Lamb of Moloch

A Story by add459

Lamb of Moloch

It had been raining for five days but the work went on, continually. Day and night. Two shifts 12 hours each. It was called a “shut down”. That’s when a big petroleum processing plant shuts down completely for maintenance. The longer the plant is off line the more money is lost. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. So the bosses push to get it done. Everybody works 7 days a week, 12 hours a day.

A petroleum plant is a mass of gauges, pipes, heaters, coolers, valves, and dials. A knot of metal twisting stories high. In the rain the “stacks” were surrounded by giant sheets of plastic, hung from wires and tied off to the scaffolding that surrounded the stacks. The wind was so high the rain still blew in. The sheets caught the wind like sails, and ripped. They popped and whistled. Everything in the stack was dripping wet. Guys had to climb up the “racks” or scaffolding--into the great tangle of pipes to do the work. In the rain and dark this was a terrible choir. They were often nearly soaked before they even got to the place in the pipes they had to work. Lights shined harsh florescent light from the ground on the outside, but in the middle it didn’t help. Inside the stack small lights were hung at various points, but it was still too dark. Shadows hid everything because everything was a tangle of pipe. It was squirming through the entrails of a robot monster.

The guys wore harnesses and lanyards. They hooked their lanyards to the racks and climbed up. They called it “tying off”. But it was hard maneuvering through the tangle, even without lines to get hooked on gauges and tied up in. So guys often “flew” up. They climbed without tying off because it was quicker and easier. There were safety guys who were supposed to watch everything, but they often looked the other way because the job had to get done for anyone�"including them�"to get paid.

Adam was in the middle of a stack when he got tangled up in his line. He could barely move enough to un-hook him-self. It was hard to see. The easiest thing to do was just un-hook, free himself from the tangle of lanyard, and tie off again. It was hard to move but much easier not being tied up to a scaffold. He went to unhook himself. Just as he did his foot slipped.

There was a large open spot just behind him. He fell into the hole backwards. His hard hat came off as he fell and he hit is head on a pipe. At the bottom, his broken body stretched across a gauge, head dripping blood. The blood fell on the guts of the stack, dripped slowly down and puddled on the concrete.

The lights smoked as the rain pelted them. The blood was absorbed into the concrete, or washed away by the rain.