by Greg Dragon
Cigarettes.
There were twenty packets in all, and they were old, very old.
The box must have been sealed somehow. There was no way that something like that could last that long. How long had it been since cigarettes were made? Hundreds of years? It had to be at least that. He’d heard stories of how, even long after the fall of the old world, a new industrial age had come about in the century before last, and things like cigarettes, canned food, and all manner of more basic goods had started being made again. He’d also heard how that had collapsed because of war. The cigarettes had to have been made then, because for them to come from the old world, well. Did anyone even know how many centuries ago that was? They certainly never came out of the Inner Zone if they were made there. Somehow, he suspected that such things wouldn’t be high on the list of things to make for the people inside the barrier-protected city.
And so, that evening, the carrier was filled with smoke, and Jack found himself the lucky owner of a new shirt, a pair of worn but usable gloves, a tin of actual fruit of some kind, a plastic flask that could attach to his utility belt, a tough belt that he could cut up and repair his rucksack with, and even better, a pillow. He guessed that the things were mostly owned by his predecessor, and that it wasn’t really much of a loss for the crew members to trade them for a share in the find, but he was happy anyway, sitting there, smoking his first cigarette for months and playing a game of cards.
They’d all heard the noise and fallen silent. Boots was the last to stop laughing, and looked puzzled until he heard the shuffling noises of movement on the ground outside.
Jack frowned, but didn’t speak. He looked at Tyler, whose expression had turned serious. Tyler put his finger to his lips to indicate be quiet, and then sat there, listening. The inside of the carrier went silent.
There were more crunches of trodden stones from outside the carrier.
Jack looked at Tyler again, and mouthed the words can it get inside? But Tyler shook his head.
Jack sat in silence. Listening. Thinking.
Some kind of wildlife. Had to be. But what could live out in this waste? People probably do, though, don’t they? Of course they do. Junkers. The ones that they all keep talking about. Mutants. Unclean things. Bugs.
There are a lot of things living out here, you just haven’t seen any of them, Jack. That’s what Tyler already told you. But they probably wouldn’t come near, probably learned from that mistake a long time ago. So what hadn’t learned? Something was out there, and whatever that thing was didn’t fear the carrier or the people inside it.
There was a banging sound above them, and a thud, thud, as something walked across the roof of the carrier. The sound moved above them, over Jack, then Tyler, then arrived at the top hatch, a thing that Jack had never noticed before. He hadn’t even known that there was a top hatch on the carrier.
Another banging sound, and then a groan.
Was that groan made by the thing on the roof? Or was it a noise of something being moved? It sounded metallic, like a rusty box being forced open.
He couldn’t know, and decided he didn’t want to know.
Then the crunching sound of movement came back, and began to drift away. Whatever it was, it had decided to move on.
It probably wouldn’t come back, Jack thought. He hoped it wouldn’t. But he didn’t sleep very well that night.
Unfortunate
Six Months Before…
An overweight weasel.
That was what the man sitting at the desk in front of Lisa Markell reminded her of. She’d seen pictures in books when she was a kid, dozens and dozens of species of creatures that no one had seen for centuries, presumed extinct, and she remembered the funny picture, and had thought that even the name of the creature was comical. A weasel. And this man looked like an over-fed one at that.
Governor Jackson was, even by standards in the city, an overweight man, and he had a nose that defied gravity. Lisa could never like him. She had decided that the moment the man began to speak to her as she stood across the desk from him, her travel bag still slung over her left shoulder and her assault rifle over the other.
“So you will replace the expedition controller – a Corporal Ranold – who we lost in that…unfortunate incident.”
“Why were they all the way out there in the first place?” she’d asked. She hadn’t meant to pry, not really, but sending three squads over twenty miles out of the scanable perimeter to the ruins of a town that hadn’t been visited for centuries, with little backup, seemed like a frivolous waste to her. Of course, she immediately recognised that Jackson had been the one that made the decision, just by the new flush to his cheeks, and she knew she would regret it, at some point.
“I…err…” stuttered the Governor. “We needed to investigate the area. We’re opening up new spots for salvage, and that seemed to be a good place to start.”
But you ignored protocol, and failed to make sure that backup teams and supply lines were already in place, she thought, but didn’t mention it. She’d already over-stepped.
“But that is irrelevant,” continued Jackson, with an irritated glance in her direction. “It was an unfortunate occurrence.”
Thirty-six troopers, three entire squads, nine fire-teams, lost. And he considers it unfortunate. No, she would never like him, and was somehow glad that her assignment meant that she would spend the vast majority of her time nowhere near the foul man and his damned facility.
Abandoned
As she sat in the back of the armoured carrier, just a few hundred yards from the Picking Factory that they were to clear and reclaim, she wondered how many other unfortunate occurrences had happened because of Weasel’s orders. It was easy enough for him, sitting there in his air-conditioned building, barely ever having to step outside into the smog and pollution of the world outside, to spend lives. He never had to see the reality of it.
