Pickers 1: The Find

by Garth Owen

  Maxine looped the fuse release string around her right hand, then kicked the selector for the bike's gear box into neutral. She pushed it, forcing it past the point where the inertia of turning the chain held it back from moving. Once it was rolling, it picked up pace quickly, passing walking speed and reaching jogging. Maxine stopped, and clasped the string with both hands. It suddenly went taut, and tried to jerk out of her grip, then, just as abruptly, was loose.

  Bikes were lining up at the bottom of the hill, and two cars had entered the square. They'd be coming up this way soon. Maxine ran up the hill to her new bike.

  Even in sunshine and facing away, Maxine could see the flash of the thermite igniting, its light changing the colour of the street around her for a moment. She looked around to see a secondary explosion, as a plume of burning fuel rose into the air and fell across the road surface. She twisted the throttle, engaging both wheels for an extra pull up the slope.

  Trailing fire and still, somehow, travelling straight, the bike and side-car carried on toward the waiting bikers at the bottom of the hill. Realising, almost too slowly, what was bearing down on them, they struggled to restart their engines or pull their rides out of its path. The fuel tank split, and another rush of flame grew around the vehicle. Finally, the strapping holding the handle bars straight broke, and it slewed to the right. The edge of the tyres dug in and it tipped over, a burning barricade not quite blocking the single lane street and keeping the gang from taking off after the people they had spotted further up.

  The road crested, then headed downhill again to a cluster of houses that had been a completely different village, back when people had lived there to be territorial. The road surface was less broken up in the lee of the buildings, so the ATVs could turn off it without leaving the obvious tracks that had given them away at the bunker. Just before they disappeared down the side street and onto the forest track beyond, Maxine caught them up. She slowed to match speed with her sister.

  Veronique looked across. "New wheels. Good job."

  "Bad luck that they turned up. For them, really. But good luck for me to find a nice new bike. Did you get what we came for?"

  "I won't know until I can plug all the drives in to my computers and see what's on them."

  "Papa won't be happy if the trail ends here."

  "Papa will just find another treasure for us to chase after. Go on ahead and tell him about the gang. We'll have to break camp as soon as we get there because of them."

  * * *

  There was fire just over the hill. A thin smudge of sooty smoke was rising straight up in the warm, still air. Maxine, Remy decided, had been burning things again. The girl had a prodigious talent for mending things, but she needed it, considering how often she broke them on other people.

  His children were going to be fine, he told himself, ignoring the fluttering fear the smoke raised in him. They had survival talents passed down from him and supplemented by experience in the wild lands. Nonetheless, a fire suggested they had encountered resistance, so a rapid departure was likely to be called for.

  Remy already had the wagons almost ready to roll. The turbines had charged the batteries and everything but the loading ramps on wagon two had been stowed. Now, he was sitting in the captain's chair on top of wagon one looking in the direction he had sent his family several hours before. He couldn't see the town- he could barely see over the tops of the trees around the wagons, in fact- but there was a short stretch of road that he could watch through his field glasses.

  Two familiar shapes crested the rise in the road. The four wheeled all terrain vehicles- stubby electric things with big balloon tyres- they used on exploration and salvage runs. They each had a rider, which made him frown. One of them should have a passenger, Maxine had headed out on the back of Veronique's ATV. A moment later, a motorcycle came over the hill after them. He couldn't see in great detail, but the body language of the rider was unmistakably that of his younger daughter. Maxine had found herself another toy, which was good. She had been moody ever since her last bike broke.

  Remy pushed himself out of the chair with his shooting stick. Kicking a lever on the roof unlocked the seat. Its legs folded backwards and the back collapsed forwards until it sat in the recess built for it. He hobbled over to the ladder on the side of the wagon, tossing the stick down before himself. Getting down the ladder was a performance. He was glad his children didn't see it.

  The damage to Remy's right knee was healing, but not as fast as he would have liked. Embarrassingly, for all his years adventuring in the wilderness, he had injured himself taking a tumble down a short flight of stairs whilst shifting booty from their last pick. It had forced him into the observer role for this one, not enjoying waiting for his family to return. Remy was used to being there with them, directing and protecting them. He was getting old, possibly too old for running around the wastes rescuing what was left of the pre collapse technology.

  There was still a wait before the youngsters arrived. The track through the forest was rough, and didn't run straight, and the ATVs didn't run fast when pulling the trailers. So it was Maxine who arrived first. She did a circuit of the trucks on her new bike, then pulled to a halt beside Remy's open door. "Bonjour Papa."

  "Bonjour cherie. A good result?"

  "Raiders. We had to leave early, but Vee and Tony got the hard drives."

  "Go back and tell them we leave as soon as they get here."

  "Bien." With a twist of the throttle, Maxine accelerated away, front wheel waving in the air.

  The ATVs trundled in a few minutes later, Maxine nipping at their tails like a sheepdog. She rushed ahead of Tony as he lined up behind wagon two, to get up the ramp ahead of him. The back wheel raised off the floor under braking, and she kicked it around to line the bike up beside her old ride. She waved Tony, and then Veronique in to park snugly side by side. As they loaded the ramps and closed the doors, she tied the bike and ATVs down. Her work bench folded down from the wall, and she used the saddle of Veronique’s ATV as a stool. She lifted the leather satchel from the trailer and started going through it.

