Read Thrown Away for Free Online

had holed up in the very same room.
    They were on the third floor of a derelict apartment building not too far from where Jack had seen the Hunters for the first time, an area that had been picked clean over centuries. Most days it was impossible enough to find decent salvage of any kind so close to The Crossing, and this place was less than two miles away. Collecting enough wood for a fire was a hopeless task in such a populated and over-picked area, and finding stuff like this just didn't happen.
    And yet here he was, holding something that was impossible to find anymore, ever. A relic from an era that was three centuries dead.
    And that wasn't the end of it.
    Jack looked at the can opener, turning it over in his hands, checking for rust spots. There weren't any.
    "This should be rusty," he said, frowning, and then glancing at the boy. "Just lying around in a dark, probably wet place , all this time. I mean years and years. It should be rusty."
    "It was in this bag," said Ryan, reaching for a clear, plastic bag lying on the floor. The bag had been ripped open, and a guilty expression crossed the boy's face. "It was in this bag, but I opened it. Sorry. I found it in the box in the wall."
    Jack's eyes widened.
    "What box?"
    "Well. Not a box ," Ryan backtracked, looking a little flustered or even embarrassed.
    The boy thinks he's done wrong, Jack thought, frowning, but he let the boy continue.
    "It's like a big square hole in the wall. You can't see it from the floor below. I looked. But under there," Ryan pointed at the hole in the boards, "you can crawl to the bit above the wall, and the top of the box is a bit open. The wall is cracked. I think there's more stuff in there but I can't reach any further in."
    "What do you mean , there's nothing in the room where the box is?"
    "I'll show you," said Ryan.
    Jack followed the boy down the stairs, avoiding the piles of trash. Underneath the kitchen, on the floor below, was a large open room that Jack had walked through many times. There were two entrances, one to the stairs and the other to the front foyer of the building. But the walls were completely bare apart from occasional scraps of faded but colourful plaster.
    Ryan stopped in the middle of the room and pointed at the north wall. "Right there," he said.
    Jack walked over to the small hole that the boy was indicating, and peered up into the kitchen above. The same rotten and faded green cabinets could be seen through it.
    "This hole wasn't here before," said Jack. "I would have seen it."
    "Ah," said Ryan, looking sheepish."It kinda gave way when I first climbed inside". The child walked over to the wall below the hole, reached up, and tapped the plaster. "The box is right here, I think."
    "It's hidden?" asked Jack.
    "Yeah. You can check both sides. If you go under the stairs the wall is bare there as well. But the box is there. I felt it. The top had cracked open, I think, but only a little bit." The boy held up his hand, using two fingers to indicate a three inch gap. A gap just big enough for a child's hand to squeeze through. "I felt inside and it was all dry, but I couldn't pull any of the other stuff out."
    Jack took out his machete and tapped the wall with the back of the blade. The sound was dull. He tapped the area a foot away, and the sound changed.
    It was hollow.
    "My god. There must be a safe hidden in there."
    And there was. After five minutes of hacking at the aged and softened plaster, which crumbled and fell away in large chunks, Jack took a step back and stared at the secure door of a metal safe, his mouth open. He didn't know what to say, and was utterly dumbfounded. No one found stuff like this anymore.
    Ten minutes later and they had used Jack's wrench to pull the kitchen cabinets from the wall on the floor above, and pull up the floorboards, then pr ised open the top of the safe. The metal was a colour that Jack had rarely seen before. New metal. And worth a lot to trade for. It might take a while for him