All Roads End Here Page 8

  Nothing to lose.

  If Matt’s objective this morning is to get to know the camp better, then this seems the logical way of doing it. He joins the back of the line and is inside the building in no time at all. The shade is a relief but the sudden change in brightness and the multidirectional movement indoors makes it difficult for him to see. A woman manning one of several barriers starts asking questions, and for a second Matt doesn’t even realize it’s him she’s talking to. “I said what’s your name? Come on, I haven’t got all day.”

  I bet you have, he thinks but doesn’t say. Instead he gives her his name and the frazzled-looking woman consults an ancient-looking laptop. She waits, taps a few more keys, scowls, waits a little longer, then looks up again.

  “You physically fit?”

  “In my prime,” he says. He’s being sarcastic, but it also happens to be true. He’s in the best physical condition he’s been in a long time as a result of his prolonged stay out in the wilderness.

  “Whatever,” she grunts, unimpressed. “Any military or security experience?”

  “None.”

  “Any medical training?”

  “Nope.

  “Any problems with manual handling?”

  “No, nothing.”

  She hands him a card with his name and the date and time written on. “Take this through there,” she tells him, and he does as he’s told. He’s fascinated by the limited information on the card (I didn’t even know it was Thursday today. Who knew it was May already?) and he allows himself to go with the flow.

  The main part of the school building is a lofty atrium, three stories high. Large glass sections in the roof let the open space flood with natural light, and the size of the atrium makes the combined sound of hundreds of people dissipate to a bearable level.

  There are numerous chunky tables and benches laid out in lines filling the center of the floor space, each of them manned by exhausted-looking administrators where previously there would have been kids eating, studying, and socializing. There are belt barriers like he remembers from banks and stores and airport security lines controlling the flow and funneling people. While he’s waiting in line he tries to work out the lay of the land. There’s an increased military presence here but no immediately visible threat, and the school’s in close proximity to both the military hub and the main food distribution point. Soldiers block the wide staircases on either side, carefully controlling the access to the higher levels. Matt doesn’t know what you need to have on your card to get you upstairs, but he’s damn sure his basic credentials won’t wash. He’s connecting the dots when the guy behind him (who’s clearly picked up on the fact that Matt’s been gawping for some time now) confirms his suspicions. “I know, right?” he whispers. “Makes you sick, don’t it?”

  “Does it?”

  “Top-floor fuckers. How the other half live, eh? Doesn’t matter how shitty things get, there’s always someone ready to cream off the rewards while ordinary folk like you and me suffer.”

  “Sorry, I’ve not been here long…”

  “Give ’em a fucking badge and they think it makes them more important than you. The chiefs are up there, for all the frigging good they’re doing. No mixing with the likes of us.”

  “Nothing changes, eh?” Matt says, trying to keep a lid on the other man’s barely contained contempt.

  “Frigging Jenna Holbrook. I’ve never even seen her. Wouldn’t know what she even looks like, if she even exists.”

  “Who?”

  “Boss lady,” he says, pointing upstairs. Matt vaguely remembers the name from the leaflet he was given when he first arrived at the camp.

  “Ah, right.”

  “Bet she don’t have to get her hands dirty just to get fed.”

  Matt’s relieved when someone else starts shouting at him. “Next. Come on, for Christ’s sake, there are people waiting.”

  The bloke behind shoves Matt toward an official sitting at one of the tables. He hands Matt a paper form.

  “What’s this?”

  “A disclaimer. Sign it.” He gives Matt a pen.

  It’s a side and a half of fine print. “Can I read it first?”

  “Let me paraphrase, save us all the bother. You want food. Work needs doing. You do the work, you get fed. If anything happens and you get hurt or worse, tough shit.”

  “And if I don’t sign?”

  “You don’t work and you don’t eat.”

  “Come on, man, get a bloody move on,” the guy behind Matt says. “What’s the worst that can happen? We’re all fucked already!”

  Matt signs and passes the form back. “Don’t know why you’re bothering. Not like I’m going to sue you or anything.”

