Radio Hope (Toxic World Book 1) (3 page)

The stranger nodded. “That’s fine.”

“Well, let’s see what’s in your bags and that box then.”

The old man opened up the box and withdrew half a dozen long florescent bulbs. The
n he and the girl emptied the first bag and laid out a few winter coats in decent condition. Wrapped inside them were a battered flashlight and a packet of medical gauze bearing the logo of the Red Cross, Crescent, and Star.

“A trip down memory lane for you, Doc,” Marcus said. He turned to the scavenger to explain. “They’re the ones who sent him to medical school.”

“There were no medical schools by then,” The Doctor said. “Just doctors training assistants.”

The scavenger opened up his second bag and pulled out
dozens of little wooden boxes. Each was about the size of an adult’s hand. On one face they had a single dial and out of the side was a wire with an earphone.

The Doctor picked one up and examined it.

“What are these?”

“Put the earphone on and turn the dial,” the scavenger said.

The Doctor, Marcus, and Abe all did what he suggested. As Marcus turned the dial, a voice in the earphone grew louder.

“. . .
is the time to gather mushrooms. There are some basic things to know to find an edible mushroom. Remember that the majority of mushrooms are poisonous, including all those that grow on yew trees. One type of edible mushroom is the pufferball. . .”

“That’s Radio Hope!” Marcus said.

Abe examined the radio he was looking at. “These look newly made.”

“They are. I found a whole cache of them.”

Abe turned it over in his hands. “How do you tune it? The Merchants Association operates a fine radio station called New City Radio. If you’re interested in an advertising spot we have good rates and—”

“It can’
t pick that up.”

Abe looked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s a crystal radio. Do you remember those? Instead of a tuner there’s a crystal cut to a certain frequency, in this case to 1010 kHz, Radio Hope’s frequency. It gets its energy from the electromagnetic waves of the broadcast itself, so it doesn’t even need a battery.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” Abe said.

The old man looked at his feet. “There was a note with the cache explaining it all.”

“So you mean to say that you just happened upon a whole
pile of radios that only receive Radio Hope, just lying there for anyone to pick up?” Abe asked. “Where did you find these?”

The stranger turned to The Doctor
angrily, “Since when does one man get to ask where another man got his stash?”

“Never,” The Doctor replied. “You don’t have to answer
him.”

“Fine then, let’s get on
with this. Market’s already started.”

“
All right,” The Doctor said. “I’m calling my rights to buy the gauze and I’d like to buy the florescent lights and one of these little radios too. What do you want in trade for all that?”

“Now wait a minute,” Abe cut in. “I’m calling unfair competition. You can’t trade a radio that gets one station but not the other.”

“Overruled,” The Doctor said without looking at him.

“Why?” Abe asked. “
We have rules about fair competition. This hurts my station’s listenership.”

The Doctor turned to him
. “The rules about fair competition only state that you can’t discriminate with who you trade with and you can’t coerce a trade. You know that.”

“But this—”

“Overruled,” The Doctor said. He turned to the stranger as Abe seethed. “What do you want for these?”

“I’ll take a kilo of flour and six Blue Cans.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “You have too many radios for them to be expensive, and I’ll have you know that I don’t have a shortage of gauze and florescent lights.”

Marcus didn’t say anything. Actually they needed those lights pretty badly, and they looked in good enough condition that probably half of them worked.

“I’ll give you a kilo of flour and two Blue Cans,” The Doctor said.

“Kilo and three.”

“Done.”

The Doctor held out a hand. The old man didn’t take it immediately.

“I’ll take that or something else.”

“What
?” The Doctor asked.

“
A spot to pitch a tent inside the walls.”

“It’s only open to citizens, as I told you. You’d have to get
nominated for associate status by a citizen and then voted in by a majority of the Citizens Council. And since you’re a stranger. . .”

“I heard that you let in people when there’s danger.”

“What danger would that be?” Marcus asked.

The old man made a sour face.

“Countryside’s getting bad. Some damn cult calling themselves the Righteous Horde.”

Everyone behind the table perked up.
This wasn’t the first time they’d heard about this new group. All the rumors had been vague, though.

