One Ma'am army

Chapter 1: Meet the Cleaner

      As a member of the work force behind keeping this war well supplied, I can easily say Sasha eats through bullets. I'm glad I'm not a ground keeper or a bomb restocker, restocking Medkits, Ammo Boxes, and the large explosive payload. I get up earlier before the sun does, travel five minutes east for the employee buildings where the stockers are boarded, and I get my stocking assignments. Every day, in and out, without fail.

    It was a regular work day, up by 3:00 in the morning, ready to go by 4:00. I started my company jeep by 4:20 am. The Jeep sputtered then purred as I left the gravel drive onto the dirt then onto the turn out of an asphalt highway. Down the deserted highway and off onto the next turnout, 4:25 am, I turn onto every dirt road imaginable to get to this place. It was secluded, I'll give the administrator credit. 4:30 am and I park the Jeep as it started to roar like what I guess would challenge Heavy's snoring. I finally get past the inflow of first shift leaving for their scheduled sleep.  I usually get in early enough for a not so awkward conversation of just small talk about the weather of the nearest restocking station, Dustbowl. Thankfully past them, there wasn't much conversation to be had.

     Inside, I beheld the poor security guard, Tom. He takes 14 hour shifts, and they are mostly nights. I walk up to him as he springs to life.

"You're early Katelyn." He yawned, then looked into an empty mug of coffee. 

"Not as early as you." I joke back. He laughed, not as awake enough to fully register the joke.

"When are you off this year? I could still take you on a date." He pointed at me with the empty mug, the dark circles under his eyes making him much more of a raccoon than the actual creature.

"Christmas, and the answer is still no. You know the ritual I do. Visiting my parents and my sister, opening presents with my sister and her family, then sleeping for the rest of the day." I swipe my ID card, saying I clocked in. 

"Fine, Hows school?" He lazily looked at the screen.

"Okay I guess. I have to study for a biology test, and I have a chemistry lab later today." I shrug. "I gotta go to school for work, and work for school." A familiar face with short flat black hair came up with two mugs full of coffee, another thing I don't drink. I make small talk as Emily and Tom slowly bud me out, knowing I had to pick up on my assignments soon. I pushed my coffee to Tom, knowing he needed it more than I did. 

     I waved to them both as I went to my boss to get my assignment. She prints off a smaller than usual paper list and hands it to me. I asked why it is shorter, and she shrugged. She said the normal joke of "If you have an issue, take it upstairs." I laughed as she dryly cackled, her voice dried out by the unusually cold snap happening on the badlands. In this line of business, if you wanted to die before seeing a change, you should go to corporate. 

     I left the offices and left for my two stops today before school. Stocking Desert cliff Code name: "Upward" and cleaning the team rooms before their scheduled war time fighting. Ah yes, Cleaning duty, fun with chemicals if they let you use them, which since I'm going into the chemistry field, they let me. Due to the nature of my contract and scholarship with MannCo., I can't say whats exactly in the stuff, but I can say its a lot of liquor and gasoline. 

    I spray the rooms with it and it takes off blood, guts, and crit residue as well as paint from the sprays. I always feel kinda bad for getting rid of Pyro's artwork, because it is either really cute, or increasingly terrifying the more you look into it. However, the porn and the suggestive sprays? I'm more than happy to spray them down more than once. Once I'm finished spraying everything down, I light a match and drop it in before ducking to the side as the resulting fire is contained by the sliding metal door. The fire purifies the room of anything.

     The stocking is my least favorite part of the job. Lifting Medkits over your head can lead to some strange bruises. The other stuff I set on the lower shelves because of my lack of height, the shifting rockets, and the heavy bullets. The Minigun ammo has to go on the middle shelf, sort of an unspoken rule, and for giggles, I climb up the side of the resupply cabinets and push the cans of Bonk! on top for the BLU's "respawn".  

    "Fuck you blues."  I snicker. It's been a running joke to mess with the blue side more than Red. Of course they are officially called BLU, but I couldn't be asked to care. RED is Red, and BLU is blue. 

     I check my watch, 5:45 am. Right on schedule. I pulled my keys out and walked back to the Jeep. It was almost 6:00 am when I made it back to the noisy Jeep. Traffic on the Road wasn't horrible as I drove to college. Unfortunately, my radio began to sputter and squawk. With a few precise slaps, it worked. Percussive maintenance, don't knock it until you try it.

     "All stockers come in, All stockers come in. We have a Code 114 at Red's base. All available units, report to Red's base and clean it up. Over" The radio spat out orders. I pulled off to the side of the road and sighed. I checked the time, 6:25 am. None of the other stockers were awake from the first shift. I wiped my hands down my face in annoyance as I grabbed the receiver.

     "Roger that. This is Alpha Krypton eight eleven responding to the code 114 at Red's base. ETA , about thirty minutes out." I hold down the button on the receiver.

     "Copy that, over and out." The speaker cut off their transmission, and I returned the receiver to the radio. I didn't know Emily ran the radios so early in the morning, I thought as I turned my Jeep around. This still wasn't worth the $3.35 I was getting paid.

     Thirty minutes pass as I slowed my Jeep down to enter Red's compound. At its center was a large warehouse, but no one at the office had the clearance to know what was going on in there. Some thought that's where they stored explosives, others thought that they just stow cargo and cars there. Anyways, I parked outside the gate and grabbed my supplies, a mop and a bucket full of bleach. A code 114, for all non MannCo employees here for the fights, is vomit or any body fluid due to intoxication. Don't ask what a code 409 is, cause that's way above my pay grade.

    I open the door and the smell hits me like a train. Oh good lord the smell, I nearly barfed my self. I began to breathe through my mouth and set to work. The barf was an easy clean up, but the odor wasn't. I remembered that I had a lemon, in case I could make lemonade for lunch, in the backseat of my Jeep. So after I squeezed the lemon onto the area and washed it down with a rag, the smell was replaced with a light lemon. I splashed the tainted solution of barf and bleach onto the gravel beside the large warehouse. Thankfully, the gravel got rid of most of the smell.

     I was rinsing out the bucket with a water spicket outside when I heard something else coming up the gravel path. The sound of the small engine stopped as another familiar woman stepped off the purple mo-ped. She had files under both arms  as she approached the door. She didn't fidget under her purple helmet to fix her black bob either, which is impressive for surprising for a woman of her stature in the company. 

     "Mornin' Miss Paulin'", I said in my New Orleans accent as I emptied the now cleanish bucket of water. She looked up from her thoughts to me, her glasses catching the morning sun, almost blinding me a bit.

    "Oh. Morning Katelyn." She smiled, slipping the files through the mail slot. I was surprised she even knew my name, considering how little we ever meet. She works the second and third shifts and I help out first shift. I put the bucket and mop back into my Jeep and shut the gate. 

     "Any reason you're here early?" She put her mo-ped into gear.

     "Someone called a code, and I was close. I took care of it." I opened my Jeep's door. "Anyway, It was nice talking to you, but I have to get going." I jumped into the driver's side. She waved and left, and I took my leave and headed off to school.

((Thank you so much for reading this all the way through! As a bonus, you get to have something revealed that is important to the later plot!~ This book is important as background, so read everything! See ya in the next chapter!))