by James Axler
All blank.
Jak pulled sheets off here and there, holding them up to show the others the smooth, untouched blankness. "Must be a store," he said. "Nothing used."
It was a disappointment to Ryan. As he moved through the Deathlands, he was always hoping to come across more information about the times before the great fighting. He'd seen books, films, vids, tapes, papers…but all of that gave only a glimpse through a tiny crack in time. He dreamed sometimes of finding some key to the past, some way of learning what madness had raced through the planet nearly a century back. Like a blinding virus, it had been an insanity that had torn apart the world, wrecking it beyond any hope of redemption. Too much had been lost for it ever to be put back together as it had been. The population had been decimated once and then again and again. Most science had been lost forever, and that, Ryan believed, was no bad thing. From what little he'd learned about the years before 2001, it seemed that the scientists should carry almost as heavy a burden of responsibility for Deathlands as the rabid politicians.
Now the best that he could hope for was that he and his friends would be like a single wave, beating upon a polluted shore, washing over it and withdrawing, leaving the shingled beach a little cleaner.
"Look at this newspaper," Krysty said, picking it up carefully. "It's like dried ashes." She laid it down again on the table, moving the drink can out of the way.
Ryan leaned over to read the faint newsprint. It was called the Ginnsburg Falls Courier, and was apparently registered at Ginnsburg Falls, Oregon. It was dated January 19, 2001.
"Day before Armageddon," Krysty said.
"What is it?" Lori asked.
"Newspaper from the last day of the old world," replied Krysty.
"Where's Oregon?" Ryan asked J.B. "Up north and west, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Lay 'tween California and Washington. Lot of mountains. Not much else."
"Never got there with the Trader."
"Nor me."
The two men had known each other for nearly ten years. Both of them had joined the wagon trains run by the man called the Trader. Ryan had become the right-hand man on the wags and J.B. had been Armorer. They'd roamed most of the central part of Deathlands, buying cheap and selling expensive. It was a profession with a high risk factor. Times you met folks wanted to pay less than your price. Times you even met folks didn't want to pay at all. That was why the ordinary trucks were guarded by war wags. That was why you saw a heap of dying when you rode with the Trader.
"What's it say?" Ryan asked.
Krysty stooped lower, her shadow almost obscuring the delicate newspaper. As she moved it with one hand, parts of the edge flaked away, turning instantly into dust. "Don't breathe on it, or it's going to fall apart," she said.
Everyone moved back a little, except Doc Tanner, who seemed almost hypnotized by the crumbling artifact from before the Big Chill. "What was concerning the good people of Ginnsburg Falls on the very day before most of them went grinning to meet their Maker?" he asked. "Or was this just for the mindless robots who ran these redoubts?"
"Front page says in big letters, 'Zoning Row Splits Council.' Doesn't say anything about there going to be a war or anything like that," Krysty told them.
"It must," Ryan said.
"No. Next story's about women picketing a porn-vid store on Red Maple Street."
Ryan shook his head and read more items from the front page. " 'Councilman Hewer Promises Ped Xing Review.' And what's this? 'Shock Scam Threatens Thrift Store.' There's not a word. It can't be right. Doc? You know most 'bout the past. It can't be from the day before it started."
"Before the missiles darkened the skies and night eternal fell upon this land of the free?" the old man muttered. "Oh, yes. If one saw a bigger paper…the Los Angeles sheets, or the Times or the Post, they would have carried it for months. Building international tension. Threats and promises. Folks up here in rural Oregon wouldn't have been that worried. There'd been the talk before. There was Cuba. Sweet Jesus, but that was…Oh, such a yearning for small-town trivia that stirs my bosom, my dear friends."
"I can read," interrupted Jak. "This here is 'bout librarian…to do with books. Says got ban some foreign writers. Can't make out names."
Doc Tanner peered at where the young boy was pointing. "Tolstoy. Chekhov. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Dostoyevski. Fyodor Mikhailovich. Russian writers. She was banning them, was she? A short step from burning them." He gave a cackling laugh, muted in the small, low-ceilinged room. "Too late, she was. Oh, yes, I guess I was wrong. It had reached Ginnsburg Falls, after all."
Finnegan had been looking through the notices pinned to the board. The first one he touched disintegrated in a shower of fine dust, mingling with the pale gray powder that covered everything.
"Just rosters. Names and times for duties. Lotsa letters and numbers. Nothing fucking means a thing now. Lists watch times right through to the end of the month."
"No warnings? No clue that the world was going t'fall out of their bottoms?" the chubby gunman said, grinning.
"There," Lori said, pointing to a piece of paper that lay on the floor under the table. Even through the layer of dirt, the red writing, faded to a dull pink, was visible.
"Evac Nine Hundred," Finn read. "What the fuck's that mean?"
Ryan answered him. "Evacuate at nine in the morning. Story is that the last whistle got blown around noon that day. Where would they have gone?"
Nobody replied. Not one of the other redoubts had shown signs of life like this. For some reason that nobody would ever know, this mountain hideaway in Oregon had been left longer than most.
Most of the gateways had a small anteroom like this one. If this one was like the others then the master control room would be beyond the locked door, with its banks of electrical equipment, powered by either a solar or nuke generator, still ticking more than four generations after the last human had been there.
Ryan opened the door, flattening himself against the wall, ready for trouble. Trader used to say that if you kept ready for trouble, then it would never happen. Relax for a moment and you might get to be dead.
The air tasted less flat. Ryan exhaled, watching his breath as it misted in front of him. His guess was that the temperature throughout the complex must be close to freezing. Maybe well below in parts. The computers and control equipment wouldn't function once it dropped below zero.
Apart from a few sheets of paper and a pen, which had evidently been dropped on the floor during the evacuation, everything looked normal. He glanced across at Krysty, raising an eyebrow. "Empty, you guess?"
"Yeah. Think I can hear… No, it's gone. If it was there at all."
A piece of paper crinkled next to his boot, and Ryan stooped to peer at it. It was torn, showing only the words, "Host… Twin…"
It looked as if it had been some kind of food tab.
There was the background whirring and humming of the electrics. One of the overhead lights had shorted out, and it was spitting erratically, tiny sparks showering from the broken fitting. Wheels moved and lights of different color blinked.
Ryan entered the room, feeling the soft dust stirring under his feet. He wondered where so much dust had come from. None of the other gateways had had so much. The others followed. There was the familiar double armored door on the far side, which would probably open onto a large, wide corridor. If it was like the other redoubts…
J. B. Dix looked back at the mat-trans chamber. "Sure is a shame we can't control that bastard," he said musingly. "Be good to try and get back."
"Back?" Ryan echoed. "Back where?"
"To War Wag One. Back to Cohn an' Hovak. O'Mara, Lint, Hooley, Loz, Cathy… Where are they now? Dead or living?"
Ryan shook his head. "Actually, I guess only a few weeks have passed since we left 'em. But they could be anywhere now."
"We can't go back," Doc said. "I told you. The controls are random if you don't know the codes. We could try making jumps for years and never find the right gatew
ay. And we'd probably hit on one that's damaged, and I swear I don't know what that would mean."
"If we got to a chamber that no longer existed, you figure we wouldn't exist either, Doc?" Krysty asked.
The old man shrugged his narrow shoulders.
"Somebody must know how they work." Finnegan muttered. "Just gotta keep asking, I guess."
The green lever on the outer portal was depressed to the closed position. Ryan moved across, eyeing the banks of disks and chattering contacts. There was a vaguely unpleasant, sticky smear on one of the consoles, as though some piece of fruit had been left there at the time of the evacuation and had rotted silently away into nothingness.
"They leave books of rules if in hurry, Doc?" Lori asked.
"I fear not, my dearest child," the old man replied. "I rather believe that there is no way anyone will ever be able to use the gateways as they were intended. And that may be no bad thing."
"What's this? Like a radio? Mike and speaker. Couldn't we try to raise War Wag One?"
"It's about a thousand miles out of range, Finn," the Armorer said.
Finnegan poked at a row of buttons and switches, one of which brought a startling howl of feedback that made everyone jump. Ryan was about to yell at Finn to leave it alone when the howling stopped, replaced by a faint crackling. And in among the tumbling static, it sounded almost as if there were words. Finnegan shouted in delight.
"Fucking sheep shit on a stick! You hear that? There's someone out there."
"Tune it in, if you can, Finn," Ryan called out, joining the others around the radio. "That dial there. Turn it real slow and easy."
The crackling came and went as though a directional antenna was turning. The words were sporadic and indistinct. There was an eerie quality to it that made the short hairs rise at the back of Ryan Cawdor's neck. He half turned and saw that Krysty's beautiful angular face was blanked with doubt.
"Something's not right, lover," she whispered to him.
He could feel it. He didn't have her power of seeing but there had been times that his life had been saved by some sort of second sight. A feeling for danger. A kind of prescience.
And he felt it now.
"…signal…help…tuned…to…willing…help…frequency… follow…north… fall…"
"Doesn't make sense," Jak Lauren spat. "Load garbage. Waste time."
Suddenly Finn's seeking fingers found precisely the right spot on the radio dial. The voice was clear, the message ungarbled.
"Anyone receiving this message who requires any assistance in any matter of science or the study of past technical developments will be aided. Bring all your information and follow this signal where you will be given help. Stay tuned to this frequency." It began to fade. "North of Ginnsburg Falls where… receiving… matter of…"
It was gone, though Finnegan frantically kept twisting the dial. The banshee howl of the static faded away, and the set was silent.
"Equipment malfunction," J. B. Dix said. "Probably not used in a hundred years. Burned out."
"But the message. North of Ginnsburg Falls. Where that paper came from. We follow it and mebbe pick it up again. Fuck it!" He banged his hand against the table, making the lights flicker. "Just another couple of minutes. We could of talked back to 'em."
"Loop-tape, Finn," Ryan said quietly. "Could have been set on automatic fifty years back. Mebbe even programmed with its own generator before the Big Wars."
"They offered scientific help," the Armorer said, rubbing a finger across his stubbled chin. "They might know how the gateways work. Couldn't they, Doc?"
"It's a possibility, Mr. Dix. I would concede that to you. But…"
His voice trailed away like the radio broadcast.
Ryan was tempted to hope. Was there someone who still had the skill and knowledge to operate the gateways properly? Or was it a voice from the tomb?
He couldn't even decide which he'd prefer—to find some place of long-dead science, or to find that scientists were still practicing their murderous skills.
THE LEVER THAT OPENED the main doors into the gateway complex was stiff. At first Ryan couldn't get it to move at all, then he threw all his strength against it and it grated upward. There was the sound of hissing hydraulics and gears meshing, somewhere buried deep within the reinforced walls.
As the doors began to move, Ryan turned to give the usual reminder to his group about taking all possible care. He was aware of the widening gap out of the corner of his eye with someone standing in the narrow corridor beyond.
Someone standing in…
Someone…
He swung around, his H&K swinging with him. A small man, in furs, face swarthy. Blaster of some sort at his hip, muzzle like the mouth of a bell. Too slow, too late.
Ryan started to say, "Fuck," which wouldn't have meant much in the pantheon of famous last words.
The boom of a gun, deafening him.
A scream, shrill and terrified.
And a heavy blow that spun him around so that he banged the side of his head against the wall.
Ryan was oddly grateful to reach and embrace the swimming blackness.
Chapter Three
"TURN, TURN to the rain and the wind."
The mournful dirge was the first thing that Ryan Cawdor heard as he fought his way up out of the slimy-walled pit of unconsciousness.
He raised a cautious hand, touching the side of his head, finding a great bruise that felt soggy to his probing fingers. He gasped, opened his eye and looked around.
He was back in the room with the chattering electronic consoles. Ryan noticed that the heavy door was shut again.
