“I realise you probably have a few questions, but first things first, let’s go to my office.”
“Do I need to bring this?” asked Brenden, holding up the blank slip of paper.
“Oh that. Just put it back on the pile there.”
A little tentatively, Brenden put his piece of paper back on the pile atop the mahogany table. He looked back over to the patchwork man, for some reason expecting some sort of a response, but there was none.
“There’s no need to concern yourself with him, he gives those bits of paper to almost everyone who arrives.”
“But who is he?”
“He’s one of my predecessors. Like me, though some time ago, he was charged with greeting all new occupants, and with making a note of their number. Several decades ago, things became a little difficult for him and the job was given to someone else. But he’d been at his post so long, he kept on returning to his stool there and attempting to carry on as before. No one’s had the heart to try and drag him away. I mean, where would he go?”
“But why’s there nothing…”
“On the paper? Oh, the ink ran out a while back. For a little while, another one of my predecessors replaced it. But we don’t use that system anymore.”
Brenden took a closer look at the patchwork man and wondered if he was taking in anything Gwen was saying about him. He looked over the stitches that seemed to be the only thing holding the figure together and noticed for the first time how ancient they appeared; how worn and frayed many of them were.
“What’s his name?”
“You know,” replied Gwen looking a little puzzled, “I’m really not sure.”
For a moment, the two stood in silence. But Gwen had no intention of dwelling on the fate of her predecessor for too long - especially due to what it might have suggested about what the future might have in store for herself - and she suggested that perhaps it was time for them to get along. After draping a bony arm over the boy’s shoulder, she led him away from the entrance to the Tunnels and, through a few polite questions, any further conversation about the unknown man they were leaving behind.
“Well, here we are,” announced Gwen after guiding Brenden through a door in the side of the tunnel to enter the box of a room that functioned as her office. “Just sit yourself down there,” continued Gwen, while pointing to a rather ordinary-looking office chair. Brenden stepped over a clump of wires that led out from the tunnel behind him and underneath a rather cheap beech finished desk. Gwen rounded the desk, before sitting herself down behind a computer that looked to Brenden as if it had been put together before he was even born.
“Just give me a minute,” Gwen added. “This thing needs replacing. So, there’s only a couple of things I need from you. From the look of things, I suppose you are one of our vampires; so that’s easy enough. But what’s your full name?”
“It’s Brenden, with an ‘e’, Wilson.”
“Well, Brenden with-an-e, welcome to the Tunnels,” despite the silliness of the joke, Brenden could not help but smile. The relative ordinariness of the whole situation and Gwen’s demeanour helped him to relax. Indeed, he almost felt as if he could just be entering a new school, or signing up for something. But only almost, as the mention of what he really was, the whitewashed concrete walls, the fact that he was talking to a zombie and the harsh whiteness of the fluorescent strip lights that illuminated the space around him never let him truly escape from what he had become and where he really was.
“Right, there’s just a few more things. First, could you stand against the wall over there? I need to get a picture.”
While Brenden stood with his back to the wall, Gwen snapped two quick shots before showing to them to the boy on the computer screen to see if he thought they were okay. Brenden barely glanced at the images and just nodded to confirm he considered whatever she had taken was fine.
“Final thing, I need to give you your number. Sometimes it gets a little tricky to track people down out there, so everyone is given a number to help us determine who is who. We now also use it to assign you your drop box and your plot. Best say that the boxes are not refrigerated, so if you expect to get any supplies, my advice would be for you to check your mail daily. This’ll also stop any thieves getting their hands on your stuff. Oh yes, that reminds me.”
Gwen jumped out of her seat and opened up a metal cupboard that took up a fair portion of a corner of the office. When she returned to her desk, she presented Brenden with a little plastic bag containing a number combination padlock and a set of instructions.
“Use this to lock up your box. One thing: When you set the code, don’t use the same numbers as those I’m about to give you. You’d be surprised how many people have lost their supplies to some unknown thief because they thought they were being clever by killing two birds with one stone.”
After shaking her mouse to wake her computer screen, Gwen mumbled and hummed through a couple of names and numbers before finally finding what she was looking for.
“Okay, Brenden Wilson,” she said cheerily as she clacked the boy’s name and an outline of a few of his more obvious features into a spreadsheet. “Your number will be 10,148.” Brenden was about to ask something, but before he could Gwen cut him off. “Don’t
