“Nim-taka de drenum,” he whispered. “Se kala meka dela trite!” When he was done, he slowly rose, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. “It’s safe now,” he said.
Harold shook his head. “How can you be sure?”
The Charger picked up a handful of the blue sand and tossed it at his feet.
The mystic gasped. But when nothing happened, he fell to his knees and smiled. “Thank you,” he stammered. He then leaned over and vomited.
The Charger pulled his hood over his head. “If this had been laid yesterday, we would be leaving you for the nagra. Remember that, cast out.”
The gob watched them from the far side of the clearing, his rod slung lazily over his shoulder. “He lives, eh? Too bad. I was hoping to get a thicker cut of the till.”
Waypman frowned. “Is that all you can think about, gob?”
“When your pocket weighs as light as mine . . . yes, that is all.”
Harold took a deep breath, wiping the spittle from his chin with the back of his trembling hand. “Just get back to work,” he breathed. “We’ve wasted enough time here.”
“That you have,” the gob replied.
Waypman watched the mystic stagger back to the cart. He’s learned his first lesson here, he thought. Anything and everything can kill you in the Waste. Even the sand. Let’s just hope it sinks in nice and good. And with that thought, Waypman picked up his rod and went back to work.
6
It was their fourth day out, and what little land they had covered now stood buried beneath a layer of thick, black oil.
Michael ground his teeth together as he thrust his rod through the sludge. The rains had come hard that morning, a dense curtain of black oil pounding the sands like a sea of roiling ants.
“You okay over there?” the Garfaxman shouted a hundred footfalls to Michael’s left.
“Fine. Just fine,” Michael said as he yanked the rod from the muck. Thrust, wait, pull, thrust, wait, pull, he told himself as slop dripped onto his feet. It was monotonous work, the kind of grind that unfurled memories like an old, forgotten blanket. Michael embraced it, though, wandering back to his home town through the fog of memory.
A shack stood before him, corrugated scrap metal and warped planks standing in for a roof and walls. Behind it rose Crilyn’s Mound, a great, stinking mountain of waste that clothed and fed most of West Leksha’s citizens. The place of my birth, he thought.
Michael could still remember the nightly pyres, as scavengers burned off clusters of the heap to separate metal from organic material. Everything he had ever learned or experienced stemmed from its filthy shadow. Michael sighed. He remembered his trips to the great heap, crawling through the grime with a sack in hand just as his father and his father’s father had done before him. The thought brought a smile to his oil-soaked face. It was the only happy memory he could muster of his father.
Not now. Not now, he told himself, breaking the memory.
Exhausted, he leaned against his rod and scanned the muddy surroundings. Where he had cleansed, vast webs of white bacteria now shimmered like cobwebs atop the sand. Strange, that, he thought. He’d heard rumors of the anomaly on the lines, but he never expected to see it himself.
“Hey!” Waypman shouted, waving at him from uphill. “Get a load of this!” The mutant held up a large, rusted piece of steel in his laptane-covered tentacle. “I found it embedded in a root. Damn thing was nearly swallowed whole.”
Michael slung his rod over his shoulder and approached the Garfaxman.
“Looks like Tritan steel,” Waypman said, handing it to Michael.
Michael took it and rolled it over in his gloved palm. It was heavy and its weather-worn surface held a strange sheen beneath the mud. There’s a trace of meridium here, too, Michael thought as he studied the black speckles embedded in the steel. At one end of the device there were three deep, serrated notches; on the opposite side, there was something that appeared to be a handle.
“I think you’re right,” Michael said. “But without the lockbox, it won’t fetch a whole lot. Keep it, though. You never know.”
Waypman took it and raised it before his eyes. “Hell, this wouldn’t be just sitting out here. Not without a lock nearby, right?”
Michael laughed. “Yeah, good luck finding it.” With that said, he turned and lifted his rod. “You’ll have about as much of a chance as I do sprouting wings.” He slammed the rod into the mud.
But this time it clanked against something metallic.
Michael froze, staring at his feet.
“Might be time to start flapping those wings,” Waypman said, smiling. He knelt down and began tossing clumps of black mud over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Michael asked.
“Salvaging.”
Michael shook his head. “It could be another trap. Maybe we should wait for the others?”
“If we wait, that Charger’ll take full credit for whatever it is. No way! This is our show now.”
Michael’s stomach churned. “It could be anything.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
While the Garfaxman dug, Michael climbed the small rise separating them from the rest of the group. He could see the gob working the lower half of the slope, toiling in knee-deep mud. A few hundred footfalls to the east, Harold stood with rod in hand, staring at the sand with a nervous expression. But as for the Charger, he was nowhere to be found.
“You gonna help or what?” Waypman hissed behind him.
Michael’s heart beat hard in his throat. He wanted the salvage, but the quota hung over his head like a dagger. If we make a claim before it’s met, we could face the ax, he told himself.
Just a few calls back, several men had found a sealed food cache in the crystalized sprawl of the Ripple. Realizing its worth, they slit the throat of their Charger and abandoned their mystic to the sands. But when they arrived in Cumlety less the two men and with an open quota, they were quickly rounded up and put to the block. No trial, no judge. Death.
