Pickers 3: The Valley (5 page)

Maxine zipped her bike off the track and ran it along the ridge line a little way. Pulling on the front brake and pushing her weight forwards, she forced the rear wheel to rise, and rode a short way with it in the air. When she came to a halt and the wheel bounced down again, she held the bike upright and still as she lined up with a rock. A blip of the throttle and a quick move of her body, and the bike came halfway around. More playing with her balance and she was speeding back toward the road again.

She had been showing off, of course. Georges was approaching her position, finally catching up with her, and he would have seen her display of bike control. She kicked the stand down and stood the bike up, hanging her open face helmet from the handlebars. As Georges came to a halt beside her, she smiled innocently at him. He turned off his bike's rasping motor and stood it up as well.

"You're a crazy woman." Georges said when he had removed his helmet.

"I just have a faster bike than you." she lied. She had raced ahead, taking risks on a track she didn't know. She had been showing off for him, or trying to prove that she was better- faster and more skilful- than he was on a bike. There had been a couple of hairy moments, when she had crested a rise without knowing what was on the other side, or entered a corner too fast, and her heart rate was still high from the last one. But she maintained a cool- as cool as possible- exterior around Georges.

"It is a nice bike." Georges stepped closer, standing awfully close to Maxine as he studied the bike. "Where did you get it?"

"I stole it from a raider. He'd just have broken it." Why was her heart rate heading up again? She moved away from him, around to the other side of the bike. "You want to have a go on it?"

"Maybe when we're back down there, and I can't send myself off a cliff because I don't know how to control it." He pointed back the way they had come. The town was behind trees to their left, but they had a grand view of the river as it wandered down the valley to the larger reservoir. The artificial lake engulfed the old road, which had run alongside the river, and a new one had been carved out of the steep hillside. Continuing scanning right, it was possible to see the older, smaller reservoir, further down the valley. They could, just, make out the people working in the fields and spot the white dots that were sheep and goats.

Turning around, they could look out over the land they would be travelling in their coming expedition. The track was a faint grey and brown line through the green, heading down into a short, shallow valley. It disappeared then, but, somewhere, climbed again over a lower peak into another small valley, then over a larger barrier, beyond which lay the prize. There were clouds approaching from the Northwest, rolling over that far barrier, then dripping down into the smaller valleys.

Georges had a copy of one of the maps which had given them the routes of the old trails. He held it up, so that it overlaid, in a way, the landscape, then traced the route of the road in the air with a finger. "It's hard to tell whether it gets better or worse from here on. What do you think, after coming along here- can your wagons get over this?"

"If it's all like this, then not a problem. We've crossed worse before. The question is, how accurate are those old maps?"

"We find out when we try to follow them, I guess. This is as far as any of us has come in this direction. As far as anyone thought we needed. I was going to suggest a recce to see what sort of force of Raiders there are out there. But it was more important to see how the farms on the other side of the tunnel were doing, and to look for salvage in the empty towns." Georges' tone was almost apologetic, as if he was embarrassed to not have travelled far and wide, as Maxine had done.

"It sounds like you've been working as Pickers." Maxine offered. She hoped that it didn't sound condescending. She didn't want him to feel that she looked down on him, just because he hadn't had her itinerant life.

"I suppose so. We did bring some good stuff back, too. Do you want to go a bit further?"

"Not today. If we go on, it starts to be a real expedition, and I haven't brought everything I'd want for one of those."

"Not enough guns?"

"Not enough guns. And no bivouac, or food."

"Maybe tomorrow. Or we could set off the day before everyone else, and scout ahead."

"And share a bivouac over night." Georges reddened at Maxine's suggestion. She had been half serious, and, it seemed, he hoped she was completely serious. Maybe it wasn't just her feeling nervous and excited around him. Perhaps it went both ways. She resisted the urge to ask straight out if he wanted to sleep with her. Even as a blunt child, she had learnt long ago that some questions never received a simple answer. "Did I see another track join this one, about a kay back?"

"The map shows another track, but I didn't spot it." Georges unfolded the paper. "It runs down to the reservoir and then back to town."

"Shall we find it?"

"Okay. But no race this time, let's go at a sensible speed. I like being alive and unbroken."

There were reminders of the building's time as a hotel in the dark wood of the doors and panelling, and the decoration on the walls. At the far end of this room, there was a line of stuffed animal heads looking down on the lathes and milling machines. Heavy work tables, with vises bolted to them and tools loaded into little baskets, pointed the way to the machines.

