The Fly-By-Nights (6 page)

Half of the column was clustered close to the big building; the other half, under Big Jon Lamon’s personal direction, had moved on to another tall but badly damaged edifice close by.

In a little while, when Garth heard Ned Singer’s bull voice calling his seek-and-destroy squad to disembark, he was at once on his feet and out through the open side of the trundle, using his bike as an aid in climbing down. Hurrying around to the far side of the vehicle, he approached Singer where he stood elevated on a pile of rubble, with his heavy multi-barreled machine-gun cradled in both brawny arms.

Singer fondled the blued-steel side of his ugly weapon like a favourite child, and when his squad was accounted for he told them: “Whatever else you do when we’re inside, don’t anyone get in front of this gun! When this beast of mine is on heat it can cut down trees, knock holes in walls, and blow anything living, dead or undead straight to hell!”

Then, looking from face to face, he addressed each man individually: first Billy Martin. “Billy, how old are you?”

“Nineteen,” that one answered.

“And how many kills?”

“Seven, most of ’em scavenging with you, when we worked out of the Southern Refuge.”

Singer nodded. “So you know a thing or two about going into places like this: the dangers that may be lurking in dark corners? All right, I won’t worry about you.”

He moved on. “And you fellows: Dan Coulter, Peder Halbstein and Eric Davis. Oh, I think I know you three pretty well: married men, all three of you, with wives and families. Too much to lose in general; nothing wild about you fellows; steady as they come, and I trust you.”

Singer turned his narrow-eyed gaze on Garth. “Then there’s the young one: the son of a fighting cock, and maybe as wild as his father was—well, in his time. Also, it’s not too unlikely that ‘cock’ is the right word for him: him being so very young, and all his sap starting to rise. Ah, but it appears that certain juicy young girls prefer grown men, eh, ’prentice Slattery? As for me,
I
still prefer to think of such as you as a pup!”

Before Garth could reply, if he would, Singer went on: “You can stick close to me, at least close enough that I can keep an eye on you.” And then ignoring the youth, glancing this way and that along the column where the folk of the clan were disembarking now, stretching their limbs, easing their cramps and keeping to the shade, Singer continued: “Now then, where’s gangling Garry Maxwell and his sniffers, eh? Ah, here he comes now.”

A tall thin man, with a pair of equally lean hounds on long leather leashes, came hurrying, almost running, from one of the animal trundles further along the vehicle chain. Garth, finding himself wondering who was in charge—Maxwell over his dogs or the dogs over Maxwell—had to smile. But in fact this emaciated, almost skeletal man knew exactly what he was doing, and so did his dogs. When Maxwell dug his heels in, dragging them to a strangled halt and throwing down a rag of disintegrating cloth, the hounds immediately quit snuffling at some unguessable trail and turned on the rag in a coughing, snarling fury.

Maxwell let them play tug-o’-war briefly, finally slapping their noses and retrieving his rag. “Fly-by-night clothin’,” he informed unnecessarily, “from a dead ’un. Or p’raps I should say from one with no life
of any sort
left in ’im! It lets the dogs know what us and them’s a-doin’ ’ere, and gets ’em all keyed up for it.” Then, turning to Singer: “Ned, if you and one o’ yours will be watchin’ my back, me and these lads o’ mine is ready.”

“All right then,” said Singer, jumping down from his rubble platform. “Let’s get it done, the place cleaned out, emptied of scum—if there’s any in there—and these folks safely inside before the sun gets up any higher and a whole lot hotter!”

There were two other such teams, and two other dog-handlers with canine charges, but all of these had moved on with Big Jon Lamon to the mainly ruined church close by; for Garth had heard people talking, and that was what they had been calling it. And now that he thought about it, he recalled seeing pictures of an ivied, very peaceful looking place—a church, of course—that had looked just like the broken hulk in its overgrown grounds a rubble-heaped block away: pictures in a crumbling old volume in the Southern Refuge’s so-called library. The sole difference being that the one in the book had been complete and had featured a tall spike at the front, something called a steeple.

