Several puke colored maintenance report slips had been stuffed gracelessly into his box. He'd heard the old building always rebelled against its residents in the winter. The civil turmoil had worsen the state of the aging establishment.
Gendry pulled the slips out and read each one carefully. He crumbled the first one since he had already run into the leaking urinal last night and had replaced the gasket. He dog-eared the third slip, turning on his boot to head to the storage room. He would fix the lights in the morgue first. A parcel with new breaker wires had arrived yesterday.
He continued to read the reports as he absentmindedly dug through his pocket, first he pulled out the keys to his storage closet and then the pack of nicotine gum he'd found that morning in one of his pant pockets. There was only two pieces left. He pushed one out and popped it in his mouth.
A distant, thundering boom stopped him in his tracks. He stood still for a moment. There was a soft rumble around the building. The floor shook a bit and the hallway went black before turning green from the emergency lights. The alarms went off and doctors, nurses and patients all began pouring out of doors in a calm, collected manner. Gendry followed them. They all headed in the same direction and took turns down the spiral staircase that lead them to the basement. The bunker was deep underground and the only way in was through a chute with a short, steel ladder.
Gendry could hear soft words being exchanged among everyone as they found a place to sit or stand. The cold room filled quickly. Nurses urged some of the patients who could barely hold their own to lay on the cots that lined the entire south wall of the long room. There was a large water tank next to one of the beds. Gendry sat beside it and leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He could hear the different conversations being whispered through the room. After nine months, he was slowly picking up on the language. He could understand most of what people were said, but he didn't trust himself to speak it without sounding like an idiot, so he never did.
"Where's your ferret?" a small voice whispered across from him.
His eyes blinked open. The girl was standing next to a doctor in a lab coat. She had a canvas book bag hanging from her shoulder.
Gendry shrugged. She crossed the space between them an wiggled next to him on the floor.
"You left him up there?"
"He wasn't mine," he said softly, "And he's not here anymore. He's outside somewhere. Maybe he's already starved to death or perhaps the wolves got him."
"That's better than what they were doing to him here."
Gendry nodded.
In the weeks since he'd first encountered the girl in the garden, he'd come to learn that she was interning under the lead researcher. She'd be there a few months before heading back to England.
"I hate this room," she leaned her head back against the wall like his. "It's stuffy and claustrophobic,"
"It's better than being outside during those drills."
"I can take the cold. Out there you can see what's coming. You can run. In here you're stuck."
Gendry chuckled, "You can't outrun a bomb. You're safe in here, these walls are thick."
"Yes you can. If you're fast. You're trapped in here if a bomb hits and the rubble falls over the exit."
"There's a grate there," Gendry pointed to the far end of the bunker. "It's enclosing a tunnel. I've seen the floor plans. They used it in the late 1920's to cart bodies out to the old incinerators at the edge of the field."
The girl leaned in to his face. She was close enough for him to pick up her scent. She smelled like antibacterial soap.
"I know," she mouthed almost in an almost inaudible whisper. She had a huge grin on her face.
His brows furrowed and he pulled his face away to get a better look at hers. One of her eyebrows twitched up slightly.
He didn't get the chance to ask her what she meant. The bells echoed off the stone walls and everyone began to rise and push off the beds, gathering patiently yet instinctively around the ladder.
Gendry resumed his duties mechanically, his mind on the damned ferret. That afternoon, once the sun set, he took a walk down the lane that stretched beside the canal. Fat snowflakes fell silently all around him. He found the spot where he'd last seen the little guy and tossed the pieces of turkey he'd taken from the kitchens.
While fussing through his pocket for that last piece of gum, he found his lighter and felt the nauseating urge to smoke. He gritted his teeth. The fields were silent all around. There was no sound of birds or cars. He was a good distance away from the manor that he couldn't even hear the humming and groaning of the furnace and generators. He sighed in frustration after he'd stood for well over ten minutes and saw no sign of the little one. The days were growing shorter and the sky was already darkening so he started back toward the manor. As soon as he made it to the path, he heard soft shuffling behind him and when he glanced back, the ferret was there, gathering the pieces of turkey off the snow. Gendry smiled.