"So, you finally got yourself a proper workshop." Remy said. "It must have been quite a job for some lucky Pickers."

"The Scouts found it all, locked up and undamaged, on one of their first trips out after we reopened the tunnel. Myriam, Lola and Fabien got to do one last run in their truck to collect it all."

"What do you make?"

"Not me, sadly. Being mayor takes up too much time. But there are a few of the youngsters who are teaching themselves by making what's needed. Mostly small components. It's surprising how many things get abandoned for want of one little bit. What the junk yard can't provide, sometimes they can build it here." Julien walked over to a cabinet of wide, shallow drawers, he opened one of them and pulled out the topmost sheet of paper it held. With a flourish, he laid it on one of the work tables. It was a design for a bracket of some form, carefully marked up with dimensions and angles. There were notes in the bottom left hand corner of the sheet, which Julien checked. "Electric motor mount for conversion of a couple of pickups that now run produce back from the fields. Really useful. We might move into gun components, if we can find the right grades of metal."

"You're going to quit as mayor and come in here to just make shit, aren't you."

"I wish." Julien said with a sigh. "You saw how the vote went yesterday. The town is still about evenly balanced on opening up to the outside. If I stood down, I don't think there's as loud a voice for continued trade and contact. Catellin and her little gang would be happiest if we closed the tunnel and blocked ourselves in here again. It took a lot to get people to go out there. Your leaving didn't help, I'll tell you." Julien had more to say, but he was biting back an argument that was ten years old, and no longer worth having.

"How are they going to feel when we bring back everything we find in the vault?"

"Gutted, probably. They hope you fail. They'd probably be happy if you died out there and we never heard anything about you ever again. Then they could crow on about wasted resources and the dangers of contact beyond the Valley."

"We're not going to die out there."

"No. Please don't do that." Julien picked a triangular section file from one of the baskets, and studied the cross cut pattern in its surface. "Anyway, I thought you might like to see this, so you know we have the capacity, if you need anything making up as you convert your wagons."

"We should have brought Maxine. She's the mechanical genius. I guess she got that from you. But she wanted to go off and explore. With young Meunier."

"He's a good man, Meunier. Good family too. Trustworthy."

"He had best be a good man. He'll be castrato if he tries anything Maxine doesn't want." Remy gave a little grunting laugh. "Though, if I know her, what she wants might be the same as what he wants. If he's too good a man, he'll just annoy her."

"I'll make sure I warn him, then." Julien rolled the handle of the file in his hand, then put it back in its basket. "Those turbines in your wagons, what do they run on?"

"Almost any flammable liquid. They just need adjusting at start up until they burn clean."

"Let's go to the fuel distillery and get a batch so you can set them up."

Maxine's shoulders and thighs ached. Hauling the mass of the bike onto the right line was a workout, and she hadn't ridden so far in one go since they had gone over the goat track. Even keeping to her promise of not racing, the path they had come back along had been more technical. She slowed and stopped before reaching the small square ahead.

George's fuel burning bike was lighter than Maxine's electric one, but, with only one driven wheel, it was harder work to control. It was noisy, too. The rasp of its motor echoed between the buildings on the street as he twisted the throttle to race toward her. He leant forward and pulled a stoppie- waving the rear wheel in the air- just like she had earlier.

"Let's not take that track on the way out." Maxine said, when Georges had killed his chattering motor and walked the bike over to her.

"Definitely not." Georges swatted a chunk of mud off his trousers. He looked around. The few people on the square were turning away one by one, pretending they hadn't been watching, curious what the noise and movement were about. "So, er, we have a couple of bars in town. If we tell them early enough, they'll do a meal for us. Would you like to....?"

Georges was uncomfortable again. Maxine fought back the urge to make him suffer. Besides which, she liked the sound of what he was suggesting. "Yes. I'd like to. When?"

"This evening?"

Why not? "Okay." Her heart had sped up again, and now she could feel the pulse somewhere lower as well. Her thighs squeezed the saddle for a moment, trying to chase that idea away, for now.

"Okay. Let's get our bikes back, then I'll go and book us a table."

Maxine stood on the pegs, balancing her bike before setting off. Georges stamped on the kick start of his ride, giving silent thanks when it turned over right away. Maxine whizzed away, and he spun the back tyre for a moment as he over revved the bike to follow her.

They slowed to a civilised speed when Georges had caught up with Maxine, his bike barely puttering as they crossed the bridge. He didn't have to go via the warehouse, but he wanted to, so he matched speeds and ran alongside her.

