by Glynn James
Here and there were features that stood out from the trash, but not many. Behind him he could still just make out the pinnacle in the distance, and to the east there seemed to be a huge open space of some kind, but it was too far away to make out any details other than a lack of junk. There was just a void. North there were three derelict buildings that dotted the landscape, one of which he thought may only be a few miles away.
Far enough to get to in an hour or two, but too far to make for shelter tonight, he thought.
There was nothing to the west or the south that stood out until darkness came. Jack had crawled back down the slope ten feet and had discovered an opening in the trash. He crawled into it and found himself sitting in the front of the shell of yet another rusted vehicle of some kind. It was one of the four-seater ones that were so common, or at least they seemed to be out in The Junklands. If anyone had found one of these back in the Outer Zone it would have been cut up and used as scrap metal, but they were all over the place out in the trash.
After shifting stuff around to block the entrance the roof still hadn’t caved in, so Jack settled down, glad that some of the seat padding hadn’t rotted away but still feeling cold from the rain. That much he hadn’t felt in a long time. The freezing feeling as night came and you were still wet from the rain.
As he watched, darkness descended upon the land. He started to make out what may have been a light in the far distance.
No, there was more than one.
Lights. There were definitely lights out there.
He could see them.
Add To Basket
Lisa stared at the screen, her eyes fixed on the acknowledgement button blinking in the middle of the panel. This was what she’d worked for, wasn’t it? What she spent these last few years placing herself in harm’s way for.
It was right there on the screen. All she had to do was click and it was done.
Four tickets, paid and covered. Two for her parents and two for her older brothers. The youngest brother, Alex, was also enrolled in active duty, still in his training period for the next year and posted at the main complex in the city. But if she kept it up, he’d be finishing his training on arrival at the new world, and she would be posted somewhere…somewhere out there.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t the slightest clue what security forces or even combat forces were needed on the new world. The rockets would burst up into the atmosphere, connect with the Orbital Station, and unload onto the Ark ship which eventually left, bursting out into space and away from the dying planet forever, carrying its precious cargo of CryoSleep passengers along with a mass of raw material supplies.
Off in the direction of the new world.
And that was the last they were heard from.
She remembered being told during her youth that there was a computer somewhere in the city that kept communications with the new world, but it was so far away that messages and information took years to get there and back, so it was reserved for critical information.
But that was all she knew.
The Ark ships left and that was the last that would be heard about them for the next fifty years, which was the time it took for the massive mechanical behemoths to cross the vast distance. Every year a new one was built from scratch, assembled in orbit and sent on its way.
That reminded her of the headlines that were everywhere, all over the city: HALF A CENTURY TO ALPHA CENTAURI.
She had liked that when she was a kid. Loved the way it sounded. The way it kinda rhythmed.
Ten thousand credits per ticket was nearly a year’s wages for most people, including those such as her, but she’d done it, finally. Her parents had always said they wouldn’t leave without the kids, without her and the boys, but that would be fine. She would reassure them that she and Alex would be coming on the next one, or the one after that, and she would show them the figures on the screen the next time she spoke to them, which was when?
Lisa frowned. When did she get screen time again? Another two days, she thought.
The screen beeped at her, and she jumped slightly. Daydreaming and deep thinking had distracted her for a moment. It wasn’t like she got the chance to do that very often.
DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE?
She clicked YES, checked the screen that followed hadn’t changed, and then clicked ACKNOWLEDGE.
Then she sat back again and gave a very long sigh. Forty thousand creds. Gone. Just like that.
Oh my god, she thought. Twenty-five thousand people went on the Ark every year. She frowned and tried to do the math. A quarter of a billion credits. She shook her head, not able to even contemplate that kind of money. Was there even that many credits?
She watched as the reservation acknowledgement screen appeared, confirming the places were booked and ready, then she looked at the departure date. One month from now her parents and brothers, all but the youngest, would leave the planet forever.
The Ark was a one way trip.
Next year, she thought – hoped. Next year it will be me.
The door opened behind her and Hailey stepped inside the office.
“You busy?” Hailey asked, seeing Lisa leaning back on the chair and apparently deep in thought. “I can come back later.”
Lisa blinked and then looked up. “No. No, you’re good. Come in,” she said.
“Um. We got something a little strange being reported,” said Hailey.
“Oh?” Lisa said, now interested. Strange or interesting didn’t happen very often in her new job. She’d discovered that within the first few weeks.
Hailey stepped further into the room and handed Lisa two sheets of print-out paper, and then she shook her head. “Well, it looks odd to me, and I couldn’t find any similar reports, so I thought I’d better bring it to you. Seems that crew E2 – the one that the recent escapee was from – has had their vehicle tampered with.”
“Tampered with?” asked Lisa. She knew the carriers were always coming back with damage, but that was normal. It was a harsh environment they worked in.