  “Just a precaution,” the man behind the desk says with an insincere grin. “You never know what’s ’round the corner these days. Give me your card.”

  Matt hands his card over and the official stamps it and gestures over toward the far right corner of the massive room. The maze of belt barriers forces him to go in that direction. It’s either that or back out to join the sunburned food queues.

  * * *

  The door leads outside to a fenced-off sloping path which, in turn, takes Matt toward a compound about half a mile from the school. The only people walking this route are those who are heading out to work. He realizes where he is when he gets near. This was a council depot—a waste disposal and household recycling site. As he approaches he becomes aware of engine noise. Garbage trucks. A whole bloody fleet of them. He relaxes, because a day collecting rubbish from the overcrowded streets doesn’t sound too taxing. He thinks he might have stumbled on a decent enough way to earn a crust and see the sights.

  A woman at a gate takes his card from him. “You get it back when you leave,” she explains. “Exchange it for food at the arena.”

  “So I still have to queue up?”

  “Yeah, but it’s a special queue for workers,” she says, and he can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or sincere.

  Matt’s bunched up with twenty or so other people. They’re counted out in fives and sixes. He’s number three of five—four men and one woman—and his group is sent over to a rumbling old truck on the far side of the depot. There’s a grimy-looking guy wearing a high-vis jacket hunched behind the wheel. “You’re covering B29 this morning, Smithy,” the driver’s told. Smithy gestures for the nearest two volunteers to join him up in the cab. Matt and the others are told to climb up and hold on to the back.

  Matt doesn’t have a clue what he’s supposed to be doing here and he watches the others for cues. The lone woman hangs on to the side of the truck next to him. She watches as he screws up his face at the stink and looks for handholds. “First time out?” she asks.

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “Picking up shit. It’s not difficult. You’ve seen the amount of rubbish around here, right? We just fill the truck and dump it. It’s not rocket science.”

  “So where do we dump it?”

  “Now that’s where the fun starts.”

  * * *

  The stench is awful. Some of this crap must have been lying here in the gutter since day one. Matt’s learned very quickly that there’s no point trying to stay clean. Another bag just split on him, and his trousers are soaked through with bin juice. The refuse has fermented and liquefied over time, and the unexpected heat of the last couple of days makes it a thousand times worse. There are flies and maggots everywhere.

  There’s a sizable fleet of these trucks operating around the city-camp. Other than the military they’re the only vehicles left on the roads, but even these massive machines struggle to get anywhere near the heart of the camp, such is the congestion along the impassable streets. The garbage patrols tend to busy themselves around the outskirts. Every pile of crap we shift is a pile less to worry about, says driver and crew manager Smithy, but it’s clear this is little more than
a token gesture. They’re barely scratching the surface.

  It didn’t take a genius to work out where the rubbish was going to be dumped, but by the time Matt realized, it was too late to bail out. Smithy drives them to a checkpoint on the recently redefined city boundary and waits for a signal. Still hanging on to the back of the truck, arms aching, Matt starts to think maybe Jason had the right idea after all.

  There’s relative silence out here on the border: far fewer people, and just the clattering rumble of the garbage truck’s engine and the buzz of mostly autonomous air traffic disturbing the quiet. The only people Matt can see are CDF. There are spotters on the roofs of empty buildings, watching the wastelands. Another soldier is sitting in the back of a canvas-covered jeep, controlling the drone that’s circling overhead like a supersized fly ready to gorge on the refuse they’re about to dump. The drone flies one last high-speed loop, racing out beyond the city then hurtling back again, then the buzz and crackle of static from Smithy’s radio signifies that they’ve been given the signal. He puts his foot down and drives at speed. Matt and the others hold on for dear life.

