Among These Bones by Amanda Luzzader

Author:Amanda Luzzader [Luzzader, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dystopian - Post-Apocalyptic - Woman
Publisher: Knowledge Forest Press
Published: 2018-09-08T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Woolly sat in the room’s only chair. It was an old creaky rolling office chair and it seemed ready to buckle under Woolly’s prodigious mass as he scooted up to a computer workstation. Chase took a knee beside him. Woolly plugged a small memory stick into a port on the computer case and after a few moments, he began typing furiously.

Ruby was watching over the goon. I sat in my corner and watched Woolly. He typed one command and then another. They appeared as long strings of green letters and symbols, and after each one Woolly hit the Enter key with his pinkie.

But it didn’t seem to be going well. On the monitor, there was a procession of error messages and failure notifications. The computer beeped as if annoyed or disappointed.

Woolly let out a soft curse and typed some more.

“We got the goon,” said Chase, tilting his head in that direction. “Let’s wake him up. Get his credentials.”

“Nah. Don’t trust him. He might give us some contingency command or fake account that sends out an alert. Let me see if I can get in without him,” said Woolly. “Then maybe we’ll talk to him.”

He typed some more and the computer emitted a series of beeps that I was sure did not indicate anything good. Woolly cursed again and shook his head.

This went on for what seemed like an hour. Chase kibitzed at Woolly, pointing at the screen and making suggestions. Woolly shook his head sternly. They bickered back and forth.

Woolly said, “I keep telling you—that might work for a sysadmin, but this is basically a guest account. Gotta be careful or I’m gonna hit a tripwire and red flags are gonna start going up all over the Agency network. Is that what you want?”

Chase had no reply.

“I didn’t think so.”

“Okay,” said Chase, “but I doubt they’re going to be checking often enough to—”

“Chase.” Woolly interrupted him, voice raised. “Shush. Gimme a minute.”

Chase threw up his hands and was quiet.

“Give me a minute,” Woolly reiterated, “to myself. Go away. Let me think.” He made a shooing motion.

Chase got to his feet and walked away in a huff. He stood a short distance off, but kept an eye on Woolly’s computer monitor. I kept watching.

Woolly’s fingers burst into motion and pages of text appeared on the monitor, as if Woolly were consulting some manual or operator notes. He scrolled through numerous pages of text, nodding at times, rubbing his whiskers. Chase began to pace.

“You got this, Wool,” said Chase.

Woolly dismissed him with a wave of his beefy hand. He typed something and the text on the monitor vanished.

Then Woolly bowed his head. I thought he might be saying a prayer. But then, with his eyes still closed and head down, he began to type. Slowly and without looking at the monitor, he entered a short command on the keyboard and tapped the Enter key with his pinkie. He entered another command, and another. There were no cross-sounding beeps or long error messages.

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