152.
Things weren't ok immediately. Going to war against the supernatural and invading hell tends to fuck things up. Clarissa knew everyone would calm down. She and Demurra helped where they could, but for the most part the world did what it always does, it recovered. Cities got rebuilt, government recovered, and a year later even Clarissa was back to just working as an exterminator. She had more calls than before, but the work was pretty much as it was before minus Gilbert and Doris.
Clarissa was working solo now. Demurra broke up with her shortly after she got back from hell, something about how she couldn't deal with Clarissa and the work she did. It made sense at the time, but the wound was fresh everytime Clarissa felt herself alone and picking at old wounds. Just like she woke up in Gilbert's house and kept hoping to hear his voice. She lived with all the ghosts now. She did change the name of the business to CS Exterminators. She didn't have the tag line like Gilbert, but she couldn't bear to see his name as much anymore.
On the majority of days Clarissa was just in the office, cooling her heels waiting for the phone or email to show up. It had been busy post the world almost ending. Most of the time Clarissa was just cleaning up after the new "Department of Supernatural Affairs", who did the best they could with all the problems in the country, but Clarissa felt they focused a little too hard on what effected rich people, and not enough on the regular folks. It was a snowy wednesday morning when she got the email, it simply listed an address and "help" ordinarily this wouldn't have been enough for Clarissa, but the sadness at the office felt cloying and so she replied "on the way" without a second thought.
The Van was gone now, Clarissa drove a pick up truck, something she'd been gifted by the government. She liked how it was less bulky than the van, and it was a reward for something she'd done and not something Gilbert had used, so it felt more hers. The truck also had better gas mileage and since Clarissa was doing the books now that was important to her as well.
Roads were taking longer to repair than a lot of other things. The drive out anywhere often needed more off roading than Clarissa liked, but she accepted road construction in the rural areas she worked were lagged behind repairing cities and power infrastructure. It did make travel estimates a pain to manage. She assumed it would take a few hours to make her way near Vancouver, but it took the better part of a day, by the time she arrived at the address it was already night.
It was a residential neighborhood, rows and rows of similar looking houses lined the streets. Clarissa took a bit to even find the specific address she was looking for. Once there she could see a DSA van out front, blaring from its speakers was a warning for others to stay in doors. Clarissa was confused, usually she didn't overlap with the DSA, they had their methods and she had hers and never the two met. When she got out of her truck one of the neighbors ran up to meet her.
"Should we remain inside?"
"You don't know?"
"I don't, that van showed up here like five hours ago, I haven't seen shit." Clarissa cursed under her breath.
"Yeah stay inside then."
"Are you going to do something?"
"Oh yeah I'll do something." The man walked away and Clarissa muttered under her breath "Don't know what I'll fucking do, but it'll be something."
No comments:
Post a Comment