by Glynn James
Sure, they were ragged looking and covered in dirt. But they seemed to be wearing armour that was similar to the facility troopers, and they even carried weapons that looked the same. The tales he’d been told were of spear wielding savages.
And then the siren stopped.
He stood there, not knowing what to do, as the Junkers entered the building, a dozen of them spreading out and scoping the corners. Some of the kids nearly bolted and ran, but others grabbed them and stopped them.
Finder had just stood there, in the middle of the open space, not knowing where to go. And they had let him stand there.
Then the three facility guards walked into the warehouse from the other side and headed towards the Junkers.
It had puzzled him at the time. They had met in the middle. No blazing fights, no killings, no blasters going off. At the time he’d thought he’d better run and get under cover, because where he was standing was a prime spot for catching a stray blast.
But the two groups spoke, and one of them even laughed.
The women and children that worked in the facility had been made to walk then, and it seemed that it was a walk that took days, because they slept in different shelters along the way, guarded by either the Junkers or the troops from the facility.
And not once had he seen anyone being hurt or even pushed.
As he sat there, in the darkness, waiting for FirstMan and the other to be finished at the shack, he smiled, thinking of how little he had known back then. He smiled and stared at the shack perched on the shore of the great swamp.
And then he noticed the figure moving through the junk below. He stopped smiling and sat perfectly still, not moving, not making a sound. He altered his breathing, remembering everything he had been taught in an instant. Slow and shallow. Slow and shallow.
The figure was moving quickly, dodging along the winding path between the great piles of junk, and whoever it was, they were limping.
Then it dawned on him exactly who it was.
The intruder.
“They’re over here!” Finder shouted. “Over here!”
Hunted
The voice, so close by, made Jack jump. But it was clear who the caller was shouting about. He paused only for a moment, glancing up the trash mound and seeing a small figure dart back into the darkness and into hiding.
Even if he wanted to silence whoever was up there, he wouldn’t be able to. His leg was screaming at him to stop moving, and the climb up there would be too much. It was the best he could do to double his efforts and press on, following the path and hoping to spot a hiding place along the way.
Except now he knew he wouldn’t have very long to do it. In the distance, back in the direction of the shack at the edge of the swamp, he heard voices calling out to each other, and the rattle of junk falling away as the group of men who had gone to the shack in search of him started taking chase. They would be much faster than he on this terrain.
He pushed on, stumbling along the path that was anything but straight. It wound around large, dark shapes that he couldn’t identify, and they slowed his progress. He was at a huge disadvantage out here.
They will know where they are, and they will know the territory. Every last bit of it, probably. You’re a fool to even think that you can outrun them or hide from them. Hell, you could be running right over the top of a hidden base for all you know.
But what if they catch you? What will they do? Eat you? The old guy from the shack, the one that took you in, seemed harmless enough, though you can’t really know that.
Had he turned you in? No. He hadn’t. The conversation outside the shack wasn’t a welcoming one. They knew each other, all of them, but the old man hadn’t been enthusiastic about letting them into his house and finding you. He’d even been sarcastic about it.
He didn’t turn you in. He just gave in because he had to. No choice.
Jack stumbled and nearly went down. The voices had stopped behind him but he could hear them coming. A dozen of them at least, mostly following the same path he was on but closing much faster than he could move.
They’ll be here soon, he thought as he rounded a corner and came to a large clearing in the junk. Across from him was a gaping hole in the darkness, a spot much darker than everywhere else. A tunnel of some kind?
He had no choice. He laboured across the clearing, stumbled up the small slope of trash at the foot of the hole, and started to climb, grimacing as his leg twinged with pain. He rolled further into the darkness, relieved that it seemed to slope away from him.
And then he lay there, about ten feet inside, in almost utter darkness, and waited for them to come, hoping that if he stayed still and quiet they would pass him by. It was by no means the best place he’d found to hide over the years, but it wasn’t too bad.
He lay there and listened, hearing boots trudging over the ground outside – some of them passing by the hole and heading further along the path. But others, he thought, had stopped not far away. He could tell that less pursuers were moving around outside.
He held his breath for a second and then started slow breathing. Slow and shallow.
Even if you’re standing just a few feet away you can still hide.
It had worked on the man who came into the shack, like it had with others, dozens of times before. The man came into the shack and walked right by you. Three steps into the opposite corner and he’d walked right by you again as he came out. No movement. No sound, and he hadn’t spotted you. The darkness inside the shack had helped, but to stay perfectly still and blend in, that was the trick. And then out the front, right behind him, just feet away. No noise. Careful steps. Three figures outside, all facing the glare of the old man’s lantern. But they were far enough away, over near the edge of the walkway. And they were slightly blinded, and not able to see you slip away, as the man who had searched for you blocked the view of you stepping out behind him.
When they didn’t think you were there, it was easy.
But now, as he lay there in the darkness, he wondered how long it would be before they found him.
It was all very well moving quietly and making a quick escape when they didn’t think you were there, but when they were hunting a moving escapee on their home ground it was an entirely different thing.