  Matt initially assumed that the refugee camp had been based around the geographical center of the city, but that’s not the case. Though its built-up urban heart is a definite part of the vast, walled-in space, the bulk of the camp covers an area largely to the southwest of town which was predominantly residential. The exit they’re using is at a point near the southernmost tip of the encampment, and they have a military escort for this part of the journey. Another jeep takes the lead, flanked on either side by bikers, with two more jeeps bringing up the rear. They follow what used to be one of the major routes out of town, then take a sudden diversion. Smithy follows the military across a track carved diagonally through the center of a football pitch, then down an improvised slope leading into a tunnel Matt didn’t know was here, a remnant of the city’s industrial past when railways and waterways connected this place to everywhere else. He must have driven over the top of it a hundred times but never realized. It’s suddenly pitch black, and the combined noise of six straining engines echoes and reverberates. A short climb and the convoy bursts back out into the light. The safety of the camp is long gone. Now they’re right in the heart of No Man’s Land.

  What the fuck have I done?

  After struggling for so long to get home, Matt can’t believe he’s already outside the city again. He knew this area reasonably well. Kings Oak. It was a pretty unremarkable place with street after street after street of council houses thrown up after the end of World War II. Now, decades later, the surroundings have been pounded by a second blitzkrieg, and the sights Matt sees are eerily reminiscent of those he remembers from the history books he read at school. There’s not a single building left unscathed. There are the footprints of homes, and the occasional half-wall remains upright, but for the most part there’s just rubble and ruination. The scale of this destruction is astonishing, and it’s made all the more remarkable because he knows this is the result of friendly fire. The area has been intentionally leveled so that any Hater attack will be visible from a distance, and while that’s of some reassurance, it also makes him feel remarkably prone hanging off the back of this truck. Collateral damage is par for the course these days.

  He can’t see any, but he senses there are Haters nearby. He keeps his hands clamped viselike on the truck, because he knows the enemy is never far away. If he was on foot they’d be swarming over him like vultures in no time. Fuckers would rip him to pieces.

  Before he can ask how far out they’re going, the answer appears on the horizon. A mountain of debris rears up out of nowhere; a frozen tsunami of shite. The lack of any other landmarks makes the scale of the improvised landfill site they’re racing toward incalculable. Scavenging birds swoop and dive, feasting on the plentiful pickings with scant regard for any of the dangers which concern Matt and the others. There’s a heat-haze distorting his view, and Matt can see that parts of the heap are smoldering. Some sections are burning unchecked. He doesn’t suppose it matters. As they near, Matt realizes the gigantic mess isn’t as high as he initially thought, but it’s incredibly wide. Because there’s no specialist equipment other than the garbage trucks, the man-made mountain is spreading out, not growing up.

  The truck comes to a sudden, lurching halt in the grubby foothills. “You stay behind that wheel, Smithy,” Matt hears one of his colleagues warn their driver. “Don’t you move a fucking muscle.”

  Most of the rest of the crew have done this before, and Matt follows their lead. They disembark then stand back as Smithy reverses his cumbersome vehicle toward the landfill. And then, ponderously slowly, and with enough mechanical noise and hydraulic hissing to alert any Hater within a ten-mile radius, the machine starts to empty. In spite of the danger, Matt’s transfixed. It’s a bizarre sight, strangely hypnotic. The tailgate and lift bucket at the back of the truck rise up and the hydraulic tank is emptied. An enormous brick of refuse is pushed out, almost like the truck itself is evacuating its metal bowels. The amount of crap the crew managed to collect between them is astonishing. He wonders how many more times they’ll have to go through this routine today.

  All his earlier worries about the stink and about dirt and disease are long forgotten, because being out here in the wilderness like this, dangerously exposed, is more of a concern than any germ. As the others start to shift the rubbish they’ve dumped deeper into the site—a token gesture really—Matt feels a nervous, prickling fear born from the days, weeks, and months he spent out here alone. Right now he’s unprotected and distracted, and it feels wrong. This is a million miles removed from the measured, quiet, and stealthy approach which kept him alive before.

