by Glynn James
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.
And so it went on until the last day. A lot of the time the crew would have to spend hours digging through broken bricks and trash, just to find recyclable metal, but each day Jack managed to cut their working time short by an hour or so, just by knowing where something was hidden.
But now he lay on the bunk, trying to sleep, his head firmly on his new – if somewhat dirty – pillow, and he couldn’t drift off. His mind was swirling.
It’s not the noise that is distracting, though, is it Jack? It’s not knowing where to go next. You hoped to see something out there, didn’t you? Something that would lead you back on to the trail of the boy, of Ryan, but all there was out there was endless miles and miles of junk mountains.
And the Junkers. Who were they?
He hadn’t seen one of them, but they had visited the carrier twice during the five days. Both times the crew had been tightly secured and tucked up inside the carrier, either playing cards or sleeping, and both times the noise had come from above.
He lay there in the bunk, thinking of Ryan and their last times together, and he watched the crew playing cards in the middle of the room.
During the game, Tyler turned to him. “You don’t want to join in?” he asked. “Boots’ got a run going here that we can’t beat. We need some of your talent here, Lucky Jack.”
Lucky Jack. His new nickname, given to him by Higgins after he found the tractor.
“I’m good,” he said, meaning a polite no thanks.
Tyler nodded, and turned back again. “We’re out to reclaim a facility tomorrow morning,” he said. “They took back a Picking Factory that the Junkers stormed a while back, bout ten months or so ago, and they want crews up there to shift all the machines out. You reckon you can do some of that magic out there?”
Jack shrugged.
“Usually some good stuff left behind by the Junkers if we can get at it first,” Tyler continued.
“That the place where all those kids and women got stole from?” asked Higgins. “That old reprocessing and picking plant that was right out in the middle of nowhere?”
Tyler looked at the old man, his expression grim. “I think so,” he said.
“That was a nasty thing, right there,” said Higgins. “Two hundred women and children, all taken. Poof, just gone, overnight.”
Jack wasn’t listening right up until the mention of children. Then, he was listening. Listening very carefully.
“Don’t, man,” said Tyler. “I don’t like to think about it.”
“What?” asked Higgins. “You don’t like the idea of the Junkers taking them, or us going there?”
“Both,” said Tyler. “You know they didn’t find any bodies, apart from two of the trooper squad, and they were even stripped of all equipment. Shot with their own guns, they reckon, which also means some Junker scum out there now has firearms. I don’t know. At least they didn’t leave no dead women or kids behind, but it makes me sick wondering what they did do with them.”
“Yeah,” said Higgins. “Took em all, every last one.”
Jack sat up. “Took who?” he asked.
The rest of the crew turned to him, and Tyler dropped his cards, the game no longer relevant. “The Junkers raid places occasionally, and I mean in force, like, dozens of them.”
“Hundreds, some say,” said Higgins.
“Yeah, well,” continued Tyler. “About ten or eleven months ago there was place way out here, a Picking Factory, where they had a couple of hundred kids and some women, and their job was to sort through all the circuitry and small electronics that gets found. You know, the stuff that gets sorted here first. Well they got sent all the smaller stuff.”
Jack thought about how he had spent hours dumping piles of circuit boards, wires, and small broken electronics into large tubs that were then taken away to a truck, and from there to wherever…to the Picking Factory, it seemed. Now there was a very real possibility, if Ryan had gone there, that the boy may have sorted the very stuff that Jack had packed.
“Well,” said Tyler. “The Junkers usually only raid and grab supplies, and then run for it, but apparently this time they came in force and took the actual people in the factory, all of them. They don’t usually do that. They normally just take stuff and go, often without even having to fight anyone. I mean, if you’re faced with a few dozen Junkers charging down on you, most people just up and run like hell and come back when they’re gone. This time they took everything they could carry and then some. They took the people too.”
“Apart from a couple of the troopers,” said Rick as he lit up yet another cigarette.
“Yeah. Apart from two or three of the trooper squad. They killed them.”
Higgins coughed and jabbed at his chest. “You know, that puzzled me,” he said. “Junkers eat folks, right? So—”
“There’s no proof of that,” interrupted Locks. He’d discarded his furry hat on the bunk at the far end of them room, the first time Jack had seen him without it perched on his head even when sleeping, and Jack could see that he had a large round bald spot on the top of his head. “No one actually got proof that they eat people, and no one has seen them doing it. Anyone found eaten out in the junk could easily have been got at by one of the bugs.”
“Oh but that’s what everybody says,” said Higgins. “Everyone knows Junkers eat anything, including each other.”
“That’s what people say,” said Locks. “And they also say that some of those bugs out there can talk, but that’s absolute rubbish, yeah?”
Higgins shrugged. “Well, maybe. Whatever. But that’s what I’m saying. If they do eat people, then why dint they take the bodies of the troopers? Or just cook em right there?”
“I don’t know, okay?” interrupted Tyler. “And I don’t even want to think about it. And anyway, we get to see first-hand what they left behind, because we’re on clean up and reclaim duty, as of tomorrow.”
That was why Jack couldn’t sleep. The Picking Factory, a place that used to have hundreds of kids working in it, seemed to be the very first sign of any significance that might lead him to Ryan’s trail. If there was a place that the boy could have ended up, it had to be there. Jack had found nowhere else, no other leads.
But the Junkers had raided the place, and that meant another possibility that Jack didn’t want to consider. But he found it too hard not to dwell on it.
Waiting For Time
Lisa sat on top of the armoured truck and watched as the convoy of salvage carriers trundled noisily into the yard of the Picking Factory. They were two hours late, and she had been pacing back and forth for most of that time before finally settling on just sitting and waiting. It was pointless calling anyone, and it didn’t matter what the delay was. They would get there when they got there.
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 out, eh?”
&
nbsp; 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.