by Glynn James
And that was when the loud crashing noise came from far above.
Intruder
RightHand peered into the darkness of the third floor, aiming his assault rifle high into the rafters. As he had discovered on the second floor, after he and his men negotiated the crumbling stairway, the levels of the building were built with an odd ceiling cavity, maybe four feet thick, that was filled with rusty cables and piping. Many of the pipes had cracked and fallen, and were probably the cause of the collapsed ceiling, most of which now lay on the floor of the large open space at the top of the stairs, but much of the cabling still hung down from above like some crazy plastic and metal spider web.
This probably isn’t going to take very long, he thought, as he looked out across the rubble covered floor.
There weren’t any side rooms or corridors on this floor or the one below, just a large open space, and he also thought that by the state of the stairs they would only be able to access two more levels, possibly just one. He glanced among the rubble, which was mostly broken masonry and rusted metal, and decided there was nothing worth risking going out into the room for.
It would probably collapse if you did, he thought.
Across from him, fifty feet away, there was movement, and he watched as one of his men came up the other set of stairs, glanced around the room without leaving the safety of the stairs, and nodded once at him.
“Move to the next floor,” he said into the microphone balanced near his chin. The other trooper nodded, looked up and then moved away, heading up the stairs to the next floor.
But the next floor wasn’t like the previous ones at all, and RightHand frowned as he looked out of the stairway entrance into the vast room. Here, much of the ceiling and probably most of the upper floors had collapsed downwards and was now piled up, filling more than half of the space of the original room.
He took one step forward, signalling for the men in the opposite stairway to stay where they were, and edged into the room to look upwards.
There was something too regular about the debris, he thought. He didn’t know what it was, but the cabling, panels and masonry weren’t stacked up as though they had just fallen there. Some of it, he mused, almost looked as though someone had put it there, exactly as it was, maybe as some form of barricade.
And he kept thinking that right until the bug crawled out of the gaping hole in the ceiling above and dropped down to the ground, chittering and clicking at him.
Before the thing moved more than a few paces, RightHand fired his weapon, a single shot into the front of the creature that tore away a large chunk of its carapace and imploded its face.
Damn bugs, he thought, Let just hope there’s only one of the—
Another bug dropped from the hole in the ceiling, and then another, and another.
What Lies Above
FirstMan’s eyes went wide and he stepped back from the lift shaft, snapping his gaze upwards and then to the stairwell. The rifle shot had pierced the air with a muffled snap that he heard even a few floors below where RightHand was. The assault rifles were silenced, almost, but if you were only twenty or thirty yards away, or inside a building, they still made an audible noise.
“What’s up?” he asked, tapping the microphone attached to his collar, just below his chin.
“We got a few bugs up here,” came the reply from RightHand. Then a moment later there was aloud thud from above and then RightHand was cursing.
“Damn it,” came the voice over the microphone. “Back up. Down the stairs. Get the hell out of here!”
FirstMan reached to his waist, instinctively grabbing the assault rifle that hung from his shoulder strap.
“What’s going on?” he asked, the microphone still active.
“Bug nest!” came the reply. “Damn thing just fell from the ceiling.”
FirstMan glanced back down the lift shaft, wondering how far into the building Jack and Ryan had gone. “Jack, you there?” he asked as he moved to the bottom of the stairwell and readied his weapon, waiting for RightHand and the others to get down the stairs and pass him.
They won’t be able to get out if there’s a lot of bugs, FirstMan thought. No way will they be able to get back up here in time. There was a lot of noise above him. Gunfire, running boots on hard stairs, falling debris, clicking monsters, and then the sounds of something heavy falling with a crash, and brickwork crumbling, bouncing off rusted metal floor panelling.
Oh damn, he thought, as he heard the upper floor begin to collapse.
He moved quickly towards the open doorway as the troopers reached the bottom of the stairs. “Jack, can you hear me?”
No reply.
Visitors Revisited
Tyler turned over the smashed up pipe and peered inside. It was starting to get dark, and he thought about turning in but knew that if they didn’t fill the dumper that they’d hear about it when they got back to the facility in two days. But the pipe was empty, as he’d expected. He cursed, dropped the pipe, and looked across the clearing to where the other crew members worked.
It had been over four weeks since Jack had gone off into the Junk and they still hadn’t replaced him with a new member of the crew, and it was showing. Tyler told himself that it wasn’t Jack’s unnatural ability to hunt down the good stuff, but it sort of was. But with one man down on the crew it meant a larger share of the dumper to fill for each of them, and dammit if they hadn’t been posted out into the deep north scavenging field, where the junk mountains were smaller and there were definitely less pickings to be had. Why they even bothered to send anyone out there was beyond him.
And why change their next location at such short notice? wondered Tyler.
Jack’s disappearance puzzled him the most. The man had never given any indication that he was a runner, and that he planned to take off, though Tyler had noticed the change after the conversation in their bunkhouse about the people that had been taken from the Picking Factory, and he had certainly thought Jack was particularly quiet when they actually got to searching and reclaiming the place. Quiet and preoccupied, somehow. Had it been his fault for sending Jack up to the top floor of the workhouse? No, he didn’t think so. Guards should have been on the wall and would have spotted Jack making a run for it. How that had happened was puzzling.