“Yeah. I don’t know. Seems odd. We get a lot of intruder reports when the crews are out there, especially when they’re camped up and shut down at night and it’s quiet, but this time the crew chief…erm…Tyler, says that the hatches on the vehicle have been tampered with again. The ‘again’ part is what made it sound odd. Apparently he’s reported it several times in the past, but I can’t find a record of it.”
“Should be reports if it’s happened before. Maybe the Chief is mistaken about it being reported?”
Hailey shook her head. “No, he says he reported it about eight months ago, and about six months before that, but heard nothing back.”
Lisa leaned forward, switched the screen back on and started hitting keys. She read the results on the screen, tapped a few more keys to change the search words, but still found nothing. “Nothing there,” she said. “It didn’t get reported.”
“Okay,” said Hailey. “But he insisted it was. No matter, I guess.”
Lisa sat and read through the report, noting the mention of scratch marks. “I’ll take a look at it later,” she said.
After Hailey left, Lisa discarded the report and went back to staring at the screen that had just cost her forty thousand credits.
Could have bought an apartment in one of the plush spots in the city for that much, she thought. But why bother? No point buying a place when your entire family was intent on getting off world and you’re stuck out here anyway.
Maybe I can buy a place in the new world, she wondered.
The Trail
A cold breeze woke Jack, and he struggled to move from his huddled position at the back of the buried car. He shivered and then pushed the stinking rug that he had pulled over himself away, tossing it to the other side of the car’s interior. Dozens of tiny bugs fell away, falling into the foot-well of the car and scurrying off into dark corners or through holes.
An itching feeling irritated him, and he reached down to his le
g and scratched. A dozen or more tiny bite marks had appeared, dotted around his lower calf, and Jack cursed himself for not covering that area. He stretched and climbed up towards the hole that would have been the back window of the car, but now acted as a porthole to the outside, exposing little of the metal cocoon he had used as a hideaway for the night.
He was surprised. He’d expected it to be colder during the night, maybe even rain again, but it hadn’t, and now the heat of the morning sun was cooking the heaps of metal outside the car, the high temperature permeating through the metal and into the body of the vehicle. As he reached forward and touched the rim of the back window he pulled his hand back, startled at how hot the metal was.
You’re damn lucky you slept on that stinking rug, he thought. Otherwise you could be covered in burns by now.
He considered trying to find something thinner than the rug, but still cloth, to carry with him. He was going to have to sleep out in the trash a lot, and if the damn stuff heated up like that in the morning he was going to cook.
The sun blazed down on the mountain of junk outside, and Jack peered out of the hole and across the expanse. The lights had been to the east, he thought, and there had been a lot of them dotted across the landscape, but they had been a long way off, tens of miles away in the very far distance, if not further.
Because the distance is out here is deceptive, he thought.
Jack climbed out the back of the car and crawled carefully down to the bottom of the junk slope, where the ground was bare and the path led around the side of the mountain that he had camped on. He took note of the position of the sun, glanced back to spot the rock pinnacle in the far distance, and turned to the path that led at least somewhat eastwards.
Had the lights been over near where the huge empty space was? That made him wonder. He hadn’t been able to see clearly what the empty space could contain. It was, as far as he could tell, just void of trash.
Could there be something over there in that space? A town, maybe? Surely not. If it was that obviously in the open then Hunter patrols from the Resource Facility would have spotted it long ago and probably wiped the place out.
Jack made his way through the debris, along the winding path, stopping only occasionally to look at something in among the trash. After four hours of walking, in what he thought was an easterly direction, he had found nothing of real interest. These corridors, as he now thought of them, had been travelled by the Junkers so much that everything that wasn’t buried underneath the mountains of metal and rubble had been picked clean.
It was as the sun was at its highest that he heard the voices in the distance, a way up the path ahead of him. Jack glanced around, hurriedly searching for an escape route or a hiding place, and realised that the path he had been on for a while now only had two directions that he could go in. There were no side paths or splits in the junk piles. The path ran almost straight behind him for a hundred yards, and ahead, where the voices were coming from, it curved away to the right. Whoever it was that he could hear approaching could only be just around that corner, barely a hundred yards away.
He made out multiple voices conversing as the noise approached him, and a near panic set in. He turned and started scrambling up the slope, hunting for a hole or crevice to hide in, climbing higher until he could just make out the heads of a dozen individuals approaching along the path.
A dozen.
Not just a couple. There were a dozen, maybe more, and they were armed with long spear-like weapons with blades at the ends.
He wouldn’t stand a chance against them with just his own spear and a knife.
Then he spotted it, only ten feet away, across the slope from him. A hole in the trash, maybe two feet across. He leapt forward, not caring if he made any noise. The people approaching – Junkers, he presumed – would catch him anyway, if he were spotted. But the ground under him didn’t shift or make much sound as he clambered across and looked down into the hole.
Just darkness.
