Date: 2015-10-05 04:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Element 12 Ltd

Thrown Away

Part 5

What Lies Below

Glynn James

Trapped

Jack sat, staring at the ground inside the cage, not paying much attention to any of the movement around him. People of the Junktown came and went throughout the day, and the cage that he now called home was sitting smack in the middle one of the larger, more open courtyards in the warren city that was hidden in the junk. Jack had seen a lot of that city on his way in, though he had been bound and gagged the whole time.

Endless covered paths wound through the mountains of junk, and along each of the many paths, there were doors attached to the walls. From the outside, the streets and alleyways looked like walls of junk until you saw a home or shop hidden behind it through an open door. The Junkers had made their homes not only amongst the trash, but out of the trash, carving deep holes into the very junk mountains above and the depths below. And there were far more people than Jack could have imagined. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of them.

He was taken along many of these alleyways as his captors guided him to where he would be held, and saw not only houses, but shops and large open places where resources were kept. At one point they passed what appeared to be the side of a massive old stone building, jutting out of the trash, and it reminded him of the Grand Theatre back in the Outer Zone, except this was used as a marketplace. There was an area where dozens of large metal containers had been stacked on top of each other, and Jack could see makeshift stairs and platforms built to reach the topmost containers. People were living inside them.

The cage that was to be his home, it would seem, was sheltered from the rain but not nearly as hidden from the elements as many of the Junker dwellings. There was only a rough mattress to sleep on and small boxed in hole in the ground to relieve himself in. At least the cage was dry. There was that. The cage was maybe twenty feet across both ways and tall enough to stand up in, and Jack had spent a lot of time pacing around the perimeter with only his thoughts to entertain himself.

They fed him, if you could call the grey slop, which was passed to him in a dented metal bowl three times a day, food, but he wasn’t going to complain. Jack had the impression that most of the inhabitants of the Junktown ate the grey slop. They had little choice, he thought. And honestly, it actually tasted good if you ignored the lumps. Where they mushrooms or some kind of animal? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t really want to know.

He had visitors, though, and those visitors took away the monotony of his incarceration. And anyway, he’d been there before, hadn’t he? Well, maybe not exactly there, but he had been in a cage similar to the one he now called home, and that had been somewhat smaller. But that was many years ago.

One good thing, though – he wasn’t expected to fight every other day, and there were no jeering crowds. No blood soaked floor.

Just the solitude of the cage and the quiet of his own thoughts.

He wasn’t expecting to be let at out all.

The cage had held a lot of slaves a year before, Old Haggerty had told him. Until FirstMan had arrived, with his troopers, and set them all free, killing the mob of slavers that had held the Junktown in thrall for years. But there were no others now. The cage was reserved for criminals to stay in while their fate was decided. Jack had been the only one in the cage during his stay.

He had three regular visitors. The one they called FirstMan, the leader of the Junkers, came at least once a day and questioned him endlessly about his past and his reason for being out in the Junklands. The man didn’t seem to believe him at first but gradually became less hostile and more curious. Jack thought he may even like the man, under different circumstances.

“I’ll probably let you out tomorrow,” FirstMan said before leaving each day, and Jack wondered after the third day if this was something that would ever happen. He suspected that his imprisonment was to be long term.

His second regular visitor was the old man that lived in the shack at the edge of the swamp, and his were the least expected of visits. The old guy checked Jack’s leg every day and muttered to him about mushrooms quite a lot, or other junk that he had found, as though it may be of interest to Jack. Then he just left. He only ever stayed maybe ten minutes at most.

Jack liked the old man, apparently named Haggerty, for some reason, even though it became obvious to him during those visits that few Junkers did. Jack thought that Haggerty had an honesty about him that was refreshing. Oh, not a kind of non-lying honesty. Certainly not. Jack suspected that half of what Haggerty said was a lie, or simply misleading, but when it was time for him to go, there were none of the formalities that even the Junkers used. No hello, no goodbye. Not even a nod. The old man simply stood up and left, often cursing at someone nearby to get out of his way, even if they were nowhere near him.

And then there was the third visitor. Ryan.

The boy came half a dozen times, during the daylight hours, and often sat there at night until he was scolded by one of the Junkers and sent to bed. From Jack’s ‘cell’, which had once been some sort of shipping cage for animals, he could see the building that was Ryan’s home in the distance, poking up towards the clouds.

Jack couldn’t believe it was an actual spacecraft of some kind. They never made real ones, he’d thought, and had believed that his whole life. Sure, there were the Ark ships that left every year, he remembered that much from his youth, but they were built in orbit, or something like that, built next to a space station, a kind of building that hung in the air, high up outside the atmosphere, in space.

Jump shuttles rocketed up into the sky hourly from the Inner Zone. He’d even seen them in his earlier years, on the few occasions he’d been close to The Wall. They burst up into to sky with a roar and then gradually vanished into the clouds, the roar of the ascent diminishing over a few minutes until all that was left was a plume of fumes dissipating in the sky.

But no, Ryan insisted that the metal monstrosity leaning against the rock outcrop was, in fact, once a ship that had flown in space.

They talked about a lot of things, he and Ryan. And when the boy left to sleep, or eat, or do his chores, Jack felt both relief and joy as well as guilt. It was as though they had never been apart. The boy chattered and chattered, bringing him more drawings that he had done, entire books full of them. They had a lot of scrap paper in the Junklands, as well as card and other materials scavenged from the mountains of trash, so much so that Ryan had two dozen or more wads of sewn together paper with his own drawings in. The paper alone would have brought a fortune in barter in the Outer Zone, but it was a common material in the Junker town.

But, with all these visits, Jack wondered if he would be stuck in the cage for weeks, or even months.

They don’t trust you, you see. Not Ryan, he will always trust you, it seems, even after you let him down so badly. He doesn’t think you did, and you’re lucky for that. Very lucky. He could have been angry with you and he wasn’t. No, it’s not his trust you’re missing. The Junkers don’t trust you. And why should they?

But things were different today. Jack could sense it. He had the ability to pick up on such things. Jack looked up from the dirt to see FirstMan strolling towards the cage, with that ever-confident swagger he used, and Jack’s spirits lifted. Even if FirstMan was trying to conceal it, Jack had noticed the ring of keys hanging from the tall man’s belt.

Hope.

There was no greeting like there usually was. FirstMan just jumped straight into the conversation that he wanted, like they had been talking for half an hour already.

“I apologise for keeping you in such a fashion but we have no spare quarters or buildings that were secure enough to keep you in one place,” FirstMan said. “You seem to be quite good at slipping by people, and getting out of places undetected, and I couldn’t have that until I was happy to let you go.”

“That’s okay,” Jack replied. “I understand.”

“You do?” asked FirstMan, surprised. “I thought you’d be angry. I have the security of all these people to consider, and few resources to achieve that goal, but now Ryan and Haggerty, and RightHand, have convinced me that you’re not a spy, I don’t feel I have the right to hold you any longer.”

“It’s fine,” said Jack, thinking that he’d been kept in worse places. Maybe not much worse. Where was this going, though? He wondered. Freedom wasn’t coming without a price. He could sense that already.

“I have a proposition for you, Jack,” said FirstMan.

There it was.

Keep it calm and friendly, he thought. Play the game how he wants to play it. Just be yourself.

Jack frowned.

“I know it seems strange to keep you prisoner and then offer you a job,” FirstMan said. “But after your little escape trick, back in the swamp, and after everything that Ryan has told me you are good at…well, I find you to be quite a talented individual. If you would be interested in working with us, maybe helping us locate certain things, I think we could make it worth your time.”

Jack thought in silence for a moment, and could sense that First Man was about speak again. “Okay,” he replied. They had kept Ryan alive all this time, and they were probably both his and the boy’s best option for survival at that moment.

FirstMan grinned. “Oh,” he said. “That was easier than I expected. I was anticipating having to haggle and persuade.” He stepped forward, unlocked the cage door and pulled it open, gesturing that Jack could leave.

Jack stepped out of the cage and stood up straight, stretching. “You’ve kept my boy safe all this time, and more importantly, he’s alive.”

FirstMan tilted his head to one side. “Well, not just me. You can thank the rest of the folks in the towns for that,” he said. “He was brought in with a large group, a couple of hundred kids and women, quite a while ago. They became part of the community, so it wasn’t done as a favour to you.”

“I know,” said Jack. “But he’s alive, and that’s all that matters to me.”

“He’s not actually your son, is he?” asked FirstMan. “He has always claimed he was, but I sense not.”

“No, he’s not by blood,” said Jack. “But we kind of adopted each another when he was much younger. He may as well be. Always has been, I think.”

“Good,” said FirstMan. “A kid needs a father, I always say. I lost mine when I was young, so I know the hole it leaves.”

They were silent for a few minutes, both considering their own thoughts and what they had just learnt of each other. Jack thought that maybe the man wasn’t so bad after all. He could put his faith in worse.

“So you’ll take my offer then?” asked FirstMan.

Jack nodded, his lips pursed. “Sure. What am I looking for?”

FirstMan paced the floor next to the cage and then closed the door and flipped the lock shut, as though putting that part of history to rest, locking it away for good.

“I need you to find me some old tech,” he said.