He stood back up, groaned at the ache in the bottom of his spine, turned, and decided the grief of a scolding when they got back would be worth it. He was done for the day. As he crossed the open space towards the carrier, he saw Higgins turn and peer at him.
“We done?” called the old man.
Tyler nodded and called to the others to stop before he climbed into the back of the carrier and slumped down on his chair. His back was throbbing, right down deep at the base, near his ass. Old age, he thought, though he wasn’t really that old. Working out in the Junklands aged a man faster, he thought. Unless you were Higgins. He tried to ignore the niggling pain, took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
The other crew members climbed into the carrier over the next few minutes, each one clattering the door as they came in and making even louder noises as they dumped their stuff and dropped into their own seats. Finally he heard the door clunk shut, followed by a series of clicks as the bolts were pulled over.
Time to rest, he thought. He was hungry, but food could wait. First just a few winks.
He sat up, startling himself, and looked around, glancing immediately to Higgins. The old man was sitting up, looking towards the roof, but gave Tyler a quick glance and touched his finger to his lips to indicate silence. He had slept for a while, he was sure of it. That hadn’t been just a minute or two.
And there it was, that familiar sound up on the roof. Tyler frowned and listened intently, trying to judge what could be making the noise. So far, they’d only found the scratches left behind and never anything else, and without staying outside when the carrier door was shut there was no way for them to watch their visitors. No one was willing to do that.
A
few minutes later, after a lot of noise from above, there was a thud on the ground outside and the sound of something moving away quickly across the dirt.
The crew – all of them awake now – sat in silence for a long time until Tyler spoke.
“What are the bets the top compartment is all scratched up?” he asked. The other men nodded in return.
“I’d say that was pretty much a done deal,” said Higgins, looking up at the ceiling. “Guess you better file another one of your reports.”
Tyler chuckled. “Not that that is going to do any good. I don’t think they believe me.”
“Must do,” said Rick. “They see the scratches every time.”
“Until maintenance covers them up again like they were never there.”
Rick shook his head. “I don’t get that.”
“What you mean?” asked Higgins.
Rick pointed at the ceiling. “Maintenance always hammer the panel back out and sand it off until the marks aren’t there and the panel is shiny and new again, only for the scratches to turn up on a different spot the next time. They don’t bother with all the rust holes and cracks in the outer plating of the rest of the vehicle, why bother with a few scratches?”
“I have no idea,” said Tyler. “But it’s really starting to bug the hell out me. I want to know why something keeps fiddling around up there.”
“Or someone,” said Higgins.
Tyler looked at him. “Or someone. Whatever or whoever it is only seems to like messing with us. No one else reports it, unless we just don’t find out.”
“Which also makes me wonder,” said Rick. “If it’s always us, then how the hell does it know where we are every single time? I mean, we travel for miles onto the next zone, but it always seems to track us down.”
“Could be something stuck in that compartment that it can smell for miles and miles,” said Higgins. “Like it’s an animal or summit. Maybe something is dead in there.”
“Enough dead things out here for a critter to smell without having to track down our carrier,” said Tyler.
“Hmm, still don’t make much sense,” muttered Higgins
“We could try and prise the compartment open,” said Rick. “Have a little nose at what’s in there.”
“We don’t have the gear to open it,” said Tyler. “It’s at least and inch thick, I reckon, and none of us have the tools to bust it open. At least not without some alarm going off. You wanna be the one to explain that to those that we must obey?”
Rick shrugged. “No, I guess not.”
“Hey,” said Boots, a man who rarely had anything to say. “May we should set up a trap for the critter.”
Tyler frowned. “What kind of trap?”
Boots frowned and then shrugged. “Don’t know, just thought it might be an idea.”
Tyler looked down at the ground, squinting. A trap, he thought. Well, maybe not a trap, but some way to record who was out there or to scare them off. Something.
That was worth thinking about.
Trapped
Jack looked up and coughed as the dust settled in the room. He could see Ryan through the gloom, standing a few feet away.
“You okay?” he asked.
The boy nodded and brushed some crumbling pieces of rubble from his shoulder. Above them the floor groaned. Jack heard the hiss of the radio.
“Jack, you there?” came the voice of FirstMan.
He grabbed the radio and pressed the button on the side. “I’m here. What's going on?” There was a moment of silence, then some crackling, then another voice.
“We found a bug nest,” came RightHand's voice.
“Stay right where you are,” said FirstMan.
Jack looked over to the entrance where they had entered and saw that beyond the archway a pile of debris had collapsed into the large room. “We’re trapped down here,” he said. He stared at the fallen pile of junk and rubble, thinking that he and Ryan only just managed to avoid being crushed by running through the double doors. That had been too close.
Ryan turned to him, frowning, and stood up, taking two steps towards the entrance.
“Don't go any closer,” said Jack. “Just in case it collapses any more.”
