Part 2: The Rebel Gets A Cause
The soft sound of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas filtered down from the overhead speaker. Jadine could hear it, but it didn’t stick in her brain the way music usually did. It floated in one ear and out the other while she double checked the chairs wedged between the door and wall. She gave each a shake to make sure there was no wiggle room that would weaken the set. The chairs effectively cut the room in half by creating a partition roughly eight feet long, eighteen inches high and twelve inches wide. Satisfied the wall would hold up against any onslaught, she stepped over it and crossed the room.
The room was mostly empty, except for the chairs against the outside wall, a push-broom and snow shovel in one corner. Everything else was for maintenance purposes and attached to the walls. The one closest to the door blinked with lights indicating the health of the underground fuel tanks, the lines to the pumps, and the pumps themselves. To the left of those, were the electrical panels for the outside lights and an emergency shut-off to the fuel pumps. To the left of that, running along the exterior wall, were a series of panels, six in all, that contained the electrical switches to every part of the store. To its left, was the wall of electronics. Routers, satellite feeds, phone lines, and a half dozen little black boxes with blinking lights that only the geeks at Corp could identify. The final section of wall, to the right of the door, was empty.
Stacy sat on the concrete floor, hugging her knees to her chest with one arm while resting her injured arm atop her kneecaps. Blood was seeping through the bandage.
“You okay, Stace?” Jadine asked softly, dropping down next to her.
“If you can call this okay,” Stacy snorted, swiping at the tears sliding down her cheeks. “How can you be so calm about all of this?”
Jadine leaned her head back against the wall. It felt cold to her bare arms. The coolness seeped through the material of her shirt to her back. She shivered.
“You,” she answered, simply. “As long as someone else is crying, I can be calm. I’d be a blubbering mess right now if you hadn’t started crying. So … thanks for that.”
“Huh,” Stacy grunted. “You’re welcome. I guess.”
Trevin wrestled a chair from the stack in the corner. “What’s wrong with these chairs?” He asked, testing his weight against it.
“Nothing,” Jadine admitted. “Corp replaced them with the ones we have out there in the eatery now. These should have been picked up over a month ago. Well, you know how that goes.”
“Yeah, it’s nearly impossible to get someone out here in an emergency. There’s no way they’d swing by just to pick up a bunch of chairs.”
“Exactly. Lucky for us.”
The three fell silent. Bing had stopped wishing for snow. In his place, Mariah Carey was belting out, All I Want for Christmas is You. It mixed with the sounds of turmoil on the other side of the door, creating a surreal soundtrack to their predicament. The clown who had been beating his fist against the door had stopped. Instead, there was a rhythmic squeal that could only be metal scraping across metal. Jadine shuddered.
“I wish he’d stop that,” Stacy muttered, cradling her injured arm to her chest. “It’s creeping me out.”
“How’s the arm?” Jadine asked, hoping to change the subject. The sound was creeping her out, also.
“It hurts,” Stacy said, running her tongue across her trembling lips. Her face had taken on the ashy pallor of shock. What little make-up remained on her face, stood out in a way that made her look a little too clown like for Jadine’s taste. “I wish I had some Motrin. Or Morphine.”
Jadine snorted.
“And a big jug of water, I’m parched,” Stacy commented quietly, wiping at her face with the hem of her shirt, flashing a strip of tan flesh in the process. Trevin looked away, red creeping up his neck. Stacy didn’t seem to notice. She wiped at the tear streaks until her skin felt dry then dropped the shirt back down. To Jadine she looked much better having wiped away the make-up. There was color rubbed into her checks and the clown resemblance was gone.
“They can’t get in here, can they?” Stacy asked when she was done cleaning up.
“I hope not,” Trevin said quietly, from his perch. “We could be stuck here all night.”