Prologue.

The noise from the crowd as they listened to the host of the evening as she warmed up the event was a little intimidating,  the guest speaker sat in a chair a little way off stage and well out of view from everybody and fought to keep herself calm. She only had a few notes with her to guide her through her speech as most of it was in her head, but not by choice and it wouldn’t leave. The events that had led up to this moment were burned into her brain as if by a branding iron and no amount of sleep would get rid of them. She had received help on many occasions to get through it and had not appeared publicly since it had all ended, the media had hounded her and the others relentlessly to get an interview so they could be the first to get an exclusive on their crappy website as most of the newspapers had gone out of business a long time ago. It was much easier to click on an article on your mobile phone than it was to buy something that would eventually end up lining the bottom of your pet’s cage. As the host continued to drone on as she sat there and played with her wedding ring, a simple gold band that had been brought for her with a love she did not think was possible at the time but had woke up treasuring it every time she saw it. It was one of many reasons she had gotten through the last few months since her life had almost gone to hell but having someone there, such as this man who had loved her unconditionally for what seemed like so long now, had made it all worth it.

“And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for!” The host said before she turned and introduced her as she got up from her chair and slowly walked onto the stage and shook the host’s hand with her right as her left held her notes.

“They’re ready for you,” she said before stepping back and taking a seat at the back of the stage. She set her notes down on the stand in front of her and then scanned the crowd slowly. She had done her best to dodge the idiots in the media as best as she could but it was almost a certainty there were some hiding in the crowd with a recorder or something. She steadied her breathing before beginning her speech, here it comes.

“I know a lot of you have come here tonight in the hopes of me telling the story of what happened out there, the battles, the wins and ultimately the loses we incurred. I, like many of the other survivors and myself lost a great deal, loved ones and friends and I suppose our innocence out there and I did my best to bury it as best I could. The truth is that I was not ever going to talk about it at all, I was going to bury it deep within me and do my best to move on but I eventually knew that it would be foolish and bottling something like that up inside me would kill me. I am here today to tell my story, it may not be one you are expecting to hear but it is my story, it is the only one I will tell and there will be no variations of it. Get comfortable, this is a long one,” she began.

Part One.

Chapter One.

As the morning light was just starting to shine through the clouds of the Vancouver sky, Mickey Hemmings pulled his car into the parking area of the giant warehouse belonging to Hodges & Parks, his place of employment, and reversed into a parking space before landing it gently in place. He checked himself in the mirror and noticed that not only were his glasses slightly smudged on one of the lenses and he had not combed his short head of dark hair. He ran his fingers through it quickly and decided it was fine and then quickly cleaned his glasses with the bottom of his work shirt, he really needed to remember to put his cleaning kit in the car for mornings like this. Before getting out he reached behind him and picked up his hard hat and lunch box and then shut the doors before strolling to the security gate. As he passed through the turn stall he waited as a truck and trailer hovered along the road in front of him before crossing to the main entrance but then stopped when he caught sight of the sign on the door.

“Great,” he said as he read about having to enter through the yard due to maintenance having to fix the lighting in the reception. A security guard who was sitting at his desk saw him and shook his head in apology, Micky held his hand up in acknowledgement and then walked around to the right and saw the gate to the yard. As he approached the gate he could see a lorry and trailer parked in the usual spot and three different yard worker (yardies) were removing stacks of pallets and rubbish from it with the outside fork lift trucks. You could always tell the difference between the yard trucks and the ones used for inside as they had screens, doors and a roof because of the weather whereas the inside ones obviously did not. As he stood there and watched the trucks hover on the spot as they removed the pallets from the trailer and then turn and drop them off at the relevant spots, it was the rule that the depots were supposed to send the pallets and so forth back to the main ware house as neatly as they possibly could so that the trailers could be emptied quicker but of course the “us and them” mentality still existed to this day and that rarely happened. Ideally the pallets were supposed to be banded together, pallet collars arranged properly and banded to another pallet and rubbish in the right waste bags for recycling purposes but this trailer looked like it had all been thrown on at the end of a shift. It was at times like this he felt sorry for the yardies, they really did have to deal with a lot of trailers like this. Granted that today was a sunny day but on the days when it was raining and the wind was giving it a helping hand, rather them than him. Mickey looked to the left and saw one of the yard supervisors, Paul, standing to one side and necking an energy drink whilst completing his shift checks with his clip board. He tapped on the gate with his wedding ring and Paul looked over at him and smiled before walking over to the gate as Mickey walked through the side entrance and approached him.