Garth and his curiosity, his almost unquenchable thirst for knowledge; he had read or at least skimmed through almost every volume the Southern Refuge had to offer…perhaps thirty? And what he’d read had always left him feeling trapped in the world of the refuge. However vast, that subterranean labyrinth, with its two and a half miles of workplaces and galleries, halls and “homes” (little more than one- or two-room caves in fact), still as a child Garth had been familiar with every inch of the veritable warren, roaming free after school hours at least until his Old Man finished his shift in the sorting bays, where the scavs dumped the often precious salvage retrieved from dead towns and hamlets “outside.”

But…that was then and this was now, and
right
now Garth must concentrate his mind on the present: on this (to him) incredibly huge concrete building they were about to enter.

First Garry Maxwell and his dogs, followed close behind by Ned Singer on one side and Garth on the other, with the remaining members of the squad bringing up the rear. Once inside this place—after the dogs had signaled the all clear, or perhaps not?—they would split up into three two-man teams, when Garth would remain paired with Singer. So perhaps it was as well that Maxwell would stay with them, under Singer’s direction.

The building, for all its size, had just two entrances—or rather, one entrance and one exit: both vastly gaping apertures with weed- and bramble-grown concrete ramps some ten feet wide. The nearest such opening still bore a metal sign swinging overhead on a thread of rusted iron which once was a screw. Most of the white paint had long since flaked from the sign’s centuried legend, whose embossed letters could still be seen to read: 

MUNICIPAL CAR PARK

Mainly uneducated and dull-minded even by refuge standards, Ned Singer was muttering darkly to himself as he and Garth followed Maxwell and his dogs in under the sign:

“They used to leave their cars here?” Ned was puzzled. “Why so regimental, when they had a whole world of space? Why didn’t they leave them at home, at their houses? And look: there isn’t a single car in sight! Given facilities like these, didn’t they have sense enough to use them?”

Garth knew he shouldn’t say anything, but did anyway. “This place must have been for the use of people who drove into town. They would park their cars here before going to their places of work…or to carry out whatever tasks they were here for.”

“Really?” Singer sneered. “You know that for a fact then?”

“No, but it seems logical.”

“Then why are there no cars here? Or is that a part of your logic too, ’prentice?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact it is,” Garth answered. “It’s because the bombs fell at night, when the people
were
at home…”

Singer thought about that for a moment, then muttered, “You and your fucking ‘education!’ A schoolboy, eh? Well I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times
I
attended classes!” He actually seemed proud of that fact.

“Ho lads!” Garry Maxwell yelled out loud to his dogs. “’Ere we goes! And you people back there—guns at the ready, if you please, but for fuck’s sake watch where you’re aimin’ ’em!”

Scowling across at Garth, Singer patted his ugly weapon and said, “The only education a man needed back at the refuge—or at any refuge for that matter—was how to load and fire one of these big fellows. That, and perhaps how to scav for good stuff among all the rubble. Those few things, and how to destroy fly-by-nights and blow them to fucking pieces, is all that was ever needed: the wisdom of
my
Old Man, who was a scav before me! And he was right. The only thing he got wrong: he thought he was invincible; he ignored his radiation badge’s warnings, went where invisible fires were burning still, till in the end they burned him, too…” Though he talked hard, Singer’s voice was somewhat hushed, growing quieter still as he finished up:

“On the day they buried him—buried my father’s body, and oh so deep—it was still making their radiation counters tick like a roomful of crazy clocks! The hard, heavy-handed old bastard…!”

