Nightmare Passage

by James Axler

  "What's wrong with them?" he asked.

  "I don't know," Mildred replied tersely. "Seems like some sort of shock. Pulse rates are irregular."

  Jak and Doc exchanged worried glances. "The jump was unusually smooth for me," Doc com­mented. "No nausea whatsoever."

  "They were close to the door," Dean said anx­iously. "Mebbe somebody opened it just when we jumped. Wouldn't be the first time."

  "Perhaps we should minister to them in more fe­licitous surroundings," Doc suggested.

  Jak stepped over Ryan's and Krysty's legs and opened the door to the hexagonal chamber. The armaglass was tinted a pale rust brown. "Make recce."

  J.B. unlimbered his Uzi and stood at the open door in case he was needed, but Jak returned in short order. "Anteroom, control room," the albino re­ported. "Empty."

  Dean, Mildred and J.B. grabbed Ryan's limp body by the arms and legs and half carried, half dragged the man out of the chamber. Jak and Doc had an easier time with Krysty. They carried their friends out of the small anteroom, past comp con­soles and readout screens and down a short hallway that opened up into a small room. Fluorescent light strips glowed feebly from the ceiling.

  As they walked down the corridor, Doc said, "Look at the murals on the walls. Hieroglyphs, too."

  Jak squinted at him. "What?"

  Doc looked from one wall to the other. "Ye gods. I mean that literally. Ptah, Anubis, Set, Osiris—"

  "What talking about, Doc?" Jak demanded, fol­lowing the older man's eye and head movements but seeing nothing but smooth, unadorned walls.

  Doc started to nod toward the wall on his right, then his eyes narrowed, widened, and his mouth creaked open. He shook his head. "Perhaps the light is playing tricks on me."

  The room was small and held only a table and a few chairs. Mildred and J.B. laid Ryan on the floor, and Krysty was gently placed on the tabletop. As her body settled, she murmured faintly, "You won't have me… Ryan…"

  Immediately, Ryan's eye snapped open, and he levered upright from the waist. He clawed at his holstered blaster. Krysty was on his blind side, and his face was a mask of agony and fear until he caught sight of her.

  "What the fuck happened to me?" he grated be­tween clenched teeth.

  Dean put a comforting hand on his arm. "You were out of it for a little while, Dad. That's all."

  "How's Krysty?"

  "Fine," she said weakly.

  Waving aside J.B.'s proffered hand, he climbed unsteadily to his feet and bent over Krysty. She, too, had returned to somewhat confused consciousness. Sitting up, she embraced Ryan.

  "Gaia!" she breathed. "Never had a jump night­mare like that before."

  "Me, neither," Ryan replied as she scooted off the table. "We'll talk about it later. Find out first where we are. Anybody do a recce?"

  "Only to here," Jak responded.

  "Nothing unusual?" Ryan inquired.

  "Not unless you consider two of our friends being unable to wake up unusual," Mildred replied.

  "And wall paintings being there one moment and gone in the next," Doc said.

  No one asked him to clarify his comment. Their long association with Doc had accustomed them to his sometimes cryptic, often nonsensical remarks. But this time, Ryan cast him a sharp, one-eyed glance.

  "All right," he said, drawing his SIG-Sauer. "Let's do this by the book. Triple red."

  The group formed a wedge, with Ryan and J.B. taking the point, the others fanning out behind. The wedge was the standard formation while exploring a strange redoubt. More often than not, the instal­lations were deserted, abandoned for a hundred years or more. Every once in a while, they came across squatters, like the crazed twins who had staked claim to a redoubt in Colorado. In that instance, Ryan and Krysty had been forced by violent circumstance to chill them.

  With the toe of a boot, Ryan eased open the door on the opposite end of the room. Beyond it was a small foyer and another door. It was a disk sheathed in gleaming metal surrounded by three concentric collars of steel. Affixed on the wall beside it was a sec-code keypad. Beneath the keypad was a plastic sign bearing red lettering: Biohazard Beyond This Point! Entry Forbidden To Personnel Not Wearing Anticontaminant Clothing!

  Half a dozen one-piece coveralls hung from hooks on the wall. Hoods with transparent Plexiglas face­plates were attached to them.

  "Fireblast!" Ryan muttered.

