Thrown Away- The Complete series Box Set

by Glynn James

  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.

&nbs
p; “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.

  PART SIX

  What lies ahead

  The Pits

  Years Before…

  Jack’s heart thumped in his chest. He breathed deeply, wincing at the pain that shot across both sides of his ribcage.

  It wasn’t normally like this. The fights had never winded him – at least not since the first few, when his body had protested the unexpected over-use of muscles and tendons. He chased his breath, trying to calm his nerves. His thoughts flailed.

  Something has changed, hasn’t it? But what? What was different this time? You never failed to entertain them, not even that first time, fumbling, stumbling around, expecting the next moment to be your last. But it hadn’t, had it? It hadn’t been the end, and this mustn’t be, either. Them. They must have changed. Not you.

  He was down on one knee in the dirt, wobbling, trying to stay upright as he stared down at the hard floor of the fighting pit. His vision blurred in and out, one moment clear, another moment washed and wavering as sweat dripped from his forehead and stung his eyes. He noticed, above other things, that his hands were swollen. Fresh blood painted them red. Not his blood, though.

  He blinked, peering at his fingers, flexing them, thinking them damaged somehow after the endless pummelling he had put them through in the last few minutes. They would ache, but that would be tomorrow or the day after. For now, they were fine. Most of the blood – drying even as he stared – belonged to the motionless figure lying on the ground. Little of it was his.

  His gaze shifted from his throbbing hands to the unconscious body of the pit fighter he had just beaten, and he ignored the raucous sounds from above.

  This one had been meant to finish him.

  He had been lined up to die.

  After dozens of fights in the pits, this one had been a test, and he was supposed to lose. They hadn’t given him a weapon. He had nothing to fight back with apart from his bare fists, and the man he faced held a machete and was armoured in leather and metal, like that worn by many of the spectators – the slavers.

  Jack leaned forward and plucked the machete from the ground. For a moment, his mind flashed back to minutes before, and he remembered the other fighter’s crazy, staring eyes, his unnatural speed and strength.

  There had been no fear of death in those eyes.

  Jack had seen insanity.

  The man had been drugged, no doubt, Jack thought. Drugged and then drugged again. What was thrown into the pit had no humanity left in it, just animal instincts and basic desires. His opponent had only wished to cut him limb from limb.

  And, Jack thought, he had seen a look he had never witnessed on other pit fighters’ faces. Hunger.

  A flesh eater.

  The noise from the crowd above slowly washed over him, pulling him from his thoughts. They were cheering for him, yelling and screaming at him to finish it. But he couldn’t force his body to move anymore.

  Let them do the final atrocity, he thought. I’ve done enough.

  “We have a victor!” a familiar voice boomed from above. “Bring him up, boys!”

  Jagan, the slaver king. Despot ruler of the pits.

  They’ll kill me now, even after that, Jack thought, and he forced himself to look at the body in the middle of the pit. One cut with the machete would do it. Just one, and then…

  He didn’t get the chance to finish the job. The grinding sound of the cage being lowered into the pit tore his weary attention from his opponent long enough for the cage to reach the ground. Jagan was not known for his patience. Time was up. All Jack could do was stagger forward and stumble inside the cage as it thudded down. The dirt floor of the pit moved swiftly away, his stomach churning as they hoisted him upwards, and then rough hands pulled him from the cramped cage and dragged him before the fiery haired leader of the pit slavers.

  “Well, well,” boomed Jagan. “It seems I underestimated you. What have you to say?”

  Jack merely shook his head and shoved the machete into his belt. They hadn’t taken it away. That was a good sign, he thought. If they allowed him to keep it, and left him alone, that would be good.

  “Got nothing to say?” boomed Jagan, then his voice lowered. “A silent killer. Interesting.” Jagan seemed to consider Jack for a moment, and Jack’s mind scrambled for something to say before the giant lost patience and ordered him dead. Before he could say anything, Jagan spoke once more. “Well, you bested one of our finest, it would seem, and he’ll not be pleased when he wakes up.” Jagan moved a step closer to Jack. “Or maybe he shouldn’t wake up? What say you? What fate will you give him? Do you want to go back to the pens with the rest of the cattle, or you could take his place in the prize cages where only the very best of my gladiators live?” Again, Jagan paused, waiting for a response. “You can take his cage, and his slaves, if you want.”

