Freezer 42

Chapter 4: Boxes...All the way down.

Meats threw on the top half of his suit as he pushed through the maintenance office door. It wasn't so much an office as a garage, a few partially dismantled cherry pickers taking up the majority of the space. To his surprise Siobhan wasn't running the newbies through the safety briefs or the mock ups of common system errors like she usually would have.

The place was completely empty. Not even so much as a half eaten fruit bar or a quarter full coffee cup left over from the shift before. Meats sat down at his desk and opened his company computer. He sifted through a few emails, the majority of which pertained to the accident from that afternoon, and then closed it again.

He drummed his fingers on the thin metal desk, waiting for something, anything that needed doing to grab his attention. He was supposed to track down the missing picker, but that was something he needed to plan a bit for. And that took time, not to mention motivation. Motivation he was sorely lacking at the moment.

As the minutes dragged on, Meats' mind tried as hard as it could to avoid remembering the box from the night before. He stared at the calendar, but all he saw were boxes. He tried the bolt and nut organizers, more boxes.

'Maybe the tool bo-... Oh, no, now you've already gone and ruined it. Shit.' He thought, rubbing his eyes. It didn't work. It never worked.

He was nearly about to give up on the whole endeavor when Siobhan opened up one of the garage doors. A blast of significantly colder air blew through the office. She shut the door swiftly behind her and placed some papers on her desk. She was alone.

"Uh, where are the newbies?" Meats asked, gesturing to the room devoid of trainees. Siobhan looked up from the forms she was signing.

"Replacing a rack strut. We found a bent one in room twelve." She replied, looking back down at the paperwork. Meats craned his neck to read them. They were training certifications.

"Um, why?" Meats asked, trying to sound as far from critical as he could. He'd never seen Siobhan let anyone out of the office after any less than two days of slideshows and tests. Even he'd been in this office for half a week, as long ago as that may have been. He'd only become head of the department because she had declined the position three times already.

"They're ready for it." Siobhan answered, pausing for a moment to think beforehand.

"I took the better half of a week before you let me out of here. And, I'd already had warehouse experience." Meats said, taken aback by her nonchalance. Siobhan paused, not to think, but to smile.

"You weren't ready." She replied, placing her initials in a couple of places on the forms. Meats deflated. As much as he may have hated the idea of training anyone, he hated the feeling of being useless even more.

"Alright then. Wont question it, but I want to go out and see for myself." He grumbled, hoisting himself out of his chair. As he sauntered over to the garage door and leaned down to heave the door open Meats stopped.

There were voices, Tom and Kady's by the sound of it. They were joking perhaps. No, too serious. Their voices carried the flavor of an argument, a relatively light one, but an argument none-the-less.

"Why'd you choose a pop star?" The higher pitched of the two voices said. It was almost a whisper, even as it drew closer. Meats suspected this was Tom. Even doing falsetto Kady's voice out bassed his by two full octaves.

"Why'd you choose someone li-" The deeper voice said, seeming more nervous than angry. Meats couldn't make out the last bit.

"Well it's usually not the same. This time h-" Tom said, again cutting the end off of the sentence.