  As far as he knew, biological warfare hadn't played a large role in the nukecaust, since the actual active conflict had lasted less than a day.

  Ryan touched one of the coveralls with the built-in baffle silencer of the SIG-Sauer. The flimsy fabric parted like an ancient cobweb, and he cursed again. He called Mildred forward. When she read the printed warning on the wall, she groaned.

  "How bad could it be?" Ryan asked.

  "Might not be bad at all," she replied. "Then again, all sorts of bacteria, rickettsiae, viruses and fungi spores could be floating around in there."

  "Still potent, still communicable after all this time?"

  "Could be," she answered. "But you, John, Jak, Dean and Krysty were born in the Deathlands. More than likely, you've developed natural resistances to infectious agents that may be fatal to me and Doc."

  "Comforting notion," Doc stated.

  "Dark night," J.B. muttered. "Why couldn't this place be like most of the other redoubts?"

  "Odds were we'd pop up into a medical instal­lation sooner or later," Mildred countered reason­ably. "Frankly, I'm surprised we hadn't before now, since we learned that bioengineering programs were going on prior to skydark. And after."

  Ryan caught the oblique reference to the per­verted researches they had discovered within the Anthill complex in the Black Hills. Both she and Ryan retained vivid, sickening memories of the crea­tures being bred there.

  "Mebbe we should try another jump," Dean sug­gested.

  Mildred shook her head, the beads in her plaited hair clicking. "I don't think that's necessary. Just because this place may have housed biological weapons, it doesn't mean any of them got loose."

  Doc shuffled his feet uncertainly. "I recall read­ing an account of the expedition who entered King Tut's tomb. Many of them died mysteriously, and though some believed an ancient pharaohs curse was responsible, more enlightened minds speculated that three-thousand-year-old microbes were respon­sible."

  "Muzzle it, Doc," Mildred snapped. "You don't have to try to scare us to death."

  "That's for sure," Krysty murmured.

  Ryan met her gaze for an instant, and understood it wasn't invisible germs she feared. The memory of the jump nightmare was still fresh. And mystifying. Quickly, she averted her gaze, almost as if she were embarrassed.

  "Well?" he demanded. "Do we try our luck out there or back in the gateway?"

  After a moment of considered silence, everyone decided, in monosyllables, to find out what lay be­yond the steel portal.

  Ryan's hand poised over the keypad. He paused. "Should we hold our breaths?"

  Mildred chuckled. "Not unless you're trying to win a contest. If microorganisms are free in there, most likely they were designed to attack the human body through the skin."

  "Dammit, Millie!" J.B. said impatiently. "For the last time, what do you think the odds are of us contracting some kind of manufactured disease?"

  "Slim to none. I'm basing that assessment on a lack of outbreaks of incurable illnesses in most of the villes we've visited."

  Ryan's hand suddenly darted to the key pad and swiftly punched in the entry code. With a rumble and hiss of pneumatics, the metal disk rolled to the left. He realized that despite Mildred's assurances he was holding his breath. An over-the-shoulder glance showed him that all of his friends were, too, Mildred included.

  No one moved. Peering into the murk beyond the portal, all Ryan could see was dim light gleaming from polished metal and glass.

  Doc exhaled suddenly and noisily, causing every­body to jump and glare at him. He inhaled just as noisily, then smiled
and patted his chest.

  "Air is fresh enough," he announced. "There is no scent of bacteria befouling the atmosphere."

  Carefully, Mildred released her own pent-up breath and replied, "There wouldn't be. Do you know what the Ebola virus smells like?"

  With a snort of impatience, Ryan relaxed his lungs, breathed in air that was only a little stale and stepped over the raised lip of the entrance lock.

  A wavery light blinked on overhead. He uttered a low whistle of surprise. His eye took in the heavy tables loaded with a complicated network of glass tubes, beakers and retorts, consoles with glass-covered gauges and comp terminals. The right-hand wall was completely covered by armaglass, running the entire twenty-yard length of the room. On the far wall was a twin of the disk-shaped entrance por­tal.

  Ryan moved carefully into the room, blaster cocked and ready, barrel sweeping back and forth in short half arcs. Behind him, the others fanned out, weapons gripped in ready hands.

