Pickers 1: The Find (3 page)

"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.

Finding the seed bank, or, so far, coming closer than they ever had, was thrilling. But Veronique knew nothing ever came easily. Somewhere in these files might be the directions right to that big metal door, but there were always dangers on any journey, and surely the prize at the end of this one would make it more dangerous than any other.

Her fears kept Veronique from bursting out of the wagon and declaring success. She would wait until she had seen just what information was on the drive, and assessed the dangers between them and wherever the vault turned out to be.

Using the trackball, Veronique highlighted the smiling faces in the picture and zoomed in on them. The reproduction was fuzzy close up, but one of those faces, the man standing second from left, looked familiar. She had seen it before in pictures in the château so many months before. It would have been no surprise if he was one of the bodies Maxine had found in the bunker's dining room, the man who had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Why had he and his companions killed themselves, she wondered. Perhaps she would find some form of journal on the drives, if she continued searching them once the data about the seed vault had been extracted.

Zooming out again, Veronique scrolled down to look at the next page of the brochure.

Behind the farmhouse, there was a large water trough lined with glazed tiles but mostly filled with dust that some pathetic scraps of grass clung to. On the uphill side of the trough was a U-shaped cast concrete channel. Like the trough, it hadn't seen water in years. Maxine clambered up to the level of the channel and looked along it up the hill. Extending the line she could see would take her to the right of the trees she had been aiming for. She decided to follow the concrete track up the hill.

The channel had been barely visible when she had stood atop wagon two and stared up the hill to get a better look at the copse. Yellow grass bowed across the gap and knotted together to cover it. Confident strides tore or pushed the little canopy apart, and walking through it wasn't any more tiring than a straightforward climb.

When the slope of the hill kicked up and became steeper, the channel started zig-zagging to keep from becoming a cascade. Maxine used the levels as steps rather than following them back and forth. At the top of this little piece of hydraulic engineering, the track of the gutter had changed, and the channel pointed straight at the bunch of trees. It terminated at another, smaller trough. Behind the trough was a large outcrop of blue-grey rock, which the trees ringed and then draped over.

Stepping up, Maxine was presented with a beautiful, crystal clear pool, the outcrop forming a natural bowl for it. Water flowed into it over rocks off to the right, bubbling up from a spring, whilst almost directly opposite where she stood, it flowed out over the lip of the rock. Beyond this overflow, the foliage was denser and greener. There were work marks in the stone just in front of her, where the lip had once been chipped away so that the water would come over there, down to the trough and into the channel. This overflow, however, had been blocked when one of the trees had toppled over and lain across it. What little gap had been left under the tumbled trunk would have silted up, or filled with debris, quickly.

Sitting on the tree trunk, Maxine studied it. Eventually, rotting and weathering might wear it away and reopen the channel, but she was more inclined to bring an axe and do the job herself. She leant over and ran fingers through the water. It was cold, but refreshingly so in the heat of the day. Finding the stub of a long gone branch, she hung her 9mm on the water side of the trunk, doing the same, at a different point, with the .38. The small satchel she had brought along went under the trunk somewhere inconspicuous. Then she dropped the knives into the shallows and started stripping.

Naked, Maxine stepped over the trunk and up to her ankles in the cold water. The chill ran through her body, and felt delightful after being in the dry and heat of the wastelands for so many weeks. Picking up the knives, she walked toward the middle of the pool.

At its deepest, the water came up to her belly button. Her skin seemed to tighten where the pool cooled it. She let the knives drop to the bottom and dropped straight down until her head was under the water. Shooting straight back up, she gasped at the exhilarating chill of it, then dropped back down until only her head was above the water. Her hands found the knives and held onto them. They wouldn't have stopped to pick the farm if they thought there might be hostiles in the area, but it was always a good idea to have some weapon to hand when out of sight of her family.

