Edward had waited day after day, hour after hour for the week to come to an end. His efforts to talk Nate into an early release fell flat when his co-worker revealed he had plans of his own tonight. To Edward’s dismay, he would be stuck closing up the lab solo. Maybe it would be a welcomed distraction.
The last hour consisted of purposeless walks around the lab, fiddling with broken equipment and reassembling a security camera with such skill it could have been mistaken for a mailbox beaten with a baseball bat. His mind wouldn’t allow him to focus as thoughts of Olivia plagued him.
She stood there in the desert camp. The wind chased and teased her white dress to reveal her tanned thighs. A quick look around confirmed the absence of people or civilization besides the khaki tent. Her dark eyes met his and she placed her index finger in her mouth, eyes still on him. Her mouth and lips moved with remarkable skill as they captured the others moments later. Edward couldn’t unearth the effort required to look away, his desire mounted as her intensity grew. A minute passed before a smile crossed her lips and she ran those fingers through her dark hair. A quick smile, a fleeting gaze. An attempt at bashfulness, but he knew better.
“I need you,” she mouthed. The wind stole her words and carried them away.
A loud rapping sound jerked him out of his daze. Four large rocks fell from the sky on either side of him. They stopped for a moment and allowed him to see Olivia’s thick red lips pulled into a smile. The ground shook and his shoulders rocked from side to side. The beautiful woman began to fade and the desert disappeared when his eyes flew open.
Fiery red hair clouded his vision and a youthful girl’s face took the place of Olivia’s. He lifted his head off his folded arms which rested on the worktable.
“Hi, Mr. Drest,” she said. “Sorry to wake you up.”
Edward stretched his arms out and let out a large yawn. “That’s alright. I probably shouldn’t be sleeping on the job. You’re Nate’s daughter, right?”
“Yeah, I’m happy I caught you. I was hoping you could help me with something.”
“Only if you don’t tell your dad I was sleeping on the job,” he said with a smile.
The redhead shook her head and maintained her calm expression.
“Alright, I’m just about done for the night, but would.” He glanced over at the clock to see how much time he could sacrifice before the agony of making Olivia wait would consume him. It certainly screamed at him right now, some areas more pronounced than others- “Ten minutes be long enough?”
The girl nodded and walked over to a shelf piled high with plastic crates. Edward followed her while he shifted his baggy work pants around and tugged at the work shirt that was too short to help his situation.
Don’t turn around kid. I’m not perving on you, I promise.
He hadn’t had a chance to work with any of the materials her hawk eyes sought out just yet. To his knowledge, they were just here for storage. Nate had never spoken of their significance before, and the girl’s knowledge surprised him to contrast his own ignorance.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“I need to find a device with this serial number,” she said and handed him a slip of paper.
He looked at the sequence of numbers and letter with a turned body. He did welcome the distraction, and could fully embrace it once his embarrassing erection subsided. Dreams like that belonged in the mind of boys closer to this girl’s age, not in his.
He looked through the labels on the exterior of the plastic crates until he found one with the same opening numbers. He lifted the container down from the high shelf and placed it on one of the work tables. They both began to go through the box, which was far less organized on the inside. People must have just tossed the devices in. They all resembled each other, handheld consoles with 3.5 inch screens.
He looked at the back of one of the consoles, and at the very bottom there were small black letters camouflaged with the dark plastic. This would take awhile. The bin contained nearly two hundred devices.
“Ten minutes, huh?” Edward teased.
“Maybe an underestimate, but I can look if you need to go.”
“No, I’ll help you out. We can stay here another thirty minutes before I really need to go.”
Nate wouldn’t appreciate it if he brushed off his daughter’s request or left a non-employee in the area unsupervised. He would just stress himself out if he went home with too much down time before Olivia’s arrival.
“So how do you like the underground? Is it everything you imagined and more?” Edward asked.
Nate’s daughter looked at him with a raised eyebrow, shook her head, and rolled her eyes. “It is what it is. What about for you?”
“Running water, free boo-“ Edward stopped himself, realizing he was still talking to a teen, “burgers, food. You don’t have to go around looking for it.”
“Oh,” she said and her eyes stayed on him. He must have said something wrong. “How was it out there after the disaster?”
“It wasn’t a cakewalk, if that’s what you’re asking. I lived out of my home for a few weeks until my rations ran out.”
“Why did you have rations?”
“I wasn’t much of a cook really, had a Costco membership. With my supply, it was easy enough to live for two weeks. I mean it was boring as hell, but it was living.”
“So you hung out in your basement or something?”
“Basements got flash flooded when the rains came. I’d never seen anything like it. The water came down in sheets, just hammered away at the ground and walls. The winds blew at ridiculous speeds. It took over a week for things to dry up and calm down.”
Her bottom lip parted from the top one, and she remained quiet for a moment longer. “Was it hard to survive?”
He shrugged. “Game of chance really. If your shelter could take the beating, so could you. Curiosity and stupidity killed a lot of people out there. Infection got the rest from what I saw. Do you still have family on the outside?”
She shook her head and turned away from him. “No. I’m sorry I brought it up. Let’s keep looking.”
They sorted through the devices and had nearly gone through six dozen when he realized the time. She didn’t speak another word as they sorted. He knew the crushing feeling of losing loved ones. The bond between him and his sister had remained strong, so much so they had lived on the same street in the past five years. His side of the street was untouched by one of the outlying tornados in the initial cluster. Her side wasn’t. When he dared to venture out, he couldn’t stomach the sight of their disjointed bodies, rag dolls cast away by a monster.
The urge to leave itched away at him and he glanced up at the clock. “I really need to get going. Here’s what we’ll do. Put the ones we’ve checked in this bag, and do the rest tomorrow. If your dad helps us out, it’ll go twice as fast.”
Her face dropped. “Oh, I can just come back another day. It’s kind of a surprise for my dad, so I was hoping I could keep this between you and me.”
Edward laughed to himself. Between Olivia and this girl, he was beginning to think that the women of this facility only wanted to exist through secrecy. He glanced at the clock again as Olivia’s name danced in his mind. He grabbed a plastic bag and began loading the devices inside. The girl was quick to help.
“One more for good luck,” she said and looked at the serial number. “Wait! This is it!” she said in high pitch. A big smile lit up her face as she pressed the power button. The screen remained blank and the smile faded. She pushed the button again with the same result.
“Shit,” she muttered and looked down at it in disappointment.
“Come by tomorrow, and I’ll help you figure it out, alright?” Edward said and dumped out the bag of devices. He placed hers inside, the only one.
“Can’t I borrow it?”
Edward shook his head. “I don’t think that’s the best idea. But, come back tomorrow in the last hour, your father has another meeting then.”
Nate’s daughter sulked off, and Edward smiled since he could finally leave the lab. Thoughts of Olivia washed over any suspicions he had towards Nate’s daughter. He made it all the way to his apartment, to find Olivia standing outside his door in a pair of dark tight pants and a top that did ample justice to her breasts. She couldn’t help but bring a smile to his lips. His body broke into a light jog that he hadn’t even noticed until now when his breaths grew ragged.