And that voice. That bothered him.
The one who had called out. The voice was so familiar, but yet he couldn’t place it.
In the silence he played back the voice in his mind, stepping back a few minutes to hear it more clearly.
And then he was back in the Outer Zone, searching through the ruins of the cinema. The boy had wanted Jack to show him it after he’d told him all about how people would gather there to watch some vast moving picture. He’d explained how they all sat in rows of seats and watched the lit-up wall with images on it, and the boy had marvelled at how such a thing could even exist.
“Can you show me?” Ryan had asked him, and even though it was three, maybe four, long days of travel from where they were, he’d still taken the boy and stood outside with him as Ryan looked up at the crumbling remains of the vast building. Most of it still stood, even though the inside of the building was almost completely gutted and stripped.
It was still an impressive sight, hundreds of years after the magazine photos had been taken.
Jack had shown Ryan the pictures in the magazine of the exact same building. He thought it had to be the same one. The details were so similar, even if most of the gleam and shine and the bright lights were missing.
And, of course, the boy had found another magazine in one of the rooms at the back as they both scoured around the building, Ryan looking avidly for some new find but Jack only wandering around, knowing that he had searched the place thoroughly already.
It had been the magazine that Ryan had drawn the stickmen in. The one he gave to Jack and the one they boy was so pleased at finding for him. Now lost.
“Over here!” Ryan had called. “I’ve got something! Over here.”<
br />
Over here.
That voice.
It was older, but not much different.
Not much different at all.
The hidden stranger on top of the mound of trash, the one that had given him away and called down his pursuers, was Ryan.
It was him.
Jack lay there for a moment, in the darkness of the hole, playing back the voice over and over, knowing that he was right.
Then he crawled to the edge of the hole and dropped down onto the ground, raising his hands as the four men standing the other side of the clearing raised their guns.
And then it occurred to Jack that Junkers weren’t supposed to own guns, let alone the assault rifles that all four of these men carried. And the armour. It was Hunter armour, wasn’t it?
One of the men stepped forward and a light shone in Jack’s face.
“Who are you? What are doing you here?” asked the man, and Jack recognised the voice of the man who had spoken at length to the old man in the shack.
“I’m looking for someone,” Jack said.
“I asked who you are,” said FirstMan. “Are you from the Recycling Facility? You a trooper? Spec Ops?”
Jack was confused. They thought he was military? One of the Hunters or facility guard. He didn’t know what a Spec Op was.
“I was a salvager,” he said. “I don’t work for…I mean, I’m not from the Inner Zone.”
“Then why are you out here in our territory?” asked FirstMan.
“I’m looking for someone. A boy. Ryan.”
Another figure moved into the dim glow of light behind the spotlight, a smaller figure maybe shoulder height to the men, but Jack couldn’t make out who it was.
“Ryan, you say,” said FirstMan. “And you’re definitely not from RAD or TSO?”
Jack shook his head. “No. I don’t know what those are, or who they are, I was just…I had to get out and find—”
“Jack?” asked a young voice. The person behind the men. “Is that you?”
Jack’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest and he took a step forward, only to step back again when the four men raised their guns higher, aiming at him now.
“Is that you, Ryan?”
The figure behind the men moved forward.
“Yes, it’s me,” said Finder. “It’s Ryan.”
PART FIVE
What lies below
Trapped
Jack sat, staring at the ground inside the cage, not paying much attention to any of the movement around him. People of the Junktown came and went throughout the day, and the cage that he now called home was sitting smack in the middle one of the larger, more open courtyards in the warren city that was hidden in the junk. Jack had seen a lot of that city on his way in, though he had been bound and gagged the whole time.
Endless covered paths wound through the mountains of junk, and along each of the many paths, there were doors attached to the walls. From the outside, the streets and alleyways looked like walls of junk until you saw a home or shop hidden behind it through an open door. The Junkers had made their homes not only amongst the trash, but out of the trash, carving deep holes into the very junk mountains above and the depths below. And there were far more people than Jack could have imagined. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of them.
He was taken along many of these alleyways as his captors guided him to where he would be held, and saw not only houses, but shops and large open places where resources were kept. At one point they passed what appeared to be the side of a massive old stone building, jutting out of the trash, and it reminded him of the Grand Theatre back in the Outer Zone, except this was used as a marketplace. There was an area where dozens of large metal containers had been stacked on top of each other, and Jack could see makeshift stairs and platforms built to reach the topmost containers. People were living inside them.
The cage that was to be his home, it would seem, was sheltered from the rain but not nearly as hidden from the elements as many of the Junker dwellings. There was only a rough mattress to sleep on and small boxed in hole in the ground to relieve himself in. At least the cage was dry. There was that. The cage was maybe twenty feet across both ways and tall enough to stand up in, and Jack had spent a lot of time pacing around the perimeter with only his thoughts to entertain himself.
