by Glynn James
At least it’s not trying to pull the junk away, he thought. Count your blessings.
The only thing I can do is wait it out. Sit here, as quiet as possible, and it should forget I’m even here. If not, maybe I’ll manage to fall asleep. It doesn’t look like the thing will be able to get in here and eat me, so may as well just wait it out. Of course, that doesn’t help with keeping up. The trail will go cold if I’m here too long. If the rain hasn’t already washed away any signs of passage.
So what is Mr Clicky? he wondered, peering out into the darkness outside, at the strange creature sitting watch over him. Some kind of beetle? Had to be. Like a woodlouse but evolved beyond anything else he’d ever seen. It was huge.
The bugs he had been warned about. It had to be one of those. But the thing was huge. He’d seen bugs like it in the Outer Zone ruins, but they were tiny, no bigger than a fingernail. Was this thing one of those, mutated beyond all possibility?
He’d managed three days on foot, crawling over piles of trash, through tunnels that had formed accidentally when large chunks of junk were dropped on top of more junk, and then, when he did find paths through the debris, he was able to make some real ground. But open space was uncommon and it was mostly piles of trash that shifted under him when he tried to climb over it. The paths in between the mounds of junk were often the only way to travel at any kind of speed.
The salvage crews would go mad for some of the stuff he had seen in that time. Tyler would go nuts.
But the ones he was following seemed to be heading along a route that he suspected they might have used before. The ground looked well-trodden in a lot of places, the trash compacted from boots walking over it maybe hundreds of times. At least he’d thought that. But then, for no apparent reason, the tracks would go right over the top of one of the piles of junk. And that really didn’t make sense if you could go around.
He’d watched them, the first night, from an alcove underneath an old overturned truck. And they hadn’t seen him, he thought. They hadn’t noticed him watching their movements. There were at least a dozen of them, and they appeared to be human, though it was a little difficult to tell with some of them.
Junkers.
They camped up inside a huge broken pipe. He had no clue what the pipe was used for originally, but it was easily ten feet across inside. The Junkers built a fire and huddled away from the rain and the wind that seemed to have picked up the hour before they made camp. And so Jack hid inside the back of the overturned truck and watched them through a tiny gap in a side panel.
And he watched and listened.
And now he was probably miles behind them, worrying about whether he would be able to pick up their trail again, and thinking that they would be long gone. If he was stuck out here, with no tracks to follow, he would die.
I can’t sit here. I need to come up with an escape route.
But then he looked through the tiny gap he had crawled through, straight into the face of the clicking monstrosity.
Damn thing is watching me.
He looked around once more, having searched the tiny alcove a dozen times already. Bricks and some broken, rotten wood held up the compacted ceiling on one side, and more crushed metal the other, leaving a cavity that was not much bigger than him. There was nothing to use against the creature. If he’d had distance on the thing he could maybe try throwing stuff at it, but he’d seen the shell on its back and figured that bricks would be no good to him. They’d just bounce right off as the thing trundled towards him.
And you don’t even know how fast it can move. If it’s anything like the bugs that were sometimes uncovered when you were scavenging in the Outer Zone, it could probably run over all this junk and be on you in seconds.
He picked up the nearest chunk of masonry and banged it down onto the point of his metal pole. The pole already had a wicked-looking point on the end, which would serve well if he had to fight something human and fleshy, that could be pierced and stuck with it, but the damn bug was spear-proof.
You already tested that several times, and Mr Clicky nearly yanked it out of your hands.
“Why don’t you go bug someone else?” he said aloud, though with the noise of the rain hammering down he doubted if even a human could have heard him. But the bug probably would. If it had ears.
But the creature responded anyway, clicking away with its mandibles and jittering. Then it hammered on a large chunk of rock that blocked one side of the entrance. It seemed frustrated.
You and me both, Jack thought.
Then the creature hammered again, and this time the rock shifted.
Jack jumped back, nearly panicking. There seemed to be a pause in the bug’s activity as it calculated what had just happened, somehow understanding that what it had done had actually worked.
And then it hammered again. The rock shifted, though not as much as it had done the first time, but it was enough to excite Mr Clicky out there. The creature reared up, heaving two sets of front legs onto the rock and started banging harder, chirping angrily as it did so, furiously trying to rip away at what was keeping it from its dinner.
Jack grabbed at his sharp pole, noticing now that as Mr Clicky reared up and hit the rock, it exposed the underside of its belly. That area was still plated, but if he timed it right he may be able to jab it in one of its joints.
He waited, aiming the point of the spear through the hole, just a couple of feet away from the angry bug. Then it reared up once more, about to hit the rock with as much force as it could muster.
As it did so, Jack stabbed outwards, aiming for the area at the edge of the belly plate, where it met the creature’s front legs. He felt the end of the spear hit something hard and cursed as the shock went through his arm, the spear vibrating with the impact.
He cursed again, hauling the spear back into the hole, and watched as the creature tumbled backwards, vanishing from the ledge just outside his hidey hole. There was a clatter and a shriek that pierced his ears and made his head throb.