Follow Your Orders

A year before

They moved through the mountains of trash like ants, scurrying between dirt mounds, navigating the pathways swiftly, even in the dark. There were no spotlights or torches. These figures moving rapidly towards the hidden settlement wore grey armour, with full face visors that showed no view of the people underneath, and gave no indication that built into the helmets were full spectrum enhancements that meant to them it may as well have been the middle of a bright, sunny day.

There were guards at the entrance to the Junktown. Three of them huddled against the inside of a wall made of rusted, stacked up cars, but they didn’t see the squads of troopers approaching, or hear them until it was too late. The first fell when he tried to lift his weapon, and the other two didn’t know what happened before their worlds went dark.

Two hundred yards away a tall, lean man covered with tattoos awoke to noises outside. He pushed aside the young woman that lay on the bed nearby and struggled to his feet. Something had woken him, he knew, and it was something that shouldn’t be there, but now, as he listened, he heard nothing.

The girl opened her mouth to speak but the man raised his hand, indicating that she should remain silent. She said nothing, not daring to anger him. She had seen what happened to people who angered the ruler of the Junkers.

He got up, grabbed the large axe that lay next to the bed, and stood listening.

There. There it was again. Almost a coughing sound that was sharply cut off. But then there was no more.

There was movement outside in the town streets, and that displeased him. The curfew he had ordered meant no one was allowed to leave their huts after sundown, and if they did they would be cast in with the slaves. But, sure enough, he heard someone running across the hard dirt in the large clearing outside.

He trudged towards the entrance and peered outside into the dark. It was not raining so the sky was clear. It hadn’t rained for weeks, and the ground outside was beginning to crack. Even the deep well spring was running slower.

No movement, and he was about to step outside when he saw it. A flicker of red across the clearing.

He squinted, frowning, wondering if it was only in his mind, a memory from a day, long ago, when everything had fallen apart. It had started with those flickering red lights.

He closed his eyes for a moment and re-focused.

No. There it was again – a flash of red across a panel of rusted metal.

Escape. Leave now. That was all that he could do now. Out here, so far away from where he had come from, he had thought they would not follow him. But they were here again, weren’t they? Curse that fat man for backstabbing him after he had sent him all that good stuff. If he ever had the chance to…

No time for that, he thought.

He turned and ran back into the hovel, grabbed his bag and his knife and shoved the blade into his belt. The back door was fifty yards away, down the passage that led deep into the trash, and it came out in an undercut area near the back wall of the town. He had hollowed the entrance out years before, knowing that if he needed a quick exit that he would need to be unseen. It had to be one that no one else knew about. So he had gradually carved his way from the very back of his hut and through the trash until he made a tunnel that came out near the wall.

He ran down the passageway now, leaving the confused girl behind him. She would slow him down, and he was done with her anyway. Another mouth to feed later on that wasn’t needed.

He slammed into the makeshift door at the end of the passage and heaved it open. A second later he dropped down into a shallow cave. But he didn’t stop. He kept moving, jogging in a crouched position. The cavernous space was large but not high, and he was too tall to stand upright down there in the dark, and would probably bang his head on the ceiling if he did.

He passed one of the struts that he had put in place to hold the roof up, and then another, counting four such columns before he reached the outer wall and the ladder that led both up and down. It only led down if you knew how to lift the hidden floor panel, and he paused, thinking of the treasure hidden far below this spot, things he could use to barter if desperate, but he couldn’t carry them and didn’t have the time. If he wanted to escape it had to be now.

He heard the shouting begin above him, and the noises of resistance in the main town square. Some fool was fighting back, he knew. Some fool that would only end up dead or shocked into submission.

He had been a king once before, when the grey warriors came and destroyed everything and took him to their prison. He had eventually escaped even then, but he remembered. Now he would not wait to fight them. He’d learned.

He pushed the hatch up and hauled himself out onto the ground outside.

Dark figures moved around the gate a hundred yards away, so he crouched and headed in the other direction, running low to the ground as he dashed for the nearest pathway into the junk.

He was ten yards from the freedom of the trash that surrounded the town when two figures stepped from the darkness and aimed their rifles at him. He slowed and stopped, and he was about to raise his hands when he saw a flash of bright blue light as one of the figures waved a scanner in his direction.

Then there was a moment of silence before the second dark grey figure raised their rifle higher and Jagan saw the red light as it burned into his eyes. Then the world was gone to him.

Inside the town, Corporal Ranold stood just to the side of the main clearing, one hand pointing his assault rifle outwards as he scanned the clearing, the other touching the panel on the side of his helmet.

“Target Alpha eliminated, over,” came the voice of team one’s commander, a Squad Leader named Waylan.

“Good,” replied Ranold. “That’s all four primary targets down. Watch out for more resistance and stand by for further orders, over.”

Ranold changed the channel and immediately heard the laboured noise of his superior, the Governor, wheezing over the radio. Ranold wasn’t surprised. The man had been in charge of the facility for more than a decade, and the air near the factories was polluted to the extreme.

“Governor Jackson,” said Ranold. “This is Corporal Ranold, over.”

“Ah, corporal,” said Jackson. “You have good news, I hope?”

“We have hit the location specified and all named primary targets are eliminated, sir, over.”

“They’re all dead?” asked Jackson, sounding surprised. Ranold found this irritating but he kept his mouth shut.

“Yes, sir,” replied Ranold. “All the targets you specified are dead, over.”

“That’s excellent news, corporal,” said Jackson. “You may now proceed to cleanse the rest of them. I want the whole area clear of vermin.”

Ranold coughed, but was thankful the filter on his radio would cut that out. Had he heard correctly? The trash town had maybe a three or four hundred people in it, he knew. They had scanned the area using drones before the assault, and most of the people were held in slave pits or cages. Women, children, the old and the weak. He’d seen the images.

“Sir, can you repeat? Over,” he said.

“I said proceed to remove the rest of the population there, corporal,” said Jackson, “I don’t want the problem returning in a few years, so they all have to go.”

Corporal Ranold paused for a moment. No. He had heard correctly. The Governor had ordered that he and his men slaughter the settlement.

“Sir, wouldn’t it be better to order a roundup and bring them in? Over,” he asked, but he already knew the answer.

“What was that?” asked Jackson. “You’re questioning my decision? Don’t be silly. Have you any idea of the cost of such an operation? Better they are put down now, corporal. Follow your orders and then find that cache of tech. That is all you are to bring back. And don’t bother to come back if you don’t find it.”

Almost Right

Old Tech

“You were almost right,” said Jack. “It’s not here.”

They stood side by side in the large clearing that FirstMan had brought them to, the boy still much shorter than Jack, even though he had grown quickly in the two years that had passed. Jack placed his hand on Ryan’s shoulder and nodded. “You already knew that when we were on our way back here, though, didn’t you?”

“Almost?” asked Ryan with a sheepish grin. “I wanted to find it for them, but it didn’t matter how hard I concentrated, nothing came. I can’t do what you do. Not always. It just doesn’t come every time, like with you. I just kept getting an urge to search further out.”

Jack nodded, though he wasn’t surprised in the least that the kid had picked up some of his talent during the time they had spent travelling together. He thought that something like that must rub off on those around you. It certainly had on Drogan, though his old – now departed – friend had been more unpredictable with his results. And when he thought back, hadn’t he himself gained the ability from travelling with that old man, when he had been very young? It wasn’t a natural ability. That much was for sure.

“Sure you can, if you try,” Jack said. “And maybe further out is precisely where you should be looking? Maybe you were right but didn’t follow your guts?”

The boy frowned up at him, and Jack let go of his shoulder and turned to scan the horizon, ignoring the crumbling buildings nearby. They were wrong about those. The whole complex had been used for manufacturing electronics at some point in the past. A very long time ago, Jack thought. But most of what had been there had been taken, or moved to somewhere else. Not all of it had travelled far.

He squinted in the bright sun and tried to ignore the figures standing a hundred yards away, watching them. FirstMan and his troops. He wasn’t yet sure about them, especially one now called RightHand, but Ryan seemed to think they were okay, seemed at ease around them. But they weren’t Junkers, Jack knew, or they hadn’t always been. He didn’t trust their past, whatever that may be. He also found it distracting having them standing there, watching hopefully. This thing they were here to find was important to them.

His gaze wandered over the horizon, passing skeletal structures that had once been a city. Many other buildings would have stood between each of the towering ruins but had long since crumbled and collapsed, leaving these odd, vast towers, tottering on the edge of extinction themselves, dotted around the landscape like lonely teeth in a rotten maw.

Two of them caught his attention and drew him towards them, and he knew that one of them held the thing they were there to find, but he couldn’t decide which it was or what was unusual about the other. Two ruined buildings, and one that he needed to search, but both had something to hide. They both looked guilty, he thought.

“So do you think it’s here, then?” asked Ryan. Jack turned back to look at the boy, noting with a little amusement how his hair had been left to grow long and how it now curled up near his shoulders. Needs cutting, he thought. Was that a slight hint of impatience he saw in the boy’s expression? Maybe.

“Yes,” Jack replied. “I think it’s here, but we’re looking in the wrong place. It was moved at some point, a long time ago, but not far. It’s further out, though, in one of the distant buildings.”

Ryan looked hopeful at this. “But, where?” he asked, looking out at the far buildings.