She wondered if the loss of the Picking Factory was something he considered a small loss, something else unfortunate. Two hundred women and children had been there, and yet the place had been guarded by just one squad of troopers. She’d wanted to read that report again, just to remind herself what she was going into, but had thrown it aside in disgust.
Not a single person left behind. That was what the report spelled out. Two hundred women and children, and a single squad of troopers. All taken by the Junkers. It just didn’t make any sense to her that they should be out there in the first place, let alone so lightly guarded.
Well, if she saw a Junker today, she was going to make sure that at least that one paid the price.
“Perimeter breach in ten,” came the voice of the squad leader in the vehicle at the front of the convoy.
This is it, she thought. My first actual activity in six months. She glanced around at the seven other troopers seated in the back of the APV, and her gaze paused when she reached Hailey, now kitted out in combat armour rather than her usual light armour. She imagined that the girl would look nervous if she could see her face, but they were heading into a potentially volatile area and were now wearing full Hunter armour.
It was a necessity, and Lisa was relieved that at least her troopers had that much. From what she had seen of the other supplies and equipment given to the border expeditions, the Hunter armour was a luxury.
Then the back doors were springing open, and she was the first out, power-assisted boots hitting the floor and propelling her forward as she skirted around the side of the vehicle and took up position at the very front. The carriers had swerved left upon entering the grounds of the factory, as she had ordered in the briefing earlier that day, and now they were lined up, all four vehicles in a row, just a few yards from the perimeter wall but facing the main building.
Lisa reached to the side of her helmet and switched on her zoom scanner as the rest of her squad swarmed around her to take their positions.
The facility was much larger than she had imagined, even when looking at the rough schematics th
at she had been sent. Eight large factory hangar buildings rose out of the dirt at least sixty feet high, and they were surrounded by old brick buildings, of various sizes, dotted around the outside of the yard.
We could have landed a dropship inside this place, she thought, looking at the vast open space to the east of the warehouse buildings, but then shrugged that idea off. She knew that the city didn’t send dropships this far out. A thousand miles was much too far for them to send one of those precious flyers, and the fuel alone would make it prohibitive.
She scanned the nearest of the factories, searching for heat signatures and knowing that she would find none. It was nearly impossible, with the distortion of heat from the sun.
No easy way, she thought. A night raid and we’d see anything lit up like a candle, but with all this debris it would be deadly.
“Forward,” she said into her microphone, and waited.
Five seconds later and the carriers turned and began to slowly crawl across the yard ahead of the Hunter squads. A hundred yards away and they would reach the nearest building, and she would go in there first, herself, leading her team.
And yet she knew, somehow, that this facility would be empty, completely void of life. And she also knew that she wouldn’t like being the first to discover what had been left behind.
The report said that a scout drone had scanned the facility after the raid. They hadn’t even sent a manned operation to go and look. Any unpleasant surprises were still there, waiting for her.
Junk
Home Sweet Home (Not).
Jack lay on his new bunk in the E2 room trying to get to sleep, but the noise all around him was distracting.
They’d finally finished their five day stint out in The Junklands, and he couldn’t believe how relieved he felt when the carrier halted and the back doors opened up, spilling in sunlight from outside and the familiar waft of dry air.
They were back at the facility.
He had jumped up, hauling his stuff with him, and squinted in the bright sunlight. He’d been five days in the sun, but just a couple of hours in the back of the windowless carrier, with its low light, were enough to make his eyes start to adjust to the darkness.
They had made a good haul, Tyler had said, and he patted Jack on the back as they trudged to their room – to his new room. The tall man was smiling and nodding at Jack now, and Jack took it that he was pleased with his new team member.
Why? Well, after the third day, Jack’s unnatural ability to find what was hidden started to work its way to the surface once more. After discovering the stash under the ruined dwelling, he’d gone on to find several other spots, some not even near his working area, and he uncovered piles of circuitry, some old machinery that looked like it could be rebuilt, and even an old vehicle of some kind, that Jack had never seen before. A tractor, Tyler had said. A whole damn tractor, with the wheels still on it. That thing had nearly filled the dumpster that day, after an hour of Boots struggling with its weight, and after the crew piled a heap of scrap metal into the gaps around the dumpster it was full. All before the sun had even reached its zenith.
And so it went on until the last day. A lot of the time the crew would have to spend hours digging through broken bricks and trash, just to find recyclable metal, but each day Jack managed to cut their working time short by an hour or so, just by knowing where something was hidden.
But now he lay on the bunk, trying to sleep, his head firmly on his new – if somewhat dirty – pillow, and he couldn’t drift off. His mind was swirling.
It’s not the noise that is distracting, though, is it Jack? It’s not knowing where to go next. You hoped to see something out there, didn’t you? Something that would lead you back on to the trail of the boy, of Ryan, but all there was out there was endless miles and miles of junk mountains.
And the Junkers. Who were they?
He hadn’t seen one of them, but they had visited the carrier twice during the five days. Both times the crew had been tightly secured and tucked up inside the carrier, either playing cards or sleeping, and both times the noise had come from above.
