by James Axler
Ryan nodded. Since the elevators wouldn’t be working, the only way up would be by the stairs. But a building like this had to have at least two stairways, maybe even more in case of fire. “Only one stairway?” Ryan asked.
“Locked others. Now let out, not in.”
“Are the stairs the only way out?”
Jak shook his head. “Windows. Twenty-four each side, not far to ground.”
A ten-foot jump out a second-story window wasn’t Ryan’s favorite way of escaping a firefight, but with forty-eight windows and a few stairways to choose from, not to mention the possibility of going up, the one-eyed man was satisfied they’d be able to escape in the event of a mutie attack, or worse. Besides that, he was too tired to go any farther. If they didn’t stop here for the night, Ryan wasn’t sure he’d be able to go on. “Second floor it is, then.” He looked at the friends to see who was freshest and could take the first watch. “Jak, you take first watch, hour-and-a-half shifts.”
The teenager nodded.
The friends went to the end of the hallway and climbed the stairs to the second floor.
RYAN AND KRYSTY TOOK a room on the east side of the building at the far end of the hallway near one of the locked doors that led to the stairs. The windows on that side of the hotel were mostly whole, looking out over a back alley, which was just as deserted as the rest of the ville.
There were two large beds in the room, both covered with dusty sheets. Krysty took them off the bed and shook them out in a room across the hall, then replaced them on the bed. It had been a while since Ryan had slept in a bed with sheets, and he was looking forward to it.
But before he did, there was something else he’d been looking forward to even more. As he lay back on the bed, Ryan set his SIG-Sauer and panga on the nightstand next to him, then hid his Steyr SSG-70 under the bed. Then, in total comfort, he bit into another of the delicious pears they’d traded for, and watched Krysty slowly getting undressed. Seeing her shed her clothing like this always gave him a little thrill that stirred a desire deep within him. The first hint of her beauty was her gorgeous mane of fiery red hair and her strikingly brilliant emerald-green eyes. Even though she looked tired herself and her hair was hanging almost straight down from her head, she was still breathtakingly beautiful. That beauty was further evidenced as she stood at the end of the bed, slipping off her boots and then her jumpsuit and bra and panties, revealing her full breasts, long, muscular legs and firm buttocks.
Ryan took the opportunity to get out of his own clothes, taking off his jacket and shirt in one smooth motion, and then kicking off his boots and sliding out of his pants.
He was ready for her.
Krysty acknowledged that fact with a smile. “If you’re done with that pear,” she said, “you might want to try some cherry-tipped golden apples.”
Ryan stopped himself from taking another bite and put the pear down on the nightstand.
“I thought you might,” Krysty said. She crawled onto the bed and moved toward Ryan on all fours. As she straddled his legs, she bent down and kissed his hardness once, then flicked her head and dragged her long red hair across his body.
Passion flowed through Ryan, and Krysty seemed to have discovered some newfound energy as her hair was now curling slightly around her shoulders. He reached out for her, pulled her forward and, when she was in position, entered her.
They were lost in the throes of passion for a long, long time.
“DID YOU GO on a honeymoon, Doc?” Dean asked as he prepared his bed in the room he was going to share with the old man.
“Oh, I did indeed,” Doc answered, smiling.
“What was it like?”
“It was gloriously wonderful,” Doc said, looking out the window at the falls. “My dear sweet Emily and I went on a riverboat ride down the mighty Mississippi. While I knew that she was a lovely woman, I had no idea regarding the depths of her charms. She was warm, vibrant and loving, and even though the word hadn’t been in common usage, if people knew about my Emily, the word sexy might have been in common parlance long before the turn of century.”
“You mean 1900?”
“That’s the year.”
“So men and women spend a lot of time having sex on their honeymoon?”
“Well, now, yes they do.” Doc had turned away from the window and was a little unsure if it was his place to talk about such things with Dean.
“Why is that?”