  He didn't pause to examine anything in the strange chamber—he sidled across it. Only when he reached the metal-collared disk did he stop and look around. His friends milled around him, eyes alert and watchful.

  "Want to look around in here or recce the rest of the redoubt?" he asked.

  "Makes more sense to find out where we are," J.B. replied.

  Another keypad was on the wall, and Ryan thumbed in the open code, the thick slab of metal rolling obediently aside. Down a short hallway, with rooms on either side, he could see the massive va­nadium-steel sec door. It was down.

  "Looks safe," he said.

  They moved quietly down the passage. The doors to the rooms they passed were open, and quick glances showed chambers in which to sleep, to cook, to wash.

  "Smaller than most redoubts," Jak remarked.

  Usually, the underground installations were multi-leveled labyrinths of corridors, dormitories and con­trol rooms. This one was Spartan and miniaturized.

  Ryan paused at the sec door, turned toward Dean and gestured to the green lever on the steel frame. "Do you want the honor, son?" he asked.

  Dean smiled and moved forward as Ryan knelt at the center of the door. The others shifted position, fingers tight on triggers, blaster bores trained on the rectangle of alloy.

  "Go," Ryan said.

  Dean threw the lever up. Immediately came the grinding rumble of a complicated system of comp-controlled gears and chain pulleys that raised the multi-ton door off the concrete floor. Buried ma­chinery whined faintly, and the door slid slowly upward.

  As the bottom edge cleared five or six inches above the floor, Dean shifted the lever to a midpoint position. The door stopped rising.

  Ryan went flat on the floor and squinted out be­tween the vanadium and the concrete. He saw noth­ing but darkness, and a cool breeze played over his face. Wind-driven grains of sand danced over the threshold.

  "Door leads to the outside," he declared. "You're right, Jak. Place is a lot smaller than usual. Up another six inches, son."

  Dean moved the lever, and the door slid upward. This time, Ryan saw sand, silvered by moonlight.

  The air was fresh, clean and very dry. In the dis­tance, he saw nothing but a sandy sea of desolation.

  "All the way up, Dean."

  The massive door ascended, then stopped with a click. A swirl of air breezed into the corridor, bring­ing a scattering of sand. A reef of clouds crossed the face of the quarter moon, obscuring the view of their surroundings—not that there was much to see. No vegetation grew within their range of vision, not even the hardy strain of flower Krysty had named the Deathlands daisy.

  "Looks like the Sahara," Mildred commented.

  "Or the Gobi," Doc put in.

  Both places were possibilities. The scientists of the Totality Concept had evidently been determined to link every continent with gateway units. So far, their mat-trans journeys had taken them to Russia, Britain, Japan and Amazonia. As for America, it seemed that the entire country was honeycombed with the hidden installations.

  Eyeing the sky, J.B. said, "Too overcast to make an accurate sextant reading. Mebbe we should wait until dawn."

  Doc hunched his shoulders in an exaggerated shudder. "I, for one, do not fancy a sleepover in an environment that may be percolating with every germ, virus and plague known to man. Or unknown to man."

  "We're infected already," Mildred said crossly. "That is, if we're fated to be infected. Besides, our provisions are running low, and this looks to be the only grocery store for miles around."

  Gesturing to Dean, Ryan stepped out into the corridor. The lad moved the lever, and the huge door rumbled down. "Let's see what we've got here," Ryan said.

  Chapter Four

  As it turned out, there wasn't much. What they had already seen of the installation was basically all there was to it.

  In a kitchen, Jak found a few sealed ration packs in a cabinet. The freeze-dried food was tasteless, but it was nutritious. Their biggest worry was water, but when they tried the faucets, the liquid that flowed out smelled and tasted fresh and untainted. Even the hot-water taps worked, so the heating system was still functional.

  Though smaller by far than almost every other redoubt they had visited, the place appeared to be in better condition. When Krysty commented on its comparative cleanliness, Mildred asked wryly, "What did you expect from doctors?"

  "It's not just that," Krysty replied, a faint line of worry appearing between her eyes. "It almost looks like somebody has been taking care of this place. Fairly recently, too."

