Chapter 12: The Basement ZF held up a camping lantern to illuminate the dark stairwell as Soma and some guy named John lead him down a stairwell leading down into the basement of the building. Cajun had shown up with a bag of parts and instructed John to use them to fix the generator. ZF had no idea why they were dragging him along, he wasn’t an electrical engineer. If things needed killing, he’d kill them, but aside from that? Let someone else handle it.
“This stairway is very long. And dark. And it smells like a swarm of deodorant-challenged monkeys died in here.” ZF grumbled just loud enough that the others could hear him over their echoing footsteps.
“It’s better than air-vent stairs. Atleast this makes sense.” Soma shrugged. The dark figure of a girl still seemed suspicious to ZF, but he supposed she had much more reason to be suspicious of him than he had to be of her. Whatever control he had over what was in his system, he was still infected.
“Can’t argue with that.” He nodded in reply.
The group stepped down into the basement and John swung his flashlight over to the generator. The machine was old and rusty. Empty gas cans littered the ground around it. ZF was hoping they had more gas, whether they managed to fix the thing or not, without fuel it was nothing but a hunk of useless metal. He held his lantern close to the machine so that John could see while using both his hands to work it. Soma was standing close to the stairway, constantly shifting her head to look around the room. She didn’t have a flashlight, so she must have been pretty good at seeing in the dark.
“How does it look, John?” ZF asked, if only to break the tension in the room.
“Ugh, it’s not looking fantastic. This thing is old, and I doubt it was in the best shape even when we got here. But I think I can get it working with some time.” John replied, forcing a bolt to turn with an old wrench.
“How much time are we talking here?”
“To be honest? I don’t know. Could be just a few minutes if this works. If not, it could be days. Even weeks. Might just turn out this thing is beyond repair.” John shrugged, sitting up and wiping oil off his hands with a rag. “Well, let’s fire this thing up and see if it works. Soma, get me some gas would you?”
Soma gave a slight nod and walked over to a shelf in the corner of the room. Her steps made surprisingly little sound. She grabbed a gas can and took it over to John. John took it from her with a quick nod of thanks and poored some of the gas into the generator.
“I haven’t a clue how old this gas is. It may not even be any good. But, it’s all we got. Before long we’ll have to go out and find more fuel.” John explained as he topped off the generator’s gas tank and screwed the lid briefly back on. “Well, moment of truth.”
John flicked the switch on the generator and the hunk of metal gave a loud, violent sputter and rang out as if protesting it’s awakening. After a few seconds, however, the noise slowed down into a loud hum. From the cheers he could hear echoing from the upper level, some of the lights must have come back on.
“Good work Gentleman.” John grinned. ZF pulled him up quickly and the mechanic slipped his few tools into his pockets. “Now let’s get the hell out of this basement, creeps the shit out of me.” He announced, taking quick steps to start back up the stairs.
“I don’t know, I kind of like it.” Soma mused cheerfully, but followed after John regardless.
“Why am I not surprised?” ZF mumbled. He cast a look over his shoulder back at the generator and the basement. There was something about this place he didn’t like either, but decided he’d think about it later and followed the others back up to the school.
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Tue Jul 05, 2011 11:02 pm