  When the wagon lurched into motion, Maxine had the big semi-auto pistol on the bench. She tutted. Tony was driving, he could never get the motors in the wheels to start smoothly. The uneven acceleration stopped after a while, and she started stripping the pistol.

  Sadly, the cellar had not rendered up any wine. But it did, after clearing everything out, provide somewhere to test fire guns.

  The big semi automatic had been in very good condition, considering it had last been used before Maxine had even been born. She had dismantled it and found the hardened blood and corrosion that had made the slide's movements so rough. It had been a simple job to clean it up and reassemble it so that the action was smooth again. Apart from the unnecessary filigrees and nickel work, it was in as good a condition as it had ever been.

  On the other hand, the ammunition Maxine had picked up was an unknown quantity. She had broken open the shells and tested some of the powder. It burned as well as she could have hoped, given its age. After mixing it, very carefully, and adding in some of her own powder, she had repacked the ammunition. It was better than anything available in the wasteland, but she wasn't ready to pull the trigger on its first test fire.

  Weighted down by masonry, Maxine's test bench was set up so that the pistol pointed at a pile of dirt that had come through the collapsed ceiling of the cellar. Feeding a single round into the chamber, she trailed string around the nearest wall and halfway up the stairs. She had ear protectors around her neck, and pulled them on after shouting, "Test firing!" She didn't know if any of her family were in the building, but a warning was good form, just in case. She pulled the string, drawing the trigger back slowly,

  The gun fired, loud in the confines of the low ceilinged cellar. Even with her ear protectors on, it still echoed in Maxine's head. It shook the rafters as well, bringing dust and old plaster- and probably rat and mouse droppings- down on her. She shoo
k the debris out of her hair as she walked back to the bench.

  The pistol was still in one piece, as she had expected. After a search, she found the ejected shell and studied it. It was deformed just as she would have expected. She was happy with her work, and didn't feel the need to dig through the dirt for the slug. Unclamping the gun, she slapped the magazine in and chambered a round. Holding it two handed, she pointed it at the pile of dirt and pulled the trigger.

  The recoil was harsh, and the gun rose even as Maxine tried to hold it down. It hurt to fight it, and she winced at the kick. More dust and detritus showered or drifted down from the ceiling onto her head and shoulders, and she tried to shake it off.

  Maxine had been prepared to be disappointed by the pistol. It was a show-off's gun, big and noisy, made for the sort of person who would never really need to use it. Sure, a single round could stop almost anything in its tracks, but you'd have to be accurate first time, because of the pause between shots whilst it was waving around. She had a plan to fix that, though.

  In the rifle case she had picked up, there had been bits and pieces from three guns. There was no way to piece the jigsaw together to make even one serviceable gun. But there were parts she could reuse, amongst them a stock she was going to use to brace the pistol.

  She had work to do.

  * * *

  "She's going to bring the building down on herself if she keeps doing that." Tony commented after the second loud report from the direction of the cellar.

  "Then she'll just dig herself out and tell us she has thought of a great way to use such a loud gun." Remy said.

  "True."

  They had cleared the cellar out for Maxine, and because the contents were easier to go through in the open air of the courtyard. It looked like a pile of rust and rotten wood, but there was always something from such collections that could be rescued and reused or repurposed. They just needed thick gloves and patience to get to it.

  The farm had been abandoned long ago, when the land around it became home to bandits and raiders. Belongings in the house itself must have been loaded onto something and driven away, but the outbuildings- on two sides of the courtyard with a high wall on the last one- still held treasures. It just took a special sort of person to find them.

  Remy and his family called themselves pickers. They trekked through the bad lands, finding what they could recover from before the collapse. They weren't like the raiders, who took what they found and used it until it broke, then threw it away.

  Most of the metal items they found had a surface crust of oxidation but were solid under it. Tony was separating out iron and steel tools, Remy was putting all the unbroken glass together. His knee was less painful, and he didn't always need a walking stick, but kneeling down for some of the glassware hurt more than he wanted to let on. For their second sift, they would go back through the pile to see what state all the wood was in.

  Maxine came up from the cellar, carrying the pistol she had been test firing and the folded up firing rig. She stopped for a moment to watch her father and brother in law going through the big pile of potential salvage, then walked over to wagon two. As well as her work bench inside, she had a table which could be hung off the side of the vehicle. It was already scattered with the tools she had used in the final reassembly of the pistol. Now she went into the wagon and brought out the battered rifle case. Soon, she was measuring the stocks of the dead rifles up to the big handgun and scribbling notes and rough designs onto the table itself.

  Tony found a pick axe, with a flat crow bar head on one side and tapered point for breaking up surfaces on the other. Somehow, it still had its shaft attached, though this splintered and broke when he braced the end of it against his foot and twisted the head. The broken shaft went on the pile of rubbish and the head went into the metals collection.

  Remy studied the bottle in his hands, and sighed. When Tony cast an enquiring glance his way, her held the bottle up. It had a wide, oval profile, and enough of the tattered label was left for Tony to be able to read the word 'Cognac'. It was empty. "Would it have been any good?" he asked.

