People are out and about in the ... well, they're paths between buildings wide enough for multiple people to walk side by side if they have to; might as well call them streets. A lot of them are people from White Forest, in clumps of one local and two or three evacuees. It's difficult to place just how many people are in this part of the cave system at the moment, as there are inevitably echoes all over the place (including tantalizing snatches of echoing music). There's light, at least, and warmth despite the depths. It's evident now that people here not only look after their buildings and keep them in good repair, but go to some lengths to decorate them with such paint and paneling as can be made to look both tidy and appealing.
"Oh, you meant-" Sarah sighs and stills her fingers on the strings. "Sorry, Ms. Vance, I thought you were talkin' about the Combine, not the people you brought with you. Shoulda realized, I guess."
"That's okay. Chief Medina says I talk too much anyways." Sarah smiles a little sheepishly, hooking one thumb over her shoulder towards the EMERGENCY door. "I'm just out here practicin' some before my shift starts."
"Tunnel monitoring," says Sarah. "There's people down in just about every tunnel in this cave every day. Most of 'em are really small, too. There's places you got to lie down and push your tools in front of you and crawl on your belly like a snake to get to where you need to go. People bring walkie-talkies with them when they go, so there always has to be somebody listening, in case someone gets stuck or hurt in one of the real tight tunnels, or something alien turns out to be living in the dark somewhere."
"Sometimes it's water," says Sarah. "The river freezes in the winter, so we get our water from underground then, and sometimes people got to go real deep to run pipes and pumps to bring the water up here. Or fix the pipes and pumps, if they break. Some of it's just exploring, though. There's lots of side tunnels and things down here that we don't know where they go. Mayor says we should know them all so nothing comes out of them and takes us by surprise."
Sarah nods. "There's one tunnel that runs so deep," she says, "it's practically warm in there, even without us doing anything about it. I got most of the way in there once but it got too small'n I had to scootch backward ninety feet before I had enough space to turn around. I could see it went an awful long way, though, I just couldn't get in there."
"I don't know about that," says Sarah. "You want to talk to Mr. Lauvray or Mrs. Peterson about machine parts and things. People get hurt down there all the time, though, so I bet they'd say yes."
"Mrs. Peterson's at the library, usually," says Sarah. "That's up that way, over by the yellow ceiling banner. Mr. Lauvray works in the biogas digester tunnel and it really smells in there, so you might want to wait until suppertime and find him then instead."
"It's where all the latrines and all the animal waste runoff feeds to," Sarah says. "We get most of our electric down here from methane generators, and the digester tunnel's where we capture the methane from all that shit breaking down."
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
That doesn't sound remotely pleasant.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment