"Hell of a thing, huh, Murph?"
"What?" Murph was caught off guard by theChief's sudden words, and then he covered it up by saying what he usually didin these situations. "Uh... yeah. Totally." Nothing got a man out ofan awkward situation like saying the phrase, "Yeah. Totally."
The Chief continued rambling, and Murph knew that he wassafe for a little while. "Lots of people out there counting on us. Youknow that?"
Murph did his best to focus on the Chief's words. Heseemed distracted, frazzled, the way Murph was whenever he got up enough gutsto talk to a woman who wasn't three sheets to the wind.
"You know, I got family in Portland."
Murph swallowed and said, "Yeah?"
"Yep. I got a boatload of cousins that left the rezto find a better life there."
Murph's palms began to sweat as his conversational skillskicked in. "What's a rez?"
The Chief laughed hard and slapped him on the shoulder."The reservation." Murph's face was blank. "Where the NativeAmericans live?"
"You mean Indians?"
The Chief's laugh was booming in the confined space ofthe control room. "Yeah, you got it." They lapsed into anotherawkward silence.
The monitors flitted by, never-ending parades of stillphotos with no one in them, the loading dock, the floor, the conveyor belt, thegate outside, the boiler, the cafeteria. Nothing. No movement. Just pictures ofa world that had become still. Murph wanted to see the workers there, movingabout, laughing and jawing back and forth the way they did, but there wasnothing, just cold concrete, unused furniture, and empty space.
"What about you? You got anybody out there?"The Chief asked.
Murph had nobody, but he didn't feel comfortable sharingthe fact with the Chief. "I got someone in The Dalles," he lied. Hedidn't know why. He didn't even know himself. The Chief silently nodded, hisbrown-skinned face bobbing up and down in the florescent glow of the controlbooth.
"Do you think they'll come back?" Murph asked.
"It's been hours. I'm sure if they were going tocome back, they would have done so by now. I'm sure we'll all be justfine." The Chief slapped him on the shoulder one more time and then turnedto leave saying, "Keep up the good work, Murph."
Murph just stared straight ahead at the console and themonitors above it. When the door closed behind the Chief, he relaxed, thetension draining out of his body so that it filled the chair he was sitting in.He leaned back in the chair and put his heels back up on the console. Whatwas happening out there?
His mind wandered, conjuring absurd what-if situations.He wished he actually had a girl in The Dalles. Hell, he wished he had a girlanywhere. He imagined himself tossing his work badge on the cafeteria tablesand rushing out with the other men and women to save his true love. She wouldbe huddled in a house somewhere, waiting for him to appear and save the day.Then he would kick down the door, and they would embrace. Perhaps sweepingromantic music would be playing in the background.
Murph punched up the boiler feed and stared at it as heplayed scenes of heroic sacrifice in his mind. The conveyor belt marched on insilence, dropping load after load of coal into the boiler where it was turnedinto electricity. Murph didn't care about the process. He didn't need to. Hejust needed to watch the lights on the console and make sure all the needles onthe numerous gauges stayed out of the red.
On the monitor, the light from the boiler shifted as ifit were alive. The monitor was black and white, and the light brightened anddarkened, fading in and out almost as if there were a pattern. Murph was on theedge of understanding the pattern, understanding the secret of the power plant,when a body tumbled over the edge of the conveyor belt and into the boiler.
Murph's first reaction was to check the gauges. Chunks ofcoal were one thing, but an entire human body was something entirely different.There was no reaction on the gauges, and for a second, Murph second guessedhimself. Maybe he had imagined he had seen a body. Maybe his mind was playingtricks on him.
He unlocked the monitor feed and watched as it cycledthrough each of the cameras. Cafeteria... nothing. Loading dock... the Chiefsmoking a cigarette. The floor, machinery shrouded in shadows chugging away.The conveyor belt... just a thousand feet of industrial belts pulling raw coalinto the boiler. The gate outside... oh shit. The gate outside.
Chapter 17: In the Coliseum
After the second indignity of having to take theirclothes off, Clara and Joan had made their way inside the arena. They had eatenfood on Styrofoam trays and milled about in the parade of refugees. They hadslept on the arena floor, on makeshift cots that had been set up for thatpurpose. There were more people than there were cots, and Joan and Clara hadbeen one of the first to arrive at the Coliseum.
For a while, the flood of refugees was fairly steady. Biggreen trucks would pull up to the fences after a path was cleared for them anddrop off survivors. Helicopters constantly buzzed overhead, dropping offsupplies and refugees. Soldiers stood on the scaffolding, gunning down thedead, but in Clara's mind, something seemed off.
With the amount of dead on hand, there should be a steadystream of gunfire, but their numbers had only swelled throughout the day. Clarasat in the fading evening light trying to figure out what they were doing. Allof her inquiries had been rebuffed by the soldiers that were in the courtyard.They weren't avoiding sharing information with her; rather, they seemed tooafraid to talk about their own situation, as if saying it would make it allseem too real.
Clara clomped around the front of the Coliseum, doinglaps in her walking boot on an ankle that still hurt mildly. In a thinlydisguised attempt at hitting the soldiers up for information, she had spent thebetter part
