Pickers 1: The Find (4 page)

Remy had cleared the table of metalwork and laid a large map of Europe on it. There was a small pebble in the west of Spain, marking their current location, as nearly as it could. A road atlas at the end of the table would show them more precisely where they were when they needed it, and the large screen hung on the side of the wagon would show any digital maps Veronique had found. Remy noticed the flush of Maxine's cheeks when she returned. Veronique and Tony shared a look. Tony shrugged.

When Maxine sat down, Remy said, "Veronique has been going through the hard drives you recovered from the bunker, and she has found what we were looking for. The owners of the bunker, had interests in many many industries before the collapse. They put money into good causes as well, trying to buy absolution for the harm they helped cause. One of the projects they were involved in was setting up a seed bank. That was the hint we got when we picked their château and found out about their hideaway from the apocalypse, anyway."

Maxine already knew most of this, but her father was rarely so talkative. She wasn't going to stop him. He took a drink of water from the canteen slung over the back of his chair, then went on. "If there was anything in the château to tell us where the seed bank was, it was hidden far too well. So, down we came to raider heavy territory to have a look in the bunker. If only we had had enough time to go through it properly. Ah, well.... Anyway, Veronique has worked her magic, and she has extracted all manner of documents about the seed bank, including security details and, most importantly, of course, where it is."

"Bounty." Maxine said. Leaning over the map, she asked, "So where is it?"

Remy pulled a sheet of paper from under the atlas. Another map had been printed on it, one that must be important if Veronique was willing to use up one of her precious sheets of virgin paper. It was a topographical map of a mountainous region. Roads were marked on it, joining up small towns and hamlets that, mostly, wouldn't exist any more. There was a red dot on the edge of one of the towns. "It is as well hidden as the bunker was, the entrance hidden in an existing building, where it can only be found by someone who knows what they're looking for."

Maxine studied the small map, turning it around and around. It looked familiar, but not enough for her to recognise it. "But, where is it?" she asked.

"A fair distance." Remy traced a finger across the big map, from the pebble eastwards, over the Pyrrenees into France and then up to the Alps.

"That looks close to...."

"The Valley? Yes. Very close. This is the Valley." Remy indicated on the map. "And the seed bank is here. It's just a few hills away." He smiled at the understatement. Those hills were pretty large mountains.

"Are we going home?"

"It looks like it."

Remy knew this was news to Tony as well as Maxine. Since Tony had joined them on their journeys through the bad lands, they had hardly ever talked about the town they left when Maxine and Veronique were still children. "Is that going to be easy?" he asked.

"Well, it is a long way, but no more major than other journeys we have made. I know, I know, that wasn't what you meant. There may be some bad blood still, but, perhaps, we can clear some of it."

"We could just go to the seed bank." Maxine suggested.

"We could. You do not want to see your Uncle Julien again?"

Maxine looked away. "I don't know. There was so much shouting after Mama...." For a moment, she looked like the little girl she had been ten years before, when they had loaded up the original wagon and driven from the Valley. Remy reached across and laid a hand on hers.

"It is time for me to go home and make my peace with the family and the town. We took important resources with us when we set out. Not enough to do lasting damage, but it must have caused some hardship for a while. We could go to the seed bank by some other route. There will still be a hard trek by road or over passes to get to it from the Valley. But it is so close, it is the obvious place for us to work from. And I can think of few other places better suited to use what we will find, or reward us properly for our efforts."

"If the town is still there." Veronique said, quietly. Everyone turned to look at her. "We have been away for a decade. A lot can happen in that time. How many of the villages and outposts that we have traded with have disappeared the next time we've been through them. Diseases happen, raiders attack. All sorts of things...."

"It is still there, and your Uncle Julien is mairie now. At least, that is how it was before last winter. I have been asking other traders and pickers over the years. Some of them have even been there, others dealt with those who had visited."

"You never told us this." Maxine said, the hint of anger in her tone.

