Morning came all too early for Dana. She felt like she had just fallen asleep when the officers burst in, banging their batons on the sides of the bed.
“Everyone up! Now!”
One by one, people sat up, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Mad Dog glared at Dana as she put on her clothes. Since privacy was nonexistent in the barracks, Dana didn’t care if he saw her naked. He probably already had after the mandatory group showers.
The grungy coveralls smelled of filth. Dana wondered if they were ever washed, or if someone had recently worn these before she was issued them.
“To the mess hall!”
Dana looked at one of the officers. They really run a tight schedule. She quickly grabbed her boots and started to the eating hall with Elsie and Sanders.
Mad Dog bumped right into her, pushing her into the wall. “Excuse me,” he spat.
Dana scowled at him as she rubbed her newly formed bruise. She knew he did it on purpose.
“Just ignore him,” said Elsie, pulling her along.
Breakfast consisted of brown slop. Dana wrinkled her nose at it. It smelled awful, but she took it. One scoop per bowl. No seconds allowed.
Together, the three new friends sat down at one of the long tables. Dana played with her food a bit. “What is this?”
“You’re better off not knowing,” said the man sitting next to her. “Believe me, in time, you will look forward to eating this stuff.”
“It smells horrible,” said Sanders.
“Just chew and swallow,” said the man. “Don’t think about it.”
“Thanks,” said Dana.
“Name’s George Saule.” The man held out his hand. He had graying hair and looked to be in his 50s, though Dana really couldn’t tell. She figured a place like this would prematurely age anyone.
“Dana,” said Dana. “How long have you been here?”
“Forty years,” replied George, “give or take a few.”
“No talking,” roared an officer. “You have 10 minutes to eat before your shift.”
Dana looked around at the uniformed officers that patrolled the area. She was used to officers being everywhere. Even at home, one never escaped them, but this was different. There were more of them, and they cracked down on anything that smacked of breaking the rules. She surveyed the armed guards that stood at various points of the eating hall. These men wore helmets and body armor, probably so you can’t see their faces, thought Dana. The thought that they were more prisoners than workers prickled Dana’s mind.
“Don’t mind them,” said George. Some of the slop dripped from his whiskers as he shoveled more into his mouth. “They just don’t like people getting to know one another. If you get to know someone, you might start to like them. To think of them as human.”
“But we are human,” said Elsie.
“Not to them,” said George. “The moment you got shipped here, you ceased to be human. Now you’re just animals to them. Workhorses.”
Dana didn’t like that thought at all. She quickly ate what was in her bowl. Her stomach growled after she had finished; she was clearly still hungry. Why is it we are never allowed our fill? Before an officer could bang their baton on the table, she quickly took her bowl to the dish drop-off. A scrawny man took it. His vacant eyes said it all. He had been here treated as nothing more than a piece of meat for too long.
Dana stared at him and his hollow eyes. Methodically, he took her bowl and put it in the sink. His demeanor haunted her the rest of the day. She studied those around her. They possessed the same hollow expression. Only the newbies had any ounce of life, something she was sure would soon be beaten out of them.
“Get to work!”
Dana darted off after being yelled at again by another officer. She reported to the duty station where she received her tools for the day’s work.
That day, she was to work with the incinerator. Dana didn’t like it. The noise pounded her ears, giving her a headache. She didn’t know where Elsie and Sanders had gone. Dana guessed that they were scheduled to work elsewhere.
“So we meet again,” said George as she reported for duty.
“Um, yeah,” said Dana.
“Don’t worry,” said George, “I’ll help you through, seeing as how this is your first day and all.”
Dana put on her workman’s gloves and held onto her rake.
“See this?” George pointed at a chute above them. “This is where the garbage comes out of from the level above. The people up there sort through what’s brought in. What’s to be recycled goes elsewhere. The rest comes to us. When you hear the alarm, make sure you are clear; otherwise, you’ll get crushed.
“What comes out of there, we put into the incinerator.”
George pointed at the hole in the ground with large fires in it. Dana leaned over some to look.
“Don’t lean too far,” warned George. “If you fall in there, you’re dead.”
A screeching sound filled the area.
“Clear out of the way,” said George, pulling Dana back.
Instantly, a hole above them opened and out poured all sorts of garbage. The smell gagged Dana as she tried to not breathe it in. George acted as though it didn’t bother him. Clinking bottles and metal hit the ground around them as mounds of refuse formed a gigantic pile. Once the alarms ceased and the chute above them closed, people moved in with their rakes and began pushing it into the incinerator.
“Well, time to work,” said George as he raked piles of junk into the fires below them.