He lay there in the bunk, thinking of Ryan and their last times together, and he watched the crew playing cards in the middle of the room.
During the game, Tyler turned to him. “You don’t want to join in?” he asked. “Boots’ got a run going here that we can’t beat. We need some of your talent here, Lucky Jack.”
Lucky Jack. His new nickname, given to him by Higgins after he found the tractor.
“I’m good,” he said, meaning a polite no thanks.
Tyler nodded, and turned back again. “We’re out to reclaim a facility tomorrow morning,” he said. “They took back a Picking Factory that the Junkers stormed a while back, bout ten months or so ago, and they want crews up there to shift all the machines out. You reckon you can do some of that magic out there?”
Jack shrugged.
“Usually some good stuff left behind by the Junkers if we can get at it first,” Tyler continued.
“That the place where all those kids and women got stole from?” asked Higgins. “That old reprocessing and picking plant that was right out in the middle of nowhere?”
Tyler looked at the old man, his expression grim. “I think so,” he said.
“That was a nasty thing, right there,” said Higgins. “Two hundred women and children, all taken. Poof, just gone, overnight.”
Jack wasn’t listening right up until the mention of children. Then, he was listening. Listening very carefully.
“Don’t, man,” said Tyler. “I don’t like to think about it.”
“What?” asked Higgins. “You don’t like the idea of the Junkers taking them, or us going there?”
“Both,” said Tyler. “You know they didn’t find any bodies, apart from two of the trooper squad, and they were even stripped of all equipment. Shot with their own guns, they reckon, which also means some Junker scum out there now has firearms. I don’t know. At least they didn’t leave no dead women or kids behind, but it makes me sick wondering what they did do with them.”
“Yeah,” said Higgins. “Took em all, every last one.”
Jack sat up. “Took who?” he asked.
The rest of the crew turned to him, and Tyler dropped his cards, the game no longer relevant. “The Junkers raid places occasionally, and I mean in force, like, dozens of them.”
“Hundreds, some say,” said Higgins.
“Yeah, well,” continued Tyler. “About ten or eleven months ago there was place way out here, a Picking Factory, where they had a couple of hundred kids and some women, and their job was to sort through all the circuitry and small electronics that gets found. You know, the stuff that gets sorted here first. Well they got sent all the smaller stuff.”
Jack thought about how he had spent hours dumping piles of circuit boards, wires, and small broken electronics into large tubs that were then taken away to a truck, and from there to wherever…to the Picking Factory, it seemed. Now there was a very real possibility, if Ryan had gone there, that the boy may have sorted the very stuff that Jack had packed.
“Well,” said Tyler. “The Junkers usually only raid and grab supplies, and then run for it, but apparently this time they came in force and took the actual people in the factory, all of them. They don’t usually do that. They normally just take stuff and go, often without even having to fight anyone. I mean, if you’re faced with a few dozen Junkers charging down on you, most people just up and run like hell and come back when they’re gone. This time they took everything they could carry and then some. They took the people too.”
“Apart from a couple of the troopers,” said Rick as he lit up yet another cigarette.
“Yeah. Apart from two or three of the trooper squad. They killed them.”
Higgins coughed and jabbed at his chest. “You know, that puzzled me,” he said. “Junkers eat folks, right? So—”
“There’s no proof of that,” interrupted Locks. He’d discarded h
is furry hat on the bunk at the far end of them room, the first time Jack had seen him without it perched on his head even when sleeping, and Jack could see that he had a large round bald spot on the top of his head. “No one actually got proof that they eat people, and no one has seen them doing it. Anyone found eaten out in the junk could easily have been got at by one of the bugs.”
“Oh but that’s what everybody says,” said Higgins. “Everyone knows Junkers eat anything, including each other.”
“That’s what people say,” said Locks. “And they also say that some of those bugs out there can talk, but that’s absolute rubbish, yeah?”
Higgins shrugged. “Well, maybe. Whatever. But that’s what I’m saying. If they do eat people, then why dint they take the bodies of the troopers? Or just cook em right there?”
“I don’t know, okay?” interrupted Tyler. “And I don’t even want to think about it. And anyway, we get to see first-hand what they left behind, because we’re on clean up and reclaim duty, as of tomorrow.”
That was why Jack couldn’t sleep. The Picking Factory, a place that used to have hundreds of kids working in it, seemed to be the very first sign of any significance that might lead him to Ryan’s trail. If there was a place that the boy could have ended up, it had to be there. Jack had found nowhere else, no other leads.
But the Junkers had raided the place, and that meant another possibility that Jack didn’t want to consider. But he found it too hard not to dwell on it.
Waiting For Time
Lisa sat on top of the armoured truck and watched as the convoy of salvage carriers trundled noisily into the yard of the Picking Factory. They were two hours late, and she had been pacing back and forth for most of that time before finally settling on just sitting and waiting. It was pointless calling anyone, and it didn’t matter what the delay was. They would get there when they got there.
