by Greg Dragon
The last truck, the one with the big grey letters E2 painted on the side, was the one she was most interested in. He would be in that one, that much she knew. She hadn’t gone over to the salvagers’ bunk rooms – no, that would have seemed strange. If she’d turned up there just to find Jack Avery, everyone would be talking about it. So she had been patient but made sure that the E2 crew was assigned to this duty, and now she waited.
Next to her, also looking relieved to see the crews arrive, Hailey was busy scribbling on her clipboard.
“Why don’t you use a touch pad?” Lisa asked.
Hailey looked up from her scribbling and frowned. “I don’t have one,” she said.
“Oh,” said Lisa. “I’ll fix that.”
Hailey nodded. “Two hours fifteen behind schedule, but at least they’re all here,” she said.
Trust Hailey to find a bright spot among the gloom, thought Lisa. She stood up, pushing away from the armoured wall that surrounded the flat platform on top of her command vehicle.
“And we’re two hours plus behind,” she said. “They better have a good reason for it.”
Hailey looked up once more. “I’ll find out why,” she said.
Junk
The Past Comes Back.
The officer was watching him, Jack was convinced. It was difficult to tell for sure. The helmet, similar to those worn by the Hunter troops in the ruins of the Outer Zone but more worn and damaged, hid the face behind it, but that blackened and domed visor was pointing in his direction and he could almost feel the gaze upon him as he bundled his gear out of the back of the carrier and threw it over his shoulders.
The scabs stood in an inspection line with Tyler at the front. This had not been mentioned to Jack, but he just fell in line with the rest of them as the crews assembled in the yard next to their vehicles. The troop officer, and another trooper that Jack presumed was a junior officer, walked along the line and then moved away.
That officer definitely stopped at him for longer than the others, he thought, and noticed even Tyler was frowning at him. Curiosity, no doubt. If Tyler had noticed it as well then it wasn’t just his imagination.
But the officer said nothing to him, just stared at him for a few seconds and then moved on. Then Tyler and the other crew leaders were called aside, moving across the dusty yard to stand with the officer. They were speaking, but what about?
He couldn’t hear the conversation, so instead looked away and stood there, taking in his surroundings.
The facility was huge, much larger than he had expected. Though he hadn’t known what to expect, really. The word factory made him think of the coal yard, back when he had been a kid. That had to be it. He’d expected a single crumbling building with a yard and a perimeter fence, but of course this was quite far away from the Recycling Facility, and isolated.
Why would they send so many people so far out? This was Badlands, and uncontrolled. Anything could be – and was – scurrying around out here. Junkers, whatever they were – people of some kind? And bugs. He’d seen neither, but the men on his crew had told him that they were both something to be feared.
“Like some kind of screwed up mutant,” Higgins had said, when asked about the Junkers. “They might have been human once, but they were like, part machine, part animal or something. I saw it from a distance, just before the siren went off, standing right up on top of the junk and looking down on me. It had this thing, a weapon, like some kind of spear but with a nasty blade on the end. I ran for it. Something about that thing. It wanted to eat me, I’m sure of it, and the hell it wasn’t afraid of the carrier or me.”
It seemed hard to imagine that a human could degenerate into something entirely different, Jack thought, but then, he’d seen the Night Ones in the Outer Zone, even if from a distance, and they seemed far from human.
Maybe that was what the Junkers were like? The Night Ones. He tried to remember the time he and Drogan had been caught out in the ruins near the Ashlands. The night they had been chased. The last time he’d ever seen his friend.
Just Run
Many Years Before.
The camp fire was roaring. Drogan had seen to that. Out in the reaches near the Ashlands the air was bitter cold all year long, even when other places were baking with the summer sun. Jack had never liked going that far out, but his friend insisted on it when things were tight and they had found no salvage to trade for a few weeks.
And this was one of those times. They’d searched further and further out in the last few weeks, after heading east from The Crossing, and they’d even gone into areas that neither of them had travelled before, but the picking had been getting harder and harder.
That was the one good thing about the borders near the Ashlands. There was still plenty to be found, for those willing to risk going anywhere near the creatures that lived in the ash wastes. And if you lit a good fire, bright and hot, those things left you well alone anyway.
He’d always wondered why that was. The Night Ones, as many folks called them, were humanoid but far from being living people. Jack suspected that once, centuries ago, they may well have been people, but the pale skinned and rotten creatures that screamed and howled in the frozen ash wastes were nothing like people now.
Until that night, while the fire roared and Drogan cooked the two skinny rabbits that they’d caught a few hours before, Jack had only seen them from a distance.
But the wind was stronger than usual, gusting in across the crumbling ruins and blowing so hard that he’d nearly toppled over several times.
Then, later, when the darkness of night came and the screaming and howling began to resound from across the ash wastes, one almighty gust of wind blew through the broken remnants of the building they had taken refuge in and the fire just went out.
And the next few minutes were the most terrifying of his life.