The boy stopped. Jack looked at the ceiling, noting the steel girders that crisscrossed above them and the metal plating the lay on top of that. Someone had wanted to keep whatever was in this room safe, he thought. What was it that was in here? Was it what he came to look for? There was a lot junk in the room, piled up in boxes around the outside, and in the centre of the room stood half a dozen tables pushed together. Upon the tables there was an assortment of circuit boards, wires, tools, cables and smaller boxes.
Jack grabbed the nearest box and peered inside it. Nuts, bolts, clips – all manner of small junk that was mostly metal. Still a treasure trove, though.
“We may as well get comfy in here,” he said as the first sounds of gunfire rattled from above them. He thought that among the snaps of shots from the assault rifles the soldiers carried, he heard clicking noises. Mr Clicky's friends, he thought.
“Jack, you still there?” came FirstMan’s voice on the radio.
Jack paused, but then pressed the button. “We’re still here,” he replied. “And still stuck. Looks like a lot of crap just caved into the room next to us, but were fine. We’re trapped in a vault down here. Room is full of junk and gear.”
“Good,” said FirstMan. “It’ll take us a while to clear out these bugs. There’s a lot of them—” The radio crackled once more and Jack missed the words that followed. “—gave you. Over.”
“Okay,” Jack replied, guessing the general message. He turned to Ryan and located the boy on the other side of the room. He was holding a box from underneath one of the tables and peering inside it.
“There’s all kinds of good stuff in these boxes,” said Ryan, as he held up a rusted wrench. With a good clean the tool would be serviceable, Jack thought, and he started to search through the items collected on the tables. He had a feeling about this room. This was where they were meant to end up, but maybe not quite in the circumstances that they got there, trapped underneath who knew how much collapsed rubble, with a nest of Mr Clickys above them.
The gap underneath the debris didn't look big enough for Mr Clicky to get through, so Jack relaxed a little and turned to look at the pile of boxes lined along the far wall.
“Look what I found,” called Ryan, a second or so later. Jack turned and found that Ryan was holding up what appeared to be a large handgun. Jack walked around the tables and took the weapon from the boy. He brushed the dust off it. It was old, and the magazine seemed to be missing, but Jack hadn't seen a weapon like it before. It was made from some sort of dense plastic, or another synthetic material that wasn’t metal, with two square holes at the end of the short barrel. He put it down on the table. “See if you can find some of the ammo magazines that go with it,” he said. “But don’t mess with it until I’ve given it a good clean up.”
Ryan nodded. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, and began shorting through another box. “There’s two more of them here.”
Jack nodded. “Nice find,” he said. “They’re for us. Call it payment for services rendered.”
Ryan grinned at this and placed the other two guns on the table next to the first. “Let’s just hope there’s some ammo for them in here.”
Jack turned to the wall where the boxes were stacked up, his gaze drifting over the unreadable letters that had worn away over time, but he stopped at a box with a yellow label still stuck to one side. Squinting in the dim light, Jack moved over to where the box was, nestled among the others, and started lifting some of the boxes off, coughing as dust wafted everywhere. “Damn,” he cursed. “This stuff really hasn’t been messed with in a long time.” Something small, with a lot of legs, scuttled over the top of the yellow label box and dropped down into the gap behind. A bug of some sort, maybe even Mr Clicky's babies, thought Jack, but he ignored it and concentrated
on the yellow label box.
All of the boxes were made of plastic, Jack noticed. He hadn't seen something like that for a long time. If left sealed shut, the boxes down in this cellar would keep their contents safe from the ravages of time. He swept a space on the nearest table clear, then hauled the yellow labelled box out of the stack and plopped it down. The top was stiff, but eventually there was a hiss and a pop as the plastic lid came away in Jack’s hands. Jack dropped the lid and peered inside.
“Bingo,” he said.
“You found it?” asked Ryan. “Damn. I was hoping to beat you.” But then he held up a six inch knife that was still in its holder. “But I got this. And this box here looks like the magazines for those guns. There must be forty clips or something like that.”
“I think your find is better than mine.” Jack smiled at the boy’s enthusiasm. “We’re going to be down here a while,” he said. “So we may as well keep searching. You, know, for anything of interest. We do, after all, get first claim on this. Especially since we already found what FirstMan wants.”
Ryan’s grin widened.
Jack looked around the room. It had been a long time since he had seen so much stuff in one place that wasn’t on its way through the Recycling Facility. Maybe that place in The Crossing, old Racket’s place.
Drogan would have loved all this, Jack thought.
Don’t Eat That
Jack waited at the entrance to the hovel, watching the bustling road outside while still keeping an eye on Drogan’s back. Inside the building was a mess of old electronic junk that Jack had seen dozens of times over the last few years, ever since he first hooked up with the older man at the junction outside the remains of the New Stadium settlement. That had been the day he gained a new friend, a shotgun, and also saw the fall of a settlement that had barely begun to thrive.
Hunched over on the other side of Drogan was Racket, an old man with only one eye over which he wore a large round lens attached to a leather strap. Jack always thought the strap looked much too tight. The lens made Racket’s one remaining eye seem five times bigger than it really was, and Jack had often wondered if he could see at all without it.