by Greg Dragon
Jack heard a buzzing noise and felt the platform under his feet vibrate for a moment, and he looked down.
A young man and an old man had gone down the green corridor. The old woman and a nearly crippled man had gone down the red. This had to mean something, thought Jack. Was the platform some kind of decision maker? A technology that could somehow choose who went where? And what were the criteria? Two healthy people down one corridor, and two unhealthy ones down the next.
As Jack looked down, he hoped that the platform would be lit up green and was relieved when it was. He stepped off the platform and started walking towards the corridor with the green archway, and since none of the Hunters tried to stop him, or guide him the other way, he thought that he must have guessed correctly.
The corridor went on for roughly a hundred yards, and was lit on both sides by bright fluorescent lights spaced ten feet apart. The ground was smooth and worn, like many feet had trodden the path that Jack now walked, and he only looked back once as he headed along it. Ahead of him, roughly fifty feet away, was the old man who had gone into the tunnel first and beyond that, near the end of the corridor, he saw the back of the young man moving swiftly away. He had stopped and was leaning against the wall. As Jack approached, he slowed down and stopped next to the man.
“You okay?” he asked. He found it strange to be asking after someone else’s wellbeing for what seemed the first time in years. Other than when he met the boy, Ryan, Jack hadn’t given much thought to others. After all, no one ever did for him.
The old man was breathing heavily and clutching his chest. My...chest.” said the man, his voice strained. “It hurts.”
Jack stood there for a moment and then looked down the corridor in the direction that they had been heading. It ended roughly forty feet away, at a metal gate. Two Hunters were standing the other side of the gate, watching them. Neither moved to help the old man.
I guess I’m not the only one not used to helping folks, he thought. Then leaned forward, about to help the man. But then he caught sight of something that made him hesitate.
Blisters and pustules on the man’s skin. Bright yellow sores surrounded by red, peeling skin.
Plague, he thought. That’s Ratters Plague.
Over the years, Jack had seen many types of illnesses. In the Outer Zone there were few people who could heal, and even fewer who were willing. At The Crossing was an apothecary who sold herbs and salves that could help, but for serious illnesses such as Coughing Fever, Sweats, and Ratters Plague, there was no help. You either died from it or you lived.
Most died.
But Ratter’s Plague was contagious. And Jack had seen just what it was capable of doing when he was barely twenty five years old.
This Old Town
Many Years Before
Just twenty miles from The Crossing, out near the ruins of the Great Stadium, there had once been a small, growing community. Over the years, Jack had seen it expand from the first few settlers, who struggled to fight off bandits, wild animals, and night creatures, to dozens more who started to build defensive walls. They had a water source there, or so it was said, and had even started to run their own market. Then, one summer, just after the cold weather had abated and Jack had found a particularly good haul of junk, Jack realised he was in that area of the new community and decided to go there to trade instead of travelling further to get to The Crossing or Dartston. Both were roughly equal distance away and would take a whole day, maybe more, to reach. But the new place, which folks were now calling New Stadium, was only a couple of miles away and he realised he could be there before dark. He’d been there a number of times before but only because he had been passing. This time he had a reason to head directly there.
But he’d noticed the change even before he got near the outer wall. It was dusk, and the sun was barely a slither on the horizon, and yet the gates were wide open – a thing unknown with all the dangers lurking outside.
And there were no sentries atop the wall.
Jack remembered standing outside the gates, just ten yards from the wall, and staring at the utterly lifeless street beyond.
“You don’t wanna go in there,” said a voice from a short distance away. The wind was howling heavily, a stark contrast to the early breeze he had experienced during the day, and he only just heard the warning. Jack had turned to see a stranger – a man – sitting at the side of the road, outside a shop front on the corner of the street just beyond the gates to the new but now seemingly abandoned settlement. He noticed that he man was wearing a cloth around his mouth, and he also noticed that he carried an axe.
Jack had slowly reached to his side, to touch his machete, but the man had seen it.
“I’ve no bone to pick with you, if you don’t wanna go that way.”
And Jack hadn’t. His hand lingered at the machete for a moment, but then he took it away and started walking over the broken ground to the stranger.
“What happened?” he’d asked as he got closer. He stopped twenty feet away, judging that if the man changed his mind and leapt for him, he’d still have time to draw and be ready.
“Plague,” said the man. “Someone in there, guy called Harris, took to ratting just before I last came by here, bout two weeks ago. Well, I bin in there just now and seen them. It seems they all done caught themselves a nasty rash.”
Jack stood silently for a moment, just staring at the gates.
“Just a rash?”
The man shook his head.
“Much more than a rash.”
“Is there no one left in there at all?”
The man nodded.
“Sure,” he said, placing his axe on the floor and reaching for a pouch on his belt. He started rolling a cigarette. “Three, maybe four left. They’re all infected. So I left them. I asked if they wanted me to, you know, end it, but none of them even recognised that I was there. Only one crazy guy throwing stones. Reckon I should have put them out of their misery, but they didn’t answer me, so I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
The man finished rolling his smoke, and then, surprisingly, held out the pouch.