He heard, more than saw, Drogan hurrying to relight the fire, and Jack scrambled toward the noise and tried to help. But it was no good. The wood that they had found was wet on the inside, and only the outer layers had took light. Now they just couldn’t seem to get the thing to catch again, even when Jack used his body to block the wind, hoping that Drogan could at least get something going.
But Drogan stopped.
“We have to get the hell out of here,” he said, and in the moonlight, Jack’s vision now adjusting to the lower light that only the moon provided, he could see real fear in the man’s eyes. They had travelled for nearly four years together, side by side, scavenging in the ruins and trading at the hovels, and Jack had never once seen Drogan look frightened, even when they had had to face down a gang of rovers three times their number.
But now the moonlight showed Jack a face full of fear.
They scrambled around the camp, grabbing their gear and stuffing it in packs, and a minute later were jogging alongside each other, away from the already chilling campfire.
“This was stupid,” Drogan had said. “I should never have brought us out here.”
“It was only the fire,” Jack had replied. “If that hadn’t gone out we’d have been fine.”
Drogan didn’t rely. He just continued to trudge alongside Jack.
“And anyway,” continued Jack. “We found a tonne of stuff to trade, and we can just go further into the ruins for a couple of miles, find a place with higher walls, and make another camp.”
“I suppose,” said Drogan. “But I still think that—”
There had been a flash of movement from their right that zipped past Jack and slammed into Drogan. The man cried out and went down hard, struggling to his feet a couple of seconds later.
Jack already had his machetes out and stood there, on the spot, next to his friend, turning left and right, scanning the darkness for more movement.
“The hell,” cursed Drogan, finally getting to his feet.
“What was that?” asked Jack.
Drogan shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But let’s not hang around to find o
ut, eh?”
And so they had continued on, moving faster now.
And it was a few minutes later, just as they began to spot the outlines of larger ruins in the distance, the walls faintly lit by the moon, when the scream resounded from just a few feet away.
“Run,” shouted Drogan, taking off at full pelt in front of Jack, and Jack had followed, urging himself onwards as fast as his feet could carry him, his lungs screaming for air and his muscles protesting at every lunge forward.
Jack caught up with Drogan and passed him, but not by much. He didn’t want to push on, didn’t want to split up with his friend. But then, as he ran onwards, he felt, more than saw, movement all around them. There were no more screams, but the gaunt figures that loped alongside them at a distance were not silent anymore. Growls and hisses assaulted his ears.
And then there was another flash of movement next to them, and Drogan vanished with a startled cry, going down onto the hard road with a slam that Jack heard. And he also heard something crack.
Drogan cried out, and then the cry turned into a scream.
Jack turned back, swinging his machetes at the darkness around him, but nothing came near him. There was a mass of movement ahead of him, right where Drogan had gone down, but Jack couldn’t make out what it was.
Figures. Dozens of them, crawling all over each other and pushing, shoving, trying to get to Drogan.
“Run, you idio—” came the last thing Jack would ever hear his friend say, the words cut off as a gargling, bubbling rasp replaced them.
But Jack had hesitated for a moment, not wanting to leave his friend to die. Whatever those things were, the Night Ones, surely he could fight them.
He ran at the mass of bodies, hacking at anything that moved, until a few remaining creatures ran from him, leaving a dozen or more of their kin lying dead. He’d seen red for that few seconds and stormed into the creatures with a rage that he didn’t know he had. Life, death – none of it mattered. Drogan was in trouble.
And then Jack was panting, his chest heaving with exertion as he tried to breathe, but Drogan was on the ground in front of him, and Jack could see there was nothing at all that he could do to help his friend.
So he’d turned and run that night, not even stopping to pick up any of the gear that had once been his friend’s.
Someone else could have that if they dared.
Someone else could find Drogan’s equipment if they really wanted to face the creatures out in the Ashlands. Because Jack vowed that he would never return.
Junk
No. The Junkers couldn’t be like the Night Ones, Jack thought. He hoped. They couldn’t be. Night Ones would never have known how to use a weapon to kill the troopers left behind at the Picking Factory. The things he’d seen that night were no more human than a rabid rat. They had been things twisted beyond recognition, dead but not dead, pale skinned and gaunt, their eyes hollow black pits that were lifeless.
And if there were Night Ones out here in The Junklands, then the people running the Recycling Facility surely wouldn’t have left so many people out here unguarded.
But that doesn’t answer your question does it?
Why had they left all those kids and women out here? It didn’t make much sense to him. It was almost like asking for them to be taken. It had to be…what? Five hours from the main facility. And from what he had heard from Tyler and the others, they had only manned this place with a single detachment of troopers.
And the bugs? Nasty long-legged things that darted over the junk like it’s a flat path, and very fast, or crawling beetle-like things, hidden away deep inside the piles of debris, nesting and waiting to be uncovered. That’s how Higgins had described them, and Jack hoped never to meet either of those.
All these things went through his mind as he stood there in the blazing sun, looking out across the massive facility that they now had to clear. Rows of huge monolithic buildings lined the centre of the vast, dry, open space, and beyond that, where the perimeter wall stood crumbling, with huge gaps collapsed to the ground, smaller buildings stood.
