by Axler, James
The roar of an engine shook the night, and Jak raced away from the redoubt on one of the stolen Harleys. The noise of the engine caught the mutie by surprise, and it arched its back as if about to leap upon the cowardly runaway. But the humans understood, and maintained their useless blasterfire to hold the beast in place, as Jak turned the bike and charged forward, gunning the big engine to top speed.
The engine coughed and died mere feet away from the snarling creature, but continued rolling. The safety cage slammed into the mutie, crushing it against the nuke-proof door of the redoubt with a sickening crunch. Howling in pain, the bleeding creature clawed at the metalwork, struggling wildly.
"Not dead? Try this!" Jak yelled, and fired his Colt Python directly into its exposed brain, pink goo splattering onto the door and rocks.
Convulsing, the mutie jabbed the barbed tip of its scorpion tail through the openings of the cage. Struggling to undo the lock of the cage, Jak dropped his empty blaster and slashed at the creature with a knife. It shook the wreckage in unbridled rage, and, incredibly, began to shove the motorcycle off its trapped form.
"Cover fire!" J.B. shouted, emptying the shotgun as more pink brains blew out of its smashed skull.
Only a second behind, Doc lunged forward, skewering the beast through the chest, then twisting his sword, so the blade opened wide the wound. Emerald blood poured from the gash, quickly slowing to a trickle. A tail lashed at the old man, and he nimbly ducked out of the way, slicing off the barbed tip.
A crackling sound could be heard from the distant line of trees, withered leaves raining to the ground by the thousands.
Climbing on the wreckage, Krysty and Mildred emptied their blasters at the creature, as Dean got Jak loose. They hastily retreated, and seconds later Ryan crashed into the beast with another bike. A wash of greenish blood vomited out the mutie's mouth, and Ryan fired his handblaster at the beast. Ichor pouring from a dozen wounds, the mutie spit sticky phlegm at the one-eyed man and demonically tried to rise again.
Grinding gears, Ryan rolled the bike backward a few yards, then hit the throttle and slammed into the creature again, driving the safety cage of the first bike into its body, dicing the mutie into pieces. Legs and claws wiggling, it began to reform once more, but it was pinned helplessly to the wreckage.
"Stay close!" Ryan ordered, wriggling past the bikes and managing to reach the keypad. It was covered with greenish blood, so he wiped the alphanumeric pad clean with a bare hand and tapped in the entry code.
Avoiding the claws and whipping tail of the mutie, which were stretching for them, the itching humans waited impatiently as the massive doors cycled open, the brown grass sweeping closer by the second.
"In!" Ryan commanded, and squeezed through the widening crack. As the last person rushed through, the one-eyed man keyed the sequence that would close the door.
Cutting away from the mouth of the access tunnel, just as a safety precaution, J.B. paused as he looked over the garage of the underground base. It seemed cleaner than he remembered from their last visit, and there were tools on the walls. Dimly, he recalled the place had been completely stripped, but they had been in so many redoubts it was easy to get them confused occasionally.
"By gad, I hate Tennessee," Doc spit, bolstering his nearly spent LeMat. "There are always traps of some kind at this accursed redoubt!"
"Check your ammo," Ryan said, checking his own blasters. The Steyr was out, the SIG-Sauer down to six rounds.
"Out," J.B. snapped. "Haven't got a thing left."
Scowling, Dean dropped his clip and slapped it back in the butt of his blaster. "Four rounds."
"One round," Mildred stated, patting her pockets. She had six speed loaders for her target pistol, but none of them held a single bullet. Just the casings she used for combat reloading.
"Same here," Krysty said, closing her revolver, then added, "You want to drop that now, or are you keeping it as a souvenir?"
Jak stared at her, confused, then saw a ropy length of forked tongue clenched tight in his grip. In disgust, he threw it away and wiped his fingers clean on his pants. The teenager started to speak when alarms cut loose all over the base, bells clanging, and Klaxons howling in deafening volume.
"Fireblast! There must be leakage through the armor somewhere!" Ryan cursed, looking about quickly. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but then microwaves were invisible. "Head for the mat-trans chamber!"
Bypassing the bank of elevators, the companions raced down the stairs. With each level they passed, the itchy sensation of the microwaves lessened a little bit. Getting off at the fourth landing, they raced down a long corridor lined with doors and slammed aside the wooden door at the far end. Charging into the control room, the companions slowed for a moment in spite of the horrible sensation on their skin. The bodies of the dead from years before were gone, the bullet holes in the consoles patched, the computers humming softly with their lights twinkling. The spent brass covering the floor was gone, and the walls looked freshly painted. Everything was clean and seemed in proper working condition.