  Jack nodded. Anything but the slave pens, he thought. He didn’t like the idea of taking the madman’s cage, and dreaded what he would discover there, but if it meant his own space away from the cramped and diseased conditions in the slave pens then he would have to take it.

  There was a thud, and Jack turned to see two of Jagan’s men dumping the barely moving, semi-conscious figure of his crazy opponent on the floor a few feet away. Jagan lifted his hand and pointed at the man. “Then it’s decided,” he said.

  Jack’s eyes opened wide, and he took a stumbling step back, surprised and confused. Was Jagan suggesting he should kill the man? He wondered if he could do it, but his hand instinctively went to grip the machete now tucked at his waist. Then, before he could step forward, Jagan reached down, grabbed the madman’s hair, pulled his head back, and sliced open the man’s throat with a knife. The semiconscious man gargled on his own blood for a few long moments as the pool spread outward, across the ground. Finally, he lay silent.

  “His cage is yours, now,” said Jagan. “You.” Jagan pointed at a warrior standing a few feet away from Jack. “Show him where he is to stay.”

  The thug nodded and signalled for Jack to follow him.

  “And somebody clean—” his words ended there, and Jack looked up, puzzled to see Jagan frowning, looking up into the sky. He didn’t finish what he was saying. Instead he stared at the clouds in confusion.

  Jack had thought, even when he had been fighting in the pit, that he may have heard the distant sound of thunder approaching, but this storm was not what he had expected and was of an entirely different nature. But it was still a familiar sound. A distant thud, thud, and a hum, deep and gut-wrenching. He knew it well.

  “Dropship,” said several voices at once, just as the word formed in Jack’s mind. One of the men nearby pointed eastwards, and Jack turned to look in that direction, as did many others. He saw the huge bulk of the dropship appearing like a phantom in the distant sky. It hung there, grey and ominous, first appearing like some great, dark thunderhead before its form solidified as it approached, heading across the skies towards them. It was lowering, slowly, drawing closer every second, doubling in size as it raced in their direction. Barely twenty seconds passed and t
he massive machine was upon them, lowering into the open grounds of the pits just a few hundred yards away.

  “Weapons!” bellowed Jagan, then he turned and walked – almost absurdly casually, considering what was coming – toward the nearby building that was his court and home, where his throne was. Around him, the thugs and the crowd dissipated, scurrying for their own makeshift, shanty abodes, grabbing weapons that leaned against walls or hung from hooks. Shouts went up as the warriors assembled.

  Jack stood, a little stunned, wondering what he should do. The man he had been told to follow was now pacing back towards him, carrying two spears. He threw one at Jack and walked past him. Jack clumsily caught the spear and gripped it tightly.

  Are they really going to try and fight a dropship? he thought. Are they mad? Yes, idiot. You already know how crazy these people are. The question is, are you mad enough to join them? And was the ship even coming for them? It might not be.

  But as Jack watched, he knew it wasn’t going to move on. He watched as it came closer, descending as it came, and as he had estimated, it was heading towards the ground that was flattest, just north of the pits.

  Dust filled the air, blown from the hard, dry ground, as the behemoth touched down. Soon, vision had been reduced to twenty feet as a cloud of smog threw a veil over the entire camp. Jack choked as his throat dried up, and he snatched at a scrap of cloth that hung from his shirt, using it to cover his mouth. A blast of hot wind hit him, churning up even more dust.

  “They wouldn’t attack us, would they?” asked one of the thugs nearby. “They wouldn’t come for a fight here?” The man took a step back, his expression nervous.

  Jagan appeared once more and the thug fearfully re-joined the line of warriors waiting for him. The huge, red headed giant was now fully dressed in scavenged metal armour, and he carried a long spear with a wicked looking blade in one hand and an axe in the other.

  “If they do,” shouted Jagan, “We’ll give it to them.”