Thrown Away- The Complete series Box Set

by Glynn James

  “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 other 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 centu
ries. “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.