Jack pointed at the first, a tall building, half collapsed but still rising maybe half a dozen floors from the ground, and then at the second, much more squat in comparison. Both were at least a mile from where they stood. “See the tall spire,” he said, “and see that one that’s already collapsed in?”

Ryan nodded.

“It’s one of those two,” Jack said. “I’m sure of it.”

“But which?” Ryan asked.

“That’s what I want you to tell me,” said Jack. “Look at them. See if you can spot what I can’t.”

Ryan did as he was told, staring off into the distance, first at the shorter building and then at the collapsed one. He frowned. It was there, that gut feeling, just as Jack had always said it would be, but both buildings called to him. It was a strange feeling to have, and Ryan had never felt it as Jack described it while he had been with him. It wasn’t until he had been living with the Junkers for a few months that he started to really understand how things called to him. He only had to learn to listen to his instincts and spot the signs that were right in front of him.

He stared hard at the taller building, sensing something hidden there that had been long forgotten, and feeling that people had recently been there but not discovered the secret that was hidden within. Had they been there looking for it? He couldn’t tell, but he knew they had been disappointed when they left.

The second building – the much smaller ruin – felt entirely different, though. It had been a very long time since anyone had ventured there, so long that he felt it could maybe be decades or centuries. “I don’t know which it is,” he said.

“Hmm,” mumbled Jack. “Me neither. But you get something from both?”

“Yes,” said Ryan.

“Want to make guess at it?”

Ryan shook his head.

Jack turned back to stare at the tall building.

Recently searched, he thought. Not recent as in months, but maybe a year. A group stayed there. The other building. Not searched since the days of the old world. Untouched. Something is hidden there, though, and he knew that would bug him. The taller building was what his gut now said.

“It’s the tall one,” he said, turning back to Ryan.

“You think?” asked the boy, and for one moment Jack questioned his instinct. “I thought that too!”

“You know, we don’t have to stay,” Jack said, his voice low.

Ryan looked up at him, frowning.

“We don’t have to stay with these people. We’d be fine on our own again, just like we used to be. We could just strike out, there.” Jack nodded towards the buildings in the distance.

“I don’t want to leave,” said Ryan. “And you won’t, if you stay.”

Jack smiled. “If I stay?”

“If you don’t head off out there alone,” said Ryan.

“Boy, I lost you for over two years... nearly three,” said Jack. “Nearly never found you. I won’t let that happen again. If it means getting used to these…” he waved his hand at the group gathered fifty yards away, “junk people, then that’s what it means.”

Ryan grinned. “They’re called Junkers,” he said.

“Junkers, yes. I’m sure I’ll get used to them.”

They stood silent for a minute, the time passing slowly as they both struggled to find the right thing to say. Finally Ryan spoke. “So, the tall building,” he said. “That’s where we need to look?”

Jack nodded. “That’s where your FirstMan’s gadget is,” he said.

All Out of Cache

A year before

They couldn’t find the equipment cache. Ranold had the entire troop out for two days, searching the area and questioning the captured Junkers, but no one knew where it was. It was hidden, and only Jagan had known where he kept his stash.

He stood in what the Junkers called The Throne Room, staring around at the mess. The place that Jagan had called home was trashed, turned over and over by his troops, the floors pulled up, the tunnel that led out the back exposed, but they found nothing. Wherever Jagan had kept his stash of goods it was well hidden. The Junkers couldn’t even tell him where Jagan went, most of the time.

That was something that niggled at the back of his mind. He had always been given the impression that the Junkers, the savages that lived out in the junk and wastelands were precisely that – savages – but they were polite, they built homes hidden in the junk, and they taught their children to read and they had laws. It was tribal, sure, but this was no savage society.

And he had orders to kill them all.

He’d seen the expressions on the faces of his troops when he informed them of the Governor’s command. Not a single man or woman wanted to obey. Not one. He wondered, thinking about how they had reacted, if any of them would even follow the orders. He imagined the situation escalating into something messy, a fight between the squads, those that would carry out their orders and those who refused to murder innocent civilians.

Because they all saw that these people weren’t monsters, and they’d all seen the school of a hundred or more children, sitting in a large circle inside the hollowed out hull of an abandoned sailing ship, their grubby, dirty faces, fearful of the troopers but bright eyed and keen to learn the magic of reading and joy of singing songs.

And they’d all known that those frightened faces thought the troopers were the bad guys. And he supposed they were, or could be. But more importantly they could not be, as well.

No. He thought. There would be no fight. Not one of his troops would obey that order. They had all spent time capturing vagrants in the Outer Zone, but their orders were to capture alive, not kill. This was an entirely different thing.

And there was this problem of the equipment cache. Whatever Jagan had been keeping here was important to Governor Jackson, and that man wanted it, but they couldn’t find it.

And that conversation hadn’t gone well.

“Sir, reporting that after forty-eight hours we are unable to locate the cache,” he’d said.

Silence on the other end of the radio. But then Jackson finally spoke.

“Keep looking,” he said.

“Yes, sir. We have supplies for maybe two more days before we have to head back.”

“No, corporal. You can take supplies from that Junker scum. You will erase them anyway, once you are done. The only reason I allow you to let them live, for now, is because you insist you need to question them. But that isn’t working, is it? Find the cache and bring it back. You are not to return until you locate it.”

“Yes, sir, but what if we don’t find it?”

“Then you keep searching until you do.”

Keep searching until you do find it.

Ranold looked at the massive bed that sprawled over a large area in the corner of Jagan’s throne room, the pillow, rugs and fur turned over. If they’d captured him instead of killing him, as ordered, then maybe they’d have found it by now, but that was another thing Jackson had demanded without argument.

The man simply had no grasp of operations or how to achieve a goal. Well, Ranold thought, maybe he did, but his methods were ridiculous and self-defeating.

Waylan entered the throne room from the outside and Ranold turned to him. He noticed that the weather had changed, and the sun was shining down on the huge open ground outside Jagan’s abode.

“Hey,” said Waylan, a keen expression on his face. “You know, they have an underground mushroom farm here.”

Ranold frowned. “A what?”

“Seriously,” said Waylan. “It’s massive. Must be an old warehouse, covered by the junk ages ago. It’s huge inside and dark. Just a bit of light shining through some gaps. It’s bigger than that reclaiming building back at the facility.”

Ranold shook his head. “So much for savages,” he said.

Waylan’s expression turned serious. “We can’t kill these people,” he said. And there it was, the first spoken acknowledgement of what they all knew.

“I know,” said Ranold. “But if we don’t, and we don’t find that cache, then we can’t go back. Jackson was quite clear.”

“What’s he gonna do?” asked Waylan. “Demote us all?”

“He’ll court martial us if we go back having disobeyed orders,” said Ranold. “He was quite clear about that.”

“Then I won’t go back,” Waylan said nervously.

Ranold frowned. “What?”

“I won’t go back,” repeated Waylan.

“What do you mean?” asked Ranold. “What will you do?”

“I’ll stay here,” said Waylan.

Ranold was surprised by this and stood silently for moment. Waylan seemed to take this as an indication to go on.

“Look,” he said. “These people need help. They’ve spent the last few years under the grip of that idiot, Jagan. He killed them if they disobeyed, and you don’t even want to hear the other things he did.”

“I know what he was like,” said Ranold. “You remember I was a grunt when we took down his pit fighting operation in the Outer Zone?”

“Yeah,” Waylan said. “Of course. I forgot. But anyway, these people need someone to take charge and rebuild, man. Come on. Wasn’t that our dream anyway? Sure, we wanted to do it out in the new world, but we’ve found it right here. And, oh boy, you wanna see the good stuff that’s just gathering dirt around here. I mean old tech, generators, appliances, all sorts of gear. We could have power up and running in a matter of days.”

“Junk is not a good reason to stay out here,” said Ranold.

“Yes, I know,” said Waylan. “But did you know there are over a thousand Junkers here and in the surrounding area?

“What?” said Ranold. “That many? A few hundred, I thought.”

“I spoke to some of the elders. Now they’re starting to think we won’t kill them all, they’re talking, and they told me over a thousand. There’s about twenty hidden settlements. C’mon, man. You wanted to start anew, to build something meaningful and not have to follow orders. We don’t have to go to the new world to do that. We found it right here. This is what you said your dad wanted. What you wanted.”

“What of the others?” asked Ranold. “Not everyone is going to want to stay.”

“I think most, if not all, will. But we’ll deal with it,” said Waylan. “Right here. This is important.”

Right here, thought Ranold. And I like mushrooms.

Hidden treasures

Now

“How does it work?” asked FirstMan as he walked beside Jack. They hadn’t taken Jack’s words on faith, and he thought that FirstMan believed him only because Ryan believed, and he made a note to ask how the boy had gained such trust among these men.

“What?” asked Jack.

“The way you and Ryan find things,” said FirstMan. The man was older than Jack had expected, probably older than Jack by a decade, and he bore the scars of combat to show for it. Deep lines etched one side of his face, which Jack suspected may be shrapnel wound scars, and there was mark on his chin that looked like it had been very deep. “You just stand there and then you know where stuff is,” said FirstMan. “It’s quite unnerving.”

“It’s not really just standing there,” said Jack, finding it awkward to explain. “I can somehow read my surroundings and…sense? I think that’s the best word, sense, what happened before, just by the signs left behind. You ever hear of something called dowsing?”

FirstMan nodded.