“How’s it going?” Paul said as he tucked the clip board under his arm and offered his hand to Mickey.

“All good this morning. You?” Mickey responded as he shook hands with him and continued to watch the trailer be unloaded. As the yardies continued to remove the pallets, a rubbish sack of plastic banding fell out onto the floor and spilled some of its contents. Paul let out a sigh and watched as the fork truck driver climbed out of his vehicle and quickly picked the debris up and slung the bag to one side before carrying on.

“Fine besides loads like that turning up,” he said. Paul had been the yard supervisor for a little while and had been a good choice for the role based on his experience. He always been known for wearing a woolly hat under his hard hat until a change in the site health and safety rules meant he and others like him who did had to take theirs off and comply with this rule. About ninety percent of the ware house had not realized that Paul had in fact have shoulder length hair underneath his woolly hat and when this became known, he earned the nicknames Timotei and L’Ore`al. When he asked why people were still calling him those nicknames weeks later, he was informed “because he was worth it”.

“Many through this morning?” Mickey asked as they stood there for a moment longer.

“No more than usual, most the loads have been ok except when ones like that turn up,” Paul said before finishing his drink. They stood there for a moment longer as the unloading was completed and the lorry gently lifted off of the ground and hovered past them and out of the gate, Paul smiled and ticked an unseen box on his check sheet and then put his pen in a little pocket of his high Vis jacket. The company had issued new versions of the high Vis jackets last week and they were slowly being issued out to staff across the shifts, Mickey had received his on the Friday afternoon before he went home for the weekend and had washed it to get rid of the stiff new feel to it whereas Paul had obviously had his a few days prior given the specs of dirt on it. Unlike the old ones, these new ones had many pockets, a sewn on plastic space for identification and even a zip in place of the Velcro patched that attracted all kinds of floating debris and so on.

“They feel like flak jackets, don’t they?” Mickey said as they started to walk towards the ramp leading inside.

“Yeah, it’s kind of funny. My lad thought it was funny when he saw me wearing it when I got home after they issued it. Mickey chuckled at the thought of that as they walked, his own son was quite a playful little thing and always bounced around the front door when he got home but his daughter who was a couple of years older, was a little more relaxed about than he was. He noticed Paul was occasionally glancing in the direction of his staff as they walked and once or twice he slowed down and then resumed his usual pace.

“What’s up?” Mickey asked.

“Checking that the lads are wearing company issued PPE, that new guy in charge of health and safety upstairs is pretty hot on it, especially as some of staff have been wearing steel toe caps they’ve brought outside which he doesn’t like,” Paul said.

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard about that, had to mark one of the lads down for wearing an outside pair during an audit,” Mickey said. PPE stood for Personal Protective Equipment and all staff had to wear uniform that complied with it without exceptions. This included a high Vis jacket, steel toe cap boots or shoes and gloves to protect hands from cuts and so on. Most steel toe cap shoes or boots were fine but the rule was being enforced that staff had to wear ones supplied by the company as they included mid sole protection. This was basically a steel plate which was in the sole of the boot or shoe to stop any nails going through into the foot of the wearer should they step on one they didn’t see, it may sound funny to think about it but sod’s law dictated that there would be one idiot who would ignore the rules and suffer such a fate, Mickey was just waiting for such a thing to happen.

“I see you got a good pair,” Paul said as he glanced down at Mickey’s boots.

“These are my second pair, the first ones got caked in paint along with the rest of my uniform after that bloody paint spill on the other side of the yard that I had to clean up with Owen last week,” Mickey said with a sigh.

“Yeah I heard about that, the pallet just collapsed by itself in the end, didn’t it?” Paul asked.