There has to be a hundred buildings here. How are you possibly going to find any trace of Ryan? Had he been out here when the place was attacked? It sounds likely, doesn’t it? This is the place to start looking, after six months of finding nothing in the Recycling Facility. A place to start.
But what if you do find something? What then?
“Okay, listen up,” came the deep boom of Tyler’s voice, drawing him from his daze and snapping him back into the present. “We got dealt the far compound, where the big machines are, and after that we have the living quarters and the outer buildings on the far side. That’s us for the next five days.” Tyler squinted in the bright sun and scratched his chin. “Usual drill, though we’re being told that the carrier will be moving over there.” He turned and pointed at the large open space between the huge central buildings and what looked to be some kind of hangar.
“Five days here?” snapped Higgins. “That long just to clear out a few machines?”
Tyler shrugged. “What do you know?” he said. “I guess there’s more here than I expected. More than just a couple of machines, anyway. Maybe we’ll find something sweet in all the rot? Never know. Let’s get back on board and wait.”
They headed back over to the carrier and Jack stood at the end of the line, waiting to climb on-board. Higgins was muttering something to himself about wasting time, but Jack didn’t catch all of it. He was too busy looking past the crew, over to where the officer and the other troopers were standing.
The officer was watching him again.
You Again
It was definitely him, Lisa thought. He’s less scruffy than he was when he gave himself up, speaking to her that day at the back of the armoured carrier in the middle of the Outer Zone ruins. But she recognised him instantly. He was tall, though not as tall as some of her men, and he was built well. Strong, even though most of the prisoners were underfed.
Now she had found him again, she was unsure of what difference it made. She’d hoped for something, whatever it might be, when she caught up with him again, but she didn’t know what. And it wasn’t like she could just initiate a conversation with him, ask him the questions that were bugging her. It wasn’t the done thing.
I have to just watch and wait, she thought. Watch and wait for the right moment.
The man probably didn’t even know it was me, that I’m the same one he surrendered to. Lifting her visor would have solved that, but she remembered that doing just that was exactly what had landed her this wonderful job out in The Junklands in the first place.
And what about that? She thought that she would be angry with the man when she finally met him again, thought that she would blame him for everything that had happened to her since then. Why had she shown her face in the first place? Why make any form of contact? It didn’t make sense, not to her, anyway.
And now, having met him again, she didn’t feel angry at all. The guy was in a much worse situation than she was. She’d sleep in an air conditioned armoured transport with a bunk tonight, and he would be bunked down with a bunch of stinking scabs.
He won’t have found his boy, either, will he? She thought. All this time, and he has probably found nothing. There were no kids at the main Facility, they never took them there. Most of the ones that came out here were sent to the Picking Factories, like the one they stood in right now.
Had the boy been here?
Damn it, she cursed silently. Why the hell should she care about a boy she’d never met? There were hundreds here when the raid happened, she knew that much. Hundreds taken by the Junkers. And what had happened to them? Dead? Were they killers, these things that lived out in the waste? They’d killed troopers – that much she knew – but children and women? Were those things even human enough to know the difference?
It annoyed her immensely every time she thought about it. Governor Jackson had sent them all out here with just one squad of securit
y, just twelve troopers, and they had been taken, captured by the Junkers. The troopers were either killed or also taken, and that foul creature, Jackson, shrugged it off as unfortunate.
No, he didn’t actually say this incident was unfortunate, she thought. That had been the disappearance of three squads, months before. But she could bet that it would be his reply if she’d asked.
Maybe I can find some clues out here, she thought. Maybe those people are retrievable.
That would be an achievement.
Junk
The Past Comes Back.
He found it on the second floor of the last workshop and just stood there, staring at it.
Three days ago they had entered the first warehouse. As Tyler had said, E2 crew was to do the last three warehouses and then all of the outbuildings on the north side of the facility, and that included a number of workshops and smaller factory buildings as well as the area that had been used as a dormitory.
They’d entered the first warehouse, Jack at the back of the crew, carrying a heavy shoulder load of cutters and some matt sheeting. Tyler was up front with Higgins next to him, the other men following. They’d all stood there for a few minutes, gazing around the massive interior of the dilapidated old building, just looking, in awe of the massive installation that they were apparently supposed to take apart.
The floor was flat concrete and, apart from a few crumbling bits of masonry in the corners, was well swept and barely cracked. The ground was worn and looked like it had been well trodden over the years, and in some spots the bare ground even appeared smooth. If there had been doors on the building then there was no evidence of them now. Huge open spaces, looking out onto the dusty ground outside, let the sun blaze into the interior, and Jack had been surprised that the ground wasn’t covered in sand and dirt from outside. But somehow it wasn’t.
And the sprawling array that was the picking plant sat smack in the middle of the wide open space. Large hoppers lined one wall, with belt-fed conveyors coming out of the bottom and leading across the open ground, splitting in several places before passing raised platforms that lined long stretches of belt.