  The bottom falls out of a soggy cardboard box he’s carrying as he tries to chuck it on the landfill. Fortunately most of the contents are nonperishable, but as it hits the deck he notices little things: kid’s toys, ornaments, family photographs … how many hundreds of thousands of memories lie scattered here? It’s sobering. For a moment it’s almost overwhelming. “Keep moving,” one of the crew grunts and he barges Matt out of the way to get past. And though Matt does move, he sees something else that roots him to the spot with fear.

  The first Haters are here.

  The soldiers are aware. They form a protective perimeter around the civilians and Smithy revs the engine of the truck, making sure everyone’s alerted to the approaching threat. For a second Matt’s worried their driver is about to leave without them.

  Matt sees two Haters coming directly at the group. He can’t tell if the fastest of them is a man or a woman. Slim. Lithe. Muscular. Long hair whips wildly around its face. Arms and legs pump hard until a soldier’s single well-aimed bullet brings the killer crashing down.

  “Time to go, driver,” another one of the CDF fighters yells.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” Smithy yells back, but he’s not going anywhere just yet. He’s waiting for the tailgate of the truck to drop back down into position before the crew can board and get the hell away from here. It’s painfully slow.

  A second Hater gets closer than the first managed. This one, a teenage boy, is close enough that Matt can see the fury in his eyes before he too is brought down with a hail of bullets.

  Three more incoming.

  The next group approaches from over the top of the landfill. The fastest of them thunders down toward the truck and its crew. The Hater’s hunger for the kill is such that the closer he gets, the harder it is for him to coordinate his movements. Each heavy footstep causes mini-avalanches of rubbish to fall, threatening to turn into a single, grime-filled downward surge. Another round of automatic gunfire brings all three of the monsters crashing down the slope together. One of them rolls over and over, eventually coming to rest in a heap several meters in front of Smithy’s truck. But she’s not done for yet and despite the fact her legs are now useless, she reaches out and drags herself forward.

  The truck’s tailgate finally locks into
place with the long-overdue clunk of metal on metal and a satisfying hydraulic hiss of relief. Matt starts toward the vehicle but another man puts an arm out and holds him back. “Wait,” he warns, and Smithy slams the truck into gear and rolls it forward, crushing the pelvis of the Hater woman still writhing on the ground.

  “Right, now move,” the other man orders, and Matt jumps up onto the back of the vehicle. From his elevated position he can see even more Haters coming, racing across the wasteland. Most of them are still a fair distance away, but there are several dangerously close and more now approaching by car. A Hater woman is standing in front of the slow-moving garbage truck like she’s playing chicken, shimmying left and right. Distracted, she fails to notice the army jeep which drives right across the face of the advancing truck, instantly wiping her out. The CDF fighter behind the wheel sticks his hand out the window and gives the signal. He turns his jeep around in a tight circle and leads the convoy back toward the camp.

  As they disappear down into the tunnel again, Matt sees that there are more soldiers up top. Many more. He looks back over his shoulder as the pursuing Haters are attacked with heavy artillery, pounding them into oblivion. He almost wishes he could stop and watch.

  The fear fades. The relief is a high; an intoxicating adrenaline buzz. Matt’s under no illusion—this was just a simple garbage run, insignificant in the grand scheme of things—but for a moment just now he was out in the open, no longer hiding, fighting back against the Haters. He threw no punches himself, but it still felt like he was the one hitting out.

  It’s good to be home.

  * * *

  The second run of the day is a far more straightforward affair. Matt’s told by Mark Coles, the man who stopped him walking into the path of the truck earlier, that the morning’s massacre was the exception rather than the norm. Second time around there’s no trouble and no Haters, and by mid-afternoon it’s job done. There’s been no letup in the baking heat, but Matt’s getting used to the temperature and the noxious stink and, he has to admit, he’s enjoying the work. The physicality is strangely therapeutic. Cathartic. Lots of effort and noise when for so long he’s been used to micro-movements and enforced quiet. And not only that, witnessing the slaughter of Haters is always an unexpected bonus. It was a glorious thing seeing them being hacked down like that.