Then silence.
He waited for the creature to reappear, and he was sure that it would. As sure as he was that he was going to die inside that nook, under the fallen building and the dilapidated vehicle.
But you took the chance, didn’t you? When she offered you the chance to run, to go after the hope that you might find Ryan, you took it and ran.
He’d been standing there, he remembered, staring at the stick men scrawled all over the wall when the voice from behind startled him.
“He was here, wasn’t he?” she’d said, and Jack had jumped and then turned to see the troop officer standing in the archway that led back out into the bright sunlight and out of the workhouse. He had stammered to say something but nothing came out.
“You were looking for a boy,” she said, staring straight at him. She’d removed her helmet and held it at her waist, and Jack had seen the insignia on her shoulder and the coloured stripes. The officer continued to stare at him, and now he realised, almost inexplicably, that it was the same trooper that had stood at the back of the armoured vehicle when he had surrendered all those months ago in the Outer Zone.
The same woman.
She stood looking at him, expecting an answer.
“Yes,” he said. “He was here.”
He glanced back at the pictures on the wall behind him and then back to her. She was peering at them, and Jack saw what he thought was recognition of some kind.
“He drew those?” she asked.
Jack nodded. There was no mistaking the boy’s drawings. Even though they were stickmen, they had a certain unique style to them that brought them to life. He’d recognise them anywhere. He’d sat staring painfully at the pictures in the back of his magazine for months.
“Yes,” he said, finally.
Then she’d looked away from the pictures and her glance shifted to behind him, to the wide open hole in the side of the building that looked out onto the panorama of junk mountains, stretching out into the distance
for as far as was visible.
“If he was here,” she said. “Then the Junkers took him out there.”
Jack turned and looked out into the distance.
But where out there? The land was an endless sprawl of trash and rubble.
The officer turned away and walked over to the balcony facing into the facility. “Do you see out there, where there is a pinnacle of rock jutting upwards? About five miles from here, through the canyon of trash,” she said.
Jack looked out and searched for the pinnacle and eventually spotted it.
“There’s a collapsed building lying against it. Do you see that?” she said, still not turning to face him, and still looking at the interior of the Picking Factory, where right now the crews were climbing into their trucks for a break. Where he would be expected.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Well, we were out that way just a few days ago, while we were scoping this place and making sure it was safe to send you guys in to reclaim everything.” She turned now, and leaned against the railing, looking straight at him. “That was where we found the most recent signs of Junker movement.”
Why was she telling him this? It was no business of his. But still, he’d looked back out towards the pinnacle of rock and the collapsed building that was leaning against it. For a brief moment he wondered how long the building had been there, but then brushed it aside as trivial.
“If someone wanted to find the Junkers, I think that’s where they would have to start, don’t you?” said the female officer.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack said.
“Hmm,” she said, and pushed away from the railing, turning to face the stairwell. “If someone wanted to go out there and look, they could do that, if they went soon. I’m the only guard on this stretch of the wall, and I’m about to go grab something to eat and change shift with another trooper. It’s very bad practice to leave a wall unmanned and unguarded, but there’s no threat nearby at the moment, and the drones are currently a long way from here. And I don’t think I saw anyone up here. The whole crew is down there, taking a break for a while.”
Jack had felt his heart thumping in his chest. He’d need supplies, but knew he couldn’t go and fetch them. He would have to survive with what he already carried and find what he needed out there. He had his pack with him, on his back. It had some things in it, but not much. There was some food, enough for a few days, maybe.
You’ve done it before, he’d thought. You’ve started from scratch before a number of times and you always managed to get by.
When he was a mile from the facility, he’d looked back as he stopped on top of a pile of metal sheets that would have been a goldmine of a find to one of the crews. His chest was heaving with exertion.
And she had been back there again – the officer – even though she’d walked off and left him to make his choice – run or stay. She’d gone back up onto the wall to watch him go.
You know, she probably watched you the whole way, he’d thought. Watched you running across the open ground and then into the trash. Maybe she had a hand on her rifle, wondering as you got further and further away if she had made a mistake. She could have stopped it right then but didn’t. And you would never have known it was coming because you didn’t look back, not even once.
Jack sat inside the nook, under the huge rock, and wondered why the officer had let him go. She didn’t have to, and it would have got her in a lot of trouble if she’d been caught. Then he wondered how she had ended up out in the Junklands. She’d been one of the Hunters in the Outer Zone just weeks before.
And then he noticed that Mr Clicky hadn’t climbed back up onto the ledge.
And Further Into Nowhere
Jack strained to listen. The bug was shifting around down there, or something was. He could hear it clattering against the rocks and the trash, rattling noises erupting every few seconds. The noises seemed to be getting more frantic, he thought. The thing was still moving and still there, but it wasn’t climbing back up onto the ledge to pester him.
Do I go out? He wondered. Do I risk it?
