by James Axler
Intent on the trail, Jak darted past a manhole missing its cover. Ryan knew that the lid had been probably taken for the iron. Manhole covers made good armor for war wags, or folks could melt them down for horseshoes, or even nails. As a child, Ryan remembered finding a lot more of the smaller items from similar predark ruins. But now the buildings were getting picked clean, and people were turning to making things once more. Doc considered that a step toward rebuilding civilization, but Ryan wasn't sure. The first things most folks made were blasters and gallows.
Stopping at an intersection, Jak went down on a knee to study the ground closely, his fingers hovering above the pavement. A bug was crushed at one point, and a stone overturned, its wet side now facing the nighttime sky.
"Trouble?" Ryan asked, cradling the longblaster in his arms. He could tell somebody had passed by very recently, but not how many, or where they were headed. Jak's expertise was tracking.
"No prob," the teenager replied, starting to move about in an ever expanding spiral. Frowning, he finally stood.
"Two groups," Jak stated, pointing toward particular buildings. "One there, other there."
"Hotel and the sports arena. Any difference in the depths?" Ryan asked. "The muties carrying the supplies should leave a deeper print."
"None, Mebbe share all."
"Or thrown it away," Mildred suggested. A plait of her hair was blown into her mouth, and she spit it out. "We better move fast, or we'll be feasting on horse steak for the next week."
"Okay, we split into teams. Krysty, Jak and I will check the arena. You folks hit the hotel."
"Good or bad," Ryan continued, "we rendezvous at the insurance company here in thirty minutes. If the other team hasn't arrived, go find them."
"Thirty and counting," J.B. said, looking at his wrist chron. "Check."
Without further comment, Ryan and the others headed toward the arena.
Unfolding the wire stock of his Uzi, J.B. took the point for his group and started toward the hotel. The main building was a mirrored-glass cylinder, and it was impossible to see if there were any lights or movements in the upper stories. On street level, two low wings stood on either side.
"Swimming pool and restaurant," Mildred said, stepping over a bent driveshaft that was brown with rust, "if this hotel follows the usual style."
"No tracks," Dean said, looking at the street, "that I can see."
"Nor I," Doc added, sliding the selector on his blaster from the .63-caliber smooth bore, to the .44-caliber revolver. Against the resilient greenies, the buckshot charge would do scant damage. But the solid-lead mini-balls would, and could, remove heads with the precision of a cannon.
The windows lining the east wing were gone, windblown sand filling the pool nearly to the top. Swinging around the hotel, they found the restaurant to be in a similar condition—broken and deserted. A lizard darted from the shadows and disappeared into the soft sand as if it were water. Not a trace remained of its passage.
"We go in," J.B. said, straightening his fedora and pulling on his fingerless gloves tighter. "Remember, go for head shots, just like stickies." Nobody replied, but they raised the sights of their blasters higher.
Under a crumbling overhang, a rusted sign squeaked as it swung back and forth from the gentle wind. Mildred stopped it with her hand, then laid it down flat. Now that they could hear, there was only the soft moan of the desert wind, and the patter of sand hitting glass.
Proceeding in silence, they found the lobby of the hotel dark and smelling of mildew. The front counter sagged in the middle, and a shoe-shine stand was alive with busy termites. The floor was bare concrete, pronged strips at the bottom of the walls showing the floor had once been carpeted.
"Damn, we could track them easy on carpeting," J.B. said, lighting a candle. The tiny flame illuminated only a few yards, but it was better than nothing.
"There's an interesting fact I learned on my junkets," the physician said, holding her own candle high to inspect the ceiling. The tiles were in place, with no indications of bullet holes or accumulated residue from other candles or torches. "In my day, nobody wanted to stay on the thirteenth floor of a skyscraper. Supposed to be bad luck. So the hotel people used the thirteenth floor for themselves as offices and storage. Often, the elevators don't even list it as existing, but we could get there by taking the service stairs. Service elevator, too. But without power, those are dead."