"All the other information I got from them was useful. It went onto the map. But this was just.... Something I wanted to know, for myself. I didn't want you to know your old Papa was so sentimental."

Maxine wouldn't look her father in the eye. Her gaze had dropped to the larger map, and he could tell she was already moving past the anger. Indeed, it was only a moment before she was tracing possible routes through the two countries that stood between them and a homecoming. "We have to avoid Madrid, what is left of it. We shall probably be best to go to the South, but then we will have the bulk of the Pyrrenees before us. At least it is Summer and there won't be snow...."

Remy looked to Veronique and Tony. His eldest daughter had found the location of the seed vault, and had the longest of any of them to think about the consequences of going to it. She and Tony were having a silent discussion, all eye messages and body contact. Tony nodded. "I have always wanted to meet my extended family." he said.

Tony had rested the axes against the downed tree trunk and stripped off. He was, he had declared, going to enjoy the pool before they unblocked it and let the water flow down the culvert. Veronique sat on the tree and watched her husband, enjoying the movement of his tight muscles as he waded out into the water.

She had never been interested in men until five years ago. She had just turned eighteen when they had met Tony whilst trading at the same outpost. She had been instantly fascinated by the blue eyed, blonde man her father was doing deals with. Of course, she had been incapable of starting a conversation with him herself, every time she thought she had an opening gambit it had died in her throat. Remy had seen it, and suggested that Tony teamed up with them. He was a sole trader with a broken down biodiesel powered tractor and trailer, whilst they were a family unit in a larger wagon and with plans to salvage a second. Along the way, they had shed the compatriots they had left the Valley with, and needed extra hands and new blood.

Their relationship had bloomed from there. It had practically exploded. Forced by circumstance to talk with Tony, Veronique had found it incredibly easy. Within days, they were in bed. At the next village they had visited, it had been made official. They held a small ceremony, and she and Tony were man and wife.

Not a hint of excess fat troubled Tony's body, and his musculature was tight and defined from the hard working life they led. Veronique watched his tight buttocks disappear under the water. She loved to grasp those so tight as they made love, loved the feel of his body against hers. Most of all, she enjoyed his big cock. As he rose from dunking himself and turned to her, she waited to catch a glimpse of his member. She couldn't keep herself from laughing out loud at how it had shrunk in the cold water.

"What? Oh, right, that. It's cold in here, you know." Tony stood with hands on his hip, reduced manhood just above the level of the water. His torso was pale white, at odds with the tanned brown of his face and forearms. Veronique knew she looked even darker pressed up against his pale skin. "Come in here and join me and he'll soon be back on form." he suggested.

Veronique wore a light pair of dungarees and a top that had once been white. She kicked her boots aside and stripped in a moment and stood on the tree looking down at her husband. She imagined the expression he had looking at her was the same as the one she had been directing at him. She stepped into the cold water and kicked up little waves as she approached Tony. He embraced her, his body cold and wet.

"Need to wash off the dust?" Tony asked. Veronique nodded, then squealed as he tumbled them into the deepest part of the pool. They splashed each other, enjoying the chance to play for a while. With both hands, Veronique directed a wave at Tony, its droplets glittering in the beams of sun that cut through the branches above. While he was distracted, she stepped right up to him and pulled him in to a kiss.

Their bodies pressed together. His hands went down to her buttocks and hers to his. She was slightly shorter than he, and had to stand on her toes to reach the right height. As he had promised, his member soon warmed and rose to the occasion. They parted lips just long enough for her to say, "Let's get out of the pond."

Sitting side by side in the sun, they kissed and reached down to excite each other. Normally, they made love in their too narrow bunk in wagon two, most often in the dark. If Veronique could release her lips from Tony's, she wanted to look down at him, enjoy the sight of his body and watch the motion of her hand as it moved gently up and down his length. Or, even better, she wanted him inside her.