If it’s too much, we leave it, that’s all, he told himself. But deep down he knew his hunger would outweigh common sense.
“I’m . . . I’m with you,” Michael finally said.
Waypman smiled and tossed one of his rusted shovels at Michael’s feet. “Let’s get this done then.”
The two stood covered in mud, their suits steaming as acid rain drizzled onto their shoulders.
This had better be worth it, Michael thought as the Garfaxman scrapped the last inch of mud from the object.
Exhausted, Waypman sat back and let the foul rain rinse off his muddy mask. “Looks like a hatch,” he said as he gasped for air.
The metal surface was rusted brown and covered in scratches. Mounted in its center was a pair of golden handles bound together by a large, rusted lockbox.
“Well,” said Michael. “I guess it’s now or never.”
Waypman leaned forward and brushed mud from the keyhole. When it was clean, he slid the key in and slowly twisted until a tumbled clicked into place.
Michael swallowed. “Maybe we should tell the others.”
Waypman glanced at him over his shoulder. “Have you ever worked the Culver before, sonny?”
“No,” Michael said.
The mutant’s eyes narrowed, his voice falling low. “Well, then, let me tell you something. No matter what they tell you back there in the city, you’ll never be allowed to keep your haul. Hell, you’ll be lucky to take home even a quarter of your salvage after the Chargers take their cut. Is that what you want? To go home empty-handed?”
“But the rates,” Michael said. “We’re covered under the Overwatch contract.”
Waypman laughed. “Come on, sonny. Who do you think wrote that contract? Hell if it was the Overwatch; they got their hands so full back at the Isle that they couldn’t care less about this dump. Out here, the Circle runs the show.”
Michael stood silent; for the first time in a long while, he felt foolish.
“T
he rich get richer, and the poor work the Culver,” Waypman said. “That’s how it is and how it’ll always be, sonny. But not for me. No more.” And with that, he pushed down on the hatch.
The bronze doors swung inward with a metallic groan revealing a gaping, black maw below.
Michael inched forward, peering into the gloom. “Steps,” he whispered. Hand-carved granite blocks chipped and covered in patches of moss and slime.
Waypman reached into one of his pockets and removed a small glass jar. Michael watched curiously as the mutant shook it back and forth. When he was done, bright orange light erupted within, illuminating the entire length of stairs.
Eternaglow, Michael thought, fascinated. A rare and expensive tool for one on the lines.
“Coinage well spent,” Waypman said, admiring the light. “Don’t you think?”
A gust of steam erupted up the stairwell.
Michael winced; even through his mask, the stench of sulfur and decay burned his sinuses. “My god, what is that?”
Waypman raised the jar. “Death.”
A bolt of lightning exploded overheard, followed by the distant grumble of approaching thunder. Waypman glanced up at the sky. “We better hurry. The others might call it quits if that lightning keeps up.”
Michael nervously bit his lip. “What about traps?”
Waypman stepped down into the dark. “We’ll just have to be careful.”
Michael shivered. Were you also as desperate for coinage, pop? he wondered.
“Are you coming?” the Garfaxman shouted as he descended the stairs.
Michael took one last look at the surrounding hillside. Would the others even bother to search for them if they didn’t return? Doubt it, he thought. Not much profit there.
His legs trembling, Michael followed the mutant into the dark.
His skin prickled with nervous tension. Two hundred steps, Michael thought as he glanced over his shoulder at the fading daylight.
“Come on already,” the mutant shouted up at him. “I’ve only enough glow for a call.”
Taking a deep breath, Michael continued his descent. This had better be worth it, he thought as he imagined his body lying broken at the base of the stairs.
When he finally reached the bottom some fifty steps later, he found Waypman standing at the mouth of a low-carved tunnel.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” the mutant said.
The tunnel walls consisted of carefully placed blocks as smooth as ice and flecked with strange, red crystals.
Meridium, Michael thought as he followed Waypman’s lead. By the gods, what is this place?
After a few hundred footfalls, the tunnel curved sharply to the east, opening into a large antechamber where it then branched off in two different directions.
Michael stared down both tunnels. “Which way?”
Waypman raised his jar and stared at the far wall. Shimmering between both tunnels was a painting of a golden shield. “Do you recognize that?” he asked.
Michael approached the painting and rubbed away the dust clinging to its surface. “I do,” he breathed, but he dared not believe it.
Waypman smiled with delight. “The Brighthorse Brigade. I’ll be damned if it ain’t their crest.”
Michael gazed wide-eyed at the ancient emblem. But it can’t be, he thought. It’s just a tale. A tale he could still recite as if whispered to him yesterday. Every child knew of it; the story was near mythological, a yarn spun around every fire in every village since the end of the Meridium War.
“If the tale was true,” Waypman said, “350 men fought here. Three hundred and fifty men who were never found.” He ran his good hand across the emblem. “Do you think it could really be here?”
“What?” Michael asked.
“What do you think?”
Michael’s pulse quickened. The Black Chamber. But for it to be here?
Michael shook his head. “No way.”
Waypman touch his mutated hand to the ancient painting. “This could be it for us. No more scrapping. No more cleansing.”