“What do you know?” Marcus asked.

The stranger looked at him.

“What’s it worth to you?”

Marcus fished into his pocket and held up an old silver-colored coin with a stamp on it.

“A meal token to $87,953. It’s a bar in the Burbs.”

“I’ve been there,” the stranger said, holding out a hand. Marcus gave him the coin. “The Righteous Horde came out of the north last year. You probably heard The Skullsplitters got wiped out. That was the Righteous Horde’s work.”

“Perhaps we should give them a citizenship medal,” Abe laughed.

“You wouldn’t get the chance. Convert or die is the way they work. They’re sweeping the countryside, getting everybody. Scavengers, tweakers, settlements, everybody.”

“What do they believe?” The Doctor asked.

“Who cares? Some mishmash from the old radical sects with the idea that they’re going to purify the world and start a new paradise.”

“How many fighters?” Marcus asked.

“Don’t know. Word is they have a few thousand.”

Marcus
felt a chill. His glanced at the wall, that wall that had been almost breached half a dozen times before by forces nowhere near as large.

Abe leaned forward, his mouth a grim line. “What else do you know?”

The scavenger gave a nervous look over his shoulder in the direction of the mountains. “Last I heard they’re about fifty miles east of here and coming this way.”

CHAPTER THREE

Jackson Andrews drew the bucket out of the creek and poured the water into the large metal drum on the cart next to him. Bending again, he got another bucketful and repeated the motion. He looked inside the drum. Almost done and about time too. The breeze coming off the cove was chilly this morning and his hands were numb.

A couple of more buckets and he was done. He placed the bucket back on the hook from which it hung on a tree branch and clapped his hands on his sides to get some feeling back in them. He really needed to get some gloves before winter set in.

Jackson looked out over the cove. It was fed by three streams, the southernmost of which ran at his feet. A larger one ran almost at the center of the gentle curve of coastline, while the northern stream ran in a narrow gully parallel to the northern shore, running along the edge of the Burbs and under the wall into New City before turning south and emptying into the cove.

New City was built on a
peninsula that made up the cove’s northern edge. In the gray dawn he could see the place was waking up. Smoke rose from several chimneys as well as the bakery. The rich smell of bread wafted over the water to him, making his stomach grumble. The city shoreline was lined with old crumbled concrete piers that had once served the giant box of a warehouse. The base of the peninsula was cut off from the mainland by a high wall, and both shores were protected by double spools of razor wire.

To the east, his right,
past a stretch of empty land he could see the sprawling mess of the Burbs. A few old buildings stood out against a dozen newer frame houses and countless shacks and tents built every which way with no design or planning. Smoke emerging from chimneys and open fire pits showed him that the Burbs were waking up too. The real people, the workers, were starting their day of thankless toil while the rich in New City sat back and raked in the profits.

Jackson spat in the direction of New City, turned his back on it, and grabbed the wooden handles of the cart. He’d built this cart himself and was damn proud of it. T
wo large bicycle tires treaded with solid rubber were well oiled and light, while the wood was quality timber scavenged from an old house up in the mountains. It was perfectly balanced so that when he lifted up the handles and started pulling, there was a minimum of resistance and swaying.

He set out on th
e well-worn path away from New City and the Burbs, south toward a line of hills that ran like a finger from the mountains down to the shoreline. The shore itself was out of view for most of his way, hidden by sickly scrubs and irregularities in the land. Not that there was anything to see out there except the occasional beachcomber and fishing boats from the Burbs. The rattle of his cart drowned out the distant sound of the surf.

As he pulled the cart he beg
an to warm up. The way was easy. Over the past year he’d taken out all the big rocks and filled in the deeper holes, so now he could make the journey in half the time that he used to. His eyes scanned the ground out of habit, hoping to spot something worth scavenging even though he knew this area had been picked clean before he was even born.

Only one trip today,
he told himself.
Then I’ll have enough to trade for some gloves and some more corn meal. Got to talk to the scavengers at the market too. Find out the news.

He’d
talked to some newcomers from the wildlands the day before and what he’d heard troubled him.

