by Greg Dragon
You’d think they’d taste foul, but they don’t, he thought. With a bit of added mint and some water, they made a broth that tasted as sweet as the sugar that he remembered from his childhood, though Jack knew that memory was probably not as accurate as he believed.
The first time that he’d eaten ant stew, sitting next to a similar fire, many miles away and a lot of years before, he’d turned the offered cup away, finding the idea foul and the withered old man sitting opposite him even more disgusting. The old man had laughed at him, calling him a fool and telling Jack that he’d soon change his mind. And that old grisly fellow had been right.
Jack was amused to see the very same reaction from the boy even as Jack gulped down a whole cup of the dirty, brown, steaming broth. And he was even more amused a few minutes later when Ryan’s growling, empty stomach made the boy change his mind.
It had been just the same for me, thought Jack.
As he’d watched Ryan grimace with the first sip, then look surprised and gulp it down, an idea hit Jack. It was almost exactly a year that they’d been travelling together, which meant it was sort of Ryan’s birthday.
And that meant that there needed to be some sort of celebration, somehow. Jack had no clue what he would do for the boy, but he was damn sure that he was going to do something.
Caught
The memory of that day faded as the mustard smell filled his nostrils. He tried to cover his face but knew it was pointless. There would be no vent in the back of the vehicle and he already knew that.
Gas, he thought. This is what they do to people that they’ve caught. He knew that at some point they would want to take everybody off the vehicle, and other than forcing them to move and possibly using violence, the easiest way would be to gas them all out. He wondered for a moment why he was even bothering to cover his mouth. The gas was so thick in the enclosed space that there was no escaping it.
Around him, the cries of fear returned, and the sound of coughing pierced the darkness as people succumbed to the gas. Yet he still held his breath, thinking the same mantra that the old man had taught him, over and over. Slow and shallow. Slow and shallow. He pushed his hand against his hood, using it to filter the air. And he knew it was working, to some degree, but not enough. Bright sparkles of light flickered across his vision, stark in contrast to the darkness around him. He started to feel faint and slightly sickened. He wouldn’t throw up but the dizzying effect of the gas made him feel drunk.
Eventually the coughing and the cries of those around him ceased, and he knew that he was the only one still conscious. Everyone else in the back of the truck had fallen. And there was something else familiar about all this. He tried to recall when he had felt it before.
Just as his eyes started to close, and his body began to collapse into a deep unconsciousness, Jack remembered the sharp sting of the dart that the slaver had used.
The Pits
Many Years Before
Jagan was a name that for many years struck terror into the hearts of every living soul that lived in the Outer Zone. He went by other names, but Jagan was what the people of The Crossing had called the slave baron who ruled from his throne in the open grounds east of 342nd Street.
Jack had seen him from a distance, several times during his days in the pits, and was always in awe of the man’s imposing figure. He was easily seven feet tall and was a mountain of pale muscle covered with armour that Jack thought may have been captured from the Hunters. He wore his bright red hair tied in a single braid that hung down his back, and even from a distance you could see his angry eyes glaring outwards at those he commanded.
The day that Jack had been caught, back when he wasn’t even twenty years old, he had left The Crossing after trading and was heading out into the ruins to find a new spot to set up. He’d turned a corner and found a dozen heavily armed men walking towards him. Their armour was hotchpotch, made up of some pieces of the grey battle gear of the Hunters and mixed up with battered pieces of metal. The leading man, who had to be as tall as Jagan himself, wore armour that Jack thought was made from cut up street signs, and he carried a long heavy metal pole with the word STOP on the metal plate at the end.
He remembered seeing the wagon behind the men, pulled along by a dozen or more gaunt figures, but that was all he’d managed to see before he felt the sharp sting in his left shoulder. He’d looked down and seen a throwing dart sticking out of his clothing, and then he looked back up at the approaching group.
When he awoke he was in the back of the wagon, tied to the metal railings. He had been stripped down to just the t-shirt he wore under his coats and the bottommost pair of jeans. Everything else was gone.
Glass Half Empty
Corporal Lisa Markell stared down at the plate of food on the table in front of her and decided that she wasn’t hungry. It wasn’t that the food was bad – quite the opposite in fact. The RAD – Reconnaissance and Acquisition Division – the section of the Inner Zone’s armed forces that was tasked with the security of all salvage and workforce recruitment operations, and of which she had been a member of her entire adult life, fed their people well.
Too well, some said. The plate in front of her was loaded with carbohydrates and high protein, including meat, which was a rare treat, even for the wealthy who lived inside the barrier, and she felt a pang of guilt as she pushed it away.
“You not eating that?” a voice asked, and Lisa looked up to see Johnson eyeing the plate hungrily. They’d only been sat down for a few minutes and his plate was already empty.
“Help yourself,” Lisa said and pushed the plate across to him.
Her thoughts had been miles away, not paying attention to the hum of activity around her as hundreds of RAD officers and troopers huddled around the long tables in the mess hall, ravenously filling their stomachs. Or more specifically, her mind had been back in the Outer Zone, where she was standing behind the truck as the troopers in her squad climbed back into the armoured personnel carrier after finishing the task of loading the small catch of recruits.
And the man had come out of nowhere, she thought, just appearing a few feet away from her. He stood motionless, watching her and looking behind her into the back of the truck where the captives were.
That had been half an hour ago, and she was still mulling it over. It bothered her. There was something about the way the man looked past her into the darkness of the back of the truck that unnerved her. Unlike almost everyone captured by their raids, this man hadn’t been afraid of her or her troops. She had seen it in his eyes. No fear. And he had just walked up to them, silently, and given himself up.
He’d volunteered.
It had been a first for her, and from what Johnson and the other corporals had said, it was almost unknown for someone to just give themselves up like that. She imagined what she and her troops must look like to those who lived in the ruins. Grey armour over black jumpsuits, a black visor blocking all view of the person inside. When Lisa had first looked in a mirror after donning her battle gear, she had thought that she was looking at someone else. The armour was made to strip all individuality from the person wearing it and was customised to fit. Male, female, thin, bulky – none of those features were obvious from the outside.
The armour was even made to look imposing – frightening even. And it worked for the vast majority of those facing off against them. Sure, sometimes a group of Scavs or some remnant of the old Slave Empire would be among the buildings they were raiding, and they would fight back, but even they had learned to fear the RAD raiders.
Yet this man had calmly given himself up and even climbed into the back of the truck without being pushed or forced. And he’d had the nerve to speak to her.
And she couldn’t get that out of her head.
“What’s eating you?” asked Ellard, another corporal, currently sitting to her right.
Across from Lisa, Johnson stopped eating and grinned. “She got spooked by one of the recruits we picked up.”
Lisa looked up, narrowing her eyes at Johnson.
“I didn’t get spooked,” she said, frowning with irritation.
Johnson shrugged and went back to eating, but Lisa wasn’t letting it go that easily. He’d annoyed her. She turned to Ellard. “This...recruit... He just walked up to us and gave himself in.”
Ellard frowned. “No way,” he said before shovelling in another mouthful of food. “Must be a crazy.”
Possibly, thought Lisa. But she had seen the man’s eyes. And she had caught a lot of crazies in her time, and this guy wasn’t one of them. There had been determination there, she had seen it.
Lisa stood up, pushing her chair back, and left the rest of her comrades to their meal. She knew she’d have to be ready for the Dropship to land at the base in twenty minutes, and be ready to process her catch at the import facility, but that still gave her a few minutes to head back to squad’s ready room. And there would be no one else there.
Two minutes later she shut the door behind her and walked over to the console on the wall at the far end. She hit the catch on the wall below the computer terminal, waited for the seat to pop out of the wall, and sat down. With one tap the terminal came to life, flickering a few times before displaying the identification screen. A flash of green light swept across her face as the terminal identified her before the familiar view of dozens of info panels appeared.
Lisa stared at the screen.
What the hell am I even doing? She thought.
He’d been looking for a boy.
Lisa tapped the screen and pulled up the roster of recruits, shaking her head as she wondered why she was even bothering.
27, 334.
She narrowed the search, selecting filters for juvenile, and male.
5,723.
Lisa stared at the number and frowned. Had there really been so many captured? More than five thousand? Lisa narrowed the search again, selecting only those still alive.
2341.
More than half of them were dead.
Again she questioned what she was doing. There was no way she was going to find the boy that the man was looking for. Stupid, she thought. I don’t even have a name or age.
The door at the other end of the ready room opened and several of the troops in her squad filed in. Lisa tapped the screen, quickly logging off, stood up and hit the button on the wall that would tuck the console and the seat back into the wall.
As the noise of her fellow RAD members resounded off the walls, she thought about the numbers again.
More than half were dead.
Caught
The huge man hit the ground with a grunt, kicking up a cloud of sand and dust from the dry earth. And then he lay there, twitching, as three of the Hunters circled him and then began to drag him away.
Jack squinted, his eyes trying to adjust to the bright sunlight while still attempting to take in the utter chaos around him. Hundreds of captives were standing in groups dotted around the massive yard, most of them, like him, still groggy from the gas, and most of them still and placid. But the huge man in his group, the one Jack thought had become rowdy in the back of the carrier, was now sporting a smashed nose, which looked like someone had hit him with a hammer, and was not co-operating at all. No sooner had he come round, just after Jack, than he was up, roaring and bellowing, and charging towards the nearest Hunter.
Must be an ex-slaver.
The man was smaller than Jack had estimated, probably only a few inches taller than he was, but he was broader in the shoulders and far more muscular. Jack was impressed. The man even managed to get a hit in on one of the Hunters, smashing his fist into the side of the trooper’s helmet and knocking him down, before the buzz of stun sticks cut through the air and three other Hunters descended on him, jabbing at him with the crackling weapons.
As Jack’s eyes began to re-adjust to the bright sunlight, he managed to take in his surroundings. They were in some kind of port facility. Huge, grey concrete buildings rose around them on all sides, and the ground was mostly dry dirt apart from the concrete platform that the dropship had landed upon.
Jack looked back at the armoured vehicle they had just been dragged from and along the line of other vehicles. There were a lot more of them than he had expected, and he estimated that at least thirty of the armoured carriers had driven off the dropship.
And so many Hunters, he thought. There had to be hundreds of them.
He watched as other groups of captives were dragged, unconscious, from the backs of the carriers and unceremoniously dumped on the dry dirt. Some of the other captives were starting to come round, easing slowly out of their drugged state and standing up, looking around and appearing as confused as he felt.
Jack’s gaze drifted back to the huge angry guy being dragged away. The three Hunters hauled him a hundred yards across the hard ground and then dumped him onto some kind of moving, metal platform. The unconscious body lay still as the moving platform carried it away into one of the buildings. He looked up at the sign at the front of the building, which read Conversion Screening Facility, and wondered what that meant.
Then Jack noticed the Hunter watching him from ten yards away and he lowered his head, staring down at the barren ground.
Don’t give them any trouble. Just stay silent and still, unassuming. But he glanced up one last time at the building where the big guy had been taken. He didn’t like the sound of conversion, even though he had no idea what that meant.
The Hunter was still watching him intently, and Jack felt himself involuntarily clenching his hands together, shifting uncomfortably, and looking around at the other people in the same group. He recognised only two of them, an older man and woman that he had seen several times entering or leaving the same building that he had been staying in when he had surrendered to the Hunters. They were a couple, he thought, and lived somewhere on the upper floors of the building. Dozens of others had lived there, each staking their own claim on one of the floors in some corner where no one else was, but just like everywhere else, they tended to keep to themselves and protect what was theirs. Apart from places like The Crossing, where he often went to trade, there were very few communities in the Outer Zone.
No one trusted anyone else.
“Everybody up,” said a metallic sounding voice from a few feet away. Jack turned and saw that it was the Hunter that had been watching him. At that command, several other Hunters approached and encircled the group, which Jack could now see was actually only made up of twenty or so people. The Hunters were waving their stun sticks and pointing in the direction of another large building directly ahead of them. As they started walking forward, guided by the rough hands of the Hunters, Jack noticed the other groups lined up in the yard were also being told to stand. But his group was the first.
It wasn’t the Conversion Facility that they were heading for, and Jack was grateful for that, but as the troop of bedraggled refugees was ushered through the massive concrete doors of the building and into a large open space with white painted markings on the floor, Jack began to feel uneasy.
There were twenty or more entrances leading off one side of the room, and every one of the led into a tunnel that was lit with bright lighting. In front of each entrance was a booth with another Hunter sat in it, and next to that, some kind of metal platform roughly three feet across. The Hunter that had been watching Jack pushed him forward so that he was the third in the queue that was now forming.
In front of him were the old couple, and as Jack watched, one of the Hunters urged the man forward. The old guy was hesitant at first, but the Hunter pointed at the platform and, with a flick of his wrist, the stun stick in his hand hummed to life. Next to Jack, the old woman cried out, telling the old man to go, but the man looked back at her, worried.
“Go,” she said, her voice shrill. “Or they’ll hurt you.”
The man stepped up onto the platform and stood still, looking around at the hundreds of captives now being forced to stand in lines in front of the booths
and platforms.
A flash of light almost blinded Jack as the platform flickered to life. Blue lights flowed around the base of the metal panel, swirling clockwise around it until, a few seconds later, the lights turned green. From nearby came a buzzing sound, and Jack looked over to the tunnels that led out of the huge hall. Two tunnels along from where they were queued, a tunnel had lit up green, matching the colour on the platform.
The old man still stood on the platform, confused, and Jack could empathise with him. What the hell did all this mean? What were the platforms for? His heart jumped as the old man was pushed off the platform. The old guy looked at the Hunter that had pushed him, both fear and a hint of anger, maybe even defiance, crossing his face, but the Hunter pointed at the green-lit tunnel, and the old man looked back at the old lady once more and then started to trudge towards the tunnel.
Next, the old woman stepped up onto the platform, and no sooner had the blue lights started flickering than they changed to a flashing red. At this, the Hunter nearest the old woman pointed towards the corridor next to the one the old man had walked down. The old woman stepped off the platform and started to walk towards the second corridor, but as she approached, she looked back and then quickly headed towards the same corridor that the old man had taken. Two Hunters rushed forward and blocked her path, pointing her to the red corridor. She hesitated, but in the end she complied and started to walk down the red corridor.
As Jack stepped forward, heading towards the platform, he glanced across the line of corridor entrances, and saw that they alternated in colour – green, red, green, red and so on. People were being led into a corridor depending on which colour the platform indicated. As he stepped up onto the platform, Jack noticed a young man being directed down the green corridor, and on the next booth another older man, who could barely walk, was being sent down the red.
