Crater Lake

by James Axler

  "Bloodthirsty little bastard, aren't you?" Krysty said. "I'd settle for some clean underwear and a flask of brandy."

  "How 'bout you, Lori?" Ryan asked. "What would you like to find in those locked packing cases?"

  The girl blushed. She shuffled a few steps to one side, reaching out to grip Doc Tanner by the hand. "Theophilus tells me all 'bout weddings in old days. I'd like there are weddings in the boxes."

  Once again the arched bunker filled with the steam and aromas of the self-heats being opened. Ryan and the others stuck to more or less the same selections they'd taken the previous evening. Jak tried different combinations, gobbling some thimbleberries and smoked cod, following that up with some bottled water and topping off the meal with curried pickles.

  Then he found an empty side chamber and noisily vomited up the whole mess. The others waited for him. There was a long silence, and finally Finn called out, "Hey, you all right, Whitey?"

  "Sure, Fats. Sure. Just looking through this to see if anything was worth eating second time around." He waited for the yelps of revulsion. "But guess I'll open a coupla fresh cans."

  When they finished eating, they packed up, each taking a couple of tins and a bottle of water. Ryan, heels ringing on the stone, led onward through the complex of rooms. Doc came second, arm around Lori, who was shivering again with the cold. She'd made a sort of cloak out of the plastic packing, and it rustled around her shoulders, J.B. followed, talking to Krysty about the relative stopping power of round-nose versus sharp-nose ammunition. At the back, Finn was using his fingers to ladle a sticky caramel goo out of an unlabeled tin. Krysty had warned him that it was probably either glue or a laxative.

  "Don't give a fuck, long as it tastes good," was his reply.

  Doc was singing quietly, his resonant voice echoing off the vaulted roof. It was a song that Ryan had never heard before. It sounded very old and mystical, not unlike the man himself.

  "Western wind, when wilt thou blow,

  That small rain down can rain?

  Christ! If my love were in my arms,

  And I in my bed again."

  When he stopped, the concrete cavern seemed a lot I emptier.

  IT WAS FINNEGAN who found the racks of clothes. The part J of the vast redoubt where they walked held dozens of lateral chambers, most of them empty and stripped. This one had its door half shut, hiding one side. Finn pushed it open with the flat of his hand.

  "Hey, come look here!" he shouted, stopping everyone in their tracks. "Fucking furs."

  Dozens of furs in all shapes and sizes hung on black plastic racks, with color-coded tags to indicate size. Some of them had fallen to the dusty floor. Perhaps they had lain there ever since some desperate order had halted the departure of the redoubt's garrison.

  Lori dived in, vanishing among the serried rows of long coats. Occasionally they could see an arm stretching up as she tried one on, or a muttered curse when one wasn't the right size. Ryan was happy with his own suede coat with the white fur trim, but all of the others helped themselves to a new cold-weather coat.

  Finn and J.B. picked identical coats in dark gray leather, with heavy collars in silky black fur. Lori seemed satisfied with one that was a dazzling white, until Doc whispered something in her ear. Looking crestfallen, she returned to the racks, eventually emerging with a more muted, gray coat in neat fur. Doc again whispered something to her, and her face became radiant, blushing with delight.

  Doc Tanner picked a strange coat. It looked as if it had been stitched together from a variety of different pelts— some brown, some black, some gray. But its seedy grandeur somehow lent him a strange dignity, and nobody even grinned at him.

  Krysty chose a coat that dropped just to the knees. It was a fine fur that was so black it was almost deep blue, the sheen reflecting the strips of overhead lights. Ryan made sure that no one picked an unwieldy coat that was too long or bulky.

  Jak Lauren took ages, disappearing at the back of the room, where they could hear his feverish scurrying. Racks were overturned, and metal hangers rattled on the floor. Eventually he reappeared, wearing exactly the same clothes as before, except that now he wore, under his ragged camouflage vest and pants, a bizarre waistcoat of fur, with ragged holes where sleeves had been.

  "Had to cut fucker with knife," he said, panting with the efforts of his exertion. "Arms too long."