A pipe of some kind, or a shaft. He wasn’t sure but he didn’t have time to question it, so he quickly sat, swung his feet into the hole, and lowered himself inside, holding on to the edge of the pipe and hoping that his feet would hit something solid that he could stand on.
But there was nothing underneath him, just open space. Jack hung there, listening to the voices as they approached, his hands screaming in protest at having to bear his entire weight.
I’m not going to be able to hold on like this for long, he thought, and looked down. Whatever was below lay in absolute darkness. But how far down did it go?
Does it go a long way or are you a few feet from the bottom?
“But did you see how many showed up last night? I didn’t see you at the camp fire.” he heard. The voice was still somewhat distant, maybe thirty yards away, and the hollow that he now hung in seemed to deaden the sound from outside. The voice was male, and sounded young – maybe that of a young man in his fifteenth or sixteenth year.
“I did,” replied another, this one older and female. “Quite a turn out. I was there, I was just on watch at the perimeter.”
“They even came all the way from out in the crags,” continued the young man.
“Exactly,” said the woman. “That’s why your da and I were on guard duty.”
There was a pause in the conversation and Jack winced as he felt numbness in his fingers. Even after only a minute or so he was already struggling to hold himself up.
Maybe I should drop something, then I could hold on here longer, he thought. But didn’t move.
“They’re dangerous, aren’t they?” asked the young man. “The crag tribes?”
Another pause. The voices were moving past Jack’s hiding place and further away.
“Yes, they are. But stop,” said the woman. “Look, Roan.”
Another pause.
“Someone got this far.” said a different voice. This one was male, and deep, almost a growl.
“Footprints go all the way along here and then disappear.”
“You think they’re around here, still?”
“No, I think they skittered over the junk and went somewhere else, maybe an hour ago. Maybe not so long. Could be just minutes, but it’s damn hard to tell. But they came this way.”
“Outsider? Or that old crackpot?”
“Outsider, I’d say.” said another new voice. “Looks like it might be the one they spotted, if you ask me.”
Spotted. That didn’t sound good. They’re looking for you now.
“So, what now?” asked another woman.
“We go back,” said the last man. “We know they came this far but we can’t track over the trash, at least not in this area.”
Then there was noise again, and more talking, but the voices were becoming distant once more, heading back in the direction that they had come from.
A few minutes later, Jack decided he’d hung there long enough and pulled, trying to haul himself up.
And that was when his fingers finally slipped and he plummeted down into the hole.
Not Alone
The Watcher watched.
And from his perch between the two columns of stone, which marked the entrance to what had been a building many centuries before, he saw much.
He watched the group as they made their way through the pathways that led between the debris. There were twelve of them, and he thought that it was too large a group. These people, those who lived in the trash town hidden inside the wall of the great hill, covered over by debris, didn’t usually travel in groups this large. Three or four was enough. This was too many. This was three groups, travelling together instead of keeping a good distance that was proper, drawing less attention from the flying demons that scoured the land before the digging people came.
Foolish indeed, he thought. But of no matter. They will come and they will go, and then it will be quiet once more, and you can sit here for a while, until you find the mushrooms you seek. Then you can go home and fill your
belly. As is proper.
Foolish indeed.
But he shrugged again, irritated. They were noisy, this group, these three groups as one. They chattered, and that was not good. The young ones were being allowed to talk also, and that was not proper. The young should learn the way before they were allowed to speak of it.
And this other one, the one that was walking in the other direction. Who was this? Not of the trash town people – no. This one was of the digging people. This one, as it made its way along the winding path, rounding the hill and heading to a collision with the too big group, was also alone. Foolish.
Except you are also alone – always – are you not? Yes. But that was wise.
The loner was a stowaway, a runner, he thought. Another one of those. More foolishness. They never live, he thought. The digging people belong with their machines and being told what to do, not out here where there was no food that doesn’t want to be eaten and nowhere comfortable to lie down and rest aching bones.
At this, he thought of his bed. Two days on this perch, thinking about where the mushrooms may be. Was that how long he’d been there? Two whole days and two whole nights. Yes, likely that much. And the bed would be cold but it would soon warm up.
And he was tired.
But he still watched the one that would soon meet the larger group.
That would be interesting.
He frowned, and then he smiled.
That’s where the mushrooms are, he thought, glancing away from the noisy people and over to the great mound of trash across from the one on which he was perched. Inside this old building, and then down into its dirty guts, and then along the corridor, passing a few rats that would fill the pot, and then into the other side of the building, the bit that was hidden even when all the debris wasn’t covering it. The mushrooms were in there.
And they’re good ones. Big ones.
But his gaze shot back to the single traveller once more, and again the Watcher watched.
The man had stopped. What was he doing? Yes, he was listening. No doubt he’d heard the noisy noisiness of the larger-than-it-should-be group, coming along the path towards him.
