Four days later they came to the outer reaches of Rotterdam, where Halvard had told Val she would find the mysterious machine part.
Winding like a snake through the crumbled and seemingly empty city, was a river running east to west. Countless stacks of metal containers reaching a hundred feet high lined the banks. The Vikings crept through the streets, staying behind cover at all times. Anders requested permission to climb a huge metal structure like a criss-crossed ladder, with rusted metal cables dangling from its tip. They guessed the thing was used to move the colorful boxes onto the huge boats—now empty carcasses—that were still moored in the deep river.
At some time during the Uttslettelse or after, the waters had risen beyond their original point, and many industrial yards and buildings were now under a foot of clear water.
They waited at the base of the large skeletal structure as Anders climbed, accessing a tiny glassed-in room at the top. From there he would have a good view of the river, and would be able to spot any obvious dangers in the town.
It took an hour for Anders to make the climb and return to the ground with the hooded Skjold, but it was well worth the wait.
“We are not alone,” he said, his bow gripped tightly in his hand.
61
There were a lot of them. Men varying in age from sixteen to sixty. They wore no common uniform like the Hangers, but the men were armed at all times, carrying stylized clubs with long narrow railroad spikes that had been fitted through the bulbous ends in an X pattern.
The men roamed around the shipping yards in packs of seven, and they went about various tasks like checking the security of locks on certain doors and shipping containers, as well as moving boxes from one place to another.
Val and her people stayed to the shadows, watching and waiting as patrols passed by. They had no way of knowing whether these men might also have been searching for them. After interrogating the Hanger leader, Val and Ulrik had reasoned that the Long Knives had also known they were coming. They were possibly also working for this man, Borss. Val personally wondered about the tidal waves of the Blue Men, as well. But they had just seemed crazed. And the maze-like funnel to their park had been created long before Val had been born. But with the knowledge that someone was hunting them, and had eyes out for Agnes, Val and Ulrik agreed that any other humans they encountered were most likely enemies. As they spied on this new group, they also saw many men carrying paint in cans, marking containers with the word ‘Vectors.’ Heinrich explained that the word sounded more like Dutch than German, and translated as something like ‘Fighters.’ He told them there were similarities between the Dutch and German languages. He had understood only some of what they had overheard the roving groups saying, but none of it revealed any useful information besides the name of the place—the Authority.
The building they needed to reach was in a disused area surrounded by a lot of mud. It was adjacent to the docks where packs of the Vectors moved boxes.
“We will keep to the shadows until after dark,” Val told them. If they tried to access the building in the daylight, their tracks would be visible. Her plan was to get in at night and be long gone by morning. Then they would try to find a boat seaworthy enough to return to the North. They had all agreed it was a good plan. Anders volunteered to continue stealthily exploring the location, and look for a functioning boat. If they could have a vessel ready, they could be away and across the water to England before dawn.
“You need to be extremely careful, Anders,” Val said, laying a hand on the hunter’s shoulder.
“If I have not returned by nightfall, I will not be coming back at all. Go on without me.” He spoke softly and for her ears only.
“We will, if necessary, but do not make it so. Return.”
With that he slipped away, moving from the shelter of one building to the next.
They stayed hidden, keeping low and still whenever they heard Vectors nearby, but the men never lingered long, focusing on their business. By late afternoon, no more Vectors came near.
“Everyone show me your packs,” Val said.
“Why?” Oskar asked.
“You all need to carry some of Ulrik’s things. He will need to empty his pack to carry the part. It is quite large.” Val made a space between her hands the size of a small shield. Then she showed them the drawing of the object. It was perfectly round, with a small square hole in the center, and the thickness of four shields stacked. There were three ridges spreading from the outer edge of the wheel to the central square hole.
“And what exactly does this thing do?” Morten asked.
“I do not know,” Val admitted. “But Halvard assured me he needed it, and that it would weigh a lot.”
“How much is a lot?” Ulrik asked.
“You will probably be the only one of us who can carry it,” Val said. “Half as much as Agnes. Maybe more.”
Agnes raised her eyebrows. “That is a lot. And that building is huge. How will we find something the size of a wheel in there?”
Val nodded, as if she had anticipated the question. “If the inside of the place is still untouched, there are numbers on the shelves. We just need to follow them.”
“I do not know numbers,” Ulrik admitted. “I never learned them.”
“I know them,” Agnes assured him. “We will find it.”
Hours passed and no more Vectors came, but neither did Anders, and there had been no sign of Skjold. When darkness settled over the land, Val waited two hours for Anders. When those two hours had passed, she waited fifteen minutes longer. Eventually, Ulrik stood up and stretched, his empty pack laying limp on his back.
“It is time, Val.”
“Damn it,” she said, standing and shaking her head. She could only hope that Anders would meet them after they emerged from the building. She refused to believe that the man was dead—or captured. He was far too stealthy to be seen and far too good a fighter to allow himself to be caught.