“It is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years.” Doc pulled up a chair next to the bed Dean was stretched out on and sat. He stared out the window again and continued talking. “Honeymoon comes from the term ‘honey month.’ You see, even though people had always gotten married, they weren’t always faithful to each other. So, when a man and a woman married, they went off for their honey month, in which they drank an alcoholic beverage called mead, a sort of beerlike drink that was made partly from honey. The alcohol helped them…well, have sex, and it lasted a month because it allowed the woman to complete an entire reproductive cycle. This insured that the woman’s first child was undoubtedly the offspring of her husband, since no other man could have had an opportunity to mate with his wife during the honey month.
“Over time the ritual became unnecessary as there was less and less likelihood of a woman’s infidelity. However, the honeymoon still served as an opportunity for a newly wed man and woman to become intimate with each other, so it was maintained as a symbolic bonding period between two soul mates.”
Doc looked over at Dean and saw that the boy was already sound asleep. He pulled a sheet over him, then went to the other bed to lie down.
“Honey month, honeymoon,” he muttered under his breath as he prepared his bed and made himself comfortable on it. “Honey month, honeymoon.”
Minutes later Doc was asleep, dreaming of Emily and the Mississippi nights in which he’d thought he’d found a little piece of heaven on earth.
MILDRED WAS in the bathroom of the room she would be sharing with J.B. She’d taken a clean washcloth from the pile of clean towels she’d found in the bathroom and with a few splashes of water from her canteen, she was now giving herself a quick freshening up before bed.
“How long has it been, John?” she asked, looking at herself in the mirror.
“Too long,” the Armorer said between bites of a pear. He’d eaten several of them since they’d arrived in the room and was just starting to feel full.
Mildred drew her hands up over her stomach, marveling at how tight and toned the muscles had become since she’d arrived in the Deathlands. Although she was stockily built, her body had become hard and shapely. She cupped her full breasts in her hands, pleased that they had become firmer, and if she said so herself, more attractive, than they’d ever been in predark times.
“Too long is right,” she said over her shoulder. “I can’t even remember the last time.” Mildred waited for an answer, but there was none. “John?”
“Yes.”
“I said, it’s been so long, I can’t remember when we did it last.”
“I don’t remember, either,” J.B. commented, “but I do know that it was great.”
Mildred smiled. “Such a romantic.”
She finished up in the bathroom and gave herself one last look in the mirror, putting her hands on her hips and twisting her body from side to side. “You’re definitely in for a treat, John Barrymore Dix,” she whispered.
She left the bathroom and found J.B. stretched out on the bed closest to the window. His eyes were closed and a half-eaten pear was in his right hand, hanging over the edge of the bed and poised to fall to the floor at any moment.
Mildred hurried to J.B.’s side. “Are you asleep, John?” she asked.
No answer.
“John?” She shook his arm, and the pear fell from his fingers. “Are you all right?”
“Huh? What?”
Mildred stood, hands on hips again and doing her best to look indignant. “I can’t believe you’d fall
asleep when you knew you had this to look forward to.”
J.B. smiled and shook his head. “I can’t believe it either.” He pulled himself into a sitting position and took one of Mildred’s chocolate-brown nipples between his lips. At the same time he let his left hand slide down between her legs, gently feeling the invitingly warm and moist folds of flesh that beckoned for more than the touch of his fingers.
“Are you going to get out of your clothes, John?” Mildred asked. “Or am I going to have to strip you down like a blaster?”
“That would be, uh, interesting,” J.B. said as Mildred began to work on his belt.
“More than just interesting, Mr. Dix.” She leaned in close, whispering in J.B.’s ear. “I’m going to oil your blaster and pull your trigger. Only in this dream, it’s going to fire…round after round, until you’re all but out of ammo.”
J.B. pulled Mildred close to him, loving her long into the night until they were both spent.
JAK GOT THE MOST comfortable chair he could find and brought it out into the hall. After positioning it in front of the only open doorway to the second floor, he sat down and had a peach.