Dana started raking in some papers. At first, she took her time, afraid of falling into the incinerator. After a while, the officers on duty grew tired of her wariness. In an attempt to catch up, Dana just shoved stuff into the fires, not caring what made it in there. Just don’t let me slip and fall, she thought to herself.
The heat from the fires made her throat ache for water, but she could not satisfy it. They only had one water boy on their floor and he could barely keep up with the demands for it.
Pausing momentarily, Dana wiped the sticky sweat from her face. Her clothes clung to her skin, forming damp folds around her body. The dampness did little to cool her down. After about an hour, the heat began to make her lightheaded. Noticing this, George told her to sit for a while.
“Here,” he said, giving her a canteen of water. “You drink that, but don’t let the officers catch you. Strictly speaking, I’m not supposed to have that.”
Dana took a big swig, grateful to have something liquid to put down her throat. It had a lemon taste to it, and she wondered where he got it. She looked over and saw a set of huge gears grinding away. ”What are those?” Dana asked.
George looked at where she pointed. “Those are the grinders,” he said. “Stay away from them if you can. Get too close and you might get sucked in. Many a man was killed or worse from those things.”
“I thought we had safety laws,” said Dana, foolishly.
George laughed. “Who told you that? Your teachers? The only safety laws are for the bureaucrats. People who work in this place, or the other manual labor jobs, are lucky if they see tomorrow. One thing you should always keep in mind: those who put you here are hoping you will die here.”
An officer appeared from around a corner. Quickly, George snatched his canteen and hauled Dana to her feet. He immediately started shoveling refuse into the fires. Dana copied his movements while keeping a wary eye on the officer.
She noticed something hanging from George’s neck. Never knowing a man to wear jewelry, Dana allowed her curiosity to get the better of her. “What’s that you’re wearing?”
George looked where she pointed. “Nothing.” He shoved it under his shirt. Dana let it drop.
A spot of red caught her attention. A girl of about seven with flaming red hair hid behind some metal barrels. Her wide, blue eyes bore into Dana, pleading for something.
Suddenly, Dana was reminded of her older sister. Separated by a year, they had been very close. Her sister, Lina, had red hair just
like the young girl that studied her. Three years ago, Lina was diagnosed with cancer.
Dana remembered the day she came home from school and was told the news. The first round of chemotherapy went well, but then the cancer worsened. Despite many appeals to the health board, it was determined that to try and cure Lina would be a waste of resources. The day they got the summons for Wing 16 of the hospital was the day her mother cried the most.
Dana thought her heart had been ripped apart the day they said good-bye to her grandfather. It was irreparably broken after they had to deliver Lina.
“Don’t cry,” Lina had told her. “You need to be strong now. Like grandfather said, we’ll see each other again.”
Refusing to lose Lina, Dana’s father decided to smuggle her out of the city. Others had tried to avoid the summons to Wing 16, but officers just came and got them. The same happened to Lina. That night, alone in her room, Dana cried until her pillow dripped from the tears.
“Hey!” George pulled her from her memories. “Stay in the present, or you’ll get killed.”
“George, who is that?”
George glanced at the red-haired girl watching them. “She’s Jesse, a waste-rat.”
“A what?”
“Waste-rat. That’s what they call children who are born here. There are some shacks just outside this facility where people who want to marry are allowed to live. They’re mostly one-room establishments. Anyway, any children that are born to them are called waste-rats. They’re born here and they die here. This is all they ever know. Many of them become orphans by the time they’re seven.”
“Why would anyone want to bring children into this place?” asked Dana without thinking.
“Why does anyone try to have a family?” replied George. “There is this human need to want a family. It’s built into each of us. I guess some here choose to do it because they hope for the future. They hope that the future will be better than the present.”
“Did you consider having a family?” The moment Dana asked that, she knew she shouldn’t have. George’s face contorted into a mixture of rage and sorrow. “Sorry, it’s none of my business.”
Dana grabbed her rake and continued shoving piles of garbage into the roaring fires that reached out for it.
A commotion arose across the way. Dana saw one of the grates under other workers shift. It hovered precariously over the fires. It lurched again.
“Get out! Get out!”
Shouts and yells went up all around as the floor beneath Dana’s feet quaked and thunder rumbled beneath her feet.
“It’s gonna blow!”
Workers fled, dropping their rakes and running as fast as possible. Unsure of what was happening, Dana just stood there watching everything. The floor beneath her lurched again and tipped toward the fires.
Dana’s feet slipped on the refuse she stood on, and instantly, she started falling toward the flames. Desperately, she reached out for anything as she slid closer to certain death.
A strong hand seized hers. Dana latched onto it as George pulled her to safety. “We need to get out of here!”
George shoved Dana away from the incinerator as an ominous gurgling noise filled the area below. Her feet slipped and slid on the piles of greasy garbage they were forced to run on. Others darted past her, having more experience in this matter.
