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All levels were accessed by the corridors, each of which was equipped with a series of sec doors that could seal off sections when required. The levels themselves were accessed by a series of large elevators, some of which were designed for large numbers of personnel, and some of which could take equipment and smaller vehicles. A series of stairwells served as an emergency backup for possible power or circuit failure on the elevators. These stairwells were accessed by sec doors, and were of bare concrete and sparsely lit. The elevators had sec risks for the companions, but from bitter experience they were all aware that the stairwells were traps from which there was less chance of escape.
So they would always choose the elevators if possible. Thus it was that Ryan led his people toward the elevator. All his senses and instincts were telling him that the redoubt was deserted. There was no sign of life anywhere on this level, and indeed it seemed that the level had seen no activity since skydark. And experience told him that, if the redoubt was in any way occupied, sheer curiosity and the search for jack and loot to trade would have led the occupants down to this level.
The companions were relaxed but still alert as they reached the end of the corridor and the dulled metal doors that closed over the elevator shaft.
Ryan studied the electronic panel. “Looks like it’s still working,” he muttered. “Let’s see….”
The one-eyed man tapped the call button, and the friends stood in complete silence, listening intently for the gentle purr of the mechanism as it approached.
“Sounds like the shaft’s unaffected,” J.B. mused.
The elevator reached their level, a muted shuddering announcing its halt. As the doors opened smoothly onto the empty car, Jak said, “Mebbe luck change…for once.”
Chapter Two
With a muted hiss, the doors of the elevator opened onto the next level. Ryan and J.B. were poised with blasters ready, their companions ready to move to defensive positions and return fire. Their condition-red stance was met with an almost mocking silence. The corridor ahead of them was as deserted as the one they had just left.
Both Ryan and the Armorer relaxed, the one-eyed warrior turning to the others as he did so.
“Looks like this one has never been breached,” he said. “Guess we should take a look around and see if they left anything behind before they evacuated.”
“If we’re lucky,” Mildred added, “there should be food and medical supplies.”
“Hot pipe, more self-heats,” Dean commented. The tinned units of food that had been standard military issue were usually somewhat tasteless, but they did have the advantage of staying edible for a long time, were easy to transport and had the extra advantage their name suggested of being able to be heated in the pack at any time due to the self-heat mechanism they contained.
Which didn’t stop them being a last-ditch emergency.
“Never mind, young Dean,” Doc commented as he strode out into the corridor, stretching limbs cramped and weary from the jump. “Perhaps we can find some other comestibles in the kitchen areas that can be used for a more, ah, passable repast before we avail ourselves of the showers—always assuming that the water supply is still constant and the heating works in this relic of the past.”
“You’re something of a relic yourself, you old buzzard, so watch what you’re dismissing,” Mildred cut in. “Besides, why do you always talk so much?”
“Just because we live in times of darkness and despair, my dear Doctor, there is no need for us to stop exercising our intellect and imagination—as I’m sure you are too well aware, if you can desist from the desire to extract humor from me at every opportunity…” His tone was harsh, but there was a twinkle in his still clear eyes.
“Let’s stop arguing with each other and just get to business,” Ryan suggested.
“Yeah. Could use sleep,” Jak commented.
The Armorer nodded. “And I’d like to check out the armory as soon as possible. If they left this place more or less intact…” He let his words trail off, but the implication was obvious. If the facilities on this level were as complete as its desertion would suggest, then there was a chance that the armory would also have been left in a fully stocked condition. Not only would this give them all a chance to replenish ammo stocks and perhaps pick new weapons, but it would also satisfy his desire to examine another fully-stocked predark arms dump.
“But first things first,” Krysty remarked, pulling off her fur coat, which was proving stifling in the temperature-regulated atmosphere. “Shower, food, sleep.”
“Go to it,” Ryan replied, indicating that she should take the lead now that they were as sure as was possible of the redoubt’s safety.
While Krysty headed for the showers, Mildred made her way to the medical bay. As the only member of the group with pre-dark medical training, she was always keen to loot as many drugs, dressings and medical supplies as possible from a still stocked redoubt, filling the capacious pockets of her jacket with as much as it was possible for her to carry. Many of the drugs had been vacuum sealed with the intention of lasting for a long duration underground, and if she was able to find undamaged stocks of drugs, then it was a bonus that could prove invaluable in the outside world.
Leaving Krysty to some privacy in the showers, Jak, Dean and Doc made their way to the kitchens to see what they could find. Jak detoured to check out the dorms, his mind fixed on some much needed rest, and a deep sleep untroubled by the need to stay on the alert.
J.B. hung back to speak to Ryan.
“This looks good. Food, showers, beds and no intruders.”
“Yeah. A bit too fireblasted good.”
“You thinking what I am?” the Armorer queried.
Ryan nodded. “You find a redoubt this good, chances are that’s because no one can get in.”
“So what do you reckon it’ll be? The upper levels are trashed in some way and impassable—”
“Or the outside is too hostile to support any life.”
“Or has blocked us in,” the Armorer finished.
Ryan twitched a half smile. “There’s always another jump if we can’t get out. Mebbe enough here to let us stay and rest up a few days before.”
The Armorer assented. “We’re okay for now. You go see Krysty. I’ll see if Millie needs any help.”
“That’s only because you don’t want to venture near the kitchens if Dean and Doc are in action,” Ryan said wryly.
J.B. didn’t answer, only remarking after a pause, “I’ll resist the urge to go straight to the armory,” before heading off to the medical bay.
Ryan watched his longtime friend disappear around the bend in the corridor before shaking his head and allowing himself a smile.
“NEED A HAND?”
Mildred stopped rummaging through the cupboard. “You could get the rest of these things open and see if there’s anything worth saving,” she replied.
J.B. moved across the large bay, past the row of couches that were designed for those who needed to be laid out while being treated, and joined Mildred at the far side of the room. He opened the cupboard door. “Looks like you hit the jackpot,” he noted, casting an eye over the medical supplies within.
Mildred agreed and enlisted his help to empty the cupboards onto the couches, so that she could more easily survey the cupboard’s contents. It took them several trips to empty the array of cupboards.
J.B. stood back and let Mildred take the lead. He knew a little about medical supplies from his time with Trader. The old man had insisted that all his people know the rudiments of first aid, and there had also been a thriving trade in the few medical supplies and drugs that could be salvaged and used for barter and trade. But Mildred was the expert.
Her plaits swinging around her face, masking her expression as she muttered to herself, Mildred sifted through the vacuum packs of drugs and dressings. Some would be of little use on the outside, and those that were for minor ailments, such as the inoculations against the flu virus, were dismissed. People had to be hardier, and there was too little space for those drugs that couldn’t be termed lifesaving. Besides, many of the smaller bugs and viruses from predark times had mutated into something that could no longer be combated by the old drug.
The medicated dressings were always useful, and Mildred had to decide which to take on the matter of size: were they easy to stash in her jacket? Would they be too small to be of any practical use? Taking all the larger ones was no answer, as once the seal was broken they were rendered useless and no longer sterile, so it would all too easy to waste so much.
J.B. waited patiently while Mildred made her choices and placed them carefully in the pockets and bags sewn into the coat, turning it from just a protective garment into a walking repository.
When she had finished, Mildred looked up at the silent Armorer. “Guess this’ll be you tomorrow when you’re in the armory, right?”
J.B. nodded. “Different thing, same purpose,” he said simply.
RYAN DECIDED to shower before eating. Like J.B., he couldn’t face the thought of Dean and Doc in the kitchens before relaxing with a hot shower—assuming that the water-heating system was still operative.
The one-eyed warrior made his way to the shower rooms, noting the sound of running water as he drew near. It was unlikely that Krysty would be showering under a cold stream, so he felt assured that the heating system was fine.
Entering the communal area where Krysty’s clothes lay discarded, Ryan picked a towel from the pile that was stacked in an open cupboard space. He shook it vigorously, and a fine rain of dust was released into the air. It was an indication of the gradual failure of the air-conditioning, but was nowhere near enough for any of them to worry about.
“Come on in, lover, the water’s fine,” Krysty called from in the shower.
“How did you know it’s me?” Ryan replied, as he left the towel on the bench that ran around the walls and began to strip off his clothing, putting his blasters down first and unstrapping the panga from its sheath along his thigh.
“Who else would it be?” Krysty replied with a laugh in her voice.
“That’s a fair point,” Ryan answered as he stepped into the showers. A long stall with several showerheads supplying the hot water, some of them were partially stoppered with scale and so spluttered intermittently, while the majority sent streams of almost scalding water onto the one-eyed warrior’s leathery skin. He shuddered involuntarily as the pinpoint needles of hot water hit his aching muscles, releasing the tension within them. Steam swathed their bodies as he moved closer to Krysty.
“Feels good to get the sweat and dirt off, doesn’t it?” she said, her mass of Titian hair plastered to her scalp by the running water, her strongly muscled but still shapely frame glistening with the wet.
“Feels better to get the tightness out of my muscles and feel them relax,” Ryan replied, turning his face into the jet stream of one showerhead and feeling it run down his face, his good eye closed against it, the water pounding a tattoo on his eyelid. “We need this now and again. Need this respite, this chance to relax and rest up.”
“Need it for a lot of things,” Krysty whispered, moving closer to him.
Ryan opened his eye and found himself looking directly into Krysty’s green eyes, opening directly into her inner being.
Ryan Cawdor was a man of action, a practical man not given to flights of fancy, but he knew that Krysty’s mutie genes gave her abilities that were beyond everyday comprehension. One of the things Ryan had read in the fragments of old texts that he was sometimes lucky enough to find was something about eyes being “windows to the soul.” It was a notion mostly too fanciful for the bleak realities of the Deathlands.
But looking at Krysty, Ryan could believe that it was sometimes so, and that she could somehow see into him—whether he wanted her to or not.
And right then he wanted her to.
JAK HAD CHECKED the dorms and found an array of beds and also a supply of fresh clothing, untouched since before the nukecaust. Satisfied that they could all rest comfortably and refresh some items of clothing, he made his way back to the kitchens, his guts grumbling, reminding him that it was too long since he had last eaten.
The four corners of the kitchens—large enough and well enough supplied to feed a full complement of personnel for an indefinite period in the event of a nukecaust—had been scoured. There was a plentiful supply of self-heats and bottled water, which would be plundered by all the companions in order to carry emergency supplies with them on a trek into the unknown. There were also other foodstuffs which, if not perishable, had a shelf life that would see them stale. Unwilling to use any of the self-heats, which were barely palatable, Doc and Dean had tried to concoct something edible from what was available to them. Neither was a particularly good cook, but between them they hoped to pull together a meal that would be both nourishing and, at least in some degree, palatable.
Despite the fact that the meal was a bizarre stew of vacuum-packed rice, frozen vegetables of indeterminate origin and a meat substitute made presentable by a liberal use of spices and seasoning, it was good enough to keep the rest of the party happy. Even Jak, who had a propensity to complain about any food that came his way, was able to enjoy the meal.
With the medical supplies sorted by Mildred, and the self-heats and water sorted by Dean and Doc, it just left the armory to be dealt with.
“I’d like to get a look right now,” J.B. said, stretching, “but I figure it’d be better if I showered and slept first.”
Mildred looked at the Armorer in amazement. “John, I never thought I’d hear you say that. Maybe I should look at you in a professional capacity.”
“That what you call it?” Jak commented.
At that they parted company. Jak, Dean and Doc took showers and slept. Mildred and J.B. cleaned up before locating their own private room. Ryan and Krysty had already located theirs, and took the rare opportunity to make love before sleep engulfed them.
IT WAS MORNING when they all awoke. Although the redoubts were artificially lit and could change from day to night at the flick of a switch, the companions had their wrist chrons to help them keep track of time in the outside world. They knew it was midmorning by the time they had risen and breakfasted on the remains of the edible food left from the night before. After finishing, they made their way to the armory.
“Need plas-ex more than anything else except spare ammo for the blasters,” J.B. commented as he punched in the sec code for the door, which opened with a purr. “But if we find any blasters that are more powerful and mebbe in better condition than ours, we should load up on what we can carry.”
As the door opened and the extent of the armory became clear, the normally taciturn Armorer pursed his lips and blew out a low whistle.
“Bet this hasn’t seen the light of day for a century,” he said with a touch of genuine awe in his voice as he almost crept into the room, surveying the boxes of oiled rifles, the machine blasters still cased in their constituent parts, the handblasters that hung on the walls alongside the rows of grens and the boxes of plas-ex that were stored in one corner.
Ryan stepped into the room behind him. “I know you could spend days looking over this, but I reckon that mebbe we should get up top as soon as possible, see if we can get out and find out where the fire-blasted hell we’ve landed up this time.”
J.B., snapped out of his reverie by his friend’s words, nodded. “Yep, reckon so. Let’s get loaded up here…”
While the companions searched the armory for spare ammo to fit their respective blasters, J.B. restocked the body belts and pouches in which he carried enough grens and plas-ex to start and finish a small war, which sometimes he’d had to do.
Ryan allowed him some time to pore over the weapons after the others had finished restocking their own supplies of ammo. Although there was a plentiful supply and variety of blasters, there was nothing that hadn’t been seen before, and they each individually elected to stick with the weapons they knew and trusted.
The one-eyed warrior gave J.B. extra time not just because he knew the Armorer was like a kid in a prenuke candy store with a fully stocked armory, but also because it gave J.B. time to asses the full range of the armory and pick out the weaponry with the maximum possible efficiency and use.
Eventually, he finished his task and turned to Ryan Cawdor.
“Okay, let’s see where we are,” he said simply.
Chapter Three
The sec door leading onto the outside creaked and groaned as it began to open.
“Think it’ll make it?” Dean asked his father.
Ryan shrugged. “Should do. The corridors haven’t been twisted enough to warp the frame. Mebbe some plas-ex if it gets stuck?” The last was directed, as a question, at J.B.
The Armorer paused, squinting at the slowly rising door and at the surrounding tunnel. Ryan was right to a certain extent. After leaving the armory and making their way up to the top level, they had stopped and looked at each level. It seemed that there had been some earth movement within the redoubt, but not enough to cause any collapse in the tunneling, nor to cause any breaches or rifts within the redoubt. But right up at the top level, it seemed as though something had pushed against the entrance, causing the door to warp slightly, and making its ascent difficult. It wasn’t from the inside.
“Plas-ex could be tricky,” J.B. said at length. “There’s nothing inside, so mebbe the problem is on the outside. And if we’ve got a real heavy rockfall, then the blast could get directed inward.”
Ryan listened to J.B., trusting his judgment on the use of any weapons, and nodded as the Armorer concluded. “Okay, we’ll see how far it rises first.”
There was a tense silence among the companions, relieved only by the glimpse of daylight that pierced needlelike through the widening gap, casting a swath of light across the mouth of the tunnel that was blinding in comparison to the muted electric light inside the redoubt.
“No rockfall,” Jak murmured, “so why door stick?”
“That is a thorny question, my dear Jak,” Doc replied. “A multitude of possibilities await, and yet how can we be prepared for any unless we prepare for all?”
“Hot pipe, Doc, you talk some real shit sometimes,” Dean muttered, standing beside the older man.
Doc smiled ironically. “A trifle crudely put, young Dean, but you do have a point.”
“Well, I’d say we’re about to find out just exactly what that problem may be—out of all the myriad of possibilities, of course,” Krysty interjected with a touch of sarcasm.
“One thing for sure, it was no rockfall,” Mildred added, taking in the panorama before them.
The door of the redoubt was now fully retracted. Before them was nothing more than an azure-blue sky, with little sign of any chem clouds within the area framed by the portal. A couple of large, dark birds circled at a height that would appear to have been several hundred feet, indulging in a complex series of maneuvers that presaged a savage battle.
The sun was a burning orange globe surrounded by a haze that betrayed the fact that, although there were no chem clouds in sight, the atmosphere was still tainted by the remnants of the nukecaust. The swirling, skeetering figures of the large birds flew across the globe, lost momentarily in the light, far too bright to stare into. In less than the blink of an eye they were out the other side, and the ritual dance had ended.
The bird at the front turned, whirling suddenly in the air in a tight movement that swung him around to face the oncoming assailant. But his attempt to catch the following bird was doomed. The second bird ducked beneath the first bird as it turned, moving underneath, then jabbing swiftly and sharply, its beak tearing at the momentarily exposed belly of the leading bird.
The squawk of surprise and pain, harsh and guttural with an undertone of fear, carried across the still morning air, reaching them as the first bird began to fall, the slightest darkness in the sky betraying a rain of blood as something vital was torn.
The fight was that swift, that sudden, that savage. As the first bird fell, the second bird wheeled in the sky with an almost deceptive leisure, heading for its falling opponent. It swooped beneath the plummeting bird, jabbing at it so savagely that it changed the course of its fall. It followed it down, slowing the momentum of the fall by pushing it from side to side, sometimes jabbing so savagely and with such force that it propelled the now chilled bird upward for the slightest moment. The corpse, which had given one last harsh cry, was now disintegrating as it fell, ripped apart by the attack of its rival.
“Welcome back to the real world,” Mildred murmured.