“Well,” continued Jack. “It’s sort of like that but looking for more than just water.”

FirstMan was silent for a moment. “You can find clean water?” he asked, now even more keen for answers.

“It’s all around us,” said Jack. “And that cage you kept me in?”

FirstMan frowned.

“Well, that hole to take a dump in probably drops straight down into an underground river,” he said. “But yes, it’s sort of like dowsing, for something other than water, and without the stick.”

“But you can sense it all the way over there?” quizzed FirstMan, indicating the tall ruin that loomed over the flattened landscape just a quarter of a mile away. The mountains of trash weren’t present in this area of the Junklands, but there was still plenty of junk strewn about, just not mountainous amounts of it.

“It’s something I picked up from an old man, back when I was a kid, just by watching him work,” Jack continued. “You think it’s odd, what I can do? You want to see a crooked old man smelling the air and then finding an old stash of tools three floors down in a cellar five miles away.”

FirstMan stopped walking and looked at Jack with an incredulous expression. “You’re serious?”

Jack laughed. “Very,” he said. “I was maybe eight years old, about Ryan’s age, really, and we were out in the middle of nowhere, not far from the Ashlands, and places where people don’t go and shouldn’t go, and he stood for half an hour, smelling the air. All I could smell was that ash smell. You ever been out there?”

“To the blighted lands?” asked FirstMan. “Yes, a few times, but we were always geared up. You can’t smell anything in full suits of combat carapace. Dismal place, though. Full of things that should be dead.”

Jack nodded. “That’s the place,” he said. “Well, the old man stood there for ages and then just started walking. Didn’t speak a word. We went for half a mile, him stopping every few minutes to sniff, then another half mile, and so on and on for about five miles. Eventually we stopped at a ruined building, just like all the other thousands of ruins out there. Nothing to distinguish it from any other. Then he sniffed again, nodded, pointed at the ground and told me to dig. Plopped himself down on the floor a few feet away to roll a smoke and watch me.”

“And you found tools?” asked FirstMan.

“Pristine tools,” said Jack. “Boxes and boxes of the damn things. I dug where he pointed and opened up a stairwell that nearly collapsed under me. Three cellars deep the place was, and full of cobwebs and spiders and all kinds of nasty stuff. He made me build a wheel cart from scratch just to haul the stuff back to The Crossing. Never lifted a hand to help with any of it, either.”

“Harsh,” said FirstMan.

“Yeah, but I learned a lot,” said Jack. “I learned a lot and I learned it fast. I was his slave, and I got paid with food and little else, but the talent I learned from him was worth that price. You know, he could stand still in a room while talking to you and just vanish. Still talking, just somehow not visible, and yet not leave the room. It took me a long time to realise that most of it was about what was in your own mind. He had this theory that he went on about a lot. He thought that people used to be able to do many more things that were forgotten and that you just had to remember how to do it.”

“Sounds strange, but amazing still,” said FirstMan.

Jack laughed. “Yeah, it does. He said his ability to vanish was just a matter of making someone else forget he was there. The old guy was pretty screwed up.”

They arrived at a wide, open ground across from the target building. The huge space appeared to have been some sort of plaza. The ground was covered in broken slabs that still bore faded colours and patterns that Jack couldn’t make out clearly. Across the other side of the plaza was the rusted carcass of a tank, with its gun long collapsed to the ground.

The group of armoured troops that FirstMan had brought with them, all geared out in Hunter combat armour, the origin of which was still a puzzle to Jack and a question he was itching to ask, started forward, heading towards the tall building. But Jack felt something uneasy in his stomach, something urgent, and it wasn’t the need to relieve himself.

Something was not right here, but he couldn’t place what it was.

“Wait,” he said, lifting his hand and signalling the men back. A few stared at him questioningly, and then looked to FirstMan for orders. But FirstMan waved them back.

“Problem?” asked FirstMan.

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “Something odd. Something makes me nervous.”

Jack turned to Ryan. “Buddy, get back over there near the building and keep out of the way.” Then he turned back to FirstMan. “Just in case.”

Ryan didn’t wait to question, and jogged back to the building opposite the taller spire, and stood peering around the edge of a crumbling wall, the curiosity too much to just hunker down and hide.

Jack stared at the front of the building, and at the junk strewn around it. There was a very definite area, maybe fifty feet wide, in front of the building that was completely clear of junk. The ground was still dusty, and dirty, but there was a section up on the dais in front of the building that was…

That was it. That was what was wrong.

“Everybody get back under cover,” Jack said as he peered at the patch of ground and stooped to pick up a stone. He waited until they were all behind cover, took a dozen steps forward, and threw the rock. He waited two seconds to confirm that the stone had fallen inside the open space, and stepped to the side, putting the ruined tank in between him and the clear spot.

There was a click, a series of beeping sounds echoing across the plaza, then a grating sound, followed by a continuous tick, tick, tick that didn’t seem to stop. Eventually he edged forward and peered around the edge of the tank. In the middle of the dais, where the clear spot had been, was a gun turret sticking up from the ground. It was pointing directly at where the stone had landed and was furiously attempting to shoot it.

But it was out of ammunition.

FirstMan arrived next to him, the other troopers following. The leader peered at the angry gun as it shifted and tried to track anything else in the locality, again repeatedly firing nothing at whatever it had decided was a target.

“Well, that could have been messy,” said FirstMan, turning to Jack. “I think maybe I’ll just trust whatever strange talent you have from now on,” he said.

Jack peered at the man who led the Junkers. There was something unusual about him. “Who are you, anyway?” he asked.

FirstMan frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not like the rest of the people out here,” said Jack. “You and your men.”

FirstMan smiled. “So not just good at finding things, then,” he said. “You spot far more than I’m comfortable with, Jack.”

Jack shook his head and smiled back. “I’m no threat, you know that,” he said. “But you didn’t take that armour from dead Inner Zone troopers, did you?”

FirstMan grinned back. “No, it was issued to me,” he said, deciding that he liked this man, Jack, and considering that the man would have just saved their lives if the defence gun had been packing ammunition, he thought he could trust him. “I’m Ranold. Previously Corporal Ranold, of the Inner Zone RAD. Though I prefer the Junker term FirstMan, if you wouldn’t mind sticking to that in front of other Junkers. All of my men are ex-RAD as well. But we’re all Junkers now, and we’ve worked hard to unite the tribes into one.”

Jack looked puzzled. “Then why are you out here?”

“It’s a very long story,” said FirstMan. “And one that we should tell another time. When we have what we came for.”

“It will be below ground level,” said Jack, indicating the building with a nod. “Probably in some kind of storage. I think there was a battle in this area, a long time ago, and the tech was moved and secured.” He turned and started towards the front of the building.

“So a bunker, you think?” replied FirstMan, following him.

“A bunker,” replied Jack. “Though I doubt it’s locked. Just well hidden.”

“Then let’s go find it, shall we?” said FirstMan.

Into The Old World

Jack stepped carefully over the pile of rubble that blocked most of the entrance to the building. Once, he thought, the entrance hall had been a grand affair, a sprawling and large open space with huge panel windows surrounding it that providing a stunning view out into the plaza that he also thought would once have been beautiful. He’d seen the tiled floor in the centre of the plaza, and although it was now broken, and overgrown with weeds and even a few trees poking up from the cracks, the tiles were still colourful.

He glanced back, as he stepped down onto hard ground, and looked out of the gaping holes that must have held single, massive panes of glass. How anyone could have made such things was puzzling to him. There had been a man at The Crossing that made glass, but it took a lot of recycled bottles and scavenged broken pieces from the ruins for him to smelt anything of size, let alone something to fill the huge holes in the side of this building.

Such were the losses of history, Jack thought. But maybe they can still make it in the Inner Zone, maybe someone still has the knowledge. They have to. He’d seen the glass panes on the Trans, and in the windows of the large buildings in the compound where he had been sorted with the rest of the captives.

But there was no one to replace these out here, he thought. He glanced towards FirstMan, who stood just a few feet away and was searching the ground and the room ahead of them, and then he looked into the once plush foyer of the building.

There was an abundance of broken wood and cracked plaster covering the floor, and as he glanced around he saw other things – bones, rags, and bits of metal. A fight had taken place here at some point, and much of the debris had been left untouched since then. Jack frowned. There were two sets of stairs and two open shafts where lifts had once been, and there were a set of doors beyond that, but no sign of a way down.

“Search the upper floors,” ordered FirstMan, and Jack looked up to see RightHand heading up the left set of stairs, followed by one of the other troopers. Another pair headed up the other stairs, while the rest remained at the open entrance, looking out into the junk and ruins beyond the plaza.

“Where do we look?” asked Ryan. The boy was picking at a pile of broken wood and plastic a few feet away, where Jack imagined a desk of some sort would once have been. Ryan picked out a long pole of plastic, turned it over and then dropped it back into the pile. He stood up and frowned at Jack.

“We need to go down,” Jack said.

Ryan glanced around, checking first the lack of a way down the stairs and then at the few doors that lined the back of the hall. “Through there?” he asked.

Jack nodded. “Has to be,” he said. “I don’t see any other way.”

Ryan didn’t look convinced. “Are you even sure there is a down? Doesn’t look like one to me. No stairs.”