“Take one if you want, just go easy on the weed, okay?”
Jack had accepted and a few minutes later the two men were sitting at the side of the road, smoking their cigarettes.
As Jack sat there, slowly smoking the harsh, dry tobacco, his gaze drifted over to the gates once more. He didn’t know if it was some form of morbid curiosity, or just a random uncontrollable urge, but he found himself struggling to resist going into the town even with the stranger’s warning.
He stood up, nodded at the man and then started to make his way over the road towards the gates.
“You’ll regret it,” the stranger called after him, but said nothing more. The man must have realised that there was little point trying to stop somebody when their mind was made up, or maybe he just didn’t care.
The gates were built from sheets of hammered car body parts, and as Jack approached he could clearly see the outline of several car doors, a roof, and dozens of hood panels, all hammered flat and then secured together with bolts. The wall itself was mostly more cars, turned on their side and propped up by piles of broken up masonry. Even though it had been centuries, there was still an abundance of abandoned vehicles littering the streets if you went far enough out, away from the sealed off city. The people who built this town had laboured for many months to collect the materials for the wall, Jack thought, realising that he had never considered it before. Scrap metal was low on the list of items he searched for when scavenging.
As he passed through the open gates, Jack looked to his left, to where a rusty old caravan was propped up on bricks just a few yards from the gate. The town folk used it as a gatehouse of sorts, and on the few times that Jack had visited there had always been a guard or two sitting outside the caravan, watching the entrance. Now the spot was devoid of life, and the door to the caravan was wide open.
He looked down the long st
reet that was the main part of the settlement and saw no one, not a single person moving around. The settlement was quite small, and comprised of one long main street and a few alleyways that had been blocked up. Most of the buildings had their windows boarded up on the outside, and the alleyways were built up with salvaged bricks from other nearby buildings so that the outer buildings along the street also made up part of the defensive wall that surrounded the place on all sides. There were probably twenty houses in total, all facing into the street apart from the few farm buildings at the far end.
As Jack moved towards the first house, he noticed something at the end of the street that hadn’t been there the last time he had visited. He walked half way along the street, stepping over cracks and weeds, but then stopped a hundred yards from what looked like a huge pile of dirt. Next to it was a hole, and even from the distance he was at he could see something that made him think twice about going any further.
The people from the settlement had dug a large hole just a few dozen yards from the farm plot, and there, sticking up from among the weeds and grass, was a foot. From where Jack was, that was all he could see, but his own imagination had told him far more than was visible.
It was a mass grave, just like the ones that had been dug on the outskirts of 342nd Street during the reign of Jagan and his pit slavers.
Jack stopped, took a step back, and was about to leave when he heard a noise to his right. Adrenaline kicked in, and Jack turned quickly, both hands going to the machetes on his belt, ready to draw and fight if need be, cursing himself for not just carrying them ready in the first place. But he didn’t draw.
He didn’t have to. The man that had made the noise wasn’t going anywhere fast.
In front of him was a single story building with a porch that was half missing. Most of the wood had probably been stripped away years ago, to be used as firewood, but some of the decking planks and a section of the railing on the right side of the house was still there. The front door was wide open now, and swung further out as the figure – a man dressed in what appeared to be rags – first leaned on the door frame, and then stumbled out onto the deck to collapse onto a bench that was placed against the front wall.
Jack narrowed his eyes, watching the man intently as he struggled to right himself, one hand fumbling to push himself up. Eventually the man leaned back and gave a rattling sigh, and that gave Jack a better view of his face. He was covered in grey and brown pock marks, and his eyes were swollen and puffy.
“Take whatever you want,” said the man, lifting his arm slowly and waving his hand around, indicating the building around them. “Ain’t no one needing anything around here no more. All dead.”
Jack stood there for a moment, his hands wavering over the hilts of his machetes, but then he took his hands away. There was no threat of violence here. Only the dead or the dying.
“Everyone’s dead?”
The man nodded. “Ayuh. Everyone who stayed. Just me alive now, and I’m for the dirt soon, I reckon.”
Jack’s thoughts zoomed back to the last few times he had been at the settlement. There had been families there and several children, probably fifty people in total, maybe more. He vividly remembered a young girl and boy, both maybe five years old, playing in the street.
“Even the kids?” he asked, not sure if he wanted an answer. He glanced along the road again, at the naked foot sticking up in the air, poking out of the grave. Was that a child’s or a woman’s? He couldn’t tell.
“Nah. They got taken off when the first of us caught the pox. That would be Tall Al and his wife Susan’s kids. Al packed up and left and took them all with him. Don’t know where they went. But they dint catch it, I’m thinking. I hope so, anyway. Hope they got away before it caught them.”
The man coughed loudly, and then the cough turned into a heaving fit, until he leaned over and spat out a glob of grey mucus spotted with blood. Jack grimaced. The man looked up and laughed.
“How about we do a bit of trade here?” the man asked.