"Twenty stories," J.B. mused, looking behind the counter. Piles of key cards lay on the floor, along with a smashed register. "Thirteen would be a good spot for an ambush. Whether invaders started searching at the bottom, or at the top, once they were higher than thirteen, the greenies could come boiling out and trap their prey."
"So we start there," Doc said grimly. "Lead on, my friend."
Going past a line of pay phones and washrooms, J.B. pushed opened a swing door with the barrel of his Uzi. Stacks of chairs lined their left, wooden easels and plastic signboards to the right.
"No cobwebs," Dean said, scuffing the floor.
Mildred reached out and lifted a green leaf off the sharp end of an easel. "I'd say we found them."
The service elevator was straight ahead, steam tables and room service carts in neat rows along a wall with faded lines painted on the floor.
"Tidy folks," J.B. commented, the Uzi sweeping for targets.
Mildred nodded. "Hyatt was the best."
At a door marked Service Stairs, J.B. and Dean stood guard, while Mildred turned the handle and eased it open. Almost instantly, a hairy fat spider darted around the edge and dashed onto her hand. Disgusted, the physician shook it off. The insect landed on the floor, and Doc crushed it under his boot.
"Filthy things," he muttered. "Always did hate them. Especially since our past close encounter."
As expected, the stairwell was pitch-dark, but under the candles they could dimly see the stairs were marked with the prints of countless bare feet. Assuming combat formation, the companions started up the concrete stairs, watching for traps.
Oddly, their footsteps didn't echo, and, reaching the fourth floor, they discovered why—the stairwell ended abruptly. Nothing was above them but the empty interior of the gutted hotel, each level painstakingly removed to make the building hollow.
Astonished, the companions stepped onto on the carpeted floor, looking upward at seventeen stories of banked windows and a very distant skylight. Vines and creepers covered the interior; hammocks hung like nesting pods along the sides. The middle was clear all the way to the roof, the ragged ends of steel beams and rough concrete slabs marring the vertical checkerboard of mirrored glass.
"Those hammocks are arranged so the greenies can catch sunlight while sleeping," Mildred guessed. "They climb the vines to get to their beds."
"We can't follow up there," Dean stated, listening to the building creak faintly as it swayed in the wind. "We get halfway and snip! Down we go."
"By Gadfrey, this is a mighty fine defense," Doc said in annoyance. "Positively Horacic in its simplicity."
"But where the hell are they?" J.B. demanded, studying the floor underfoot. The carpeting was clean, no spots from dropped food or drink. "There's hammocks here for a hundred, mebbe more, and we've only chilled twenty or so."
"Could be room for new families," Mildred said, wrinkling her nose at the sharp smell of the vines. It was similar to ivy, but resembled hemp. Clearly another mutation. "But more likely, the rest are chilled. "
"Hey, that's why they risked death to get our horses," Dean realized, a flash of anger coming, then going just as quickly. "They were starving to death."
"Not much to eat in the desert," she agreed as a spider ran by, boldly going over the toe of her boot.
"Sure as hell hope they're chilled," the Armorer said gruffly. A vine brushed against his neck, and he swatted it away. "Otherwise, there's only two options. They're either terrified of our blasters and have ran away in hiding—"
"Or else," Doc finished with a grimace, "
the greenies are preparing a major ambush, and this whole city is one huge trap."
AS THE MISTS faded from the mat-trans unit, Dr. Silas Jamaisvous appeared, standing on a hexagonal platform of tiny lights twinkling from inside the hidden machinery. Next to him was a forklift, its prongs filled with foam boxes sealed with yellow-and-black-striped warning tape.
The man waited a few moments for indications of jump sickness to hit, and was relieved when none occurred. Sometimes he was driven to the floor in retching agony, but those bouts were occurring less frequently these days. It was as if his constant nightmares of the chron jump were somehow making him immune to the smaller miseries of disintegration and instantaneous travel.
Climbing into the seat of the forklift, Silas started the electric motor and carefully drove the machine off the portable gateway and onto the bare concrete floor. Stacks and crates of every description filled the Quonset hut, long rifle boxes, drums of fuel, foot lockers, backpacks, everything his growing army needed. Even the hut had come through the gateway, painstakingly carried one piece at a time until Silas was finally able to have his troops take down the canvas tent around the gateway and surround the unit with the more secure domain of the hut.