Jack walked over to the nearest lift shaft and peered down. Darkness below and more rubble. He could vaguely see what he thought was the bottom, some thirty feet below, and what looked like the top of the lift itself. There was a large pile of metal cable collapsed on top of it and a small hatch that was already open, revealing darkness inside.

“The lift goes down further,” he said, and then noticed that Ryan and FirstMan were already next to him, also looking into the darkness. “But why would they build a level that only the lift accessed?

FirstMan shrugged. “I’ve seen worse designs,” he said. “You should see the conversion facility over at the RAD grounds.” He shook his head and looked puzzled. “Utter mad chaos.”

Jack turned to face him. “I saw that place, or at least the entrance to it, when I was captured,” he said. “What do they do there?”

FirstMan looked back down the shaft and then upwards. “You really want to know?”

“I’m just curious,” said Jack. “I saw someone causing trouble and they got dragged off that way.”

FirstMan smiled, but there was no joy in it. “Well that person is about the unluckiest you ever met,” he said. “They…recondition people who are a problem, mostly violent criminals and troublesome captives from the Outer Zone. Brainwashing, or should I say, Resetting.”

“They actually do that?” asked Ryan.

FirstMan turned to the boy, seemed to consider whether he should be telling the youngster such things, but then continued. “They do indeed. And if you ever happen to be unlucky enough to bump into the HAC – that’s Heavy Assault Corps, then you’ll be looking at the results of that…facility. They stew up their minds. They don’t get rid of violent tendencies, in fact I’d say they increase those, but they make them like obedient dogs.”

“Nice,” said Jack.

“Absolutely,” said FirstMan. “I had the unfortunate pleasure of having to escort a detachment to a drop off at a clearance zone, once. Not a single one of them spoke, the whole two hour journey. They just sat there, looking straight ahead into empty space.”

Jack looked back down the shaft and finally noticed the set of rungs studding the wall at one foot intervals. They seemed to lead both up and down, and he could see that they went all the way to the bottom.

“That’s our way down,” he said, pointing.

FirstMan frowned, but then saw what Jack was pointing at. “You want me to send my guys down there?” he asked.

Jack shook his head. “No, me and Ryan can handle this. Better off without a lot of heavy boots stomping around down there. Also, I don’t know if those rungs will take the weight of that armour you guys are wearing.”

FirstMan nodded, reached to his waist and pulled away a radio handset. “Well this is my spare, if you know how to use it? Yell if you need us.”

Jack took the radio, clipped it onto his belt and then turned to Ryan. “Want me to go first?”

“No way,” Ryan said as he sat down, swung his legs over the edge of the shaft, and shuffled towards the ladder. “I’m gonna find the loot way before you can sniff it out.”

What Lies Beneath

Jack followed the boy down the shaft, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the darkness below. He could just make out Ryan, about fifteen feet below him, as the boy dropped down onto the top of the lift. A quiet, dull thud echoed faintly up the shaft as he landed. Jack thought he heard something else, a clattering noise of some sort from far above them, and wondered what RightHand and the others were doing up there.

He glanced upwards to see that the shaft rose high into the building and then darkness, and thought for a moment that now would not be a good time for something to drop down from that height. With this he sped up, taking the rungs two at a time and hoping none of them would break. Finally he hopped onto the top of the lift and looked down the hole that he had just seen Ryan disappear into.

“It’s okay down here,” said Ryan, looking up at him from inside the lift. “There’s…ah…the remains of someone down here in the corner, at least I think it was a person, but it’s really old and dusty, so try not to step on it. I nearly did.”

Jack started to lower himself and then peered down into the hole once more. He saw the boy kneeling on the ground, and a moment later there was a spark and a flicker of flame as Ryan lit a makeshift torch made from a scrap of wood with some cloth tied to it.

Good lad, Jack thought. You haven’t forgotten the things I taught you, even if you haven’t gotten rid of that reckless adventurer streak. Not a bad thing, really.

Jack dropped down into the lift, felt the structure shudder and then settle once more, and watched as Ryan stepped out into the opening outside the lift. Jack stepped forward, moving beyond where the boy stood. “Okay, now I go first,” he said, grinning as Ryan frowned with annoyance. “Just in case something is down here.”

In answer to that, Ryan flashed his knife in the torchlight. He held it tightly in his other hand and smiled back. “I’m ready for that too,” he said.

Jack nodded and took out his own knife, thinking again that he was glad the FirstMan had put his gear aside instead of sharing it out among the Junkers. He knelt down next to the lift. “Can you shine that over here?” he asked.

Ryan knelt beside him and lowered the torch to the bottom of the lift, peering and trying to spot whatever it was that had caught Jack’s interest. The torchlight was dim, maybe lighting up twenty feet from the spot with a yellow, flickering glow, but it was enough for the two of them to see underneath the lift, and to see there was nothing underneath it but a concrete floor, half a foot lower than the floor inside the lift.

“What?” asked Ryan.

“Bottom floor,” said Jack, standing back up and looking around the room outside the lift. “Means unless we find a stairway or something, this is the lowest level and we don’t need to search any lower down. Also means that with the open shaft and decent ventilation its ok to leave that flame lit.”

Ryan looked confused for a moment, looked at his torch burning in the darkness, then he seemed to realise what Jack meant. Gas below ground. His mouth turned to a silent oh and he nodded.

Jack already suspected that what they were looking for was not far away. Glancing around the large room, he saw piles and piles of boxes and crates, all seemingly filled with cables and rusted gadgets, some of which looked similar to the thing that FirstMan had described. But he knew it had to be a sealed package that he took back up with him, or the circuit board would be useless after so many years exposed to the elements.

He stood in the darkness, watching as Ryan walked around the room, uncovering more boxes as the light from the torch explored the unknown. There was a set of double doors at the other end of the room, a single corridor with three doors leading off it, and another door in the far corner.

But which of them leads to what we want? he thought. Where does the trail lead us?

Jack looked at the smaller corner door, thinking. That it was probably a storage room for cleaning materials. Seemed to be the obvious choice. He glanced at the three doors. One of those, maybe? But, no. The double doors led somewhere else, maybe into a larger storage room. He judged a direct line from the lift opening to the double door, envisioning someone wheeling a trolley out of the lift and directly across the room. He glanced at the floor, peering through the scattered pieces of debris and broken plaster that had fallen from the ceiling and onto the worn concrete. The paint marks had worn away over the centuries, but there was still a trace of them. Deep lines crossing the gap between the lift and double doors, those painted in yellow. The other lines, three of them and much thinner, heading to the corridor and the three doors, and then a blue line weaving its way across the floor towards the smaller door.

He tried to twist his brain around the image on the floor and closed his eyes for a second. In the darkness inside his mind he saw an image of the Sorting Room, where he had been sent down one corridor along with some of the other captives, and others had been sent down different corridors. Coloured lights marked the different destinations and this was somehow similar to that. Then the image was gone, and he saw an automated factory, with small metal robots making their way around the different machines, delivering parts and picking up new ones. This was an image of the Picking Factory, he thought, but one from long ago. Where the image had come from he didn’t know, maybe one of his old magazines, but as he opened his eyes he saw, just for a moment, a ghost superimposed on the cluttered and dusty room in front of him. A large robot with a trolley following behind it moved out of the lift and drifted forward, its wheels skittering over the flat, unobstructed floor and ignoring the real debris that was there now. It rolled forwards, heading across the room towards the double doors, following the painted line. It slowed until the doors opened and then sped through them into the interior of the next room. Then the ghost was gone.

“That way,” Jack said, pointing to the double doors, and Ryan turned from the box over by the smaller door, which he was peering into, and looked towards the doors. The boy’s mouth opened a little, and Jack waited for the questions, but then Ryan just nodded, accepting Jack’s intuition. He dropped the box and started forward, holding the torch aloft to light the way.

And that was when the loud crashing noise came from far above.

Intruder

RightHand peered into the darkness of the third floor, aiming his assault rifle high into the rafters. As he had discovered on the second floor, after he and his men negotiated the crumbling stairway, the levels of the building were built with an odd ceiling cavity, maybe four feet thick, that was filled with rusty cables and piping. Many of the pipes had cracked and fallen, and were probably the cause of the collapsed ceiling, most of which now lay on the floor of the large open space at the top of the stairs, but much of the cabling still hung down from above like some crazy plastic and metal spider web.

This probably isn’t going to take very long, he thought, as he looked out across the rubble covered floor.

There weren’t any side rooms or corridors on this floor or the one below, just a large open space, and he also thought that by the state of the stairs they would only be able to access two more levels, possibly just one. He glanced among the rubble, which was mostly broken masonry and rusted metal, and decided there was nothing worth risking going out into the room for.

It would probably collapse if you did, he thought.

Across from him, fifty feet away, there was movement, and he watched as one of his men came up the other set of stairs, glanced around the room without leaving the safety of the stairs, and nodded once at him.

“Move to the next floor,” he said into the microphone balanced near his chin. The other trooper nodded, looked up and then moved away, heading up the stairs to the next floor.

But the next floor wasn’t like the previous ones at all, and RightHand frowned as he looked out of the stairway entrance into the vast room. Here, much of the ceiling and probably most of the upper floors had collapsed downwards and was now piled up, filling more than half of the space of the original room.

He took one step forward, signalling for the men in the opposite stairway to stay where they were, and edged into the room to look upwards.