It didn't take long to get used to the cool water, and Maxine soon fought down the shivers and began to like it. She leant her head back to wet her hair again, dunking and scrubbing it to clean out as much as possible of the crap and dust of the cellar. After ducking under again, she rose from the water feeling fresher than she had in weeks. Water ran down her breasts and arced away from her perked out nipples, which made her giggle.

Maxine didn't have any form of towel to dry with, but she didn't need one. She walked out of the pool and stepped over the tumbled tree into the direct sun. She stretched out on the warm rock and let herself dry out. It was relaxing, and another sensual experience after that of the pool. Rolling over, she enjoyed the sun on her back for a while. But she wasn't the sort who could sit still for long, and once she was dry, she stood and walked over to where she had stowed her satchel.

Inside the shoulder bag were some of the items she had picked up in the bunker. None of them was practical in the slightest, she had taken them mostly out of curiosity. She took the soft, thin wisps of underwear out gently, almost nervous of tearing them. The skimpiest item was a mere triangle of material with thick strings coming from each corner to go around her waist and between her legs then meet. She understood what it was and how she was supposed to wear it, but still she stared at it, confused that anyone would wish to wear something so minimalist. Shrugging, she stepped into the thong and pulled it up.

The front panel just, barely, covered her unruly pubic hair and the lips of her sex. Maxine wasn't much troubled by modesty, and somehow she would have felt more self conscious wearing this little slip of material in front of others than being completely naked before them. But, again, the fact that there was so little to it made moving in the little piece of underwear feel unrestricted and easy. She jumped up onto the downed tree and ran along it a short way, then skipped back to her bag. They weren't to be worn for long periods, but maybe if she ever got around to wearing a dress or skirt, they would go well under one of those.

The next pair of knickers had panels front and back, but they were made of a sheer material that meant her pubes, and even the outline of her lips, could be seen. After the thong, they felt restrictive, and she didn't like the way they were see through. If she wanted someone to see her pussy, she would stand before them in the nude, not let them think they were getting one over on her because her panties were transparent. They wouldn't do, she didn't like them.

The last piece of underwear was a peachy pink colour and made of material that was light and fine. Maxine's fingers slid easily over it. They were like small shorts, Maxine thought as she pulled them on. Light and open, they were unsurprisingly comfortable, though loose about her waist and flaring out. Made for someone with wider hips, she decided.

These sexy under things must have been expensive when they went into the bunker, for they had been in the display cabinet with all the other trophies. There had been bras as well, but they were made for someone with a larger chest than Maxine, so she had left them. Even if only one of them fit her, it would be nice to have a reason to wear them. To have someone to wear them for.

There had been a boy, the year before, at a town they had been trading in. But he had wanted to stay when they moved on. More likely, he had been happy to have his fun without the risk of commitment. And there had been a girl, as well, from another band of pickers they had met down near the Mediterranean. That had been two weeks of sneaking off for fun that still raised a tingle when she recalled it.

Maxine slipped the knickers off. Now she was turned on. Veronique had her husband, and her father seemed to have a woman in every town. But she almost never got laid, no matter how much she looked for it. She bunched her clothes and kit up by the tree trunk and sat against them in the sunshine. There was one last thing in the bag that she had picked up for the hell of it. The dildo was made of a shiny metal, she hadn't checked to see which yet. It was cold, but it would warm up, and heavy.

Still wary, Maxine had her right hand by her 9mm as her left brought the head of the dildo up the inside of her thigh. It warmed up soon enough as she teased her pussy lips with it. She could, maybe, do this in one of the wagons, but she always managed to be interrupted when she did that. She'd got herself all excited just thinking about it. The dildo slid easily into her.

"Max! You wanna come down to the wagons, we found something cool!" Tony shouted. He was still only halfway up to the copse, at least he hadn't seen her.

"Fuckit!" The word hissed out through clenched teeth. A few more minutes and she could have got herself off. It never worked like that. "I'll be a minute!" she shouted back to her brother in law.

In the next town, she promised herself, she was going to get laid.