The warehouse was a tall single storey building with a metal frame. On one side of it, there was a flat space. The shape of the building that had previously occupied the lot was sketched out on it in brick and cinder block. Parked beside the small side door to the warehouse, at the far end of the building, was a pickup. They hadn't even looked at the door whilst they had been working on the wagons, but now it was propped open.

Georges recognised the pickup as one of the communal vehicles used for carting produce in from the fields, and goods to and from the tunnel. It didn't belong by the warehouse, he was sure. He twisted the throttle and raced across the empty lot toward it. Maxine reacted a moment later, and, with her faster bike, had drawn level with him just as he started braking to skid to a halt beside the pickup. They propped their bikes against the vehicle as they hopped off.

Maxine had taken one gun with her, her trusty 9mm. Reading Georges' suspicion, she reached for it. He laid a hand on her arm, holding her back from drawing the weapon. Quietly, he opened the driver's door of the pickup and reached inside to remove the keys from the ignition.

Three men and a woman were going through the salvage that had been removed from the wagons. What had been relatively orderly was scattered across the floor as they had discarded what they didn't want. A fourth man was trying to open wagon one. They all froze as Georges and Maxine entered.

Maxine's hand rested on the grip of her pistol, her thumb unclipping the retaining clasp. She stared at the man by the wagon, until he took steps back toward the other four intruders. Two of them had holstered guns, and their hands were edging toward them.

Before any weapons were drawn, Georges strode into the gap between Maxine and the five uninvited guests. It may have seemed odd to her that none of them were youngsters, but he knew just who they were dealing with. He rested his thumbs on his belt, balancing his right hand a short distance from his own holstered pistol. "Monsieur Catellin. I didn't expect to see you here. I thought your wife didn't approve of this expedition."

"She.... We do not approve of letting them.... Back into the Valley. This.... Is ours. It belongs to us now it is here, and we are taking what we need from it." François Catellin gestured excessively as he talked, pointing at Maxine and the pile of salvage in particular to highlight his points. His cronies nodded affirmations at his points.

Maxine had moved sideways, in the direction of the wagons. She was making sure that Georges wasn't between her and the two men with guns, and heading for a pallet of machinery she could use as cover.

"That's not how it works. But you know that. If you leave now, we can sort this out quietly with the constable later."

"He's got no authority here. You tell him François." the woman said. She was Catellin's sister, Ludivine, the stronger willed of the siblings. Between her and his wife, François Catellin was easily led, a big, strong man, who didn't do much thinking for himself.

"Do you really want to go against us, Meunier? Are you like her father, weak for a bit of the dark meat? Has the little black bitch spread her legs for you yet." Catellin took a step toward Georges, closing the gap between them. His height advantage over the younger man was supposed to be intimidating, but it didn't work.

A short, sharp punch under his jaw stunned Catellin, but it was the sweeping kick to the inside of his right knee that put him on the floor. Georges skipped back, out of reach, and his hand went to his pistol.

"Hands off the guns boys." Maxine didn't shout, but delivered the command loudly, with authority that had the two men at the back letting their guns slip back into their holsters. "Good. Now, hands where I can see them, and no sudden moves. You wouldn't want to do anything to annoy the little black bitch, would you."

Georges had his gun drawn now. He held it low, pointing at the floor in front of Catellin but ready for any sudden moves. "You're going to leave now. Don't take the pickup, it stays here. I'll have the constable come talk to you all tomorrow."

"You assaulted him!" Ludivine's voice was raised almost to a screech. "We saw that, you..." Maxine made the slightest of moves, not shifting her gun, but letting Ludivine see her expression. The older woman shut up and hurried over to help her brother up.

Georges and Maxine moved so that the intruders passed between them as they left the building. When they were at the far end of the street, Georges holstered his gun and studied the lock on the door. It had been forced. He looked around and found the crowbar that had been used, dropped near the piles of salvage. "I can make a quick bolt that will lock it from the inside." Maxine said. As if noticing that she was still holding her gun, she made a show of putting it back in its holster. "You didn't have to hit him just because he said bad things about me. That could have been dangerous."

"Between him and his sister, they would have ended up talking us to death without really saying anything. It was better to get it over with quickly."

"It was, of course. I'm remembering why I had such a crush on you when we were kids." Before she thought herself out of it, Maxine turned Georges to face her, stepped up close and pulled him into a kiss. His hands reached around her waist to pull her closer still. After a long moment, they parted. "Right. Let's get a bolt on that door, so we can lock ourselves in." Maxine said, turning on her foot and striding off to the wagons.