There was something too regular about the debris, he thought. He didn’t know what it was, but the cabling, panels and masonry weren’t stacked up as though they had just fallen there. Some of it, he mused, almost looked as though someone had put it there, exactly as it was, maybe as some form of barricade.

And he kept thinking that right until the bug crawled out of the gaping hole in the ceiling above and dropped down to the ground, chittering and clicking at him.

Before the thing moved more than a few paces, RightHand fired his weapon, a single shot into the front of the creature that tore away a large chunk of its carapace and imploded its face.

Damn bugs, he thought, Let just hope there’s only one of the—

Another bug dropped from the hole in the ceiling, and then another, and another.

What Lies Above

FirstMan’s eyes went wide and he stepped back from the lift shaft, snapping his gaze upwards and then to the stairwell. The rifle shot had pierced the air with a muffled snap that he heard even a few floors below where RightHand was. The assault rifles were silenced, almost, but if you were only twenty or thirty yards away, or inside a building, they still made an audible noise.

“What’s up?” he asked, tapping the microphone attached to his collar, just below his chin.

“We got a few bugs up here,” came the reply from RightHand. Then a moment later there was aloud thud from above and then RightHand was cursing.

“Damn it,” came the voice over the microphone. “Back up. Down the stairs. Get the hell out of here!”

FirstMan reached to his waist, instinctively grabbing the assault rifle that hung from his shoulder strap.

“What’s going on?” he asked, the microphone still active.

“Bug nest!” came the reply. “Damn thing just fell from the ceiling.”

FirstMan glanced back down the lift shaft, wondering how far into the building Jack and Ryan had gone. “Jack, you there?” he asked as he moved to the bottom of the stairwell and readied his weapon, waiting for RightHandand and and the others to get down the stairs and pass him.

They won’t be able to get out if there’s a lot of bugs, FirstMan thought. No way will they be able to get back up here in time. There was a lot of noise above him. Gunfire, running boots on hard stairs, falling debris, clicking monsters, and then the sounds of something heavy falling with a crash, and brickwork crumbling, bouncing off rusted metal floor panelling.

Oh damn, he thought, as he heard the upper floor begin to collapse.

He moved quickly towards the open doorway as the troopers reached the bottom of the stairs. “Jack, can you hear me?”

No reply.

Visitors Revisited

Tyler turned over the smashed up pipe and peered inside. It was starting to get dark, and he thought about turning in but knew that if they didn’t fill the dumper that they’d hear about it when they got back to the facility in two days. But the pipe was empty, as he’d expected. He cursed, dropped the pipe, and looked across the clearing to where the other crew members worked.

It had been over four weeks since Jack had gone off into the Junk and they still hadn’t replaced him with a new member of the crew, and it was showing. Tyler told himself that it wasn’t Jack’s unnatural ability to hunt down the good stuff, but it sort of was. But with one man down on the crew it meant a larger share of the dumper to fill for each of them, and dammit if they hadn’t been posted out into the deep north scavenging field, where the junk mountains were smaller and there were definitely less pickings to be had. Why they even bothered to send anyone out there was beyond him.

And why change their next location at such short notice? wondered Tyler.

Jack’s disappearance puzzled him the most. The man had never given any indication that he was a runner, and that he planned to take off, though Tyler had noticed the change after the conversation in their bunkhouse about the people that had been taken from the Picking Factory, and he had certainly thought Jack was particularly quiet when they actually got to searching and reclaiming the place. Quiet and preoccupied, somehow. Had it been his fault for sending Jack up to the top floor of the workhouse? No, he didn’t think so. Guards should have been on the wall and would have spotted Jack making a run for it. How that had happened was puzzling.

He stood back up, groaned at the ache in the bottom of his spine, turned, and decided the grief of a scolding when they got back would be worth it. He was done for the day. As he crossed the open space towards the carrier, he saw Higgins turn and peer at him.

“We done?” called the old man.

Tyler nodded and called to the others to stop before he climbed into the back of the carrier and slumped down on his chair. His back was throbbing, right down deep at the base, near his ass. Old age, he thought, though he wasn’t really that old. Working out in the Junklands aged a man faster, he thought. Unless you were Higgins. He tried to ignore the niggling pain, took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

The other crew members climbed into the carrier over the next few minutes, each one clattering the door as they came in and making even louder noises as they dumped their stuff and dropped into their own seats. Finally he heard the door clunk shut, followed by a series of clicks as the bolts were pulled over.

Time to rest, he thought. He was hungry, but food could wait. First just a few winks.

He sat up, startling himself, and looked around, glancing immediately to Higgins. The old man was sitting up, looking towards the roof, but gave Tyler a quick glance and touched his finger to his lips to indicate silence. He had slept for a while, he was sure of it. That hadn’t been just a minute or two.

And there it was, that familiar sound up on the roof. Tyler frowned and listened intently, trying to judge what could be making the noise. So far, they’d only found the scratches left behind and never anything else, and without staying outside when the carrier door was shut there was no way for them to watch their visitors. No one was willing to do that.

A few minutes later, after a lot of noise from above, there was a thud on the ground outside and the sound of something moving away quickly across the dirt.

The crew – all of them awake now – sat in silence for a long time until Tyler spoke.

“What are the bets the top compartment is all scratched up?” he asked. The other men nodded in return.

“I’d say that was pretty much a done deal,” said Higgins, looking up at the ceiling. “Guess you better file another one of your reports.”

Tyler chuckled. “Not that that is going to do any good. I don’t think they believe me.”

“Must do,” said Rick. “They see the scratches every time.”

“Until maintenance covers them up again like they were never there.”

Rick shook his head. “I don’t get that.”

“What you mean?” asked Higgins.

Rick pointed at the ceiling. “Maintenance always hammer the panel back out and sand it off until the marks aren’t there and the panel is shiny and new again, only for the scratches to turn up on a different spot the next time. They don’t bother with all the rust holes and cracks in the outer plating of the rest of the vehicle, why bother with a few scratches?”

“I have no idea,” said Tyler. “But it’s really starting to bug the hell out me. I want to know why something keeps fiddling around up there.”

“Or someone,” said Higgins.

Tyler looked at him. “Or someone. Whatever or whoever it is only seems to like messing with us. No one else reports it, unless we just don’t find out.”

“Which also makes me wonder,” said Rick. “If it’s always us, then how the hell does it know where we are every single time? I mean, we travel for miles onto the next zone, but it always seems to track us down.”

“Could be something stuck in that compartment that it can smell for miles and miles,” said Higgins. “Like it’s an animal or summit. Maybe something is dead in there.”

“Enough dead things out here for a critter to smell without having to track down our carrier,” said Tyler.

“Hmm, still don’t make much sense,” muttered Higgins

“We could try and prise the compartment open,” said Rick. “Have a little nose at what’s in there.”

“We don’t have the gear to open it,” said Tyler. “It’s at least and inch thick, I reckon, and none of us have the tools to bust it open. At least not without some alarm going off. You wanna be the one to explain that to those that we must obey?”

Rick shrugged. “No, I guess not.”

“Hey,” said Boots, a man who rarely had anything to say. “May we should set up a trap for the critter.”

Tyler frowned. “What kind of trap?”

Boots frowned and then shrugged. “Don’t know, just thought it might be an idea.”

Tyler looked down at the ground, squinting. A trap, he thought. Well, maybe not a trap, but some way to record who was out there or to scare them off. Something.

That was worth thinking about.

Trapped

Jack looked up and coughed as the dust settled in the room. He could see Ryan through the gloom, standing a few feet away.

“You okay?” he asked.

The boy nodded and brushed some crumbling pieces of rubble from his shoulder. Above them the floor groaned. Jack heard the hiss of the radio.

“Jack, you there?” came the voice of FirstMan.

He grabbed the radio and pressed the button on the side. “I’m here. What's going on?”  There was a moment of silence, then some crackling, then another voice.

“We found a bug nest,” came RightHand's voice.

“Stay right where you are,” said FirstMan.

Jack looked over to the entrance where they had entered and saw that beyond the archway a pile of debris had collapsed into the large room. “We’re trapped down here,” he said. He stared at the fallen pile of junk and rubble, thinking that he and Ryan only just managed to avoid being crushed by running through the double doors. That had been too close.

Ryan turned to him, frowning, and stood up, taking two steps towards the entrance.

“Don't go any closer,” said Jack. “Just in case it collapses any more.”

The boy stopped. Jack looked at the ceiling, noting the steel girders that crisscrossed above them and the metal plating the lay on top of that. Someone had wanted to keep whatever was in this room safe, he thought. What was it that was in here? Was it what he came to look for?  There was a lot junk in the room, piled up in boxes around the outside, and in the centre of the room stood half a dozen tables pushed together. Upon the tables there was an assortment of circuit boards, wires, tools, cables and smaller boxes.

Jack grabbed the nearest box and peered inside it. Nuts, bolts, clips – all manner of small junk that was mostly metal. Still a treasure trove, though.

“We may as well get comfy in here,” he said as the first sounds of gunfire rattled from above them. He thought that among the snaps of shots from the assault rifles the soldiers carried, he heard clicking noises. Mr Clicky's friends, he thought.

“Jack, you still there?” came FirstMan’s voice on the radio.