“Yeah. Nights dumped it out there at the top of the slope, I moved it as it was near a drain and then someone else moved it to another part of the slope but further up. The pallet was knackered anyway but weather damage did the rest. Me and Owen were out there for two hours cleaning it up. It nearly went in the drain as well but we caught it just before it did,” I said. Any paint or chemical going in the drain was classed as an environmental hazard and if it was traced back to the company somehow, a fine or fines would follow as well as attention from the media.

“Good thing Clive was on holiday when it happened, if he’d come in and seen that first thing in the morning, he would have gone into orbit,” Paul said with a chuckle.

“Yeah, I hear you there,” Mickey said. Clive was the other supervisor of the yard, a man who had served in the army and knew how to get what he wanted out of the staff in the yard. He was also one of the people on site whom you really didn’t want to piss off in any shape or form as he was quite vocal and used some very choice words when letting someone have it.

“The waste collection people should be coming sometime this week to pick up the rest of the paint bins and all that, finally got a date out of the girl on the phone last week,” Paul said as they stopped at the bottom of the ramp.

“Thanks for getting that organised for me, I thought sending an email would have been enough but then she started asking me for all kinds of stuff I didn’t know anything about. She even said at one point they didn’t have the COSH sheets for what I wanted her to pick up,” Mickey said as another lorry and trailer moved past them and lowered itself onto the parking space for the fork lifts to pick at it. When it came to information on collecting waste products, Control of Substances Hazardous to Health was a big thing as the waste company could charge the company quite a lot if something was in there that had not been included in the list. At one point the company was using small and separate plastic waste tanks to dispose of each product if it had been split and the container damaged, but unfortunately there were those who really didn’t care about what they were doing and soon the contents of the bins were all mixed and the end result was either a chemical weapon or a home science experiment. Thankfully now it was just a case of bagging up whatever the product was and getting rid of it.

“Hey no problem, keep me in the loop and I’ll help when I can,” Paul said as he produced a pack of cigarettes and pulled one out. He and Mickey fist bumped as they parted company and as he walked up the ramp and into the warehouse, he heard Paul shout “SMOKE BREAK!” to the yardies and they all headed for the smoking area to light them if they had them.

“Hey Mickey,” called out one of the reach truck drivers on his shift as he was signing himself in on the fire register.

“Hey Mark,” Mickey said as he pulled out a pen from his pocket and put a tick next to his name and then continued to his locker. After he had put his hard hat and lunch box away, Mickey walked into the canteen and got a cup of coffee from the machine and sat down to drink it before the start of shift. As it was a Monday they were the first in, they could get started easy without have to deal with the hour long crossover with the night shift before they went home and he didn’t need to worry about checking the paint spill areas for any surprises. Hodges and Parks distributed many products to many different parts of the country, it was either DIY and minor building supplies, home items and furniture and even food; they literally were an all in one company. The only problem was that when a mess was made and it was right at the end of a shift, the person or persons responsible would leave it out in the waste area outside for the next shift to deal with and “forget” to mention it when doing the shift handovers. Surprises like this greeted Mickey often, often enough in fact for him to get used to it and come to expect it most mornings.

“Hey,” said a voice behind him which accompanied a tap on his shoulder. Mickey turned around to see Gary, one of the managers on his shift. Gary, or Gaz as everyone called him as was the way in warehousing to give someone a nickname as soon as you got to know them, had promoted Mickey to begin with and the two of them worked together often. He was the same medium height as Mickey but five years older and differed from Mickey by having a little bit of a beer belly and a grey crew cut hair style.

“I haven’t finished my coffee. In fact, I haven’t even started it,” Mickey said as Gaz sat down next to him.

“It’s ok, no early morning meeting today but we do have one. I’ll come get you when it’s ready because apparently it’s a big one,” Gaz said before he took a sip of his own coffee.

“It’s a little early for a mystery tour, can you give me a hint or something?” Mickey said as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

“If I knew myself I would, I’m going to find out from senior management in a moment, so watch this space,” he said before getting up and leaving the canteen.

“Happy Monday,” Mickey muttered to himself as other people slowly began to enter the canteen and line up in front of the coffee machines.