She stood and readied herself. The others did the same. They had discussed the plan. Agnes was to stay by Ulrik at all times. Val would enter the building first with Ulrik and Agnes, then Morten and Oskar would come next, keeping watch within the building, as Val searched for the metal wheel. Heinrich would stay just inside the door to the building, keeping watch for Anders’s return or for any of the Vectors.
There was an entrance on the far side of the building they had scouted earlier in the day, but it was too close to a building that housed some of the Vector men. So they would enter and leave from the door surrounded by the thick mud. It would leave thick footprints and show they had gone both in and out the same way, but they would all walk through the footsteps of the first person, hiding the group’s number.
As they slipped out of the building they had waited in all day, the night air was chilly. Val felt the cold settle on her skin like a blanket of dew. Then she realized it was raining slightly.
She took Heinrich aside and whispered some private instructions to him, then she moved to the front of the group, and stopped at the edge of the mud.
“Agnes, behind me,” she said softly, then she took even, measured strides into the mud. Her feet sank six inches into the squelching muck, and each footfall sent a plume of rank stench into the air. The mud was, she assumed, from the bottom of the river, from when it had flooded last. The rain fell a little harder, and the sound of it obscured the gentle lapping of the water in the nearby harbor.
When she reached the building’s door, she twisted in her tracks—not taking her feet out of the mud—and looked back at the others. Agnes was two steps behind her, the girl’s hair already wet and plastered to her forehead. Ulrik was a few steps behind her, and Morten behind him, his longsword still in its sheath, but his hand on the pommel, at the ready. Oskar followed, glancing all around. Heinrich stood beyond the mud, but was ready to follow, once the way was cleared.
Heinrich watched them step through the path, each foot carefully placed in a mucky hole that Val had create
d with her original steps. Soon it would be his turn.
Val pulled her knife and slid it into the rusted hasp with its orange padlock. She pried back slowly, until the lock broke with an unearthly loud metal groan, before it plopped into the mud by her ankles. Everyone froze and looked around. As rear guard, and someone who had yet to enter the muddy footprints, Heinrich quickly spun around, looking for any sign of the Vectors.
All was quiet.
When he looked back, Val had slipped into the building, and Agnes was following her. When Oskar slid through the door, Heinrich started across the muddy path. When he reached the door, he stopped and peered inside the massive space. There were metal shelves stretching up to the ceiling, thirty feet above the door, and the aisles of shelves were full of metal crates. The racks stretched over hundreds of feet down the length of the building toward the distant Vector stronghold.
Off to one side, Heinrich could see Oskar moving into the shadows, where he would keep watch. In the other direction, the much larger Morten also moved to keep guard. Straight ahead, down one of the aisles, Val, Ulrik and Agnes hurried, shining a small hand-cranked flashlight beam at the shelves, checking the numbering system.
Heinrich stepped backward toward the doorway, then carefully walked further backward, placing his booted feet in the muddy prints. He closed the door. Then he walked all the way back across the mud. When he got to the last footstep, he stopped and reached down to unlace his boots. Awkwardly, he managed to slip one foot out of a boot and reach his stocking-covered toes to the concrete.
When both of his feet had cleared the mud, he reached back for his boots, collecting them in his hands and shaking them briefly, dropping globules of mud back into Val’s very first footstep.
Then, his boots in hand, Heinrich ran off into the night.
62
Val hurried through the silent warehouse. They were so very close to their second goal. Then all that remained would be to safely return to the North. But every nerve in her body sizzled, telling her something was wrong.
She wondered whether it was the recent revelation of Morten’s and Oskar’s prominent part in her early life. As far as she knew, Oskar had been good to his word, and Morten was oblivious to who she was. But something was wrong. She could feel it in her bones. She didn’t like that Anders had gone to scout for a boat and had never returned. If he had been discovered, she figured he would have made a huge ruckus, and Vector men would be running around the docks on high alert. So where was he? Where was Skjold?
She and Ulrik had split up, with him moving off to check the adjacent aisle with Agnes. He used a small flashlight powered by a solar panel that had been charging in a beam of sunlight all day. When he held the button down, it shined a painfully bright light. Val’s own flashlight was not as bright, and not powered by the sun, but by a small metal arm that she cranked. One revolution of the crank arm would power the light for about a minute. Instead of keeping it on all the time, and cranking the thing until her hand was sore—and having the device continually produce the whining metallic whirr it made—she turned the light on only every few feet.
She swept the beam at the metal stamped numbers and letters on the shelves. QAB477, QAB478, QAB479. Then she turned the light off and continued down the aisle in the dark. She was beginning to understand the number and letter system. She had learned numbers when she was young, and she knew the letters as well, even though she could not read complete words. Amazingly, most of the metal boxes were still on the shelves, coated in decades of dust. All that was left was to follow the codes and hope the box she needed was still in its designated place.
The vast warehouse loomed in the silence. Val dropped her goggles around her neck so she could see better in the ambient light, which was minimal. There were some skylights far above her head, but with the rainfall outside, little illumination penetrated the dusty gloom. She found herself holding her breath so she could hear the open space around her. If she listened hard she could hear Ulrik’s footsteps in one of the other aisles, and every once in a while she could see the flicker of his light as he checked the tags on the hard metal shelves.
