The Brink Read Free Page B

which were precision machined glass discs that couldn’t be made without some of the best machinery money used to be able to buy. The nearest factory was Germany, hundreds of miles away, and he doubted they were still operational.
    Second, solar cells used a similar lens in their converters and were normally located in the same place on all common cells - beneath the primary and secondary heat exchangers. These were large, bulky things that were always kept near the outer shell of the unit behind round panels. It didn’t take him long to find them and begin removing the screws that held the panel in place.
    The night was cool and the birds that sat in the trees around the camp made enough noise to drown his work. The chattering and chirruping of the creatures, the clicks and natters of insects, the buzz of flies, all served both to mask and irritate him as he lay there, dissecting the machines until he’d exposed the cores and removed the precious lenses.
    By the time he’d reached the third car he was confident that he’d pulled it off without disturbing the camp. It was only when he heard the flaps of a tent rustle and listened to the stream of urine that fell near his feet that he felt the first pangs of panic.
    Instantly he switched off his torch and lay there as still as he could be, willing the person to go back to sleep. The noise of the night continued but with less effort and the silence began to enfold him like a spectre. From where he lay he could see a pair of boots in the moonlight, unlaced, and they were so close to him that he was sure he must have been seen.
    Alan wondered how long he would have if the man saw him and raised the alarm. He and Moll would have to run and not stop until morning, maybe head west a little and circle back, throwing them off. Even as he thought this his stomach knotted and he realised he was biting down so hard on the torch in his mouth that the plastic casing was beginning to crack. He didn’t fear the chase. He feared being caught. It’d been his worst fear since he’d discovered what had been done to him in Longsteel, since the rest of the staff had died of starvation and thirst down there in the darkness while he and the other volunteers had lived. If they knew, if they realised, his life would become a living hell of unending torture without even death to release him.
    The man zipped up and moved back towards the tent and Alan sighed with relief. When he heard the rustling of the fabric he turned on the torch and finished his work, removing the lens and putting it in his pocket.
    As he crawled out from under the car he stood up, turned and saw the barrel of a pistol a few inches from his face.
    “Who the fuck are you?” asked the man. Alan slowly looked down at his boots and saw that it was the same guy from before. “What were you doing under there?”
    He said nothing. The man flicked off the safety with his thumb and asked again. It was a matte-black automatic that fired bullets, not laser, and Alan could see it was well looked after. A museum piece perhaps? There were more and more of them showing up in the hands of gangs now that laser rifles were starting to fail without the skills available to repair them.
    “One more time,” said the man. “What the-”
    Moll leapt up and fixed her jaw around his throat without making a single sound, other than a gargle that escaped from his blood flecked lips as he fell. The hunk of flesh came away from his neck without effort but as his writhing shape hit the ground, the pistol fired and the report tore through the night, sending the birds and insects into a fresh frenzy.
    The bullet, angled up at Alan, slammed into his body and tore through his right lung, felling him with the impact and a sudden rush of air into his chest cavity. The agony was beyond compare as he tried to breathe using his collapsed lung. The noise alone was a horror in itself - a slurping, sucking sound that came from somewhere out of his swimming