Down the hall he could hear Doc snoring like someone’s grandfather and wondered how Dean was able to sleep with so much noise.
He looked at his wrist chron. Just another hour to go before he could wake J.B. and get some rest himself.
The soft noises continued to resound along the hallway.
One hour was going to seem more like two.
SEC CHIEF GRUNWOLD pulled back the frame of the door so the rest of his sec men could enter the hotel without a sound. They tread lightly over the broken glass strewed about the lobby, their boots making slight crunching sounds as they walked.
“Fillinger,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Sir.”
“Do a recce of the hotel, find out where they are and report back to me.”
Fillinger was gone without a word, treading silently down the first-floor hallway on his way to the stairs.
“I want at least one man on each of the stairwells, and two outside on either side of the hotel. I don’t want these outlanders slipping away.”
The sec men scattered, each filling one of the posts Grundwold had outlined. The sec chief remained in the lobby by the front desk, using it as a makeshift command center.
Five minutes after he’d been sent away, Fillinger returned, only slightly out of breath. “They’re on the second floor. They’ve got a sentry posted in the hallway in front of the only unlocked door to the floor. The other entrances have all been locked, so my guess is the rest of them are getting some sleep, taking turns on watch through the night.”
“Good work.”
“Do you have a plan?” Fillinger asked.
“Not yet,” Grundwold said. “Give them some time to fall asleep, and for the sedatives to kick in. Meanwhile, I’m sure I’ll be able to figure something out.”
Chapter Eight
An hour later, Jak Lauren was having trouble keeping his eyes open. During his entire time on watch, he hadn’t heard a sound other than Doc’s snoring—which had mercifully toned down as the time traveler fell into a deeper sleep—and he’d found it hard to remain awake and alert.
But now that he’d finished his watch, he was eager to be relieved so he could crawl into bed for some much needed sleep. According to the rotation they’d used of late, J.B. followed Jak. J.B. would be followed by Mildred, then came Doc, Dean, Krysty and Ryan. Jak could have waited for J.B. to come and relieve him, but with a mat-trans jump and a long trek on foot there was no reason why anyone would be getting up from a sound sleep on his or her own.
Jak got up from his chair and went into Mildred and J.B.’s room. They were together on the same bed and fully dressed, J.B. on the right side, closer to the door. Jak nudged the Armorer’s shoulder in an attempt to wake him.
J.B. didn’t stir.
Jak tried again, this time nudging the man a little bit harder.
Still nothing.
Jak took firm hold of J.B.’s shoulder and arm and gave him a firm shake, as well as tapping him on the side of the head with a finger. That seemed to do the trick, because in an instant J.B.’s eyes were open and his hand was under the mattress reaching for his Tekna. In less than a second he had it raised and pointed at Jak. But even though his eyes were open, the sleep wasn’t quite gone from his mind. If Jak’s white hair and ruby-red eyes hadn’t been so distinctive, J.B. just might have run the teenager through with his blade.
“Your turn take watch,” Jak said, his right hand on J.B.’s wrist just to make sure he didn’t slip with the knife.
J.B. sighed, opened and closed his eyes several times and tried to bring himself to wakefulness. It wasn’t easy. He’d been awakened in similar circumstances many times before, but he’d never had so much trouble rousing himself. “I’ll be right there,” J.B. said.
“Good,” Jak replied, leaving the room. “Tired. Need sleep.”
J.B. closed his eyes again, but immediately opened them, knowing that if he allowed himself to drift off, he’d never get up. He sat up on the edge of the bed rubbing his hands vigorously over his face.
“Is everything all right, John?” Mildred asked, awakened by J.B.’s movements.
“Tired is all.”
“Do you want me to take your turn?”
“No, I’ll be fine.”
“Call me early for my shift if you need to,” Mildred muttered, sliding back into sleep.
