Free Afterlight by Alex Scarrow Page A

well, Walter?’
    The old man grinned but didn’t reply. He’d volunteered to come down to the ‘stink room’ to help Jenny out when her turn came up on the rota. His infatuation for her was embarrassingly obvious.
    ‘What do you say, Hannah?’ asked Walter. ‘Want to help your mum, too?’
    She shrugged. ‘Maybe. I’ll think about it.’
    Jenny laughed. Such a little madam.
    ‘I know it smells bloody awful down here,’ said Walter, ‘but if you get into the habit of breathing through your mouth—’
    ‘Can’t we move it to somewhere better ventilated?’ asked Jenny.
    He stood up straight, stretching his stiff back. ‘It’s the warmest location on the production platform.’ There were no windows down here, the room was perfectly insulated on all four sides by other storage rooms.
    ‘It’s the easiest place for us to maintain a consistent fermenting temperature,’ he said, ‘and let’s be honest, the chickens on the deck above are unlikely to moan about it.’
    Hannah giggled. ‘Moaning chickens.’
    ‘It worries me,’ said Jenny regarding the other two digesters. Thick rubber hoses attached with G-clamps ran from both of them up to the ceiling and there, attached with wire ties to a metal spar, snaked across towards a doorway leading to a second windowless room where the generator rattled away noisily.
    ‘What does?’
    ‘That we can’t ventilate this place properly. Isn’t that a bit dangerous? ’
    He shrugged. ‘We just keep the door open. That’ll be all right.’
    ‘I know. But that’s another worry - the door always open, one of the smaller children could just wander in and—’
    Walter stood up and arched his back. ‘They all know not to come down here.’
    ‘Could you not rig up an extractor fan or something? Then that door could be closed and locked.’
    He sighed. ‘Another thing to put on the To Do list, I suppose. I could consider relocating all of this to a cabin with a window, for safety’s sake, but then we’d need to heat the room to keep it warm enough for the slurry to ferment. That’d be a lot of work, Jenny.’
    She nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose.’
    ‘For now, as long as the children know they’re not to play down here, we’ll be just fine.’
    Jenny hefted another shovel of spent slurry into the barrel at her feet. ‘Perhaps something to think about in the future, Walter.’
    Hannah was doing her best to help out with a trowel, scooping small dollops out of the digester with a determined frown on her face. Leona grimaced at the sight of shit smudged up her daughter’s arm. ‘But did you have to rope in Hannah?’
    ‘I want to help my nanna and Uncle Walter,’ she answered.
    Walter smiled at her. ‘You’re our little helper. Aren’t you, poppet?’
    Hannah scooped up another heavy trowel, carelessly flicking a small dollop of pale brown mush onto her forehead. ‘Yup.’
    ‘Ugghh,’ Leona made a face, ‘be careful, Hannah, you’re getting covered in crap.’
    ‘It’s not crap,’ said Walter. ‘Just think of it as rocket fuel for our potatoes, onions and tomatoes. That’s all it is. Everything gets used; there’s no room for waste or slack on these rigs. You know that.’
    Leona continued to curl her lip at the sight of the slurry as they shovelled and scraped it out of the plastic tube.
    ‘Walter,’ said Jenny after a while, ‘how’s our newcomer? I’ve not had a chance to drop in on him yet.’
    ‘Tami says he’s still very weak.’
    ‘What do we know about him?’
    Walter shook his head. ‘Not much. I’d say he’s in his late thirties. He’s French, or at least he speaks French. He looks Mediterranean, perhaps Middle Eastern at a pinch . . . hard to say.’ He stood up straight, leaning tiredly on the shovel. ‘But, to be honest,’ he hesitated a moment, choosing the right words, ‘he looks like the type you wouldn’t normally take on, Jenny.’
    ‘Hmm?’ she mumbled.
    ‘A loner. The loners are always trouble. You know