Michael shook his head. He knew it would never be that easy. We’re dregs, he told himself. Luck has no place with our kind.
They ended up choosing the easterly tunnel, wandering for some time until Waypman finally caught a glimpse of daylight splashed across the right side of the tunnel.
“Probably a lookout port,” he said as he approached it. “I bet these tunnels run throughout the entire forest.”
Michael stepped up to the light and squinted. Outside a graveyard of ancient stumps poked up through the surface of a black, oily swamp.
I wonder who was last to look upon this, he thought as the mutant nudged him aside to get a better look.
“We’ve gone farther than I thought,” Waypman said as he scanned the mire.
“How the hell can you tell?”
“I saw this place earlier today. On our way in. We’ve probably gone half a league from where we first entered.”
Michael glanced down the tunnel. Another antechamber glowed in the distance. “I think it splits again up ahead.”
Waypman sighed. “We’ll have to do the same, if we want to cover more ground.”
“Half a call, though,” Michael said.” Then we meet back here.”
Waypman nodded. But as Michael turned to leave, he grabbed his arm.
“Take this.” He reached into his vest and withdrew another eterna jar. “And be careful. Anything could be waiting for us down here.”
Michael took it and nodded. “See you soon, friend.”
Michael’s heart raced as he marched through the cobweb-choked passage.
Just keep moving, he told himself.
The eternal lamp’s orange light reflected off of the tunnel’s polished granite walls. Each brick was laid with perfect precision, and unlike the earlier passages, marble urns sat at regular intervals against the walls, each filled with brackish, black water.
After another hundred footfalls, horizontal portals began dotting the right-hand wall.
Michael approached one and slid back its brass handle.
“Damn it!” he cried as muddy water splashed across his mask. He tried wiping it from his eye port, but his clumsy fumbling only made it worse.
“To hell with this,” he spat, tearing off the mask.
A rush of cool morning air instantly embraced his sweaty flesh. When he dared a breath, he was surprised to find the air clean and free of the Culver’s rotten stink.
In the distance, a set of massive steel doors glimmered in the eternal light’s glow.
Tritan make, he noted as he cautiously approached it. For intricate carvings adorned its polished surface. Master works that only a diamond-tipped blade could carve.
You’re worth more than my life, he thought.
He took a step back and kicked the horizontal bolt. Rust drizzled onto the floor, but the ancient steel held. Undeterred, he kicked it again. This time, the rusted bar broke free and hit the ground with a metallic clang.
When the din faded, he reached out and pushed on the doors. As they ground open, there was a gentle hiss, accompanied by a cloud of gray, ash-like particles that exploded into his face.
Coughing, Michael fumbled with his mask. But it was too late. The microscopic particles had already penetrated his lungs.
A Sharna trap, he thought, wheezing. He’d heard scrappers talk of them back in Cumlety: poison seals, which when broken, released deadly particles into the air.
I’m a dead man! he thought.
But when seconds melted into minutes and still nothing happened, he sat back and sighed.
Perhaps the spell faded over time, he thought. Or maybe it was nothing more than escaping dust. Either way, it was a rare blessing in the Waste.
Trembling, he donned his mask and cautiously entered the room.
“My god!”
A kaleidoscope of colors refracted off metal-coated walls. Meridium-infused steel, he realized. Polished to a mirror-like sheen. And it wasn�
��t just on the walls; both the floor and ceiling were plated as well.
Michael moved into the center of the chamber. Not a single cobweb or speck of dust was anywhere to be found. It’s been sealed for all this time, he realized, awestruck.
Above him, a vaulted, steel-plated ceiling arched deep into shadow.
Soldiers wouldn’t have taken time for this, he thought. No. This was the work of artisans and architects, men whose talents were employed at great expense.
In the center of the chamber, a massive steel box sat wrapped in heavy chains and padlocks.
Michael’s heart raced as he ran a hand across its icy surface. Like the bolt on the door, time had corroded its locks; he doubted it would take more than a few kicks to open it. I should wait for Waypman, though, he thought.
But there was no time. Even if he found the mutant, they would still have to return to camp before sundown.
He braced his foot against the side of the box and took hold of the thickest chain. His teeth clenched, he pulled until every muscle chorded in his body.
“Come on you son of a bitch!”
The chain snapped, sending him crashing backward onto the floor.
As he scrambled onto his feet, the padlocks sprang open and the chains retracted into small holes cut into the floor. Moments later, the steel chest blossomed open like a flower, its four walls hitting the floor with a loud, metallic thud.
Michael stood silent, his breath held. When he picked up his torch and raised it above the open chest, the light revealed a large brass urn resting at the center of dozens of smaller clay jars. Many of the jars were cracked and shattered, their ashen contents strewn across the bottom of the box. But the brass urn stood unscathed, its dull patina glistening in the torchlight.
Michael leaned in closer with the flame. A menagerie of cryptic symbols covered the urn’s surface. A funeral urn, perhaps, he thought. Not the most sought after relic on the market, but at least the brass would yield some coinage. Add to that the meridium-infused doors and walls, and we’ve got quite a salvage here.
Sand and Scrap Page 8
