Moonfeast

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The companions couldn’t speak for a minute at the miraculous sight of dozens of pallets filling the room, the wall shelves jammed full of supplies. There were also endless racks of M-16 assault rifles, M-203 combination assault rifles, 40 mm gren launchers, M-60 machine guns, even bulky .50-machine guns too heavy for a person to carry, much less fire and remain standing. There were entire rows of plastic drums marked as containing ammunition, and pallet after pallet of sturdy plastic boxes that the companions knew contained grens, and even LAW rocket launchers. It was the military might of the predark world spread out in front of their astonished eyes like a holiday feast.

“Nuke me, this redoubt was never emptied after skydark!” J.B. cried happily. “The people must have died just before the evacuation order came.”

“Fully stocked redoubt,” Jak muttered. “More than we dream finding!” For the normally laconic teenager, that was an extraordinarily long speech.

“Thank you, Gaia,” Krysty whispered.

“Not even that deep storage locker in New Mex had this much ordnance,” Mildred agreed, already looking around for any medical supplies. Sometimes, field packs were stored in the armory along with the weaponry.

“All right, fill your pockets, but nothing more,” Ryan ordered brusquely, resting the stock of the Steyr on a hip. “Krysty and I will stand guard. Don’t weigh yourself down for the rest of the sweep. We can come back later and take what we want.”

Instantly the rest of the companions separated, walking swiftly through the stocks and piles, checking the numbers on the countless sealed containers and mentally translating those into descriptions. Boots, combat, size ten, for use of. Milk, powdered, vitamin fortified, for daily consumption. HazMat suits, Level 10, hazardous materials: antinuclear, antibacteriological, antichemical.

Going to a wall cabinet, Mildred pulled it open to find a stack of boxes full of MRE food packs. Grinning widely, she went to a nearby pallet and grabbed a nylon duffel bag, then returned to start packing the shiny Mylar envelopes. There was beef stew, veal parmesan, meat loaf and mac and cheese. Pausing for only a second, the woman removed the smoked gopher from her backpack and unceremoniously deposited it into a waste chute.

Eagerly, Doc went in search of trade goods. Among the thousand and one things stored in the redoubts, the predark government had considered the fact that some sort of crude civilization might arise from the nuclear ashes of America all by itself, so the base personnel would need trinkets to trade with the survivors outside. The companions had found such things before and they were always tremendously useful, such as unbreakable pocket combs, Swiss Army knives, Bowie knives, plastic mirrors, pots and pans, rain ponchos, fishing hooks and, of course, lots of weapons. Mostly battle axes, shields and swords. The Pentagon had clearly expected civilization to fall all the way down to true barbarism, but sometimes there were also black-powder weapons, which was what Doc wanted. Especially the tiny copper nipples full of fulminating mercury that the Civil War–era .44 LeMat used as primers. He never had enough of those.

Unfortunately, Doc was unable to find any such items on this initial pass, and consoled himself with a Webley .44 revolver and a cardboard box containing fifty live rounds.

Meanwhile J.B. was having trouble restraining himself from taking everything in sight, and was snagging only a few choice items, several sticks of TNT and a box of detonator caps, a small coil of primacord, a fistful of waterproof timing pencils and items for pipe bombs. Then the man paused at the sight of a wall safe. A safe inside a vault?

Mentally crossing his fingers, J.B. went to work on the combination lock and soon it yielded with a soft click. Turning the handle, J.B. opened the door and stopped breathing. A portable lockbox filled the safe, and he removed it as gingerly as if defusing a land mine. Placing it on the floor, J.B. used his knife to trick the lock, then lifted the lid. There nestled in the soft, gray foam, were six implo grens, the most powerful predark weapon invented by the human race. It worked just like a regular gren: pull the safety pin, release the arming lever and throw. But instead of an explosion, the gren created a gravity whirlpool, an implosion that could condense an Abrams tank to the size of an orange in less than a microsecond. With these at their command, the companions no longer had to worry about sec hunter droids, or much of anything else, for that matter.

Quickly rummaging in his munitions bag, J.B. found some duct tape and securely attached the arming lever of each gren before transferring it to his bag. The weight was considerable, but the man had never seen this many implo grens.

Affectionately patting the leather bag, J.B. proudly started back to find Ryan when he saw something twinkle out of the corner of his sight. Twinkle? Oh shit.

Frantically grabbing for an implo gren, J.B. sniffed hard for any trace of ozone, but the air in the armory was warm and flat, sterilized and purified until it was completely without any taste or flavor.

With the gren clenched tight in a fist, J.B. crept around a pallet stacked high with plastic boxes containing M-4 rifles, to stop dead in his tracks. There was a small alcove directly ahead of the man, thick metal bars sealing it off from the rest of the armory. Set into the metal was an alphanumeric keypad similar to the type used to open the redoubt’s door, and behind the bars were a dozen crystalline containers, inside of which was a swirling white cloud filled with sparkling lights. The sight almost made him drop the gren.

“Cerberus clouds,” J.B. whispered, the soft words somehow sounding louder than thunder.

Backing away slowly, J.B. tried not to breathe, the terrible sight of the inhuman slayers filling his world. Just for a second, the man looked at the implo gren in his hand, then realized in cold reality that if the charge didn’t chill all of the clouds at once, he and the rest of the companions would be in for the fight of their lives.

When their old boss the Trader had first discovered the existence of the redoubts, the entranceway had been guarded by a cloud that bit, and chilled. Over time, the companions learned the inhuman guardian of some of the redoubts was called a Cerberus cloud, and aside from an implo gren, the friends knew the things were virtually indestructible. The clouds were sentient, or at least they acted that way, but if it was only a software program running into their vaporous minds, or if they were truly alive, who knew? Certainly no one alive in Deathlands. What was known for a fact was that they ruthlessly aced unauthorized personnel inside a redoubt.

Going back around the pallet full of M-4 rifles, J.B. never took his sight off the crystal jars while he softly whistled like a nightingale. Immediately everybody else in the armory stopped talking, and soon the others were alongside the man, their weapons primed for combat.

“Trouble?” Ryan asked, looking around.

“See for yourself,” J.B. whispered, indicating a direction with his chin. The implo gren was still in his fist, the tape removed from the arming lever, a finger in the safety ring.

Starting forward, the companions paused at the first twinkle of light. While Ryan and Jak sniffed hard, Krysty tried to sense anything unusual, Mildred held out a mirror to see around the stack of boxes, and Doc stepped onto the pallet to sneak a peek over the top.

“By all that is holy, a Cerberus cloud!” Doc whispered in a strained voice. “No, by thunder, it is six of the Hellish constructs!”

“Jars of Cerberus clouds,” Mildred said in awe. “This must be how they transported the damn things.”

“Use implo gren,” Jak suggested. “Use all.”

“And what if there are more of these things that we haven’t found yet?” Mildred asked, trying to ignore the tingling sensation on the back of her neck. The physician knew it was only a psychological reaction to the tense situation, but her hackles still wanted to rise in preparation of immediate flight.

The teenager scowled at the possibility, and hunched his shoulders as if getting ready to charge the clouds.

“Okay, people, fall back by the numbers,” Ryan commanded softly, walking backward on the toes of his combat boots, trying not to make any noise.

The rest of the companions closely followed his example, and the group carefully retraced its path through the massive armory until reaching the entrance again. Quickly, Ryan and Krysty removed the old bones from the threshold, and anxiously waited while the massive door cycled shut then rotated slightly to firmly lock.

“All right, if those clouds come alive, this’ll buy us some time,” Ryan said, slinging the Steyr over a shoulder. “But we better haul ass out of here, just in case.”

“Jump?” Jak asked succinctly.

“No,” Ryan decided. “We’ll check outside first. See where we are before we do another blind jump.”

“A wise choice, my dear Ryan,” Doc said. “To be honest, I am still feeling somewhat queasy from our last impromptive sojourn through the ethereal void.”

“And without any more of Millie’s juice, we’ll probably arrive puking out our guts this time,” J.B. added, glancing at the ceiling. “Mebbe we can drive out of here. Should be lots of wags in the garage upstairs just waiting to be used.”

“Wherever the nuke we are,” Krysty retorted, starting for the elevator banks in a long stride.

Along the way, J.B. passed an implo gren to each of the others. That way, in case he got chilled, they would still have a fighting chance to survive.

Piling into the cage, the companions started for the top level of the redoubt, each of them feeling slightly more at ease the farther they got from the armory. Six Cerberus clouds. They would have been happier finding a roomful of rampaging stickies.

Arriving at the garage, the companions were delighted to find the place full of vehicles: civilian wags, vans, trucks and some motorcycles. There was even a score of military wags: trucks, Hummers, several armored-personnel carriers, and even a couple of LARC amphibious transports. Even better, the worktables were covered with equipment, the pegboard walls festooned with tools of every description. Unfortunately, each APC seemed to have been undergoing some serious maintenance on the transmissions. There were numerous skeletons in greasy coveralls bent over the exposed diesel engines, tools and spare parts scattered across on the floor.

Over by the fuel pump, skid marks on the floor revealed that a big GMC truck had clearly come out of the tunnel too fast and lost control, desperately trying to brake to a halt before crashing. However, the driver failed, and the big Jimmy had plowed into an SUV, the two vehicles then smashing a Hummer into the wall.

“And there is the source of the nerve gas,” Mildred stated, running stiff fingers though her beaded plaits.

In the rear compartment of the crashed Hummer was a large equipment trunk securely strapped into place. But the crash had snapped the restraining straps and popped the locks, allowing some of the containers inside to tumble out. Their broken valves lay nearby, the concrete severely discolored from the escaping contents. The containers were small, hardly larger than a fire extinguisher, and painted a very bright yellow with a black skull and crossbones painted on the side, along with the universal logo of a biohazard.

“I stand corrected. It wasn’t nerve gas, but some type of a plague.” Mildred scowled in open hatred. “It must have been airborne to spread so quickly through the entire redoubt before the scrubbers cleaned the air.”

“Germ warfare,” Doc snarled. “The most foul and cowardly of weapons!” Doc had read hundreds of books during his stay in the twentieth century, and he had been astonished by man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.

“We safe?” Jak asked in an even tone. If the teen was frightened, there was no sign of it in his calm demeanor.

“Safe? Oh, absolutely,” Mildred stated, her shoulders easing. “There’s not a plague in existence that could survive a hundred years in such a sterile environment.”

“That you know about,” Krysty countered, her hair coiling protectively around her face.

Without comment, the physician shrugged. The world was full of unknown dangers. That was just part of life.

“Any way to check, see if the plague is still live?” J.B. asked, taking the stub of a cigar from his shirt pocket and tucking it into the corner of his mouth.

“No, John. Afraid not.”

“Damn,” the man muttered. In spite of Mildred’s disapproving look, he used a butane lighter to light the cigar and take a deep drag. “Frag it then. We’re still standing, and that’s good enough.”

“Agreed,” Ryan declared. “Krysty and Doc, find the least damaged APC, see what needs to be done and start the repairs if you can. Jak and Mildred, start filling gas cans, and find some extra engine oil. Those wags burn it like crazy. J.B. and I will go outside and see where we are.”

Everybody began to hustle, but as the two men headed for the exit tunnel the elevator doors unexpectedly closed and the cage began to nosily descend. That caught everybody by surprise as there was nobody else in the redoubt to summon the elevator…

Chapter Five

“Gaia, the clouds must be loose!” Krysty cursed, pulling out an implo gren.

Spinning, Ryan raced toward the elevator bank. “Forget the outside recce! Doc, grab some fuel! Everybody else, find something that rolls, any mother bastard thing, and let’s haul ass!”

Everybody exploded into action. Bitter experience had taught them that a Cerberus could move faster than a running man, so a wag was their only hope of escape. However, the garage was full of vehicles, most of them in pitiful shape despite the inert gas that had filled the redoubt. The civilian wags were the worst with flat tires that had deflated over the years, and many were situated over dark puddles that might once have been engine oil, but now was closer in consistency to tar. Those vehicles were ignored and the companions concentrated on the mil wags, each choosing something different.

Reaching the working elevator, Ryan rammed his panga into the rubber seal between the two doors and managed to force them apart by sheer strength. Instantly the cage stopped moving. That bought them a few moments, and every second counted now.

Scrambling to the workbench, J.B. grabbed a welding torch and wheeled it over to the stairwell door. It took him a few tries to get the equipment working, then the rod gushed out flame. Narrowing that into a white-hot stiletto, J.B. expertly moved the torch along the edge of the metal door, feeding in a melting iron rod to try to create an air-tight seal.

Risking a glance down the shaft, Ryan heard nothing moving inside the cage, but then caught a faint twinkling of reflected light through the ventilation grille. Fireblast, it was a cloud, all right. Mebbe even several of them, or even all six. The weight of the implo gren in his pocket was sorely tempting, and he thrust in a hand to touch the charge, but then decided to save it for an emergency. The cloud seemed to have stopped for the moment, but the man knew that it could simply float to the shaft if it wanted, so there was no sense clearing a direct path for it that lead directly to the companions.

Lying sideways inside the cab of a Mack truck, Jak tried to hot-wire the engine. It struggled to start, then coughed hard and roared into life, only to immediately bang and stop cold. Hot rads, it blew a rod!

Extracting himself from the wiring, the albino teen yanked open the rear door of an APC to try for better luck there. Kicking the skeletons of the sailors out of the way, Jak headed straight for the driver’s seat and started flipping switches.

Turning away from an ambulance in disgust, Mildred next yanked out a grinning skeleton from behind the wheel of a Hummer. The physician desperately longed to raid the medical supplies stored in the back of the ambulance, but that was impossible right now, so she forced those thoughts from her mind. Run away, and stay alive, was her mantra for today.

Leaning dangerously far into the shaft, Ryan used the curved blade of his panga to slash at the control wires until he was satisfied that the cage would never work again without extensive repairs. Then he stepped back and let the door close again. When nothing happened, Ryan grunted in satisfaction and went directly to the next elevator to repeat the process.

“John Barrymore, please extinguish that cigar!” Doc barked, dragging a pair of sloshing cans across the garage, the nozzle of the fuel pump dripping slightly onto the floor. “How are we going to detect the dulcet smell of ozone with you puffing on that reeking cheroot?”

Accepting the logic of that, J.B. spit out the precious cheroot and crushed it under a boot, but his hands never stopped in their desperate work. Sweat was running off the man from the staggering heat of the acetylene torch, but J.B. was more than halfway done, the door nearly welded shut. Whether that would stop a Cerberus cloud he had no idea, but it was the best plan he had.

There came a whirring sound and an engine sputtered into operation, then settled into a steady roar of power. Whistling sharply for everybody’s attention, Krysty waved from inside the tiny pilothouse of a LARC amphibian transport. Resembling a flat-bottom boat with wheels, it looked about as speedy as a wheelbarrow, but this was the first wag they found that worked, and that was good enough for today. Checking over the small control board, Krysty saw that both of the fuel tanks read empty, and she quickly killed the V8 diesel engine to save what gas was still lingering in the ancient fuel lines.

Finished with the elevator bank, Ryan turned just in time to snarl a curse at the sight of twinkling lights coming from a wall vent. The bastard clouds were inside the ventilation system! Now pulling out the implo gren, the man backed away to a safe distance, ripping off the duct tape and curling a finger into the arming pin. Ryan would only get one chance at a chill, and he couldn’t miss.

Tossing the spare gas canister over the gunwale of the LARC, Doc went to the rear fuel port and used the butt of his LeMat to hammer off the rusty gas cap. With no concern for his own safety, the man simply turned the canister upside down, to quickly pour as much as possible into the amphibious transport. A lot of the fluid splashed onto the sloping side of the vehicle, staining his pants and shoes, but Doc never slowed for an instant in his task. Clothing could be replaced, but not that elusive state of existence colloquially known as life.

With a dry mouth, Ryan watched as the Cerberus cloud flowed from the grille of the wall vent, growing ever larger. Released from its jar, the thing was twenty feet across, the sharp smell of ozone filling the garage.

Rushing over to the LARC, Mildred tossed in an M-60 machine gun yanked from a Hummer, and Jak heaved two more gas canisters into the middle span. Then everybody yanked out an implo gren and clawed off the strip of duct tape.

“Done!” J.B. announced, stepping back triumphantly.

But then he cursed as he saw a tiny glowing spot in the middle of the door. That wasn’t his work, he had been nowhere near the center. As J.B. watched, the spot got a little bigger as it changed color from a dull red, to bright cherry red rapidly escalating to orange, then yellow and finally white. Then the door would melt, and the cloud on the other side would flow through. He had spent ten minutes welding the fragging door shut, and the Cerberus cloud would get through in only a few moments. Not knowing what else to do, J.B. shoved the welding torch at the orange splotch. The white-hot flame instantly cut through the softened metal and there came a sound from the other side, almost as if the cloud had experienced pain.

Trying to keep his hand steady and pointed at the same location, J.B. watched for the formation of any other burns, knowing that he was now trapped. If he dropped the welding torch, the cloud would pour though the hole like escaping steam. The implo gren was in the pocket of his leather jacket, the tape removed and ready to go. But that might as well be on the moon for all the good it would do him right now. There were more iron rods on the workbench, but by the time he got back, the cloud would be through. Not that any of that really mattered, because the pressure gauge on the acetylene tank was rapidly approaching zero. Suddenly the man was filled with the overwhelming urge for a smoke.

Gunning the diesel of the LARC, Krysty wheeled the long vehicle around to point toward the exit tunnel. She reached for the horn, but like most military vehicles, the amphibious transport didn’t have one, rush-hour traffic being one of the few problems for sailors storming an enemy beach.

“Time to go!” she yelled, the muscles standing up on her back from the sheer force of the cry.

Wheeling over a tool chest, Doc set it directly in front of the door, and J.B. arranged the welding torch into position, then used a heavy wrench to hold it there. Releasing his grip, the man stepped back to check the work, then turned and bolted for the waiting half-track with Doc close behind, the tail of his frock coat flapping behind him.

As the cloud started to move away from the wall, Ryan yanked the pin and gently rolled the gren along the floor, then turned and raced away. Reaching an APC, he grabbed onto a stanchion set into the armored hull and held on for dear life. His skin began to prickle from the close proximity of the Cerberus cloud, then there came a musical ting and the gren activated.

Instantly the garage was effused with a blinding white light, the Cerberus cloud emitted an inhuman noise that might have been a scream, and then a violent wind filled the inside of the underground garage as the gravitational vortex began dragging every loose item toward its epicenter. Dust streamed toward the powerful implosion, papers went flying, bones rattled across the floor, and small tools pelted Ryan as they hurtled by. The ceiling lights swayed, a motorcycle toppled over, an empty jumpsuit sailed through the turbulent atmosphere like a kamikaze ghost—then the wind stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

Releasing his hold on the APC, Ryan glanced at the circular crater where the air vent had existed. Yards wide, a huge section of the floor and wall were gone, vanished, compressed into an allotropic state beyond comprehension. Shuffling toward the LARC, Ryan could see the internal plumbing and wiring, the ventilation shaft a wide gaping mouth, the edges mirror-bright. There was no sign of the cloud, even the smell of the ozone was gone, every trace annihilated by the staggering power of the deadly implo gren.

Clambering over the low gunwale of the LARC transport, the Deathlands warrior nodded to Krysty in the pilothouse, then saw her face contort with fear, and knew the truth. Turning fast, Ryan saw another cloud rising from the open ventilation shaft. Only this one began to move across the garage before it finished rising from the shaft. Fireblast, Ryan thought, the fragging things learned from their mistakes!

“Me this time,” Jak snarled, standing in the vehicle and yanking out the arming pin.

Flowing over some of the disorganized skeletons on the floor, the cloud paused for a few moments, the bones vanished, and the mass of the cloud grew slightly larger.

“Eat dead?” Jak snarled. “Try eat this!”

Throwing the gren against the distant pegboard, the albino youth banked the shot, and the mil sphere rolled toward the cloud from behind. As the cloud turned at the noise, Krysty slammed on the gas and the LARC lumbered into operation, the four huge tires squealing in protest.

Angling fast around the first corner, Krysty heard the gren activate, her hair fluttering from the wind of the implosion.

“Dark night, I saw the torch go out!” J.B. stormed, adjusting his glasses. “That means another cloud is on the way.”

“The three heads of Cerberus, eh?” Doc rumbled, yanking the pin from his gren.

“Save that bastard gren until you see the thing!” Ryan commanded, grabbing the side of the gunwale with both hands and holding on tight.

At the best speed possible, Krysty raced the cumbersome LARC along the zigzagging tunnel, the steel hull throwing off sparks as it scraped along the walls. In the backseats, the companions were thrown around helplessly. Once, there had been safety belts, but implacable time had reduced those to a gossamer thinness more suitable for a bathroom than a restraining harness. As the LARC careened off a sharp corner, the M-60 bounced over the side. Jak tried for a save, but the weapon tumbled away, a sacrifice to the god of speed.

“The sixty!” Doc cried out aghast, then the man used a word that normally he pretended didn’t even exist.