He tried to peer over the edge, but from his hidey hole all he could see was the end of the ledge, and it was easily twenty feet down to the ground from there. He couldn’t picture if it was steep or sloped.
The creature shrieked, and Jack heard it clicking its claws together, most definitely alive. But still he grabbed his spear from where it had landed on the floor nearby, crawled forward through the gap, and slowly made his way to the ledge, breathing deeply as his nerves crackled.
Damn thing is waiting for you to come out, he thought, as he stood halfway between the bolt hole and the edge. So he waited a minute longer, listening to the thing shrieking, unsure whether to go forward or try to make a run for it without even checking what was slowing Mr Clicky down.
Yet it doesn’t sound as near as you first thought, does it? Sounds like it’s down on the ground.
Jack took the last few steps and tentatively peered over the edge, spear pointed out in front of him, expecting the bug to jump him at any moment.
But it didn’t attack, and he could see why. Below him, the crumbled rock and rotten wood was sloped down to the ground to the path that he had been following through the junk. And there, smack in the middle of the path, lying on its back and wriggling around furiously, was Mr Clicky.
Jack laughed, and started to climb down the slope, all caution now gone. The stupid thing was wedged in. It had fallen off the ledge when he had hit it and then tumbled down into the path and wedged itself between the junk. And it was on its back, belly exposed to the sky as it thrashed around with frustration.
As Jack approached, the creature’s shrieking intensified, and it tried to kick its legs and right itself, but he could see that it wasn’t going anywhere.
He looked down at it, wondering if he could stick it with his spear and remove the problem, but decided against it. The thing could become dislodged and come at him again, and then he’d be right back where he was before, hiding in the hole.
Jack left the creature, jumped down onto the path and moved away as quickly as he could. He’d been hours stuck in that damn hole, and he was more than likely a long way behind the Junkers he’d been following.
But how long had it actually been? You were stuck there for quite a while and the Junkers would surely have kept moving, unless they camped up near here or their destination wasn’t far away.
Only one way to find out, he told himself. Get moving again.
He looked behind him, through the gap in the junk piles, and in the distance, a long way off, he could still make out the vague outline of the pinnacle of rock and the fallen building, highlighted in the moonlight. It was what? Thirty miles behind him now? Maybe only twenty, it was difficult to judge. But after nearly being caught by the Junkers that first night, before he’d even reached the pinnacle, he’d followed them all this way until Mr Clicky slowed him down.
But to where? They had to be going somewhere. Unless they were nomadic? They could be. Back in the Outer Zone there had been the Scavs, nomads who stayed in one place for a short amount of time before moving on. Maybe the Junkers were like that? He had no way of knowing, but what he did know was that they had taken over two hundred people from the Picking Factory, and those people had to be somewhere out here. And Ryan with them.
And he also now knew that Junkers were most definitely not like the Night Ones.
He moved quickly through the junk piles, picking up the trail where he had left off, and was surprised that he was able to do that. He’d expected the rain to wash away most of the signs of passage, but there were still things to be spotted if you were someone able to notice the small details – a rusty pot that had fallen from a pile of junk, its clean underside shining in the sun. A muddy boot-print, filled with rain water, or a cast-off bone from some dead animal, the few remaining shreds of meat not yet rotten. All of these things told him a story of passage that someone less attentive to detail would
surely miss. It was enough for him to pick the trail up once more.
As the sun rose, slowly lighting up the hills of trash with a metallic shine, following the trail became easier. Darkness had hidden a lot of things he would otherwise miss. But with the light, the blistering heat returned.
The rusty pot was clean enough on the inside to be used to scoop up some of the rain water, and Jack drank deeply as he continued to walk, wishing that he had something to catch more rain in as the day went on. The sun was relentless, glaring down and heating up any metal lying around, and a number of times he touched something only to pull his hand away in surprise at how hot it was.
The water from the downpour was gradually vanishing in the heat. Small wafts of steam rose from the ground, but as hard as Jack searched, following the trail, there was nothing discarded in the junk that looked like it would hold water other than the rusty pot.
At least I can keep that full, he thought, but every time he found a pool of water in the dirt, or a piece of junk that had retained some of the downpour, he drank it all. There just wasn’t enough.
As nightfall came again, he looked up at the walls of junk and tried to figure out where to camp up, where to hide from more bugs while at the same time avoid being spotted by any Junkers that may come by. He had to presume that the Junkers probably sent out patrols and the group he had been following was just that. And if there was one patrol there would be more. Of course there would be more. As for bugs, he had only met Mr Clicky so far, but he was sure there must be many more around. He had to hide before sleeping.
He eyed the hill of rubble and trash he stood at the foot of, looking for potential hazards, things that might collapse and avalanche down into the path. He saw none, so he made the slow climb up the junk to the summit. It was a hundred feet of hard climbing, and there seemed to be few footholds that would stay still for very long, everything shifting and sliding under his weight, but eventually he hauled himself up to the top and peered out over the landscape.
Still more endless junk. Miles and miles of it.