by James Axler
“Yes.”
Ryan looked up at the fallen expanse of the Grand Rapids Bridge. “Bridge is out.” The hydroelectric plant was the only modern edifice still standing, and it was a cracked and raddled lump falling in upon itself as the Saskatchewan River’s rapids fell past its clogged sluices and silent dynamos. People began debarking wags, staring disconsolately at the river in front of them, the expanses of lake to either side and the sadly twisted trees.
Hunk looked around blankly. “Where is it?”
There was little to see except scrubby trees; nothing to hear but the rushing of the river. There was no parking lot, not telltale sign of anything at all. Ryan looked at the map again. X marked the spot. The spot was a fallen bridge.
“Lady Cyrielle!” Six knocked at the camper wag’s door. “Lady Cyrielle! You must come!” Six opened the door and went in.
Hunk wasn’t happy, and he spoke for most of the people in the convoy. “Blasters! Food! Fuel! Tech! You said it was all here!” Hunk raised his arms and slowly spun in a disappointed circle. “Where?”
Lady Cyrielle emerged. She was wearing the same shift she had slept in for three days. Six had draped a parka around her and shoved boots onto her feet. Her eyes were red with weeping and dark-circled with exhaustion. With the death of her brother, she had seen the fall of the Toulalan dynasty in Val-d’Or. When her father died, she would end up the spoils of whatever faction came out on top. Unless Mace Henning took her first. She clutched a Diefenbunker laptop comp. Six gave the dazed, grief-racked lady gentle directions, and she opened the laptop, adjusted a plug-in antenna and hesitantly typed some keys.
Nothing happened.
Six nodded to her. “Again.”
Lady Cyrielle typed the keys and nothing happened.
“Again.”
Faces fell as Cyrielle typed the command code again with shaking hands. The anticlimax was agonizing. After everything they had been through, all the pain, all the loss, the payoff was an empty plain and a fallen bridge. Angry murmurs moved up and down the convoy. The wild dream of unlimited electrical power and the new society was dead. Ryan’s eye narrowed. Of much more immediate concern was that they had been depending on the food and fuel the bunker was sure to have contained. Very soon they would be as bad off as Baron Henning and hundreds of miles farther north and west. The LAVs, the semi and the command camper wag were pigs for fuel. It would be a hell run to reach Val-d’Or through hostile territory, abandoning wags and gear every step of the way.
Tamara kicked a rock and muttered beneath her breath. “This is what happens when you sign up with landlubbers…” Six caught Cyrielle as she buckled. Her brother’s death had been in vain. People silently began remounting their wags without being ordered, and blue smoke belched into the air.
Ryan’s head snapped up. “Cut the engines!” The convoy drivers looked at him as though he was insane. The look on his face brooked no disobedience. The wag engines died. The one-eyed man knelt and put his fingers on the cracked concrete of the road. It was vibrating. He unslung his Scout and walked up the road toward the river. He stopped in front of the Grand Rapids Bridge on-ramp. Dust and dead grass was sifting off it. A slow smile spread across Ryan’s face.
Pavement cracked like gunshots. The on-ramp split open down the middle, and the giant clamshell doors butterflied open. A ramp led downward, and it was wide and tall enough to accept the semi. Ryan knew it ran beneath the river and probably led to the highly modified basement of the hydroelectric plant. Ancient lights began snapping on along the length of the ceiling. Ryan stepped inside the giant doors and slid a finger along one gleaming hydraulic shaft. He felt the dry lubricant’s oil on glass slickness. This wasn’t one of Mildred’s “retro” Diefenbunkers. This place was predark state-of-the-art.
Ryan glanced back at the convoy. The LAV would fit down the tunnel, but it wouldn’t be able to turn in an emergency, and he wanted it up top defending the convoy in case someone or something came wandering along. “Six, we’ll take your sec wag. Bring Lady Cyrielle and the laptop.”
Six nodded. “Marie-Laure, you’re driving. Tamara, would you care to accompany us and look after the Queen’s interests?”
“Rad-yes!” The markswoman beamed.
“Hunk?”
“Fuckin’ eh!” the young man replied.
Ryan looked at J.B. “Circle the wags. You’re in command. We’ll take a com unit.”
J.B. kept the disappointment off his face. He lived for discovering caches of predark blasters and tech, but duty was duty, and he knew more about defending convoys than even experienced Deathlands travelers had forgotten. “Right.”
“Jak?”
The albino teen leaped into the back of the wag. He was always ready to roll.
“Mildred, this stuff is your era,” Ryan said. “I want you along.”
The physician checked the loads in her ZKR target pistol and slung her med kit. “On it like Blue Bonnet!”
Ryan was pretty sure that meant yes. He nodded at his recce team. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The thunder of the sec wag’s rebuilt V-8 engine echoed down the long tunnel beneath the rapids of the Saskatchewan River. Marie-Laure drove. The passenger-side chicken-armor slats had been raised to let Hunk man the hood-mounted squad automatic blaster. Cyrielle and Mildred were ensconced on the bench backseat. In the truck bed Six stood behind the post-mounted twin autoblasters. Ryan, Jak and Tamara each dropped to a knee around him with their weapons ready. Kagan and Kosha snuffed the ancient air of the redoubt.
A little seepage streaked the walls of the tunnel, and a few of the evenly spaced overhead lights had shorted out and left occasional pools of darkness, but otherwise the tunnel was remarkably well preserved. It ended in a huge wag circle with cranes inset in the walls. The blast doors hissed open instantly at Cyrielle’s comp command. Ryan smiled at what he saw within. It was classic Deathlands redoubt architecture. In the midst of revamping their Diefenbunkers, Canada had built one last stronghold to spec.
His smile died when he saw its former occupants.
The ancient dead lay strewed around in the redoubt’s deployment foyer. By their attitude some had died clawing at the doors to get out. “Mildred?”
Mildred hopped out and warily approached an air-cured corpse in a blue coverall. The dead man’s paper-thin skin was raddled with coin-size lesions of various denominations. With no fluids left in his body the holes opened onto yellowed bone. “Something biological got in here. Looks like whoever was in command put the place in lockdown.”
“We safe?” Ryan called.
“It’s been a hundred years since it had a living host, so bugs should be dead by now.” Or dormant Mildred mentally corrected herself. “But we don’t have any safety protocols we can exercise except to not touch anything, and we came here expressly to pillage. It’s your call.”
“I’m willing to go in,” Ryan stated. “The rest can stay here.”
“I’m willing to accompany you,” Six affirmed.
“We’re the recce team.” Tamara grinned. “We’re all volunteers.”
Hunk slammed a fist into his palm. “Let’s kick this pig!”
Mildred looked for a piece of wood to knock on and couldn’t find one among the stark metal and concrete of the redoubt. “Don’t say pig. Just don’t.”
Marie-Laure rumbled the sec wag into the redoubt, and the rest of the team dismounted. Ryan took point, and Tamara immediately fixed her bayonet and moved to his back. Marie-Laure immediately took up the same position on Six. Cyrielle attached herself to Six’s fire team and Mildred to Ryan’s. Hunk took rear guard.
It was the first postmodern facility Hunk had ever laid eyes on. “Sure built fancy back then!” the young man observed.
Ryan pushed
the button on a door and it hissed open.
“Rads, thunder and fallout!” Hunk was close to hopping up and down with delight. Like the last bunker the armory was right next to the door for quick deployment. This armory was untouched. Canadian hand-, long- and machine blasters of every description were racked and ready to go along with crates of ammo. Not a single weapon was out of place. Tamara unracked a long green tube with folding grips and sights and read the top line of the instructions. “Antitank!”
Ryan went to a rack of four Scout longblasters and took some spare magazines and another accessory kit. “We strip it clean later. Right now we find the reactors.”
The recce team moved through the redoubt and found occasional chilled corpses in various states of rigor mortis. The staff of the bunker had died hard. Whatever the disease was, it had raddled their flesh, and they had died where they had fallen, probably of dehydration. They found the cafeteria and kitchen. The cryo-freeze units were three-quarters full of food. The fuel bunker was just about full. The inhabitants had died of disease before they could ever deploy into the brave new world. The medical facilities and the dormitories were strangely devoid of corpses, as if the staff had decided to die at their stations or trying to escape.
Ryan kept the hesitation off his face as they entered a mat-trans control room. Cyrielle went to the door to the chamber and pressed the lever to open it with obvious experience. The walls of the chamber were the ocean blue of a tropical lagoon. Cyrielle frowned at the interior. “There was a chamber like this in the Val-d’Or Diefenbunker, and the one in Borden. We couldn’t figure out their purpose. Their comps aren’t linked to the rest of the bunker, and we couldn’t access them.” She looked at Ryan.
Ryan shrugged. “We were more interested in the food and the LAV.”
Cyrielle closed the door to the chamber once more. The recce party moved on. Ryan figured they had gone about a thousand yards and were right below the hydroelectric plant when they found the mother lode. They walked into another storage chamber and stopped in their tracks.
“Behold,” Cyrielle said, “my brother’s dream.”
“Wow, atomic outhouses.” Mildred put her hands on her hips. “Wonders never cease.”
It wasn’t a bad description. Four eight-feet tall, sky-blue cuboids with rounded edges and a discernable, man-size door or hatch occupied the middle of the chamber. Each had the universal three-spoked radiation-warning sign and the Canadian flag emblazoned on the hatch. Ryan picked up a binder emblazoned with the Diefenbunker logo and read the title, “Endymion Industries Cartridge Reactor.” Ryan was the son of a baron, and had been raised with the closest equivalent to a classical education that the Deathlands could manage. The dense text swiftly turned to a blur technical gobbledygook. “Mildred?”
Mildred took the binder. She was a physician, but she had spent years reading technical textbooks. “J.B. could make a lot more out of this, but it’s written so that basic level electrical technicians could operate them. From what I can gather, they are self-contained units, though it says they can be linked and there are diagrams on how to do it. I know there is more to it, but basically you hook them up, add a water source and pull the rods.” Mildred looked over at the pyramid of large military crates. “Those contain couplings and adapters for various applications, and there are specs in here on how to build basic steam turbines. As far as I can tell, standing before us is eighty-one megawatts of power looking for a job.”
“We did it,” Cyrielle said. Her voice gained strength with victory. “My brother did it.”
Ryan clicked his com unit. “J.B., it’s all here, food, fuel, an armory full of blasters, loads of supplies and gear, the reactors, everything. Tell Krysty to bring in the big rig. There’s a wag circle at the end of the tunnel where she can turn it around. We’ll bring the rest of the wags inside in relays and load them up with everything we can carry.”
“If I may object?” Lady Cyrielle said.
“Yeah?”
“I suggest we bring all the wags in. We have hot showers, beds, central heating and the ovens. I think we might spend the night here. It is probably the securest place in Canada, and we would all benefit from the rest. We have been pushing hard, and the push home will be even harder.”
“J.B., you catch that?”
“Yeah,” the Armorer confirmed. Ryan knew J.B.’s leg was killing him, and that he was dying to take a look around inside. “Not a bad idea, and I ain’t just saying it. Homeward bound is going to be a hell run.”
“Six?” Ryan asked.
“I’m anxious to press on, but…” The big man raised a scarred eyebrow. “We bring in all the wags, fuel them, load them up. Get everything ready, then who knows what delights the kitchen freeze units hold, perhaps even beer. We sleep warm and safe behind blast doors, and leave tomorrow before noon.”
“J.B.?” Ryan said.
“Yeah?”
“Bring everybody in, the big rig first.”
RYAN YAWNED and stretched as the credits on the vid rolled. He had some problems with coldhearts who wore shoulder pads and loincloths in the desert but other than that Mildred had been right. The Road Warrior was a pretty good flick. The recce room was mostly deserted. The convoy had feasted and feasted well, except for those who had pulled guard duty. Most of the members of the convoy were passed out in bloated food comas. Between the infirmary and the dormitory there were enough beds to go around. Ryan and Krysty had claimed one of the couches in the recce room. Ryan could have spent a week drinking beer and perusing the collection of flicks. It was extensive.
Krysty had stuffed her backpack with CDs for the player in the semi.
Six appeared and put his finger to his lips and jerked his head for Ryan to follow. The one-eyed man disentangled himself from Krysty and walked across the recce room as silent as Six had entered, following the big Québécois into the hall. “What?”
Six led him to the bunker’s security suite. Marie-Laure was watching the screens looking very unhappy. Six pointed at the feed from three of the sec cams. “These are pointed north.”
On clear nights the Canadian sky was a magic show of light curtains and acres of crystal-clear stars. In the distance the Northern Lights and the stars were reflected off a mass of white like an earthbound cloud bank. “What is it?”
“The freeze,” Six replied. “It is early.” The sec room had a shining chrome periscope, and Six slapped down the handles and invited Ryan to watch.
He peered. He clicked the thumb adjustment, and each time the magnification of the periscope jumped. It was a cloud bank, but as he upped the magnification he could see that it was a vast swirling mass, spinning in a westerly rotation like a revolving wall and trees and debris were swept ahead of it. It was a cyclone, thousands of feet tall and filling the horizon. It was a superstorm, and an arctic one. It was moving toward them at incredible speed. Ryan suddenly had to dial back his magnification as the storm jumped his view and whited out his lens. Ryan dialed back and dialed back again as the superstorm kept jumping his magnification. Even the Deathlands at its worst didn’t have storms this big or so fast. “How does anything survive?”
“Below the 50th parallel the storms lose much of their force. Some say it is the combination of the Rockies to the west and the updraft of the Great Lakes.” Six gazed steadily at the suite of security monitors. “It’s on us.”
Ryan was at zero magnification as the storm hit. The Diefenbunker shuddered down to its foundations and the lens was enveloped in a maelstrom of white and gray. “How long do they last?”
“Not long, but they come marching one after the other, the sweep of a scythe from east to west.”
Marie-Laure gazed at the gleaming shaft of the periscope. “Let me look!”
“Not much to see,” Ryan said, stepping away, “except whiteout.”
Marie-Laure took the handles and peered. “Oh no! It is clear!” She turned in a circle. “You can see the entire funnel from within!”
“The eye of the storm,” Ryan said.
“Oui, it is…” Marie-Laure’s breath misted like smoke and she suddenly jerked away from the periscope. Part of her cheek came off on the eyepiece. Her left hand stuck on the handle. “Merde! It burns!” She yanked her hand away and her left ring and little finger snapped off like a breaking stick. She staggered back in shock and Ryan caught her. The temperature in the room had plummeted. Cold radiated from the steel shaft of the periscope in a searing wave.
“Out!” Ryan roared. They piled out of the room and Ryan kicked the metal door shut. The toe of boot scraped frost. The walls of the redoubt clicked and hummed as the generators and internal heating tried to adjust to a cold it had never been designed for. The other side of the funnel hit and the walls rumbled and vibrated again as the storm shook the hydroelectric facility above. Ryan clicked his com as Marie-Laure sagged. “Mildred! I need you now!”
“I’VE HEARD OF IT,” Mildred said to Ryan. She bandaged Marie-Laure’s hand while Krysty held it. Marie-Laure’s ring and little finger were back in the sec room. Her middle finger had required amputation, and the palm of her hand was the equivalent of a full thickness burn. Luckily the med facility’s supply of cryogenically frozen drugs was still tip-top, and the facility itself was designed to deal with small-unit action level casualties. Mildred mentally fretted about the nerves to Marie-Laure’s forefinger and thumb. Mildred had already sutured up her face. Marie-Laure hadn’t been a good-looking woman by anyone’s standards before, and the loss of flesh beneath her left eye was a freeze avulsion. The flesh had frozen to her cheekbone and snapped off. It was going to leave some very nasty scarring.
Mildred talked as she worked. “They called it supercooling back in my day. It was in a lot of end-of-the-world scenarios. Conduction, convection, I don’t know the science, but somehow the eye of the storm gets colder than it was previously ever thought possible on Earth. It explains all this talk about a killing hard freeze.”