by Glynn James
He thought that maybe the tales could well have been true, but he doubted that pirates had flown in it, and there were probably no heroes in the crashed and ruined craft’s history, but it had been a ship of some kind. Now, as it had been for hundreds of years, its nose was buried under fifty feet of dirt and the back of the ship pointed a hundred and fifty feet up into the sky. Most of one side of the ship had been replaced by junk metal panelling and scavenged windows, all bolted or welded on over the years.
So he lived in a spaceship that hadn’t been to the stars for probably hundreds of years, and it made for a strange kind of house, even in a town where buildings were made entirely of junk. The original main walkway leading through the middle of the ship, from the engine room at the back to the crushed main deck, was almost vertical, only barely sloped where the ship leaned against the outcropping of rock that had become its bed, and the floor of his bedroom would once have been one of the walls.
And the four huge, cone-shaped jets at the back of the ship, which he supposed would once have spat out fire, or plasma, or whatever else was used to propel the behemoth machine through space, were used to collect and store water.
He liked to sit up there, and would have all day, but he could already see the first signs of movement below as folks opened their doors and windows to let the air in. It got very cold at night, but in the day the heat could sometimes be unbearable, and any ventilation through the junk-built metal structures, which the Junkers called home, helped a little.
But he couldn’t sit there all day. He was expected by the leader, FirstMan. And he had chores to do.
He stretched, stood up, and made his way back to the hatch. In a short while there would be a gathering troupe at each of the gates, and normally he would be going with them, but not today. Today he headed through the bustle that was the lower quarter, winding his way through the shanty maze of metal shacks that was the market and up the exit on the far side of town.
Then it was out into the swamps.
There was no gradual build of wet ground, no sparse vegetation growths to show that the swamps were getting closer. They just appeared. Ten feet away the ground was barren and dry, and as hard as rock, and then the water’s edge. And it was a strange place. There were plants. The swamp was one of the few places in The Junklands that Finder knew harboured life of any kind. Life as in plants. There was plenty of the other kind. Bugs and critters were all over the place, and he always held his spear tight as he travelled, just in case a skitterbug came crawling out of the trash. They were the worst. They were big and their shells were hard, but if you knew how to point a spear as they approached you could catch them and flip them right over on their backs before they got to you. He’d done it many times.
But today he got to the swamp’s edge and started to make his way up the long slope towards FirstMan’s encampment without seeing a single bug.
But what he did see as he approached the edge of the swamp was the old RootMan, heading off along the edge of the swamp in the opposite direction, and he was in a hurry, it would seem. He had someone with him – Finder could see a pair of arms flopping around over the sides of the stretcher that he bore.
Strange, Finder thought, as he watched the old man struggle with the stretcher. RootMan didn’t normally take people back to his shack. If someone was hurt he’d go and visit them rather than take them in. And he wasn’t one for visitors, either.
Finder shrugged, thinking it odd but realising that he would be in for a scolding if he got waylaid and offered to help. So off it was, up the gravel slope, to the where FirstMan lived.
It was strange house, Finder thought. Situated outside of the main settlement, perched in a large, unnatural alcove of junk that must have formed from the cavity of some monstrous metal structure that he couldn’t identify, the building wasn’t a building at all. It was made up of several different vehicles, set out in a circle, each of them identical and each with the open doors facing in towards the marquee tent that had been erected in the middle. FirstMan lived in the centre, with his strongest warriors guarding the entrance.
The two warriors at the entrance nodded at Finder as he passed through, his face a regular one in FirstMan’s den over the last few months, ever since he had found the weapons cache for them. It was what he was good at, what he had been taught by his father before his father had been lost to him. He was Finder.
“Ah, there you are,” said FirstMan with a genuine smile. He was seated on a chair near the desk at the back of the marquee, one of his legs up on the metal surface and the other on the ground. A cloud of wispy smoke rose through the air in front of him as he exhaled. FirstMan liked his smoke.
“I was hoping you’d be on time,” he said. “I’ve got something else I want you to search for, if you are up for the task.”
Finder nodded, honoured to be called to service by the great leader of the Junkers. “Yes, sir,” he said, not forgetting his manners.
“Good. Good,” said FirstMan. “I need you to come with me and some of my men to a place a short way from here. It’s an old tech place, and we’ve been looking for it for months. Now we’ve found it, we can’t find what we expected to be there.”
Finder frowned. “Something old?”
FirstMan nodded. “Very old, young Finder. Very old. It’s old tech, but it’s something very important to our cause.”
Finder studied FirstMan, searching for a snippet of knowledge that would tell him something more. “It’s something that will help you see much further?”
FirstMan grinned. “You’re intuition is quite unnerving, Finder. Yes. I know there’s no point trying to keep it secret from you.”
“I won’t be able to find it if I don’t know what it is,” he said. “And knowing makes it easier.”
