by Glynn James
“Is everything okay?” asked Hailey.
“Yes,” said Lisa. “Fine. Absolutely fine.” She handed the cards back to the young recruit. “Good choices, there.”
Hailey smiled, and inside Lisa also grinned. The girl was genuinely pleased to be helpful, but that wasn’t what made Lisa smile. Jack Avery, the man who had asked who she was, who they were, the man who had given himself up – a thing that no one ever did – and had caused her to remove her visor to speak to him – causing her to be demoted out into this dirty outback – was under her command.
He was one of her salvagers.
I never got answers, Lisa thought. But now I will have them.
Junk
Not Alone.
Jack stepped back from the wall of junk and took a deep breath. If it weren’t for the hood that he’d managed to fashion the night before, from a scrap of dirty cloth that he found in among the trash, he’d have been even hotter. The first day had been fine for about an hour, and then the heat had started to get the better of him.
That was why they all wore hoods, he told himself that evening as he sat in his seat in the back of the carrier, his face and neck red and his head throbbing.
Not one of the other members of the crew had mentioned anything to him, but they were watching him that night as they sat around eating, talking and playing cards on a crate that they hauled out from behind one of one of the seats.
A rite of passage, maybe? That could be it. That they would put him at risk of heat exhaustion annoyed him a little, but he couldn’t deny that these men owed him nothing, and the junk that was in the rucksack – a few spare items of clothing, a utility belt with a bunch of empty pouches on it, a crude knife and fork – they hadn’t been obliged to give him them, even if they were what remained of his predecessor’s gear.
It didn’t matter. He’d fixed it that first night and hadn’t said a word to any of them about it, and the following few days had rolled by, hard as the work was, with relative ease. Jack even thought that he caught Tyler smiling to himself when Jack stepped out into the relentless heat the next morning with a hood over his head. It wasn’t great, and didn’t really keep any of the heat away, but it stopped the sun from burning his already sore scalp.
Now, on the fifth day, after filling the damn dumper truck four times already, he was starting to get past the tiredness that followed in the evening, and even the aches and stiffness in the morning.
And he’d found the entire crew something rare that very morning, only twenty minutes into the start of the day. It was at the back of the caved in dwelling that had been uncovered when they had first arrived. That had been the first spot that the crew descended on the minute they started work, obviously spotting the potential that the ancient and abandoned abode could hide, and now, having found the old box behind the wall, he understood why.
He’d followed the rest of the crew over, climbed the ten or so feet up into the open cavity, and joined them in their search, but Tyler was cursing their luck within a few minutes and claiming that the makeshift home had been abandoned decades ago. Jack had picked up the half-torn and rotten remains of an old magazine that lay in the corner of the dwelling, but the pages were stuck together and most of the paper started to crumble away the second he picked it up.
“The new guy can have this spot,” Tyler had mumbled, and Jack had taken his cue from that as the crew left the cavity one by one and took up positions around the clearing.
He’d stood there after they’d left, just looking at the strange cavern that had been carved into the junk, and marvelled at how long the piles of trash had been just sitting there. Centuries. And whoever lived in this dwelling twenty, thirty or even a hundred years ago, had meticulously removed and reinforced the outer walls of the cocoon inside the trash. There was no entrance, and Jack presumed that any way in or out must have been in the section of the hideaway that the diggers had already cleared. Along the walls, scrap metal had been almost woven together and reinforced with plastic covered cables and wires. The floor was constructed from sheets of metal hammered flat – probably car or machine body parts – and then, he presumed, covered in scrap cloth and pieces of carpet. The floor was covered in a mashup of something that must have been cloth or carpet but now, after all this time, it had rotted away into a brown, furry mush.
He moved away, climbing back out of the cavity and down onto the dirt ground below, and looked up at the wall of junk that was now his prospect area.
And he realised he didn’t really have much of a clue what he was doing.
I can find stuff, he’d thought. Sure. I can find value junk inside this mountain of crap, but what am I looking for? Well, if what got delivered to the sorting area that had had previously worked in was anything to go by, metal and electronics were the thing. So that was where he started, hoping that they didn’t send something more valuable that he didn’t know about elsewhere.
Two entire days he’d ploughed through the masses of junk, avoiding broken masonry and larger chunks of rubble, relentlessly looking for things made of metal and anything that looked like electronic circuitry. That was their job, it seemed, to crawl among the debris and haul out anything made of metal that could be recycled. It was mindless, and Jack couldn’t help but wonder why the hell the city didn’t just send out huge automated diggers to haul the stuff away. Surely that would have been more efficient? A half a dozen men, picking away by hand, seemed a slow way to achieve what a digger could do in minutes.
On the third day, Jack had to fling himself away from the edge of the junk as the cavity, and what remained of the uncovered dwelling, collapsed. He’d been picking away at the junk wall in the area surrounding the cavernous hole all that time, pulling bits out, discarding some and keeping others, and gradually the wall had weakened. The cloud of arid dust that spewed out nearly filled the entire clearing, and as he stood up and patted himself down, he heard curses.
But then as the dust began to settle he spotted the box, now newly uncovered where it had been hidden underneath the floor near the back wall of the dwelling for whoever knew how long.
But he’d somehow known it was there. He’d sensed it, like he used to sense lost or concealed things in the ruins of the Outer Zone. He’d felt it from the moment he first saw the dark and open maw of the dwelling. There was something secret in that old place, a precious thing that someone had tucked away and covered over and not wanted anyone to ever find. Even after they were long dead.
He looked around, checking that none of the other crew members had seen it, but the dust still hadn’t cleared further across the open ground away from where he stood, and he knew that the nearest to him was Higgins, at least fifty feet away. He hauled the box out from the trash that had compacted underneath the hidden dwelling, looked for a catch of some kind, found it already broken, and slowly, cautiously, lifted the lid.
There was a faint hiss, followed by a musty smell wafting out of the box, and Jack cringed and moved back a short distance, wondering what could make such a stink, but then he peered in, and instead of some nasty, rotten thing in the bottom of the box, Jack spotted a pile of small boxes, each wrapped in a clear plastic jacket and measuring about four inches across.
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 th
at 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 that 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.