  THEY WERE STANDING outside the locked door. J.B. could hardly contain his enthusiasm for opening it and finding what wonders lay inside the rows of packing cases. "It's got to be good. Something real special that they left till last. Mebbe some secret blasters they were working on. Scopes. Missile launchers. Laser sights. Portable rail guns with megajoule power sources. Grens. New kinds of grens. Handblasters with heat sensors. Got to be good. All in neat rows, greased and packed, ready to take out and use."

  It was an unusually long speech for the normally taciturn Armorer. His sallow face was alight with eagerness, his battered fedora pushed back off his high forehead. He squinted through the armaglass slit in the steel.

  "Got to be good. Must be fifty cases there. All look the same."

  They stared at the door. Ryan noticed that someone had scratched in the concrete, just to the left of the hinges, "Remember Charlie and remember Baker." He'd seen graffiti like that before in redoubts. Generally it was either names or crudely sexual.

  "Move back and I'll blow the lock," J.B. said, leveling his mini-Uzi.

  "Someone's tried kicking it in," Krysty observed, pointing at chips in the surround to the door. "Maybe in the rush they had to leave it, 'cos they lost the keys."

  "Could be," Ryan said. He could feel a tremor of excitement that he always felt in redoubts. To be where no man had been for a hundred years was inevitably thrilling. And with those rows of cases waiting to be opened… The garrison of a large redoubt could easily have run to several thousand personnel, male and female. That meant a lot of armaments.

  "Shall I blow it?" J.B. asked.

  Ryan glanced around. The only danger was from bullets ricocheting off the door, spitting anywhere in the maze of stone and metal. "Got any plas left?"

  "Little. Safer to do it that way?"

  "Yeah."

  Jak watched, fascinated, as the slightly built Armorer fumbled at the lining of his jacket and peeled out a small strip of colorless plastic explosive. He removed a tiny primer, with built-in rudimentary timer, from the cuff of his pants. Pushing them together against the lock, he pressed the start button on the timer.

  "Set on fifteen. Go."

  They scurried to an antechamber for cover, kneeling, hands pressed tightly over ears. Ryan instructed Jak to keep his mouth open to minimize the effects of the detonation in a confined space. He and Krysty crunched together, eyes shut, making themselves as small as possible.

  The sound of the explosion was surprisingly soft and muffled. They felt the shock wave try to lift them from the floor. Dust billowed everywhere, making them all cough and splutter.

  "Open," J.B. shouted as they rushed to join him. The plas-ex had been used with great skill. The force of the explosion had been just sufficient to take out a section of the doorframe, ripping the lock apart. The door responded to a gentle push from the Armorer's hand.

  The crates were all identical, about four feet square, with a series of cipher letters and numbers stenciled along each side. But no clues were evident as to what they might contain. Ryan looked around the sealed room, seeing that a rectangular notice board on the left-hand wall had a frayed magazine cutting pinned to it. It had no heading and no date.

  The others gathered around the wooden chests, discussing what they might hold. The consensus of opinion was that it would be weapons. Finnegan waxed lyrical about what they'd look like, saying, "Rows of blasters, in nests of grease and oil, stacked one a'top the other."

  Ryan read the short cutting aloud. " 'Straps have to be strong. Seen some men pull so hard against them that they've broken their own wrist and ankle bones. The first shock
throws them forward. Folks don't know, less'n they've seen it for themselves. The eyes come out so far you think they're going to burst from the sockets. Tongue protrudes and starts turning black, and a few wisps of smoke come from it. Times the current doesn't do the job first time, so it takes a couple more jolts. Couple more rides on Old Smoky is what I call it. Hairs up the nose smolder an' all, and the teeth crack with the power. Fillings drop right out. Makes me laugh fit to bust when I think of that part. Worst is the smell. Land o' Goshen, it's terrible. Stench of burning, scorched flesh. Pungent, someone once said. I put Vaseline up my nostrils so I can't catch it so bad. But it gets in your clothes. After a bad one, I have to take my coveralls out back of home and burn them. I claim that on the County, you understand. Course, they always piss and shit themselves. Every one. You get used to it. I counted back the other day an' I've fried me over five hundred in the last four years. Beats all, don't it?'"

  "What's that you're reading?" Krysty Wroth asked, turning from the others.

  "Nothing," Ryan said, pulling the paper off the board and crumpling it in his hand, letting the dry shards join the dust on the floor.