They were a quarter of the way down the long hall, where on both sides the floor was divided into empty bays whose markings were here and there barely visible under layers of light debris and blown dust. The four members of the other teams paired off, climbing ramps to the higher levels. The place was ominously quiet now, a silence where even the softest footfall was clearly audible, while the snuffling of the dogs straining on their leashes came echoing back from the looming walls like the slobbering of primal beasts…

Behind them the pale dawn light from the entrance was gradually diminishing…ahead, their forward-leaning shadows were dimming with each step that took them deeper into the darkness. “Careful now,” said Ned Singer quietly. “Softly softly catchee monkey!”

“Monkey?” Garth whispered.

“Some old saying I got from my Old Man,” the other replied, yet more quietly. “Said he got it from his father.”

Now, almost halfway down the vast windowless gallery, with the narrow, yellow beams of their torches probing the deepening gloom, the grey, concrete bulk of another up ramp abruptly appeared and blocked the view ahead. In the same moment the hounds commenced to whine and skitter a little, no longer straining on their leashes; and as the team skirted the foot of the ramp and moved toward the utter darkness beyond it, so Maxwell’s charges halted and backed off stiff-legged. Then:

“Whoah, now!” Maxwell’s throaty, quavering warning sounded. “Take a look at my not-so-brave lads here, will you? Tails down, they don’t want to proceed; they’ve sniffed out somethin’ nasty just around this ramp on the dark side. See how they hang back? Oh, they enjoys to track the fly-by-nights, but they also knows when to quit and back off. Well, you may call ’em cowards if you like, but to my way o’ thinkin’ their behaviour says
we
are the ones that should be scared…
and I
bloody well am!
So now you gents, if you’d care to take over from me and the dogs…” With which he quickly slipped back between Singer and Garth, letting the dogs whimper and whine where they huddled to his long legs.

“Fingers on triggers, but gently!” Singer growled, clipping his torch to the stock of his big weapon. Easing forward, Garth followed suit…but only a moment later somehow found himself in the lead position and first around the corner! Nerves jumping and scarcely breathing—if at all—he jerked his torch’s beam here, there, and everywhere, slicing criss-crossing light paths through the sentient darkness, paths far too fleeting in their passing for Garth to identify anything. But still his eyes were starting out, as he vainly attempted to penetrate the cobwebbed gloom of that awful corner, and his spine tingling as he sensed the almost physical
weight
of Ned Singer’s presence just a pace or two behind him.

But at last—in only a matter of seconds despite that each second felt like a minute—he began to make out certain shapes and outlines on the floor. A jumble of rubbish: old bedding and other
stuff
piled in a tangled white heap…
and
sudden motion!
A rat went scurrying…and another! But Garth had squeezed his trigger one split second after seeing or sensing movement—or at least he’d
tried
to—only to find his action blocked! Like a frightened novice, and unaccustomed with his father’s weapon, he had neglected to release the safety catch! And now, silently cursing himself for an utter fool, he withdrew a trembling finger from the trigger guard, freed the safety catch, and finally…
finally
began to breathe again, albeit shakily.

While from behind, almost in Garth’s ear: “Well, it appears I should grant you this much at least, ’prentice Slattery,” Ned Singer begrudgingly panted, his breath coming in short, shivery gasps. “For a mere pup you’ve learned fast!…Learned to save your shells and stay cool in a queer situation! If I’d been in front…why, it’s not at all unlikely there’d be rodent blood and…and
bodies
all over the floor! That’s a pat on the back for you ’prentice, but don’t you go bragging about it!”

Surprised, startled for a moment—until the truth sank in —Garth thought,
So: more concerned for himself Ned failed to notice my error. Good, else for sure I’d be in for another dressing down! As for all his “pat on the back” waffle: that’s just so much empty flattery—a cover to hide or disguise his own fear—because he’s no less shaken than me!
(Or perhaps not, but
it salved Garth’s conscience to consider it so…)

Now that both Garth and Singer were directing their torch beams into the unquiet corner, the mess on the floor was more clearly revealed. Coughing his disgust, Singer called for Garry Maxwell to come forward with his dogs: