After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1) by Mark R. Healy

said, resentful.  “Let’s just forget that for now.  How about we just concentrate on the part where we get you on your feet again?  Try to find a way to allow you to get from one place to the next without having to crawl through garbage.  That would at least allow you to get up there , right?”  I swung my arm and pointed back at Ol’ Trembler.  “That’s what you really want, isn’t it?  To go up there and pray that it collapses on you, so you have an easy out.  Right? ”
    He looked away, sullen.
    “Well listen,” I went on angrily, “it’s your choice. I’m not going to force you one way or the other. If you want to go up there, why don’t you crawl up there right now?” I was on the verge of shouting. “Get it over with, huh? Come on, we’re right here! Go and do it if that’s what you want.”
    “Are you finished?” he snapped.
    Overwrought, I glared back at him.  “Yeah.  I think I am finished.”  I began to stalk off.
    I’d taken a few steps down the street when I heard his voice. “The base.”
    I stopped, looked over my shoulder. “What?”
    “You need the right kind of metal.” He scraped his way around to face me. “If you’re gonna do it, you need the right materials. You go strapping a block of wood, or an iron bar to the bottom of my legs, it’s gonna fall off when we hit the first sand dune.”
    “Yeah, makes sense,” I said in a more reasonable tone.
    “You need the right kind of alloy, and a way to weld it together. There’s no way you’re gonna find that in coffee shops or hardware stores around here.” He gestured to the north. “But at the military base, there might be a chance you’ll find something. We had a clank workshop there.”
    “I thought you said there was nothing left out there.”
    He shrugged.  “Well, don’t get your hopes up.  There might be something there.  Underground, at least.”  He struggled into the wheelbarrow and sat there expectantly.
    “Okay, so tell me about it.” I moved back over toward him and got the barrow moving again.
    “Last time I saw it, there wasn’t much there but a pile of rubble. It was clouted pretty damn hard. But there’s a chance you’ll find something underground - if you can find your way down.”
    “What’s down there?”
    “Well, the workshop for one thing. It was mainly geared toward modifying the clanks in some way that wasn’t provided by the manufacturer. They’d take clanks, remove one hand, and stick a grenade launcher on there. Or they’d weld in extra plating around the torso. Y’know, that kind of thing.”
    “Right, so hopefully they’ll have some alloy. Let’s hope they have some welding gear sitting around there as well,” I said wryly.
    “Don’t push your luck,” Max said.
    We came out of Fitzgibbon Avenue and the river lay before us. I turned the barrow north.
    “So how do I find it?”
    “Okay, if you head north on the freeway it’ll take you out of town. There’s a long narrow bridge that I hope is still there. After that the highway winds its way east and up into the foothills of the mountains. You’ll need to take a right hand turn, it should be the third after the bridge. Follow that and it will take you to the base, it’s a couple of clicks out.”
    “What about the layout of the base. What am I looking for?”
    “The workshop was over in D Block. It was close to the eastern-most building there. So I guess you’re looking for the eastern-most pile of rubble.”
    “Well,” I said thoughtfully, “it sounds like it’s worth a shot. I hope everything is where you remember it.” It was also a chance, I realised, of finding out if there were people out there in cryotanks, but I didn’t mention that to Max.
    “Hey, maybe you’ll get lucky and there’ll still be some signs out there that can point you where to go,” he said.
    “Yeah. Or maybe I’ll stumble into a tour bus that will drop me at the front door. Anyway, I'll see if I can get out there