A terrified scream reached Dana’s ears. She looked over and saw a man hanging precariously from a rail. If he lost his grip, he would fall into the incinerator.
Glancing around, Dana watched as people stood frozen despite the man’s pleas for help. Without thinking, she rushed for him.
“Dana! No!” yelled George.
She didn’t listen. It just didn’t seem right letting that man die because she was too scared to help. Her feet sank deep within the piles of garbage as she ran for the man crying for help.
Officers just watched the proceedings with mild interest. They had already gotten to safety and had no desire to help any of the workers.
“Help me, please!”
Dana skidded to her knees as she reached the man hanging above the flames. She took hold of his arms. “Don’t worry. I’m here.”
A flame burst from the fire below, stretching up and reaching the ceiling. The heat of it burned Dana’s skin, but she ignored it.
“Take my hand.”
The man grasped her sweaty palm as Dana seized him with her other hand. She heaved on the man, but he weighed too much. She slid closer to the flames. Her muscles strained against gravity as they moved closer to the incinerator beneath them.
The fear in the man’s eyes etched itself onto Dana’s memory. He knew he was going to die, and she too. Once again, she pulled him up. Slowly, they started to pull away from the hole that led to the incinerator.
Without warning, a huge explosion rocked the area. The force of it knocked Dana back, sending her flying through the air until she crashed into the hard wall. Agonizing screams from the man she had tried to save echoed in her ears as he was burned alive and fell into the flames below. Dazed, Dana watched as her efforts to save a life quickly burned to ash.
An officer walked up to her. “We were wondering if you would succeed,” he said. “We even took bets. I won.”
Dana stared after him in disbelief as he walked away counting his money.
George came up to her and hauled her to her feet. He did a quick check to make certain she wasn’t permanently injured. “That was foolish,” he scolded. “You need to learn that life is cheap here.”
Wiping a trickle of blood from her forehead, Dana refused to hold back her anger. “If I ran like the rest of you, I would be no better than those officers.”
When the shift ended, the buzzer sounded, signaling quitting time. Dana followed the others and put away her rake and gloves. Her stomach ached from hunger. She had had only one meal that day and had worked at least 12 hours.
Thoughts of the man dying in front of her filled her mind, and instantly, her hunger died away. “Why?” she thought. It all seemed so pointless.
She fiddled with her bowl of brown sludge. If this was life in Waste Management, then Dana wanted none of it. A mop of red hair caught her attention. Jesse had snuck into the eating hall and watched hungrily as everyone ate. Dana took the slice of bread they had been given and wrapped it in a napkin. She wasn’t very hungry.
Making certain that none of the officers watched her, Dana took her supper and walked over to the girl who hid behind a giant trash can in the shadows. “Here,” she said, kneeling down and holding out her food. “Go on. Take it.”
Jesse’s nimble fingers grasped the bowl and the bread with a strength that Dana didn’t think she possessed. She ran away and disappeared around a corner. Dana stood up and headed back to the barracks.
Elsie and Sanders waited for her. “Hey,” she said, “we heard about today and the explosion.”
They had been assigned to the recycling section of the plant and had not witnessed the explosion of the incinerator.
“Yeah,” said Dana.
“Well, tell us,” Elsie insisted.
“A man was killed,” said Dana somberly. “The incinerator blew up and everyone panicked. One man fell in. I tried to save him, but—”
“Oh, Dana, I’m so sorry,” Elsie put her hand over her mouth in shock. “I knew you had been scheduled to work there, but I never thought—”
“The thing is, no one else bothered to help him,” continued Dana. “Even as he hung there, people just worried about themselves. But that wasn’t the most sickening thing.”
“What was?” asked Sanders.
“The officers had taken bets as to whether I would be able to save him or not,” replied Dana. “One even thanked me for allowing him to win.”
“That is sick,” grunted Elsie. “This whole place is disgusting.”
“But this is life,” said Sanders. “How are we to change it when everyone accepts it? The ones in charge aren’t about to change.”
??
?Well, maybe there is nothing we can do, but I wish there was.” Elsie’s eyes brightened a bit as she remembered something. “Hey, I noticed you didn’t eat anything. Here.” She handed Dana a slice of bread that she had snitched from the kitchens.
“Where did you get this?” asked Dana.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Elsie. “Eat it. Quick, before anyone sees you.”
Dana thanked her friend and chowed down on the bread. Despite its stale flavor and crustiness, her mouth appreciated it as her stomach had reawakened to its hunger.
“Lights out!”
Dana shoved the remaining bread crust in her mouth before the officer noticed her. She slipped under the blanket on her bunk and fell fast asleep, exhausted from the day’s events.
Chapter Five