“Sure.” J.B. laced up his boots, then grabbed his spectacles and fedora off the nightstand and put them on. He decided to take his scattergun with him. It would cover the entire hallway with a single shot, and the noise would surely awaken the rest of the friends from even the deepest sleep.
“See you in an hour and a half,” J.B. whispered, giving Mildred a kiss on the cheek.
Mildred smiled as if lost in a dream.
THE OUTLANDERS obviously knew what they were doing, Grundwold thought. While their choice of spending the night on the second floor of the old hotel at first seemed unwise, a closer look revealed that they had taken up a fairly secure defensive position. There was only one way onto the second floor, but many ways off. A new sentry was watching the entrance, and he’d pulled his chair into one of the room doorways so that it was impossible to take him out with the first shot. At best, a sec man would have to open the stairwell door and rush the hallway, giving the sentry at least an even chance at getting off a shot before he was chilled. That would surely awaken the rest of them, and then all hell would break loose.
When that happened, the women could easily get caught in the firestorm. The baron wouldn’t like that at all. He wouldn’t care if only one of his sec men came back from Falls, as long as he had the two women with him. After all, a single stud could service dozens of women; it was the women who got heavy and delivered the goods.
As an experienced sec chief with plenty of loyal men under his command, Grundwold knew he couldn’t commit all his men to a firefight in the hopes of capturing just two women. But in this situation, what else could he do?
He looked through the glass of the doorway at the open end of the hallway. The short wiry man with glasses and a hat looked to be having trouble staying awake. That was likely thanks to the sedatives in the pears. It was just the sort of advantage Grundwold had been hoping for. If nothing else, they could sneak into the hallway, slit the sentry’s throat and then take out the rest of the outlanders as they slept, until they had captured the women or chilled all of the men.
“Kauderer,” Grundwold whispered.
“Sir!” the sec man responded.
“Go around and join Fillinger at the door at the other end of this hallway.”
“Then what?” Kauderer asked.
“We wait for this stupe in the hat to fall fast asleep, and then we start chillin’.”
The sec man smiled. “Yes, sir!”
KRYSTY STIRRED beneath the sheets. She c
ould feel something was wrong. She reached over to check on Ryan. Her lover was there, warm and resting comfortably in a deep, peaceful sleep. She wondered if she should wake him and let him know what she was feeling, but decided it wasn’t strong enough to sound the alarm just yet. She’d have a look around, and if she noticed anything unusual, she could wake Ryan.
Slipping out of bed, Krysty was struck by the coolness of the night air. She dressed hastily, slipped on her bearskin coat, then picked up her Smith & Wesson and left the room.
The hall was quiet. J.B. was on watch down the hall, which was some twenty-five yards away. He was sitting on a chair in a doorway to one of the rooms and facing the open door to the stairwell. She’d check in with him later, but first she needed to check out the stairs at this end of the hallway. Something told her that whatever was sending her the danger signals was located at this end of the building.
She looked through the glass in the locked door, peering first down the stairs and then up them. No one was there, but still her feeling of unease persisted. She opened the door and took a single step into the stairwell to get a better look.
Suddenly a hand was on her wrist, and another on her mouth. She was yanked into the stairway, her Smith & Wesson torn from her grasp as she was thrown onto the concrete landing.
The door almost closed behind her, but was kept open by a clip from somebody’s blaster.
“We weren’t expecting you,” a sec man whispered. “But we’re glad you could make it.”
The second sec man plastered a large piece of silver tape over her mouth, and they both worked to tie her hands behind her back with a strong piece of nylon cord.
“And not even a scratch,” the first sec man said.
The second one laughed. “The baron will be pleased.”
GRUNWOLD COULDN’T believe his luck. As he’d watched through the glass of the door, one of the two outlander women wandered out of her room, opened the door at the far end of the hallway and was caught on the other side by Fillinger and Kauderer.
And best of all, she’d opened the door and now they were free to enter the second floor away from the end of the hallway being watched by the guard.