<<Prev | >First< | Next>>
(Again, note the tags. This isn’t my usual stuff)
“Alright, which one of you numbskulls left food out here overnight? Are you trying to get us overrun with damn ferals here?”
Lyle sipped his coffee, shuddering in the Georgia autumn morning. The crew gathered here early, checking the plans for the day, making assignments, warming up with the strongest brew they could find. The air shook when a ladened dump truck revved its engine and pulled out of the lot.
Looking to the more immediate area, the pizza was stone cold having been left outside with an open lid. A big bag of chips. Wings gnawed down to the bone. Lyle figured there wasn’t enough of a smell to attract anything. He didn’t know if fluffies liked beer or not, but the supervisor was laying into two young men about policy and safety. Heaven help them if an inspector showed up and busted them for having booze on a job site.
Things got quieter as the respirator slipped on, steady steps walking inside the red-brick building. The sound of breathing died in the silence, hard soles clacking against the wooden floor. Rolling doors were down, closed since the end of yesterday. A gloved hand held the pull-chain loosely, staring at the transport palettes stacked in the loading bay.
“The dump refused them,” was what Mark had said.
“Still no luck finding a home for you guys, huh?” Lyle thought to himself, looking a dead fluff where its eyes would’ve been.
It said nothing.
The stairs beckoned, leading the middle-aged man past the second floor and up to the third. The east side of the room was blocked off with hazard tape, its flooring wet and pale. Glass lay about by the windows, shards large and small. The manager’s lounge stank of mildew, what was leather furniture now looking far more dubious. Remnants of bird nests and wasp hives lay scattered upon the floor.
The third floor was a different world. In his mind’s eye Lyle could see it how it was: clean and warm, the high priced furnishings and toys out of place for a fluffy mill. The foosball table was still in one piece, the large HDTV still on the wall. Alexander’s desk hadn’t been tossed, and the self-important owner’s computer still there.
“Hey, boss,” came from behind. Robert, the shift supervisor, tapped his metal clipboard against the wall.
“What’s up?”
“Good news and bad news.”
“Well, lets hear the good news.” Lyle sighed.
“Mary was calling around this morning and found a place that’ll take all remains we’ve got.”
“That’s good to hear,” he muttered. “I assume there’s a catch?”
“Ah, the bad news,” the senior replied. “Its a three hour trip each way, plus we just had a bunch of guys quit.”
“Huh?”
“Some of the guys are kind of freaked out by all the corpses. They signed up for gutting a building, not being fluffy undertakers.”
“Do they know we hired a specialist crew to do the haz-mat stuff?”
“They do. They didn’t care.”
The bald man sighed, not that he blamed them. There were thousands of dead fluffies stuck in the nursery racks, rotted, stuck to the wooden cages and chicken-wire floors. There was a shudder when he realized none of the workers had been inside the brooding rooms yet.
Or, for that matter, the feed room below ground level.
The rats had long gotten into the cut rate kibble, but past employees noted how they gave the weaned fluffies a mix of wet and dry food. The dry food was the cheapest kibble Alexander could get his hands on along with dried plant matter hauled off from green waste at one of the landfills. But the wet food? A mixture of fluffy fecal matter and the ground up remains of dead fluffies.
Large cooking vats cooked the slop in an attempt to pasteurize the gruel. It was a common, if not mandatory practice in many mill operations. Thin profit margins required cutting every corner with the view that protein was protein.
Mark had excused himself long before Lyle went down to see it himself. The old building originally served as a warehouse, its lift system still intact. He opted for the stairs, unsure of how a year of neglect would affect archaic motor and switches.
The air lay heavily, cold and damp. A small thanks for the respirator mask escaped his lips as the lights flickered to light. Wooden walls were covered with mold, growing worse the closer they were to the gas stoves. An industrial grinder was installed against the furthest wall, stainless steel vats queued up below the output nozzle. Old metal carts lined up opposite to them, filled with dozens of small skeletons. The fluffies were likely already dead or sick when they arrived here.
He hoped they were already dead. The fact some had a brief moment of hope when humans turned off the machine before being leaving them to languish and die made his stomach drop. The smaller buckets and ladles next to the vats didn’t help.
Still, that was yesterday. And a hazardous waste company was coming in this morning to start taking care of the dead fluffies was a plus. He just needed to get through today, then tomorrow, and the day after that. Day at a time.
The investors had given him the time and money he needed to rehabilitate this facility for them, after all.
And a 3hour long back and forth oh man!
Oh god no… not again… I though my old building restoring days were over… no… please…