Silas knew many of the secrets of the mat-trans system, and aside from controlling the jump destination, the man also knew where a lot of military equipment was stored, tons of materials and supplies that hadn't been touched since he personally ordered Special Forces troops to place it there a hundred-odd years ago. Richard Overton had marveled at the AK-47 assault rifles and radios. But those were toys compared to the weapon Silas was working on now, a weapon that would burn the pollution from the Deathlands forever and give him absolute mastery of the world. It would mean an end to war! After the necessary bloodshed of retribution, of course. But then, nothing was free.
Parking near the door, Silas rose and placed a hand on a glowing pad on the wall. There was a hum, and the door disengaged, cycling open onto a small enclosure. Directly across the neatly mown grass was the laboratory, to the right the barracks, to the left a brand new wall of concertina wire, topped with crackling electric prods.
"Guards!" he called, stepping onto the neatly raked soil.
Several armed sec men in crisp blue shirts ran over immediately. "Sir!" a young corporal saluted.
Silas returned the salute, trying not to appear dismayed at the age of the trooper. Most of the replacement sec men were young, hastily recruited from distant villes after the slaughter of so many veterans by the rebelling slaves. The barbed wire was only one of many steps taken to make sure such a disaster was never allowed to happen again. He blamed himself for the slaughter. He had been too lenient last time. No more.
"Drive the forklift outside the enclosure and have some workers haul these components up the main ladder to the dish for assembly," Silas commanded, walking stiffly and trying to hide his limp. "And make sure that nobody is to enter the warehouse for the next twenty minutes. No, make that an hour. Just to be safe."
"Safe, Dr. Jamaisvous?" the sec man asked, nervously glancing at the thick door of veined steel.
The predark scientist scowled. "Your ape brain could never possibly understand the reasons why. Just do as you are ordered."
"Yes, sir!" With exaggerated care, the sec man piloted the machine along a walkway and through the gate in the electric fence.
Chained slaves were waiting there, and each took a box from the stack and started shuffling toward the gigantic dish.
A teenager took a foam box and started for the ladder at the base of the bunker. His steps were hesitant, and almost immediately he tripped and dropped the container. The foam broke apart on the flagstones, and the computer module inside tumbled into view and shattered on the ground, pieces spraying for yards.
"Masters, I am sorry," the slave said, going to his knees and hastily sweeping the bits into a pile with bare hands. "Forgive me!"
"Clumsy idiot!" an overseer cursed, and lashed the teen with a knotted bullwhip. The sweat-stained shirt split across the back, and blood welled from a deep slash. The slave cried out, and the laughing sec man coiled the whip for another strike.
"Hold!" Silas roared.
The overseer froze, confusion on his features. "Sir?"
Silas stared at the bleeding youth. The strapping young farmer was too tired to haul a small box a hundred feet. "Bleeding to death isn't going to help this worker get more done today, is it?"
"I'll make him work," the overseer boasted, and the line of chained slaves cowered.
Hands clasped, Silas stared coldly at the fool. "Indeed. You are relieved of worker supervision and assigned to the wall," he said, his voice rising in power. "We have no need of fools here. Go!"
Stunned, the overseer stumbled away, unable to comprehend what he had done wrong.
Looking about, Silas choose a sec man and pointed. "You there, Corporal!"
"Yes, Doctor?" the older man asked, saluting briskly.
"Congratulations. You are now an overseer. Feed these workers and give them a ten-minute rest every two hours. Finishing a job is much more important than trying to finish the job. Understand?"
The sec man saluted. "Yes, Doctor. Hail the New America!"
Sighing in frustration, Silas walked to the lab and locked the door by throwing a dead bolt. Luxuriating in the air-conditioning for a moment, he limped to a computer console and continued the diagnostics on the new software. Building the dish was only the first step in controlling the Kite. They also needed precise calculations to focus the power station. Even the slightest mistake could result in nothing happening to the target, or his own sec men dying in droves.
