Fall out part 3

He looked at the woman again, and he realised who she was. He knew her name was Darcy, and that she worked over in accounting. He wondered if she had fled here after the first hit.

The first sign of war was in accounting. It had started slow, so no one noticed until it was too late. Later when things had calmed down, they figured out what happened. Someone had been changing numbers. At first it was small things. On one page a 5 became a 3. On another a 4 became a 14. Then more and more, untill the whole system was infected. Some of the work that was being changed, was also being coppied in to the computers. Once the first computer read enough of the faulty numbers it went beserk, and then it spread to all the systems. Some thought there had to be a mole. Someone working from the inside. Giant streams of ink and huge piles of torn paper littered accounting for weeks as they evacuated.

The workers were demoralised. They had to shovel mass resignations, burn infected piles of paper, and the ink, that was the worst. Anyone who has ever had to scrub ink off a cubical would know that. Dripping from chairs, covering keyboards. Just looking at the state of things and someone could tell that it must have been horiffic. If one were to try and imagine it they could almost visualise the scene in their head. One persons computer would go, papers would start jaming; pencils breaking. Coppiers and printers would start malfunctioning and then the ink would come. Spirting out like blood. Spurting from coppiers, pc printers, hand held priniting calculators, any thing and everthing with ink, just boiled over. The image would be burned in to the minds of those who saw it for the rest of their lives.

Then it spread. First to payroll, then HR. It spread every where, and didn't slow down. Finaly it hit Shipping, then Receving. Once it hit Public Relations it was all over. At least the first attack. Nothing after the first assault could really be called an attack. It was more like fallout from the first attack. The losses in every department slowly built up. With each loss, they would get further behind. Late paychecks, dammaged deliverys, the devistation was insurmountable. Now there were few left. Those who stayed were mostly just too subborn to quit. "Die hards". There were also the destitute. Those with no place else to go, trudging along to the slow pace of manual type writers and hand held staplers, but it was better then nothing.

That ray of hope promised by the Man No Longer Under the Desk was like a shining light in a pitch black world. Soon they would find reprieve.....