They fed him, if you could call the grey slop, which was passed to him in a dented metal bowl three times a day, food, but he wasn’t going to complain. Jack had the impression that most of the inhabitants of the Junktown ate the grey slop. They had little choice, he thought. And honestly, it actually tasted good if you ignored the lumps. Where they mushrooms or some kind of animal? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t really want to know.
He had visitors, though, and those visitors took away the monotony of his incarceration. And anyway, he’d been there before, hadn’t he? Well, maybe not exactly there, but he had been in a cage similar to the one he now called home, and that had been somewhat smaller. But that was many years ago.
One good thing, though – he wasn’t expected to fight every other day, and there were no jeering crowds. No blood soaked floor.
Just the solitude of the cage and the quiet of his own thoughts.
He wasn’t expecting to be let at out all.
The cage had held a lot of slaves a year before, Old Haggerty had told him. Until FirstMan had arrived, with his troopers, and set them all free, killing the mob of slavers that had held the Junktown in thrall for years. But there were no others now. The cage was reserved for criminals to stay in while their fate was decided. Jack had been the only one in the cage during his stay.
He had three regular visitors. The one they called FirstMan, the leader of the Junkers, came at least once a day and questioned him endlessly about his past and his reason for being out in the Junklands. The man didn’t seem to believe him at first but gradually became less hostile and more curious. Jack thought he may even like the man, under different circumstances.
“I’ll probably let you out tomorrow,” FirstMan said before leaving each day, and Jack wondered after the third day if this was something that would ever happen. He suspected that his imprisonment was to be long term.
His second regular visitor was the old man that lived in the shack at the edge of the swamp, and his were the least expected of visits. The old guy checked Jack’s leg every day and muttered to him about mushrooms quite a lot, or other junk that he had found, as though it may be of interest to Jack. Then he just left. He only ever stayed maybe ten minutes at most.
Jack liked the old man, apparently named Haggerty, for some reason, even though it became obvious to him during those visits that few Junkers did. Jack thought that Haggerty had an honesty about him that was refreshing. Oh, not a kind of non-lying honesty. Certainly not. Jack suspected that half of what Haggerty said was a lie, or simply misleading, but when it was time for him to go, there were none of the formalities that even the Junkers used. No hello, no goodbye. Not even a nod. The old man simply stood up and left, often cursing at someone nearby to get out of his way, even if they were nowhere near him.
And then there was the third visitor. Ryan.
The boy came half a dozen times, during the daylight hours, and often sat there at night until he was scolded by one of the Junkers and sent to bed. From Jack’s ‘cell’, which had once been some sort of shipping cage for animals, he could see the building that was Ryan’s home in the distance, poking up towards the clouds.
Jack couldn’t believe it was an actual spacecraft of some kind. They never made real ones, he’d thought, and had believed that his whole life. Sure, there were the Ark ships that left every year, he remembered that much from his youth, but they were built in orbit, or something like that, built next to a space station, a kind of building that hung in the air, high up outside the atmosphere, in space.
Jump shuttles rocketed up into the sky hourly from the Inner Zone. He’d even seen them in his earlier years, on the few occasions he’d been close to The Wall. Th
ey burst up into to sky with a roar and then gradually vanished into the clouds, the roar of the ascent diminishing over a few minutes until all that was left was a plume of fumes dissipating in the sky.
But no, Ryan insisted that the metal monstrosity leaning against the rock outcrop was, in fact, once a ship that had flown in space.
They talked about a lot of things, he and Ryan. And when the boy left to sleep, or eat, or do his chores, Jack felt both relief and joy as well as guilt. It was as though they had never been apart. The boy chattered and chattered, bringing him more drawings that he had done, entire books full of them. They had a lot of scrap paper in the Junklands, as well as card and other materials scavenged from the mountains of trash, so much so that Ryan had two dozen or more wads of sewn together paper with his own drawings in. The paper alone would have brought a fortune in barter in the Outer Zone, but it was a common material in the Junker town.
But, with all these visits, Jack wondered if he would be stuck in the cage for weeks, or even months.
They don’t trust you, you see. Not Ryan, he will always trust you, it seems, even after you let him down so badly. He doesn’t think you did, and you’re lucky for that. Very lucky. He could have been angry with you and he wasn’t. No, it’s not his trust you’re missing. The Junkers don’t trust you. And why should they?
But things were different today. Jack could sense it. He had the ability to pick up on such things. Jack looked up from the dirt to see FirstMan strolling towards the cage, with that ever-confident swagger he used, and Jack’s spirits lifted. Even if FirstMan was trying to conceal it, Jack had noticed the ring of keys hanging from the tall man’s belt.
Hope.
There was no greeting like there usually was. FirstMan just jumped straight into the conversation that he wanted, like they had been talking for half an hour already.
“I apologise for keeping you in such a fashion but we have no spare quarters or buildings that were secure enough to keep you in one place,” FirstMan said. “You seem to be quite good at slipping by people, and getting out of places undetected, and I couldn’t have that until I was happy to let you go.”