"Silas has been here." Krysty frowned, forcing herself not to cringe from the growing misery of her living hair.
"Touch nothing!" J.B. warned, going to the door that led to the mat-trans unit. He ran fingertips along the jamb and lintel before opening the heavy portal.
"Clear," he reported. "Let's go!"
Rushing into the chamber, Ryan saw that the arma-glass walls had also been painted, the deep purple identifying this as Tennessee now painted over with a deep military green. However, the paint was peeling from the armaglass. But the disguise might fool a casual observer.
"Hiding his location," Dean said, scratching at his forearms. "Smart son of a bitch."
"Dead son of a bitch," Mildred corrected, then paused before stepping onto the platform. "Damn. Think he might have jimmied the controls?"
"Only one way to find out," Ryan said, and, pulling out an empty clip for the Steyr, he tossed it the chamber.
The companions closed the door and waited in mounting pain, then hastily opened it again. The metal-and-clear-plastic clip lay in plain sight on the cold floor on the chamber. Nothing had happened.
"He did something, or the microwave is affecting it," J.B. said woodenly, the alarms screaming in the background.
Touching her quivering hair, Krysty winced slightly. "It doesn't hurt as badly here in the mat-trans unit," she said. "Mebbe we can ride out the attack. The blues can't keep the Kite focused on us forever."
"Yes, they can," Mildred replied coldly. "And this is only buying us time. We're still being chilled, just slower than outside."
"What do?" Jak asked, rubbing his itchy face.
"It seems that we are to die today," Doc said, bowing his head in finality. "Microwaves are seeping in, and the mat-trans unit is deactivated. What other course do we have?"
"Fuck that We're trapped, not aced," Ryan spit, rubbing a fist in the palm of his hand. "Mebbe…"
"What?" Krysty barked impatiently, her hands tucked under her arms, to keep from clawing her skin off.
His empty socket feeling as if it were filled with hungry ants, Ryan scowled. "There's a fission reactor in the basement. The extra shielding might help protect us."
Tossing away his hat, J.B. wiped the hot sweat from his face. "Mebbe," he panted in agreement. "B-but for how long?"
"Till we starve to death, or they fucking turn it off!" Ryan growled, a red fury growing inside the man. "And then we'll go back and smash that bastard machine just like we did Silas."
"A chance for life is all I ask," Doc said weakly. "Lead on, my dear Ryan."
Turning for the door, Ryan braced himself for the pain waiting outside the chamber. Then, closing his good eye tight, the man charged into the control room, blindly stumbling through the maze of the redoubt for the faint hope of survival deep within the radioactive bowels of the military base.
Epilogue
Alone in the laboratory, Major Sheffield sat the c
omputer desk and carefully turned on predark machine. It cycled through the boot programs in a few seconds, and the screen lit with a picture of a hundred tiny icons. Reaching into his shirt pocket, the sec man pulled out a CD-ROM, wiped some blood off the disk, then inserted it into the little tray as he saw Silas do once. The device pulled the drawer back inside, made soft noises, then cleared into a picture of Silas.
"Hello, Major," the whitecoat said without a smile. "If you are listening to this, then I am dead, most likely from my own hand to stop the nightmares. If so, now you are charged with the all-important task of purifying North America, and the saving of the human race from the growing threat of the muties."
"Think again, norm," the major said softly, his two hearts beating hard. "And now it's Baron Sheffield."
The laser-disk ghost of Silas Jamaisvous went on undisturbed, "…and thus the redoubts were originally conceived during World War II as haven against the crude nukes of the time. However, upon creation of the mat-trans unit, several interesting possibilities became evident and the Pentagon decided to implement a particularly bold plan called Overproject Whisper…"
The voice went on for hours, and Sheffield stayed through the night, drinking in the most amazing story he had ever heard, all the more so because he knew it to be completely true.
Almost unnoticed in the background, the computer that controlled the Kite blinked steadily as the orbiter poured gigawatts of raw power onto an insignificant patch of grasslands in the hills of Tennessee.
When the disk eventually finished, Sheffield turned the machine off and walked to the barred window to watch the sun rise over the craggy mountains of the valley.
"My mountains," he whispered, and slowly began to smile. "My valley, my continent!"
There was a crackle from the intercom. "Sir?" a voice asked in concern. "I heard a shout. Is everything all right, Major?"
"Everything is fine," the mutie replied. "And the next time you call me 'Major,' I'll rip out your guts and feed them to the dogs!"
"S-sir?"
"I am Baron Sheffield!" he roared. Then he added softly, "The new ruler of North America."