Pushing Tony down onto his back, Veronique straddled him. He helped guide himself into her and she sank down his shaft. She so rarely got to go on top in the bunk, there just wasn't the headroom for her to sit up. Resting her hands on his chest, she began moving up and down. Short movements, but each time she pressed down, his shaft pushed deep inside her. Grasping her butt cheeks, Tony started moving to match her rhythm, increasing the length of his stroke and drawing a sigh from her.

Veronique’s orgasm rose quickly. The excitement of making love outside always did that for her. Soon, she couldn't keep up her part of the movement that was pushing her ever closer to climax. She sank forward to lie on Tony's chest, and he wrapped his arms around her as he kept on pumping in and out of her. She bit his shoulder as she came, hard enough to leave little red tooth marks but not break the skin.

Tony could feel Veronique clenching him as she climaxed. He rolled her onto her back and started longer, harder and faster strokes. She wanted to help him, but she was still shivering and soft muscled from orgasm, and just rode the further pleasure he was giving her. Her back and buttocks rasped against the stone, a light pain to complement the pleasure of her husband's actions. With a yell of victory, Tony pressed hard against her and she felt him pumping into her.

They held each other tight as they came down from their orgasms. When their breathing and hearts had slowed, they rolled to lie side by side. "Need another wash?" Tony said with a smile.

"I think so."

They sat side by side on the tree trunk after they had bathed, relishing being naked in the open air for a while longer. "You have really not been back to your old home town in ten years?" Tony asked. He knew it was true, he had been part of the family for half that time.

"I was thirteen when Mama died. Maxine was nine.... No, just turned ten. Papa had an argument with his brother, our uncle Julien after. It had something to do with Mama's death, and getting supplies from outside the Valley, I think, and it went on for a couple of weeks. Then, Papa put us in a wagon one night, and we drove off.

"Papa tried to explain why we left, once or twice, anyway. He said he had always thought that people should be out here in the bad lands, salvaging what they could to be reused in the town. There had been an outbreak of.... Something, I forget what, which was what killed Mama. Papa thought there were supplies out here that would have made caring for the ill better, maybe saved a few of them. Uncle Julien, and lots of the others, wanted to keep the road in and out blocked, thinking it made them safer."

Veronique was quiet for a while. "I can't believe we're going back. For a moment, when I found out where it was, I thought about not telling Papa where the seed bank is."

"You don't want to go back?"

"Of course I do. I just don't know if Papa would be welcome there. The way he was talking about it, it seems like he thinks we'll just roll up after a decade away and they'll be happy to see us. Maybe if we had done what he had suggested, and returned every so often with the stuff we found, maybe then it would be okay."

"We will be taking them quite a prize." Tony offered.

"Maybe it would be big enough."

"If it does work, and they do welcome us in, perhaps we could stop moving for a while. Settle down.... Start a family."

Veronique rested her head on Tony's shoulder. "Darling, we've been having sex for five years. A lot. If I haven't got pregnant yet.... Maybe I never will."

Tony's expression suggested he hadn't though of that. "We shouldn't stop trying though, should we." Theatrically, he looked down at his crotch, and Veronique followed his gaze.

"No, we shouldn't stop."

After they had made love again, bathed and dressed, they had to race the setting sun to cut the tree trunk up before it got dark. They hacked at the trunk several feet apart, until there were two V-shaped notches deep enough that the water flowed through it. Each blow now raised water but didn't seem to remove any more wood. There wasn't that much left holding the parts of the trunk together, so they started kicking it, pushing it against the water and letting the pressure bend it back. Soon enough, they had to skip back as the tree gave way and the flow of water became a cascade. The trough below the rock filled in seconds and sent a smaller wash down the culvert.

Wet halfway up to their knees from the wall of water they had released, Tony and Veronique watched its progress down the hill as far as they could see. It kept disappearing under grass, and didn't have as much sunshine to reflect as if they had done this earlier. "Max can make sure it's flowing properly in the morning. Let's get back." Veronique handed her axe to Tony and led the way down the hill.