Jack frowned and opened his mouth to speak but then stopped. He was puzzled. What the hell could the man want? He was a day at most from dying. If any scavengers wanted to raid the village, they could just walk in and take whatever they wanted.
“A deal. If you can manage.”
Jack peered at him warily. “What kind of deal?”
The man coughed again, then he took a few deep breaths, his chest rising rapidly with effort. “Got me a nice weapon back in there, locked up. Single barrel shot and thirty rounds, but the damn thing is in a case and I can’t open it. My hands don’t wanna work the lock. I gave up trying. Look. If you can take the key and take out the gun, you can have the damn thing.”
“And what do you want out of it?” Jack asked.
“An end to this,” stated the man.
Three minutes later, Jack walked out of the main gates and glanced over the street to where the stranger had been. He was still sitting there, and as Jack walked across the street towards him, he saw the man’s hand reach to his belt, to something metal there.
Jack stopped, and raised his hands. “I still don’t want any trouble,” he said.
The stranger watched him for a moment, his gaze jumping from Jack’s face to the shotgun in his hand.
“I heard the shot,” said the stranger, relaxing once more. “Thought that you must have gone into that crazy fellow’s house.”
Jack smiled. “You met him already?”
The stranger nodded. “Yeah. I went in there, took a look in a couple of houses and got to his. Damn crazy ass only started throwing rocks at me from his window. Missed, thankfully. He was raving and waving his arms in the air. So I took off. Figured I’d wait him out instead of risking getting smacked on the head.”
Jack stopped at the side of the road and looked at the shotgun in his hand.
“And you figured if I went in I might save you the trouble?”
The stranger looked up.
“No. No. I did warn you.”
Jack smiled and the stranger smiled back.
“No foul?” the stranger asked.
Jack nodded. “No foul.”
“Good,” said the stranger.
“I’m Jack.”
The stranger grinned. “Drogan,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
Caught
Drogan.
The thought of his friend from way back then made Jack feel a pang of nostalgia for the days that had passed and times that would never return, but right then, standing in the tunnel, Jack knew he had to do something about the old guy with Ratter’s Plague before a lot of other people were dead.
He turned away from the man and started forward, hurrying towards the three Hunters that waited at the gate at the end of the tunnel. As he approached, one of the Hunters turned his head toward Jack, then nodded at the other two and slowly drew his stun stick. He stood there, the other side of the gate, watching Jack.
Jack slowed as he got to the gate, and then turned and pointed at the old diseased man, who was slowly making his way down the tunnel. Behind the man, Jack could see several other captives in the tunnel, and a few of them were catching up to the old man.
If any tried to help him, Jack thought. If anyone touches the guy, they’re as good as dead.
“That man,” said Jack, talking to the Hunter that had drawn the stun stick. “That old guy has a disease.”
“Move through,” Jack heard. The voice was metallic and emotionless. He turned back and saw that the Hunters had opened the gate and were stepping aside. The one with the stun stick drawn flicked the glowing bat, indicating that Jack should go through.
“But the guy,” said Jack, turning back again.
“Move through, immediately,” said the voice. Again it was emotionless and flat. Jack turned back to the Hunters and glanced at each of them in turn, realising that they weren’t even listening to him, and started forward, moving between the three armoured figures and out into the room beyond. He g
lanced back and saw that the nearest captive behind the old man caught up, glanced briefly at him, and moved on, walking past and away from the old guy.
He sighed. It’s not even in people’s nature to consider helping when it could save them too, he thought. He turned back, looking into the room ahead. I would have done the same a few years ago, he thought.
Before you met the boy. That was how things were. You would never have stopped to help the man. But he couldn’t help but feel a little resentful towards both the man who had just passed the stricken old fellow and the Hunters at the gate. Emotionless, all of them. Just like you were, once. If you hadn’t met the boy, and hadn’t learned to care, would you have just walked by the old man? After all, that is what you did anyway. You didn’t try to help him. But he’s diseased. You could have caught it, and then where would you be? You’d be exactly where the old guy will be a week from now. Dying, or already dead, or bleeding from everywhere, just like the man on the porch had been. Bleeding out of your nose, and your eyes, and your ears.
Jack closed his eyes and tried to force the feelings of guilt to pass. You killed him. With his own shotgun. But he had asked you to do it. Yes, he had asked, but you didn’t even hesitate. But that was before. Before. Everything changed with Ryan.
And anyway, it was merciful, wasn’t it?
Ahead of him was a platform of some kind, maybe thirty yards long, with a metal rail along the edge. Beyond that he saw a row of windows lining something that was painted a bright white. He recognised it from somewhere, and tried to think how.
A picture you’ve seen? But when? What was it?
In the middle of the platform was another booth, just like the ones in the huge chamber where people were being... Sorted. That was what they had been doing, Jack thought. They were sorting us. But this one wasn’t. This was different.
A group of three more Hunters stood at the booth on the edge of the platform. One was next to what looked like a metal seat that had wheels on the bottom. Beyond that was a door-shaped opening in the wall of windows.