Jack paused, but then pressed the button. “We’re still here,” he replied. “And still stuck.  Looks like a lot of crap just caved into the room next to us, but were fine. We’re trapped in a vault down here. Room is full of junk and gear.”

“Good,” said FirstMan. “It’ll take us a while to clear out these bugs. There’s a lot of them—” The radio crackled once more and Jack missed the words that followed. “—gave you. Over.”

“Okay,” Jack replied, guessing the general message. He turned to Ryan and located the boy on the other side of the room. He was holding a box from underneath one of the tables and peering inside it.

“There’s all kinds of good stuff in these boxes,” said Ryan, as he held up a rusted wrench. With a good clean the tool would be serviceable, Jack thought, and he started to search through the items collected on the tables. He had a feeling about this room. This was where they were meant to end up, but maybe not quite in the circumstances that they got there, trapped underneath who knew how much collapsed rubble, with a nest of Mr Clickys above them.

The gap underneath the debris didn't look big enough for Mr Clicky to get through, so Jack relaxed a little and turned to look at the pile of boxes lined along the far wall.

“Look what I found,” called Ryan, a second or so later. Jack turned and found that Ryan was holding up what appeared to be a large handgun. Jack walked around the tables and took the weapon from the boy. He brushed the dust off it. It was old, and the magazine seemed to be missing, but Jack hadn't seen a weapon like it before. It was made from some sort of dense plastic, or another synthetic material that wasn’t metal, with two square holes at the end of the short barrel. He put it down on the table. “See if you can find some of the ammo magazines that go with it,” he said. “But don’t mess with it until I’ve given it a good clean up.”

Ryan nodded. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, and began shorting through another box. “There’s two more of them here.”

Jack nodded. “Nice find,” he said. “They’re for us. Call it payment for services rendered.”

Ryan grinned at this and placed the other two guns on the table next to the first. “Let’s just hope there’s some ammo for them in here.”

Jack turned to the wall where the boxes were stacked up, his gaze drifting over the unreadable letters that had worn away over time, but he stopped at a box with a yellow label still stuck to one side. Squinting in the dim light, Jack moved over to where the box was, nestled among the others, and started lifting some of the boxes off, coughing as dust wafted everywhere. “Damn,” he cursed. “This stuff really hasn’t been messed with in a long time.” Something small, with a lot of legs, scuttled over the top of the yellow label box and dropped down into the gap behind. A bug of some sort, maybe even Mr Clicky's babies, thought Jack, but he ignored it and concentrated on the yellow label box.

All of the boxes were made of plastic, Jack noticed. He hadn't seen something like that for a long time. If left sealed shut, the boxes down in this cellar would keep their contents safe from the ravages of time. He swept a space on the nearest table clear, then hauled the yellow labelled box out of the stack and plopped it down. The top was stiff, but eventually there was a hiss and a pop as the plastic lid came away in Jack’s hands. Jack dropped the lid and peered inside.

“Bingo,” he said.

“You found it?” asked Ryan. “Damn. I was hoping to beat you.” But then he held up a six inch knife that was still in its holder. “But I got this. And this box here looks like the magazines for those guns. There must be forty clips or something like that.”

“I think your find is better than mine.” Jack smiled at the boy’s enthusiasm. “We’re going to be down here a while,” he said. “So we may as well keep searching. You, know, for anything of interest. We do, after all, get first claim on this. Especially since we already found what FirstMan wants.”

Ryan’s grin widened.

Jack looked around the room. It had been a long time since he had seen so much stuff in one place that wasn’t on its way through the Recycling Facility. Maybe that place in The Crossing, old Racket’s place.

Drogan would have loved all this, Jack thought.

Don’t Eat That

Jack waited at the entrance to the hovel, watching the bustling road outside while still keeping an eye on Drogan’s back. Inside the building was a mess of old electronic junk that Jack had seen dozens of times over the last few years, ever since he first hooked up with the older man at the junction outside the remains of the New Stadium settlement. That had been the day he gained a new friend, a shotgun, and also saw the fall of a settlement that had barely begun to thrive.

Hunched over on the other side of Drogan was Racket, an old man with only one eye over which he wore a large round lens attached to a leather strap. Jack always thought the strap looked much too tight. The lens made Racket’s one remaining eye seem five times bigger than it really was, and Jack had often wondered if he could see at all without it.

Drogan was a man who knew just where to trade for most things – especially anything that even vaguely resembled old tech. From circuit-boards out of the back of old TV sets to the guts of a rusting, rotten computer, he would insist on taking them to Racket, and Jack had to admit that the old man would certainly pay top coin if the object happened to be of value to him for one of his projects. What those projects were, Jack had no idea. He had never seen beyond the entrance room of Racket’s building, but knew that the rest of the building, considering its size, could hide quite a lot.

Racket had a lot of resources at his disposal to pay for anything they found. Enough, Jack mused, to cover the costs of employing a thug to stand outside all day, and few could do that.

“What do you mean, you can't give me a good price?” Drogan’s voice bellowed from the room behind him. Jack glanced over at the thug, standing a few feet away, and the man looked back. They both shrugged. This was usual, Jack thought.

Drogan knew what he was doing, and Jack had been in the other room a number of times to witness the conversation between his friend and the old man as it got a little heated, but Drogan was used to getting what he wanted, and persistence was his middle name. He’d keep on and on, and eventually Racket would give him a little more. They all knew that Racket was bound to try his luck with at least one thing that Drogan was trying to sell him.

Drogan and Racket were old friends and Jack had learned that this was the way they spoke to each other. The anger was only feigned, pretend.

Ten minutes later, Drogan came out with a grin on his face. We won this time, thought Jack.

“We ready?” Jack asked.

Drogan nodded. “Sure. Let's go get some food.”

They wandered through the market, Drogan walking a few feet ahead of Jack, occasionally stopping to glance at something on one of the stalls, but mostly leaving things alone.

The pedlars were almost as persistent as Drogan, constantly waving things in Jack's face as he walked by. He was used to this, keeping his hands by his sides and shaking his head as continued on his way.

They eventually made their way to the east side of the market where the food places were. “What’s it to be?” asked Drogan. “Rat roasted, rat fried, rat soup?”

“Fat lot of choice,” said Jack. He’d rather not touch any of it, but he was hungry and they had few supplies after their last expedition. Drogan stopped at one of the stalls where small rodents of some kind – probably still rats, Jack thought – were skewered and roasted over a fire pit. He had to admit, the smell was pretty good when you were that hungry.

Drogan started haggling with the seller, so Jack stood back, watching those around him, and he noticed someone out the back of the tent. The chef had his back to them, preparing more of their catch. The man wore a long smock, stained with blood, and it turned Jack's stomach. But it wasn't until the man reached out for another skewer that Jack noticed the purple mark on his arm. It was only small, no bigger than a fingernail in size, but it was there – a purple mark surrounded by slightly grey skin and a black spider mark, trailing away along the man's forearm. The man must have sensed Jack’s scrutiny, because he glanced up and pulled down his sleeve, looked at Jack once, then turned back to his cooking.

Jack put his hand on Drogan’s shoulder. “Let’s leave these,” he said. Drogan frowned but then he saw the serious expression on Jack's face and nodded.

The food pedlar frowned. “What? You don't want anything now? I was doing you a bargain.”

They walked away, ignoring the curses from the man behind them.

No Time to Bug Out

FirstMan took a deep breath and lowered his assault rifle, watching as the last bug kicked and writhed on the ground a few feet away before finally lying still. There must have been a hundred dead bugs littering the ground outside the front of the building and in the foyer by the time RightHand and the rest of the troopers had finished wiping out the nest. He shook his head.

I’ve never seen so many in one place before, he thought, but then, no one really comes here, do they?

At least none of his people did.

The industrial complex was too far out, and too near The Crags. FirstMan wondered for a moment if the crag tribes visited this place. But then, he thought, no nest such as this would have grown to such a size, and remain undiscovered, if it had been near the Junktown. And the crag folk would have eaten them.

He grabbed his radio, coughed to clear the dust from his chest, and spoke. “Jack, you still okay down there?”

“Sure. We’re good. Still stuck down here and not going anywhere soon,” came the reply. “But I think we may have found what you’re looking for.”

“Really?” asked FirstMan, as he walked back towards the building. “That’s good news. Bad news is I think you're buried under a quite a lot of debris.”

“Yeah, figured as much from the mess down here,” replied Jack.

“Seems that it was a large nest, and it collapsed from above,” said FirstMan. “It took out a couple of floors. May take us a while to get you out of there.”

“We’ll be okay,” said Jack. “But don't take too long.”

FirstMan turned to RightHand, who was standing a few feet away, looking around at the dead bugs and then at the collapsed rubble. It now filled the area where the stairs and the lift shaft had been. “I guess we better get digging,” he said.

They’re Back

Corporal Lisa Markell stood staring at the scratches on the side of the carrier, puzzled and a little amused. It had been over a month since she had watched Jack running off into the junk, and several weeks since she had spied the Governor poking around the vehicle bay, and in that time she had almost forgotten about the scratches and the compartments that had been tampered with.

Thankfully, she had badgered Mechanical to sort out a key fob that opened pretty much all of the compartments on any of the vehicles in the bay, and she had managed to do it – as far as she knew – without Jackson finding out. That, she thought, would be that last thing she wanted. She’d seen the report the last time they were sent to the facility. Hayley had dug it up for her.