The intercom buzzed.
"What?" Silas snapped, pressing a button. "I told you I was never to be interrupted in the lab!"
"Glorious news, sir!" A voice crackled through the speaker. "Ryan has been captured!"
A minute passed before Silas could speak. "What was that again?" he asked in disbelief.
"One of our patrols caught them in some ruins east of here. The major has them in the main courtyard. Do you wish to talk with the prisoners, or should we chill them, sir?"
"Do nothing!" Silas ordered, sliding a rainbow colored CD-ROM from the mainframe computer and tucking it into a shirt pocket. "No, summon more guards in case they try to escape. I will be there at once!"
Turning off the intercom, Silas hastily hobbled from the lab and headed down a hallway for the exit. Could it be true that after so long a time, he was finally going to chill Tanner? Maybe that would stop the nightmares. His heart beat faster with hope. Yes, it had to! Free, he would be free from that cursed man once and forever!
Rushing from the building, Silas found a dozen sec men around a LAV-25 that was parked in the courtyard. Sheffield stood nearby with an unreadable expression.
"What's wrong?" Silas asked.
"Judge for yourself, sir," the major replied, crossing his arms.
An iron cage was attached to the rear of the APC with heavy chains, and it had obviously been dragged behind the transport through mud and fields. Horribly jammed inside was a group of wounded men, arms and legs sticking out of the bars of the impossibly tight confines.
More chains had been attached to a cross made of wooden beams. A man was chained and tied to the beams, his arms outstretched. He was covered with dirt, sweat cutting paths through the caked road dust. Dressed in combat fatigues and military-style boots, he had long black hair, was tall, heavily muscled, and a terrible scar bisected his face. But the prisoner had two eyes, and his teeth were filed to sharp points.
A smoking cigar dangling from his mouth, a grinning sergeant stood nearby the prisoners, his AK-47 leveled and ready as if expecting trouble.
"Are you in charge of this patrol?" Silas asked in a deceptively calm voice.
"Yes, sir, Dr. Jamaisvous!" the sec man stated proudly. "Gave us quite a fight, but we brought Ryan in alive and kicking."
"Dullard! Poltroon!" Silas raged, hobbling closer
. "This isn't Cawdor! Can't you see he has two eyes!"
His smile fading quickly, the sergeant puffed nervously on the cigar. This wasn't going as planned. "Well, we sort of figured he took the eye from a dead man and shoved it in as a disguise. But we found him with those five others—one's a blonde, another a redhead and they had plenty of blasters."
"And he admitted to being Cawdor?" Sheffield asked in a monotone.
The sergeant scratched his head and looked at the other sec men, watching from the hatches of the LAV. "Well, no. Not exactly, sir. But we figured out who they were pretty fast. Who else could they be?"
"Anybody, you ass!" Silas lowered his bushy eyebrows until they touched. "Mercies, coldhearts, ville sec men, anybody at all. Ryan travels with six other people, not five!" he reminded harshly. "Two of them women, not men. Can't you tell the difference, or haven't you read the posted description? As per standing orders!"
"I…" The sergeant swallowed hard, losing his cigar. "My apologies, sir. None of us can read."
Conflicting emotions raged within Silas, and he glared at the sweating sec man for several minutes without talking. Finally, he spoke.
"You will have to do better next trip, Sergeant," Silas said sternly, the threat of severe discipline clear in the tone.
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir!" The man almost fawned in his gratitude. "We'll leave today and find them fast!"
"See to it," the old man stated with a glare. "As for your prisoners, it's no great loss. We can always use more workers. Put them in chains and send the whole group to the wall. There's a constant need for fresh bodies in the stone quarry."
"Yes, sir! At once!"
Silas dismissed the matter with a wave. "You may go."
As the LAV drove away, dragging the prisoners behind, the rest of the guards returned to their duties, and Silas headed for the laboratory. Holding a palm to the wall plate, Sheffield opened the door for the man and entered after him, closing it tight behind them, making sure the lock was engaged.
"How utterly disappointing," Silas remarked, leaning heavily on his cane as they walked.