“Yes,” said FirstMan. “But keep that knowledge to yourself, would you? Knowledge can be invaluable, but it can also be dangerous.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re looking for a stash of circuit boards, specifically ones for remote controllers and automated systems. That probably doesn’t make much sense to you, but we need it if we’re to succeed. It’s all that’s stopping us from using what we have to finally make our move. Think you can take a look?”
Finder nodded. “Of course.”
It’s Not Here
“Sorry,” said Finder. “I don’t know if it’s just me or maybe the thing isn’t here.”
“Damn it,” cursed FirstMan, kicking the dirt ground as he paced the yard. He’d been sure they would find something here. The records showed that equipment like that was stored and made at the factory. FirstMan knew it should have been there.
Others gathered around the large clearing in the ruins of the industrial complex. It was miles from the junk towns, and had taken nearly two hours of travelling to get to on foot, and FirstMan had high hopes that the boy would prove useful, as he had on other occasions. He was convinced if the boy couldn’t find it then no one would.
Finder stared at the ground. Failure. It was a bitter feeling, and one he had felt many times before. This would have been a good time to not fail, and he’d known that. Back when he’d been with his father – well, the one who he’d thought of as a father – it had never been about failure. The man had taught him so much, and even the slightest of thoughts about him churned a pang of sickness in the boy’s stomach. He had disappointed his father a few times, and known it when it happened, even though the man rarely scolded him. It was about praise, mostly. But that was all gone, now. His father was gone.
“It’s not your fault,” said FirstMan, placing his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I wasn’t blaming you. I’m just frustrated that we didn’t locate it.”
Finder felt the pain ebb away and looked up, hopeful, and he did see something in FirstMan’s eyes, something like the glances he had received from his father. “If my father had been here, and this thing you need was here, he’d have found it. He was a master at finding things.”
Fi
rstMan nodded. “And if our plan goes through, then one day you may be able to return to the Outer Zone and search for him,” said FirstMan. “But we don’t have him here, and that is unfortunate. Though it’s strange for someone such as me to even contemplate how you manage to find things the way you do and that there may be someone out there who is more masterful at it. It’s a little unnerving to watch.”
Another man, taller even than FirstMan, scratched his beard a few feet away. This man Finder knew as RightHand, but he’d heard that the man’s real name was Waylan. He was FirstMan’s most trusted companion. “You know, we could try and capture one of the salvage crews,” he said. “If I remember right, there were a lot of good scavengers among them. If anyone is going to know where to look it will be them.”
FirstMan nodded again. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe we should. Other than that, we just have to keep the people out here and keep searching the place foot by foot. And honestly, I don’t think the scavengers are any better than the Junkers. The boy’s ability is not a common thing. I think we have to scour the whole place. Again.”
RightHand winced at this. “This place is vast,” he said. “Must be a square mile, maybe two. It could take years, and we don’t have that.”
“No, we do have time,” said FirstMan. “We do have years, if necessary, but I don’t want to get old and die not having tried our plan.”
RightHand nodded his agreement.
“Okay,” said FirstMan. “We need to head back if we want to be back at the towns before dark. And we still need to hunt down that damn intruder.”
RightHand grinned. “Last message I heard was that a group found traces of the intruder’s presence about two miles from the swamp, out towards the crater, but they didn’t find him. Or her. Whoever it is, they’re good enough at hiding that even the Junker patrols are missing them.”
Finder felt something tingle at the back of his neck, something he’d felt before. He listened intently, knowing that he should probably move away while the two leaders talked.
“They actually found traces that close to the towns?” FirstMan asked. “You never said anything about that.”
RightHand shrugged. “I figured we have enough people searching. Worrying you about it wasn’t going to get the guy found. And it’s only one person.”
FirstMan frowned. “One person could be a Spec Op from the Tertiary Station, and that could mean trouble. End of game kind of trouble.”
Finder found some of the terms confusing. But then he always had found the leadership group of the Junkers to be different to the rest of the clans and most of the trash town people, somehow. But the mention of the swamp made him wonder about the RootMan and whoever it was that had been on the stretcher.
RightHand shook his head. “Tertiary wouldn’t send a Spec Op out after us. They think we’re dead anyway, you saw the report yourself. Why a Spec Op in The Junklands?”
FirstMan turned to the boy, a thoughtful expression creeping across his face. “You’ve found people before, haven’t you, Finder?”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy.
“Hmm, so you’re ability works that way too. Think you could find a stranger, an intruder, if we took you to the last place he’d been seen?”
“Near the swamp?”
“Yes,” said FirstMan
“Well, I was going to say, but didn’t want to interrupt…”
“Say what?”
“When I was coming to meet you, this morning, I saw RootMan, old Haggerty, pulling a stretcher with someone on it.”
FirstMan stopped smiling. “Old Root took someone in? He never wants visitors.”
“You gotta be kidding me?” cursed RightHand
“No, sir,” said Finder. “It may not be this intruder, but RootMan had someone on a stretcher. I don’t know if they were alive, though.”
“Goddamn old man plucked the intruder right out of the junk?” cursed RightHand. “Right under everyone’s noses and then hid him? That would be so like him.”