Even though Jackson didn’t bother with the normal formalities of talking to each trooper about their performance levels, as was usually required, he also didn’t bother removing the officers’ report summaries from the batch that she used to rate her troops. If she kept up her current performance level she could be reassigned within months, maybe just a couple, back to the Inner Zone or at least a closer facility.

No, alerting Jackson to her suspicions was the last thing she wanted. Better to investigate, take notes, and make a full report when she was moved on and out of his clutches and ability to harm her career.

But here were those very same markings on – and it seemed even more unlikely – the same carrier. E2 crew. And they had been reported by the crew leader, Tyler, as they had before.

Except this time she’d been looking at Tyler’s report on the screen when it had been deleted. She’d watched as the entry disappeared from the screen less than two hours after it had been put there.

Lisa coughed, wiped the sweat from her face, and swiped the key fob over the panel next to the compartment. There was a slight click and a beeping noise from the fob, and the compartment popped open.

Hayley, standing next to her, grinned and gave a quiet “Yes,” as the door swung open slowly. “We’re in.”

Lisa pulled the door open, glanced around to make sure than no one but she and Hayley were nearby, and pulled out the small package stuffed inside the compartment. She placed it on the ground, pulled her scanner out and swiped it over the package.

Nothing. No signs of live electronics or life, not that she was expecting any.

“What is it?” asked Hayley, trying to peer over her shoulder.

“Don’t know yet,” Lisa said, as she pulled back the dirty cloth that wrapped the object. Inside something metallic glinted in the bright sunlight.

What Lies Outside

Three hours later, Jack squinted at the bright sunlight as he dusted himself down. He was standing a dozen feet away from the ammo-less gun turret outside the front of the building. Three hours in the dark, waiting for FirstMan and the troopers to clear the way down to them, was a long time, and in that time he and Ryan had managed to sort their way through most of the treasure that was buried in the room below. He had tried pulling away some of the junk blocking the doorway but heard the debris above it groan in protest. It was too risky.

So they were stuck in there until FirstMan and the other troopers managed to clear what had fallen into the lift shaft and some of the room beyond that.

He’d thought, given time, if they'd been stuck down there, with no help from the outside, that he'd be able to gradually make a tunnel of some sort through the debris, but he saw little need since FirstMan and his men needed what Jack had found more than he needed them.

But what happens to me now? he thought, wondering if his usefulness was spent.

But he was still alive, and FirstMan was sitting on a pile of rocks near the broken pavement that had been churned up by nature as it forced its way up from underneath. The man was examining the contents of the yellow label box and nodding

“Perfect,” FirstMan said after a few minutes. “Just what we needed, and even some replacements, if necessary.” He held up one of the sealed packages stuffed into the box. “At least one of these, if not more, is gonna be in working condition. Excellent job, Jack.”

“So,” said Jack, peering at the man whom he still wasn't sure he trusted. “You going to tell me what it is you need these for?”

FirstMan looked up at him and the looked back down at the box, “That's a long story. Where do I start?”

“At the beginning?” suggested Jack.

“Well,” said FirstMan. “As I said before, we used to work for the facility, or should I say we used to work for the RAD. Me, RightHand, and all my men, were Inner Zone troopers, sent out here to run missions clearing out zones ready for scavenging. Basically doing whatever Governor Jackson decided was needed.  His dirty work. Sometimes we were sent out here to find a group that was particularly troublesome and were raiding the outer lying facilities.”

“Like the Picking Factory,” said Jack.

“Yes,” said FirstMan, nodding. “Just like the Picking Factory. When we got here, we took out the group that was trouble, but we found far more than we expected. Thousands of Junkers out here, and as you can see they're not the monsters that we were told about.”

FirstMan paused in thought for a few moments.

“We were given orders to wipe the entire place out,” he said.

“What? Kill them? All of them?” Jack asked, stunned.

FirstMan nodded, his expression grim. “Yes, all of them.”

Jack looked away, disgusted. He'd only met Jackson, the Governor of the facility, once, and he hadn't liked the man. He remembered how Jackson had looked at him like he was a piece of dirt. But, to someone like Jackson, Jack supposed he was just dirt.

“So you mutinied?” asked Jack, looking at FirstMan.

FirstMan frowned, but then smiled, seeming a little embarrassed. “Well, yes. I suppose you could say that, but I wouldn't consider it mutiny, as such. Maybe changing sides. You see, my father was sent out here, to the facility, many years ago, when I was very young. I know that he worked with the salvage crews, but I don’t know which, or under whom. I do know that I never saw him again.

“We had money problems, you see. My father was ambitious. I wouldn't say he was greedy, but... Well, I wouldn't know for sure, but he ran up debts that he couldn't pay off. So they arrested him and sent him out here is punishment. My mother went to a workhouse, and we were lucky we managed to stay in the Inner Zone and not get kicked out into the ruins like so many.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Jack said, remembering his own father vaguely. He wasn’t sure if he felt the same loss that FirstMan felt, though, having been abandoned by his own parents when he was a just a child.

FirstMan paused and then looked at Jack. “Sorry, I didn't mean—”

“No, it’s fine,” said Jack. “Carry on.”

“Well the choice between killing a few thousand people out here and disobeying orders wasn't a choice to me, nor was it to any of my men. These people needed help.” FirstMan stopped talking for minute or so, and just stood there, staring at the ground.

The man’s hiding something. But what? Jack thought that he was probably telling him more than he wanted and making sure he didn’t tell him too much.

But he’s telling you because he wants more from you.

FirstMan sighed and looked around. None of the other troopers were nearby. They were too busy helping Ryan and RightHand empty out hidden treasure trove on the floors below.

Finally he spoke. “That circuit board can be used to fix a drone that we managed to capture, or should I say the Junkers managed to capture a long time before we joined them. It was sitting among the trash when we found it. The old guy, Haggerty, he told us a story about how it was sent to take pictures of the Junktown, and the old chief – one of the ones that we took out when we came here – shot the thing down from the sky. It had been in the trash ever since.

“Well, we had a look, and one of my guys is a pretty good tech, a dab hand at fixing stuff up. He managed to get it working, apart from the navigation. And that's what these boards are – a navigation system that can link in to the satellites still in operation by the Inner Zone.”

Jack frowned. “Satellites? Like in the sky?” Jack remembered seeing pictures in an article in a magazine about such things, but believed them to be a thing of centuries ago, of the old world.

“Yes, exactly,” said FirstMan. “We can use it to guide the drone if we can get it working again.” FirstMan looked Jack in the eyes. “One of the things that we carry on the troop carriers, in case of extreme circumstances, is an EMP device. An electro-magnetic impulse explosive. It can take out electronics within a half mile radius, with very little damage to structures and even less damage to people. If we have this drone working, we can use it to take out the outer wall defences at the Recycling Facility.”

“Why would you need to do that?” asked Jack.

“So that we can invade the place and take over.”

“What good would that do?” asked Jack. “Why would you want to take over the place?”

FirstMan watched him, no longer wary, and Jack thought that somehow he’d already decided he could tell Jack everything. “Because from there we can control all of the facilities this side of the Trans. It’s the hub. The only connection from the Junklands to the Inner Zone.”

“So you just want power?” said Jack, puzzled. “You want to rule out here?”

FirstMan was shaking his head. “No, sure, yes. We want to take over, but not just so that we run this place. It’s not all about power. But I guess it sort of is.”

“Then what?” asked Jack. “Why bother. Why go to all that trouble?”

“Because if we take over the Junklands, and all the facilities, it’ll choke the Inner Zone, and they’ll no longer be able to send their Ark ships without dealing with us. They need the resources out here and, if we control that, then we will have something to bargain with.”

Jack was confused. All this talk of taking over, of bargaining, of bartering with the Inner Zone. “But why would you need to do that?” he asked, but somehow he already knew the answer. There was a bigger plan here. Something much grander in scale than he had first thought, and his respect for this former soldier was growing with each new enlightenment.

“The Junkers,” said FirstMan. “All these people. If we control the flow of resources, then we can barter. We can bargain a ticket off world. For everyone.”

“Why tell me all this?” asked Jack.

“Because you asked,” said FirstMan.

“But, you actually think you can trust me enough to tell me the whole plan, why?” asked Jack

“Because you have Ryan to look out for, and you have someone you care about, like I care about these people. It’s someone to fight for.”

“Fight?”

“Yes,” said FirstMan. “I told you because we need someone to carry a targeting beacon into the Recycling Facility, so that the drone can locate the power plant we need to take down to lower the outer wall defences.”

“You want what?” asked Jack.

“I want you to get captured and taken back into the facility with a beacon hidden on you. I want you to be the target for the EMP,” said FirstMan.

To be continued in part 6...

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About the Author

GLYNN JAMES, born in Wellingborough, England in 1972, is a bestselling author of dark sci-fi novels.

He has an obsession with anything to do with zombies, Cthulhu mythos, and post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction and films, all of which began when he started reading HP Lovecraft and Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend back when he was eight years old.

In addition to co-authoring the bestselling ARISEN books (over 175,000 copies sold), he is the author of the bestselling DIARY OF THE DISPLACED series. More info on his writing and projects can be found at www.glynnjames.co.uk.

Copyright

First published 2015 by Glynn James

Copyright © Glynn James

The right of Glynn James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.