She couldn’t hear Morten or Oskar, but they had been told to stay back near the exit of the building, hidden in the shadows. She cut over an aisle and once again checked the numbers.
RIJ522, RIJ523, RIJ524.
Almost, she thought.
She was in the correct aisle. The number Halvard had given her was RMN643. The entire aisle seemed to be the same first letter. The next two letters denoted sections of the aisle, and the numbers were for the shelves and the actual items they housed.
She sped up, still stepping lightly and straining to hear in the dark.
She stopped and cranked the metal arm on her light to check the shelf numbers. RQR246. She had overshot her target.
She turned in the dark and stopped, certain she had heard a small shuffling noise on the dusty concrete floor. Straining her ears in the dark and hearing only the thrumming of her own blood pounding through her veins, she stepped to the side of the aisle, leaning into the heavy shelving unit.
She paused, keeping perfectly still.
Two aisles away and much further back toward the door, she saw Ulrik’s brilliant blue-white light flicker on and off. He was too far to have made the scuffling noise she had heard.
A rat, she thought. This place must house many.
But in her heart she knew it was something else. Moving on instinct, she slid sideways along the shelf, feeling the metal crate behind her back. All the boxes were roughly the same size—four feet wide by three deep and two tall. The shelves had been stacked in an orderly fashion, with a foot and a half of space between each crate and the upright metal support posts. Val felt her way in the dark to one of these empty spaces, pulling herself up in a chest high gap.
The sturdy old shelf did not move, and it made no creaking noises as she climbed into it. She paused, listening for another sound, but hearing nothing.
Then she moved again, feeling her way to the shelf’s edge and pulling herself up onto the next shelf. Then another and another, until she was close to the building’s ceiling. After another brief pause, she moved back up the aisle, walking on the tops of the crates and then paused, listening again.
From her new vantage point, she could see Ulrik when he flicked his light on, and she used the brief flash of brilliance to scan her own aisle twenty-five feet below her.
When she was sure she was alone, she placed her flashlight inside her leather jacket to muffle the sound of its crank arm. She cranked it three times, then withdrew the device, not yet switching it on. She leaned over onto her stomach and out past the front edge of the shelf. Then she slowly pulled her black shirt out of the front of her pants, and stretched the fabric over the light. Squirming forward on the hard metal shelf, she felt for the metal number tag with her fingers. When she had it, she placed the light close to it, and lifted her T-shirt slightly off the light. She leaned her head close. It wouldn’t block all the light, but it would reduce some of it.
RMN648.
As soon as the light flicked out, she breathed in and held her breath. She heard a noise far across the warehouse, but it was most likely Oskar or Morten. She noticed Ulrik’s light was no longer flicking on and off.
Has he heard something, as well?
She stayed motionless on the shelf while she calculated how many levels down she would need to climb to reach her target. Then she waited longer, hoping to hear that shuffling scrape yet again, but knowing she wouldn’t.
Damn you, Anders, what happened to you? Why did you not return?
She climbed down in the dark, lowering herself shelf after shelf and pausing on each to listen for movement.
When she reached the correct shelf she waited again, counting down the seconds. Then she repeated her trick with the light, first muting the sound of the crank handle in her jacket, and then diminishing the glow of the beam with the fabric of her shirt.
RMN643
.
At last, she thought.
She had seen the latches on the metal crates near the front of the long warehouse, and feeling in the dark, she let her fingers walk across the cold metal surface to them. They had buckles with a thin bit of wire on them, and the wire had been sealed with a thick glob of clay-like metal. Some of the propane cages they had found on the road had been similarly sealed. She knew that she could twist the rough textured glob, and eventually the thin wire would snap under the torsion.
The tips of her fingers grazed the glob on one buckle and she paused, once again listening for the phantom sound in the blackness. When no noise assaulted her senses, she quickly twisted the metal until the wire snapped. She felt it go under her fingers, but the break made no sound. Then her hand slid across the case to the other buckle, and she was pleasantly surprised to discover there was no wire present on it.
She took a deep breath in. Then she crouched over the case, holding the unfinished metal surface of the shelf above her head with one hand, while she unfastened the buckles and raised the lid of the case with her other hand. There wasn’t enough clearance for her to raise the lid the whole way, so she propped it open with her elbow, while pulling out her flashlight again. With no free hand, she pressed the metal of the device’s lever against her thigh and managed an awkward half crank.
Good enough for a look.
Flicking the light on and popping her elbow upward to raise the lid further, she peered inside the crate.
Inside was the metal part—a slick, perfectly machined wheel with ridges and a dark black square hole in the center. The part was resting in blue foam padding.
Val smiled.
She turned off the light, lowered the lid and waited in the dark for the sound once more. Certain she was alone now, she put the flashlight in an inside pocket, then climbed down the three shelves to the ground. When she reached the concrete floor, she took the flashlight out again, and she gave it a few silenced cranks.
Viking Tomorrow (The Berserker Saga Book 1) Page 26