“You think? Why would he do that?” asked FirstMan. “What use is a stranger to him?”
“You don’t know the guy,” said RightHand. “I have to talk to him a lot whenever we want medicine, whenever someone gets sick. We’ve got barely any med supplies left and his damn concoctions seem to work, even though I dread to think what goes into them. He’s always playing a game, always has to get one up on you. This would be just like him. Hide some damn stranger, just because he can. Just for fun, I reckon.”
FirstMan chuckled. “Well. Let’s head back and pay ourselves a visit to the swamp, shall we? See if Finder here is just what his name suggests.”
Strange Fellow
Jack nearly screamed as the pain shot up his left leg, but he clenched his teeth and waited for the pain to go away. It didn’t, not completely, but at least it dulled to a throbbing ache.
He looked around and was immediately confused. He wasn’t in a dark pipe, or a hole in the ground. Instead he was lying on a bed of some kind, in a room only just big enough to fit the cracked and rusted metal cot. It was much too small for him, and he presumed that the owner, whoever that was, was either a kid or a very small person.
Light streamed in from above him, but he didn’t want to move his leg just so that he could see. A window, or just a hole. A breeze blew from somewhere up there. Just a hole, then.
“You don’t want to move that leg so much,” called a voice from nearby.
Jack was silent, not knowing what to say. This stranger, whoever they were, hadn’t killed him, and from the pile of junk dumped on the ground just a few feet away he could see that they hadn’t robbed him either.
Not yet.
There was silence for a moment.
“Hey,” called the voice. “Are you deaf? I know you’re awake.” It was an old man’s voice, Jack noted. Not a child.
Jack coughed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just…where am I?”
A laugh came back. The person was in the room next to his, that much he could tell, but as he strained to arch his back and look around, Jack felt his knee twinge.
It’s the knee, he thought. Not my lower leg or ankle.
“It’s not broken,” said the voice, as though reading his thoughts. “Was just dislocated.”
“Is it bad?” Jack asked.
“No. No,” said the stranger. “Couple of days and you’ll be up again. Maybe even one day. I put it back into place before I hauled you here. I thought it was broken when I first saw it, and that you were dead or something. I saw you fall down the chimney.”
Jack frowned. “Are you one of the people who I saw? It was a chimney?”
“No. No,” said the stranger. “I was just watching. And yes. Chimney of an old building hidden under the trash. Lot of those around this way.”
Then Jack squinted as the man’s head appeared a few feet away, leaning into the room.
He was small, as Jack had guessed, maybe only Jack’s shoulder height, and he appeared as old as Jack could imagine. Maybe older. The man’s beard came down to his belly, which was rounded and stuck out from the rest of his scrawny body. He was dressed in rags, and Jack guessed there were probably thirty or forty different items of clothing tied and stitched together like patchwork. He couldn’t see the man’s feet – the patchwork clothing hung down to the ground and looked like some bizarre multi-coloured robe. The man grinned at him, and Jack was surprised to see a full set of bright, clean, shiny teeth. It was an odd sight to see, bright teeth in the middle of a grimy and unwashed face.
“What’s your name, then?” asked the old man.
“Um…Jack.”
The man frowned for moment. “Hmm…okay,” he muttered, and then turned and left the room. Jack imagined that he had looked disappointed but couldn’t guess why. “Not Bob, then?” asked the man.
“No,” said Jack. “Jack.”
“If you say so,” came the voice again.
“Who…Who are you?” asked Jack.
“I�
��m the idiot that hauled you back here instead of fetchin’ mushrooms. But I’m going to remedy that now. I won’t be long. Don’t try to move or you’ll screw your leg up proper and I’ll have to chop it off. Don’t want that, now, do we?”
Jack was about to answer, but he heard a creaking noise beyond the door, and then a slam as a door shut, and then silence.
What a strange fellow.
What Dreams May Come
Then and Now
The hammer swung close to his head, barely missing him as it crashed into the wooden planks that lined the pit. It had been a close one, certainly the closest in a while. But the man was unskilled and over-reached every time.
Jack darted back, kidney punched the guy once with a quickly clenched fist, and then stepped back again, pacing around the arena to face his opponent once more. And the guy was struggling already. The hammer was too heavy and he had started off too quickly, lunging time after time with shots that he probably thought were good ones, but to Jack these were easy dodges. The hammer was a slow weapon and, even unarmed, Jack knew this was a battle he would win, even if the guy gained some sense and dropped the huge, heavy mallet.
I’m dreaming. I have to be.
But the man didn’t learn. Still he came on, staggering from the shock that the single sharp kidney punch had caused but still determined to hit Jack with the hammer. Once more, Jack dodged, and this time he back-handed the man as he stepped away, smashing his knuckles hard into the side of his opponent’s head as he moved swiftly away and put distance between them once more.
But when he turned he wasn’t facing the same man, and the figure wasn’t falling to the ground unconscious, like Jack had remembered.
