped the beads of water off the black plastic and held it to his ear.

“Light! DAMNIT. Light, get her off the fence. Something is coming through the jungle, and its headed right for you guys.” Maya’s voice was panicked.

He didn’t even have time to react. The tech was already on her way down, welding mask pushed up atop her head, laser cutter secured on her tool belt. She was a good worker. The tech stopped suddenly, frozen in place, looking out at the jungle. From here, it looked as though she were squinting, neck extended through the space between cables.

“Get down. Get her off the fence.”

He heard the gunshot first, miliseconds before the garacat lunged. It was so fast. It came straight out of the foliage at her, tusks nearly taking a chunk out of her thigh. The technician let go of the cables, knocked back by the force of the garacat slamming into the fence. The thrum of vibrating steel rang out through the silent compound. She fell twenty feet to the ground. The other workers barely managed to pull the rope fast enough to break her fall. Light raced over to his crew, pushing aside the others and shoving the radio into the hands of one of them. “Call the medical center. Tell Lucy to get over here as fast as possible. Bring a medical kit and a stretcher.”

Light bent down over the tech’s body. She was choking on her breaths, but conscious. He unbuckled the harness and pulled it free. It slid across the mud and he bunched it up and tossed it aside. Her fall was softened by the rope and harness, and the soft ground, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He looked her over, wiping dirt away from her skin to see if she was bleeding anywhere.

Maya was running over, One hand on her rifle, the other holding onto the top of her hat. She slipped in the muck, fell to her knees, picked herself up and wiped the water from her eyes, smearing grime everywhere. She dropped down next to them, rifle propped up against the base of the concrete. “I saw it coming but I couldn’t get a clean shot.”

“What the hell happened?” Light asked. “It came out of nowhere. They’ve never done that before, not directly attacked the perimeter.”

“I have a theory,” she looked at him pointedly. “We’ll talk about it later. Where the hell is the medical team?” Maya looked around frantically. “All of you, get out of here,” she growled at the rest of the crew.

Light looked at the nearest of his team. “She’s going to be fine. We just need the medical team here. You need to start working on the housing. Immediately.” If the garacats were getting bolder, they definitely couldn’t afford to have weakened defenses. He pointed at the huge, hollow metal tube embedded in the ground. “Dig it out. Get it to the maintenance area. When you’re in the hangar, use the loader to unbend it. Once the weather clears, we’ll bring it back out.” He turned back to Maya.

“Now will you accept help from the security team?” Her eyes burned into him.

They didn’t have a choice. Everything by the book. Everything to standard. Safety first. It was hard to tell himself all that while looking down at the body of one of his own team, writhing in pain.

Suddenly, Lucy didn’t seem so scary anymore.

When the technician was safely in the medical center and Light was sufficiently assured that she would be okay, he turned to Maya. “I’m sorry,” he began, “thank you for everything.”

“I wouldn’t thank me just yet,” Maya said, looking out from the canopy of the porch at the medical station, water dripping from the roof onto the railing. From here, her eyes wandered to the perimeter fence. “We killed one yesterday. I killed one yesterday,” she corrected. “They’re pack animals, you know that. We don’t kill the wildlife. We protect ourselves, dig in to this little nest we’ve made. We survive. And now that we’ve threatened their pack, it’s going to be very dangerous for a while.” As a member of the security team, part of Maya’s job was to study the local wildlife. She was more a scientist than a security guard, preferring to study rather than interact.

“But, you did what you had to do.”

“I didn’t think it through. I killed it. I could have used a tranquilizer gun instead. But I didn’t think. I just acted. And I can’t help but feel responsible for that girl on your crew. I shouldn’t have been so insistent on your security detail, at least not the way I approached it. I’m not sorry for insisting. I just...could have been more tactful about it.”

“Tact is something neither you nor I have in any supply, Maya.” Light looked back over his shoulder at the medical center, and Lucy.

“Point taken. The security team will assist with restoring the safe zone around the perimeter. It’s not a question.”

“You won’t get any argument out of me. Not anymore. I hope this weather clears up soon.” Light held his palm up, cupping the cold rain in it. “We’ve only got a few days of auxiliary power. And no one wants to eat cold food while we wait for the solar to come back.”