  A total of eighteen beds were divided between the three bunk rooms. The bathroom had five toilet stalls and three urinals. Though three shower heads pro­jected from the tiled wall inside an enclosure, there was a six-and-a-half-foot-tall, bullet-shaped cylinder in one corner. Though everyone else was mystified by its purpose and function, Ryan was familiar with it.

  "I saw one like it in the Anthill," he explained. "The freezies called it a Medisterile unit."

  "What's it for?" J.B. asked.

  "A bug chaser," Mildred said. "A decontami­nation chamber in case any of the personnel here were directly exposed to something toxic or infec­tious."

  Ryan nodded. "Yeah, the freezies stuck me in one. Guess they thought I had cooties."

  He didn't elaborate further. The memories of his experiences inside Mount Rushmore still gave him occasional nightmares. Almost every predark evil had survived there, nurtured and coaxed by the de­ranged, cybernetically altered refugees from the days of the nukecaust. Only Mildred had penetrated the vast installation with him and witnessed its hor­rors firsthand.

  They searched all the rooms. One thing they ex­pected to find, but didn't, were the skeletonized re­mains of the installation's personnel.

  "The folks here must've jumped out a long time ago," J.B. said. "Doubt they went overland."

  In an office suite, they found six partition-enclosed desks, all of them equipped with comp ter­minals. Two gray steel file cabinets stood in a cor­ner. Tacked on the wall, faded and yellowed with age, was a sign reading Geneticists Do Everyone Better.

  Doc read the copy aloud and added in a mono­tone, "Ha. Inside humor."

  Mildred's dark eyes scanned the walls.

  "What are you looking for?" Dean asked.

  "The standard slogan of predark offices," she re­plied. "A sign that says You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Work Here, But It Sure Helps."

  Ryan tugged on a drawer handle of one of the file cabinets. It slid open with surprising ease, though it was jammed with paper and notebooks. He pulled out one at random and read the label aloud. "Overproject Excalibur. Mission Invictus."

  Both Doc and Mildred glanced toward him with interest. "Invictus," Doc intoned. "Latin for 'invin­cible.'"

  Opening the notebook, Ryan saw only columns of closely set type and mathematical formulas. Most of the words were long and difficult to pronounce, such as "adenosine triphosphate," "deoxyribonucleic acid" and "haploid karyotypal." Illegible hand­written not
ations were scrawled all around the col­umns. As he thumbed through the notebook, Ryan found a double-page spread containing the graphic of a twisting, ladderlike helix.

  "DNA molecules," Mildred said. "That cinches it. This was definitely some kind of genetics lab."

  Thinking about the loathsome, bioengineered blasphemies he had seen in the Anthill, Ryan slapped the notebook shut. He forced it back into the drawer and slammed it closed.

  Voice thick with disgust, he asked, "Was there nothing too foul for your predark whitecoats to fuck around with?"

  "Unfortunately," Mildred answered sadly, "no."

  They returned to the kitchen and made a quick meal out of the contents of one of the sealed pack­ages. It was a sort of gruelly oatmeal soup sweet­ened with brown sugar.

  "I wish I knew if this was breakfast or dinner," J.B. commented.

  Doc scowled as he spooned a bit of the food into his mouth. "What difference does it make, John Barrymore? Breakfast, brunch or lunch, these viands would still be unsatisfactory, even to the most undiscriminating of palates."

  Jak pushed his bowl away. "Crap don't know if wants to be ate or drunk."

  "I like it," Dean said simply.

  Mildred ate only a few bites before saying, "I want to check out the laboratory facility."

  J.B. swung his head toward her. "No!" He spoke with uncharacteristic vehemence. "There's no tell­ing what kind of germs are in there, Millie."

  "And there's no telling what kind of medical stores are in there," Mildred replied. "How many times have we—and others—suffered because of a lack of proper medicines? I won't pass up this chance."

  J.B. opened his mouth to respond, but Ryan in­terjected sternly. "Enough."

  All of them were weary to the point of exhaustion, their nerves frayed and frazzled. Both Dean and Doc were swallowing yawns. Krysty's head was bowed. She had yet to fully regain her strength from the toll exacted on her by calling upon Gaia.

  "Let's get some rest," Ryan continued. "We'll talk about it in the morning."

  "Whenever that be," Jak said wryly. "Take first watch."

  Ryan shook his head. "I don't think that's nec­essary. This place is secure."