"Better, lover?" Krysty asked. She was kneeling at his side.
"Yeah. Who hit me?"
"There was a mutie outside. You saw him?"
"Little bastard. In furs? Got a gun with a bell muzzle on it, bigger'n Finn's belly?"
"Yeah. Blunderbuss. Old homemade piece. If'n he'd squeezed off on it, he'd have blown you from here to tomorrow. But he didn't."
"I heard—"
"Me," Lori said proudly, but with a faint note of doubt.
"You shot him?"
Krysty grinned. "She's a tad worried because she realized afterward that her bullet must have missed you by about this much." She held her finger and thumb an inch apart.
"That's far enough, Lori. Thanks."
"It was more than that," she protested. "More like this." Her finger and thumb were at least two inches apart.
"But who in the long chill laid me out?"
"Sorry, Ryan. Had no choice."
"Jak?"
"Yeah."
"How?" Ryan found it hard to believe that the skinny little kid had sent him flying so easily.
"Kicked you."
Ryan closed his eye, shaking his head in disbelief. Krysty was grinning at him when he blinked up again. "It's true, lover. Damnedest thing ever. Hair flying like snow in a northern blizzard. Pushed off the side of the door with his hands, kicked you round 'bout shoulder high. Both feet. Bounced you out of the mutie's firing line. Your head was the first thing to hit the floor."
"Lucky it wasn't nothing fucking important," Finnegan cackled. "That was something, Ryan. Fiery little demon, ain't he?"
Ryan stood up, shaking his head to try to clear the muzziness. "Thanks, Jak. And you, Lori. There any more of those muties out yonder?"
"After Lori sent that one to go buy the farm, we checked a ways up the corridor," J.B. answered. "To the left's a dead end. Blank wall. No more doors. Other way's open, but the ceiling's real bad. Lot of places where it's collapsed."
"There's a big fall less than a hundred yards along that way," Krysty added. "Narrow gap's all. We figured best to come back in here with you sleeping so tight."
"Best we go look," Ryan said.
"Follow up that radio message," J.B. said, his voice holding just a hint of a question.
"Yeah. Why not?"
THIS TIME RYAN was a whole lot more careful. He kept flat as the
lever was thrown, then moved out quickly, backed by Finn. The others came out only after the signal was given that the corridor was clear.
"See that?" Krysty said, pointing at the outside of the glittering metal door. It was deeply scratched and gouged, with scorch marks in places. "Someone tried real hard to get in there."
"Muties like him?" Ryan suggested, pointing with the barrel of the G-12 at the corpse of the little man. Lori had shot him with either a lot of luck or impressive skill. Bearing in mind how close the bullet had come to taking him through the back of the neck, Ryan chose not to think too long on which it had been.
The dead man was only about five feet in height and looked about thirty years old. His face was flat, with a coppery cast to the skin. The lips were narrow, peeled back to reveal long, curved teeth. The nails on the small hands were long and twisted, like horn. The man wore a coat of animal skins and furs, probably rodent. The gun had a hand-carved stock, while the barrel was iron, with the extra-large mouth riveted on. It was based on a primitive flintlock design.
"Rough old blaster," Finn said.
"Rip the belly out of even you," Ryan replied, kicking it aside with his foot.
The blood was drying, black around the neat hole just above the man's right eye. It had leaked over his face, filling the gaping mouth with a pool of crimson. A lot more blood had oozed from the exit wound at the back of the skull.
There was an odd weapon hooked to the belt of the dead mutie. It consisted of several narrow lengths of hollow wood, each about twelve inches long, ending in a sharp, barbed tip of something like ivory. A rawhide cord ran through the middle of the sections. J.B. bent over it.
"Interesting."
"What is it, Mr. Dix? I confess myself somewhat puzzled by it."
"Spear."
Doc Tanner smiled doubtfully. "You are teasing me, are you not?"
"No."
"A spear only a foot in length? Perhaps for hunting the inhabitants of the land of Lilliput."
"Where the fuck's that, Doc?" Finn asked. But his question was ignored.