  "Come on, we'll open 'em up." J.B. was more enthused than Ryan had seen him in a long while. Last time he'd been so eager was when they'd found a pile of old gun magazines and manuals in a redoubt near Billings.

  "Sure," Ryan said.

  There was a crowbar leaning against the nearest case. The Armorer took it up and started to jimmy open the closest chest, tearing the nails out, splintering the white wood. Inside was a layer of greased foil, and J.B. pulled that away so they could see what was inside.

  They opened five cases altogether, but they were all the same. Ryan couldn't stop laughing at the look on J.B.'s face. There they were, all in rows, all in a thin coat of grease to protect them through eternity and beyond.

  Something like three hundred thousand black plastic zippers.

  Chapter Five

  RYAN WHISTLED SOFTLY between his teeth, considering all the options, failing to find one that looked even remotely worth trying.

  The right fork of the corridor had finished in a blank dead end only fifty yards or so from the sliding entrance to the stores. Retracing their steps, they rounded the first bend to the left and found themselves faced with a dark section of the passage completely blocked by a massive earthslide.

  That seemed to limit which direction they could go. The section of the stores where they'd found the fur coats led only to the totally wrecked sec door; Ryan knew they didn't have enough explosives to shift it. There was no other way out, and they could go neither forward or back.

  It didn't look good.

  "Figure there's enough stuff to eat an' drink to keep us alive for a week. Mebbe ten to twelve days if we're real careful," J.B. said.

  "If we get through the slip, we should be somewheres round the place where the corridor passes the broken door. Should loop around," Ryan said.

  "That looks like it's about a mile wide," Finn grunted, spitting in the dust.

  Jak suddenly dropped to his hands and knees, staring intently at the floor where Finnegan's saliva had landed.

  The others looked at him, puzzled, until Ryan also noticed what the boy had spotted.

  "Fireblast! Look. Footprints. Those muties have been along here. Means there's some way in or out."

  "And the air's fresh," Lori exclaimed, clapping her hands in delight.

  "Let me," Jak said, not waiting for a reply as he scampered up the shadowed pile of gray-orange dirt and picked his way through the tumbled heaps of concrete and twisted steel. His newly acquired sectioned spear rattled on the stones as he went. When he reached the top, it was hard to see him, but his snow-white hair flared like a magnesium beacon.

  "Yeah. Like other. Narrow, but dark. Can't see through." His voice was muted and they watched him disappear.

  "Jak!" Ryan shouted. "Come back. We'll all go if'n it's safe."

  The boy reappeared, his red eyes seeming to glow like rubies. "Yeah. Be tight for some." He stared pointedly at Finnegan. "But we can do it. Goes up at an angle. Seems to be another tunnel going off a few yards up here."

  Ryan looked at J.B., seeing from his expression that he was thinking the same thing. "That mutie…"

  "Yeah, Ryan. Small bastard. Dirt on his clothes. Spear like that… useful in a tunnel."

  "You reckon they're up there?"

  J.B. nodded. "Could be. Waiting for us."

  "One way to find out."

  The Armorer grinned, thin-lipped. "Fucking right, Ryan. Fucking right."

  IT WAS THE BEGINNING of one of the worst experiences in Ryan Cawdor's entire life.

  At their highest the tunnels didn't reach five feet, and in places the group found it necessary to wriggle on their bellies. Mostly the tunnels were dry and dusty. But some of them were wet, with slimy mud that got all over everyone, making it hard to get any purchase on the rough floors with fingers and toes.

  Most of the way, the tunnels were totally dark. But occasionally the black gave way to a dull gray light, which would fade away again as the tunnel dipped or straightened.

  By mutual agreement, Jak went first, his lithe, skinny body folding easily around the sharp bends and inclines. Lori followed, with Finn struggling along third. Doc Tanner came fourth, his stovepipe hat cradled in his arms as he crouched and ducked like a rheumatic stork. J.B. was fifth, his Tekna knife in his right hand. Krysty was next, and Ryan brought up the rear. As the tallest of the party, he found the tunnels most difficult. He also got everyone else's dirt and mud pushed back in his face.

  The only sound was panting and scrabbling, with an occasional curse or groan of discomfort.

  It was agreed that Jak would stop every four minutes and that everyone would remain silent and still while Krysty listened for any warning of the muties.

  At the third stop, at a point where the tunnel widened to about eight feet, and three other tunnels opened off it, they discussed strategy. Jak was for going on, picking every tunnel that seemed to go upward, on the assumption that eventually they'd emerge into the open air. Lori had become terrified, face glistening with sweat, voice high and thin as she chattered to Doc, begging him to take her back.

  "I fear that we are in the land of no return, my dearest dove," he said gently, patting her on the arm in the way that one would try to gentle a frightened foal. "It is ever onward and upward for us all."

  "Don't like dark, Theo, lover," she said.

  "Get her to keep her voice down, Doc," Ryan warned. "If there's muties down here, they'll just have to sit quiet and tight and pick us off. Must keep as quiet as we can."

  "Watch out for boobies, Whitey," J.B. urged the albino. "Sharp sticks, trailing wires, a deadfall in the tunnel. Anything like that."

  "How come you know so much 'bout tunnels?" the boy asked.

  "Read a book once. Found it in a ruined house, somewheres round North Platte, up in 'braska. Remember it, Ryan?"

  It rang a distant bell for Ryan. "Sure. Tunnels in the Viet wars. You loaned it to me."

  "And you lost it, you son of a bitch."

  "Yeah, I remember that, too."

  J.B. turned back to whisper to Jak. "There were tunnels in the Viet fighting. Place called Cu Chi. Lotsa little men being chased by bigger men. Naked guy with a bamboo spear killing a soldier with a dozen blasters strung all over him."

  "Guess blasters no use in tunnels, huh?"

  J.B. sniffed, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Despite the intensely cold clamminess in the tunnels, all of them were perspiring.

  "Read of one. Smith an' Wesson .44 Magnum. Six-shot, cylinder load. Weighed in around two pounds. Exposed hammer on it. Fired fifteen-pellet round, starred like a shotgun. But they cut out most of the noise and the flash."

  "Sounds good t'me," Jak said, smiling. "Could do with one of them here, case we run into muties."

  "Keep that spear handy, son," Ryan warned.

  "He's right," Krysty added. "Got me a feeling
that we'll have some company real soon."

  They moved on.

  At one point the tunnel dipped steeply and then came up almost vertically so that Finnegan got stuck and had to be pulled by Lori and pushed from behind by a panting Doc Tanner.

  When he was free, he hissed back to Ryan that they ought to abandon their bulky cold-weather coats. "Be best, after a fucking tight spot like that. Can't do that again, Ryan."

  Despite Finnegan's almost limitless courage, Ryan heard the thin note of frayed panic that haunted the fat man's voice. Being in this twining, bending maze of darkness was like living one's worst nightmares. The walls seemed to close in, and the clumps of dirt that fell constantly from the roof kept the chilling fear of a cave-in fresh in one's mind.

  "Keep the coats as long as we can. When we get out, we'll need them, Finn."

  "Sure, Ryan. When we get out. Or maybe it's if we fucking get out."

  "We'll get out, Finn. Air's tasting sweeter, and the light's not so bad."

  A hundred feet farther along, they came to a dead halt. The tunnel had sloped down again, getting wetter and wetter, until they were crawling on hands and knees through clinging mud. Krysty whispered to Ryan that she thought she could hear the sound of running water.

  "If it rains up top, then it's coming this way," he whispered back.

  "I just love the way you reassure a girl, Mr. Cawdor," she said. "If these tunnels start to fill up with water, it'll be a million laughs."

  Jak's voice floated back to them. "It goes under water. I figure it's mebbe a trap. I'm going through. If it's safe, or I can't get through, I'll come back."

  Ryan pushed past the others and touched the boy's shoulder, feeling it slick with mud. "Don't try and be a fucking hero on this one, Jak. Don't push it too far. Remember that Doc and the girls, and Finn, won't be able to get as far as you can."

  "Sure." The mane of tumbling hair, although matted and streaked with dirt, glistened white in the narrow confines of the tunnel.

  Ryan, his eyes accustomed to the poor light, watched as the boy crawled to the point where the flat, leaden water waited. Jak took several deep breaths, then gave a quick thumbs-up sign. Slipping into the unknown deeps of the pool, he wriggled out of sight like an eel.