by Glynn James
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.
&
nbsp; “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.