A noise from the direction of the shore made him stop. He was about to set down the cart and grab the
meat cleaver that hung from a leather loop on the side of the frame when he saw it was only a trio of young boys, all gangly limbs and laughing faces. They spotted him, stopped in whispered conversation, and then ran right toward him.

As they shot past
, they pointed at his face and shouted, “Blamer! Blamer!”

Jackson frowned as he watched them disappear in the direction of the creek. He recognized them as kids from the Burbs. Typical.
Children of the working class emulating the mindset of the wealthy. Probably heard their parents pining for associate status every day.

His hand went up to the brand on his cheek. He’d like to pretend that the way those kids acted didn’t hurt, but
class treason always hurt. It hurt his father all his life. Father had been a mechanic in the last days of the Old Times, an important worker although invisible to those who really called the shots. His eyes had been wide open and all he got for it was mockery from his fellow working men.

Jackson shook his head and picked up the
cart again. He plodded on toward the line of hills.

It was an hour to the hills and by then he was sweating despite the cool sea breeze.
Luckily the path wound its way along a narrow gully, otherwise he’d have never been able to haul the cart up through the gravelly slopes.

While the prevailing winds blew southwards, from New City
toward Toxic Bay, he was close enough now to get a slight breeze through the gully that wafted an acrid tang into his face. His nostrils tingled. He was almost there.

From around the next bend staggered a figure. Jackson guessed it was a man but couldn’t be sure. He was black from head to foot, rags and skin covered with a uniform filth.
Underneath a twisted mat of black hair two glassy eyes bulged from their sockets. The cheeks twitched, and long strings of fluid ran from the nose and slack mouth. The figure held up a rusty old can to his face and took a deep breath.

Jackson set down his cart and grabbed his cleaver.
The figure swayed and almost toppled over, then resumed its zigzag course along the gully toward Jackson.

He
stood his ground. Backing away from a tweaker was a bad idea; it sometimes gave them the idea they were superhuman and then you’d have to show them otherwise. The last thing he wanted to do was cut down a member of the lumpenproletariat on his water run.

The
tweaker was almost upon him before he spotted him. Glazed eyes focused on Jackson and the mouth broadened into a wide, drooling smile. Jackson’s nose wrinkled from the chemical stench coming from the can the tweaker held. He tightened his grip on the cleaver.

The tweaker stopped a few paces from Jackson. His smile grew wider and he bu
rst out into an idiotic laugh. The sound came out more like a statement, a challenge, rather than real laughter.

“Ha. Ha ha ha! HA!”

The tweaker resumed his staggering course down the gully. Jackson turned and watched him go.

“HA. HA. HA!!!!”

Once the tweaker was out of sight Jackson waited a minute and when he didn’t reappear he stowed his cleaver and set out once more.

The gully opened up on the other side of the
range of hills and Toxic Bay lay spread out before him. It was ten times as big as New City Cove. Across the stinking water a crumbled city stood rotting on the slopes of a steep ridge. The decayed buildings ran along the far edge of the bay, here and there leveled by blackened swathes from long-ago fires, to a port. Twisted remains of cranes hung limp like dead weeds next to collapsed warehouses. In a couple of places the rusted hulks of sunken container ships poked out of the water. Along one pier an old cruise ship lay half capsized, its once luxurious decks sloped at a crazy angle, streaked with rust.

On the near shore n
ext to the port stood the remains of an old petrochemical works, its globular containers, connecting pipes, and chimneys all punctured with rust. An iridescent streak of effluent flowed from it in a broad band through the center of the bay and out into the gray sea.

Before him
stretched a fetid swamp at the edge of which stood a cluster of reed huts. This was his destination. Jackson nodded in satisfaction. Less than a mile to go and downhill all the way. He’d have time to stay a while before he headed back to the Burbs.

Jackson stopped the cart long enough to tie a bandanna around his face. It would be nice to get some goggles at the market too, but he hadn’t seen any for a long time and the last time he did he couldn’t afford them. Rubbing his eyes, he picked up the front end of the cart and pulled it down the path leading to the settlement.