Maya frowned, pulling her wide brimmed hat down around her ears more. “If it keeps raining, you’ll need to go back out to the power station, won’t you?”

“At some point. But we’ve got a few days before that’s a problem. Have to check the meters, you know. I’m not going to let someone else go, especially after what happened today. Anyway, I need to go check on the progress they’re making on the steel housing.”

“I’m going to double up security on that wall until it’s back up. Keep me updated, okay?” Light waved back at her from the bottom of the stairs, and began the miserable trek to the maintenance hangar. Along the way, he took note of the areas that were particularly eroded. Paved roads would help so much, but the environmental effects weren’t worth it. Clean living. Instead, they maintained. Preserved. Except for last night. Maya made the decision to do what she did. It was her choice, her consequences. Then why do I feel guilty about it?

The maintenance hangar was near the front of the compound, a big expansive building with a cement floor and an open floorplan. There was a charging bay, a big painted circle surrounding a rubbery pad on which the mech loader was powered down. The rest of his crew was huffing and puffing, some bent over and trying to catch their breath. The housing was on the floor, the kink even more noticeable here, up close.

As meticulous as he was, Light was terrible at handling the mech loader, something he found exceedingly irritating about himself. There weren’t many things he couldn’t do well. He was calm, calculated. And a horrible driver. This was one job he was happy to leave to someone else. There was a long table in the center of the room. It was relatively low to the ground and fairly wide across.

One of his team climbed into the loader and powered up the engine. Four others went to the opposite end of the beam and readied to lift it. The clamplike hands of the loader slid easily into the opposite end of the housing. On the count of three, the group lifted simultaneously and with a lot of grunts and grumbles, managed to get two ton metal tube on the table. On the wall opposite the bay doors that served as the entrance to the hangar there was a pegbard filled with hanging tools of all shapes and sizes.

From the wall, Light grabbed a welding mask and a blowtorch. The table was made with a special alloy that didn’t bend, break, or melt under any conventional circumstances. This wasn’t the first, or last time that Light silently wished they had the knowledge or technology to reproduce that material. It would have come in handy for the perimeter fence, that was for sure. He pulled the welding mask over his face and donned thick, ugly, matte leather gloves.

“Alright, hold it steady.” On one end, the other crew were clamping down the housing. At the other, the loader waited patiently. The blowtorch lit, and Light got to work. He carefully heated the metal, slowly, evenly around the tube. It turned black, then glowed softly. “Okay. Try it now.”

The tech in the loader pushed gently against the bend. Light held his breath, standing on his toes to lean over enough to see it from above. After a few seconds, he called out to the loader to hold up, and instructed the tech to rotate it so he could check the rest. It was unclamped, and rotated, and Light was satisfied.

“Now if we can get this damn rain to stop before we have any more visitors, we’ll be good to go,” one of the techs said.

“I wouldn’t be too anxious for the rain to stop, if I were you,” Light said grimly. “As soon as the perimeter fence is back online, we need to rezone.” There were six miles of fencing, total. Six miles of cutting, trimming, hauling, and exposure. Six miles of area they’d be unprotected by the confines of the compound. The exhaustion of the rest of his crew was palpable.

He understood how they felt. They’d spent the whole night clearing away the debris of a massive kapok tree, and then got called back on site to take down the cabling and haul the housing back to the hangar, and now they were being told they had a week’s worth of glorified landscaping ahead of them. No other team in the compound had as much to take care of as Light’s crew, and he knew part of that was him being so demanding.

“Go home and get some rest until the weather clears up. Just straighten up before you go.” He eyed the loader still standing in the middle of the floor. It was dark in the hangar; they kept the bay doors closed to keep out moisture, dirt, and any critters that might find their way inside. Light hated bugs, something Maya found amusing. The overhead lights were few, but their yellow glow filled the room like candlelight. It was warm, comfortable. Truthfully, Light was more at home here than anywhere else in the compound. The power flickered momentarily, and Light threw up his hands. Of course. No one had enough discipline to conserve energy during bad weather.

When everything on the power grid ran off of solar energy, the sun was life itself.