  "I honestly do not know. Couldn't have been rougher than the shine the mountain boys get out of their stills." With a shrug, Remy put the bottle with the others he had found.

  They went through the scrap three times in total. Each of the resulting piles could be put to use. The wood could be used in the solid fuel oven and even broken glass had potential. Maxine had a selection of glass tipped shafts for her longbow, though today she was more interested in her new pistol than donor material. She had disappeared into wagon two with two of the dead rifles and they had heard the whine of the bench and fret saws. After a string of inventive curses, she had bought the frame of one of the rifles out, split in all the wrong places, and put it in the pile of firewood.

  As Remy set up another of the folding tables stowed in a cavity under the body of wagon two, Tony brought out folding stools. Maxine appeared from the wagon again, holding the fruit of her labours. She laid the gun on the table for her father and brother in law to appreciate.

  The second rifle's frame had been made from some form of composite, which hadn't decayed and didn't split along unwanted lines as Maxine had cut it. The stock now fitted neatly onto the back of the pistol's grip, held in place by clips and a frame she had built for it. Remy picked the gun up and studied it, nodding appreciation. His youngest daughter was incredibly talented at this sort of thing. And possessive, he noted, the new stock was too short for Tony or him to comfortably hold, but just the right size for the shortest member of their party. "Excellent work as always." he said. "How accurate do you think it will be?"

  "I would love to know, but I don't have enough rounds to test it." Maxine took the pseudo rifle as her father passed it back. Pressing the butt of the stock against her shoulder and wrapping a hand around the grip showed that it was a perfect fit for her. She lined the sights up on the remaining wall of the farm house, then swept it around, picking out targets about the yard. Remy almost pitied the person who attacked them and got to be the test target for his daughter's new gun.

  When she had stopped shooting imaginary targets, Maxine let the gun drop to rest against her thigh. "Do you need any help with this stuff?" she asked.

  "No, we are okay with it. Do you want us to keep the glass bits for you?"

  "Please. Well, if there's nothing to do right now, I am going to go up there." Maxine pointed to the spot halfway up the hill behind the farm, marked by the only patch of deep green for miles around. "I suspect there is a spring up there. I'm coated in.... Stuff from down in the cellar, and I want to wash it off."

  "I hope you're right. I like the idea of a bathe." Tony said. "Tell us what you find."

  "Of course."

  Maxine packed her work table away before setting out. She pondered taking her new gun with her, but settled for her usual load of the .38 and 9mm, backed up by several knives. She wasn't heading far, but it was always best to be ready for trouble out here in the bad lands. She waved to her father and Tony as she walked through the gap between the farm house and barn. They returned the gesture, then went back to taking the oxide off various bits of metal using wire brushes.

  * * *

  Wagon one was Remy's home, wagon two Veronique's and Tony's. Maxine claimed space in both vehicles, and slung a hammock in whichever one she felt like at the end of the day. She could usually be persuaded to spend the night in wagon one if her sister and brother in law wanted some quality time.

  Somehow, the work spaces were in the wrong wagons. The back of wagon two was given over to mechanical engineering, and storing their smaller vehicles, whilst wagon one had the computer workstation in it.

  It was hot in the little room given over to the computer equipment, but it was too dusty outside to risk working with the door open. Veronique wiped the sweat from her brow again and made a note to have Maxine increase the power of the ventilation system. She slotted another of the drives into the cradle she
had made especially for them.

  Masses of pre-collapse digital information was lost to the world, through the deterioration of hardware, loss of software and encryption. Luckily, Veronique had several advantages in her search through the drives they had recovered from the bunker. First, and most important, was that she had the decrypt key, found in a broken down château along with the map to, and floor plan of, the underground hideaway. Secondly, she had one of the most powerful computing set ups extant in the wilderness. Built up over years from salvaged equipment and based upon military grade equipment they had found in a downed plane, it could crack locked down drives through application of sheer brute force. She could imagine that the processors were sulking today that they had not needed to flex their muscles and show her how strong they were.

  There were three screens arrayed before Veronique. The one to her right showed the state of the computer rig- in bars and numbers all in the green at the moment- directly in front of her was a basic graphical user interface and on the left a listing of the files on the drive she was examining. There were thousands of them, but she had scripts that would work through them and rank them relative to what she was searching for. She could watch the way file names shuffled up and down the screen for as long as the search took, it fascinated her. But this time, a bunch of names appeared at the top of the list that sent a thrill through her. Twirling the trackball built into her seat, she highlighted the top one and clicked to open it.

  The file opened in the middle window, once the system had worked out what software to use. It was a short book, a brochure, turned into electronic form. The first page, the cover of the brochure, was a colour photograph of a large square door with rounded corners, set into a wall of rock or concrete and twice the height of the smiling men and women who stood before it. "The Alpine seed bank: securing biodiversity for future generations." Veronique read the proclamation at the bottom of the page aloud. The flush that ran through her body was excitement that she might have found what they had been searching for for the last two years. It was followed by a chill in the pit of her stomach, her usual adrenaline response.