After a few minutes the path leveled out. A few figures passed among the huts. In the distance he could see a couple more gathering reeds in the swamp. Another came along the coast of the bay carrying a haul of fish. Jackson shuddered. He hoped the fisherman had taken the trouble to walk at least a couple of miles down the coast but he was sure he hadn’t. He knew these people too well.

The inhabitants of Toxic Bay—not the tweakers in the ruined city, but the real people in the huts—had chosen to live here because nobody both
ered them. The roving bandits and cultists never came to this bay, for they like most people feared the toxins here and at other spots like this scattered across the landscape. Even when New City suffered one of its regular sieges the invaders never made the short walk to plunder this village. There was little here worth stealing and in any case it was all tainted. The people here had chosen to breathe poison and radiation rather than risk getting robbed, raped, and killed.

Jackson would li
ke to think that the villagers of Toxic Bay had created a little paradise of culture, intellectualism, and egalitarianism, choosing quality of life over an uncertain quantity. But that wasn’t the case. For the most part the people of Toxic Bay were ignorant fools who lived in squalor before succumbing to any number of afflictions.

They did have enough sense to buy fresh water
from over the hills, though, and he was dumb and desperate enough to deliver it.

A gaggle of children
ran out of the village in his direction, waving and calling to him. The pair of adults gathering reeds turned toward him and shaded their eyes.

As he came to the final stretch to the village the children surrounded him, a half dozen
kids of all different ages in tattered clothes. Jackson bit his lip when he saw them. Most had open sores. A couple had terrible deformations of face or body. One was a blind albino named Bobby who was led by a little girl, his eyes milky and unseeing.

“Water’s here! Water’s here!” they all chanted, except for the one born without a tongue. She grunted in time with her friends’ little song.

Jackson sighed. He’d never get used to this.

He rolled his cart to the center of town as several adults gathered around. Looking past them to a certain hut, he saw
Olivia smiling at him from the doorway. He gave her a warm smile back and then turned to the village headman.

Oscar was a big brawny fellow, a head taller than Jackson. His skin was a patchwork of sores and dry, flaky patches. His hair had all but fallen out and when he coughed into a rag li
ttle drops of blood dotted the cloth. Oscar greeted him happily and pounded on the side of the barrel.

“Full as always,” he said in a booming voice that sounded unreal coming from that ravaged body. “I like a man who trades fair.”

“You like any man with balls enough to trade here,” Jackson muttered under his breath, wheeling the cart to the village cistern. He pulled out a short length of hose and stuck one end on a tap on the underside of the barrel. He ran the hose to the opening of the cistern, turned on the tap, and stood back as the flow of fresh water gushed into the cistern.

“So what do you have for me today?” Jackson asked.

Oscar passed him a coil of copper wire and a handful of nails.

“These look OK,” Jackson nodded.

“Until tomorrow then,” Oscar smiled, then winked. “Enjoy your stay.”

The headman walked off
, as did most of the crowd. A few lingered behind waiting to take a drink from the cistern once it was full.

The blind albino boy was led up to him.

“How’s the market this year?” Bobby asked.

“It’s starting well enough. You’ve probably heard that the harvest wasn’t that good so most of the traders will go away unhappy. New City and the Burbs are set well enough for winter, though.”

Jackson resisted the urge to tell him more. He’d tell the adults later.

“I wish I could go,” he
said, a distant look in his unseeing eyes.

“You know it’s not safe,” a young woman wheezed. “As long as we stay in the bay we’re safe.”

“We could trade!” the albino said.

“Enough, Bobby
,” the woman snapped. “We’ve explained this before.”

The last of the water trickled out of his barrel. Jackson retrieved the hose, stowed it in his cart, and pushed it a little out of the way
so everyone could get to the cistern. Then he strolled over to Olivia’s hut.

She greeted him at the door.

“Hey,” she said and smiled.

“Hey,” he smiled back. He moved to kiss her on the lips, saw that her sore was worse, and kissed her on the cheek
instead.

“That’s all?”
Olivia said, pulling close to him.

“No,” Jackson chuckled and nibbled her neck.

“That’s more like it,” she whispered.