Lost Gates

by James Axler

  The thought made him nauseous. He felt like he would puke. Or maybe that was just the feeling that came in that briefest of moments before the black of unconscious claimed him. That moment that came…

  “LORD—THAT’S WHAT it looks like?” Mildred whispered, averting her eyes from the lightning flash, but not before it had seared itself on her retinas.

  “You get used to it,” J.B. said in a laconic tone. The briefest of smiles flickered at the corners of his mouth.

  “Get you—blasé already,” she said. Then, on seeing the puzzlement crossing his brow, she added, “Acting like you’ve seen it every day of your life.”

  “I hope I have more every days to come,” he muttered by way of reply. “Wonder where they’ll end up?”

  “Whatever or wherever, I just hope that they exact due caution,” Doc murmured.

  Crabbe had been listening to them with interest. Standing beside him, Krysty could see that he was having trouble coming to terms with their attitude. He turned to her.

  “What’s with you people? You act like there’s no danger at all. Now that I’ve seen that thing in action—” he pointed with disdain at the mat-trans unit “—I’d be damned if I’d trust myself to chance it.”

  “But you’d send your men through it?” Krysty asked him, ignoring his question and keeping an eye on McCready and his men as she did so.

  Crabbe shrugged. “Sure. That’s what they get their jack for. Don’t mean I have to, though. That’s what being the boss is all about, right?”

  “If you say so,” she said noncommittally. But she noted that the sec men looked at their chief questioningly. And that McCready himself looked uneasy at the prospect.

  Another little chink. When the moment came, then these would all count against Crabbe.

  RYAN’S EYE WAS STICKY, gummed together and difficult to open. It felt like some kind of stickie gloop, as though one of the muties had punched him in the eye and left something of itself behind. He felt the lashes pull against skin as he forced the eyelid open. The eye behind it felt little better. Perhaps he had been punched in the face? The mat-trans had somehow slugged him as it pulled him apart and glued him back together again. Maybe this was part of the glue?

  Considering how dry and sore his eye felt, it was amazing that any kind of gloop had been produced at all. Come to that, the rest of his head felt like that, too. He moved it slowly, flexing his neck and testing just how far he could push it before the pain kicked in.

  Good. The more he did it, the more it began to clear. It was as though he needed the movement to kick-start his reconstituted body. Feeling stronger by the second, as a sense of being himself rather than someone stuck in an alien body began to return, Ryan hauled himself to his feet.

  The armaglass was dark, the lights in the chamber beyond chilled. In the gloom, he could hear Jak retching. The albino teen always suffered from a jump in this way, and Ryan was sure that once he had thrown up he would feel better.

  “Jak.” His voice was a dry husk. He coughed phlegm and spoke again. “Jak, how are you?”

  “Okay. No—feel like crap but okay soon,” Jak replied. In the semidarkness, Ryan could see his companion’s stringy white hair and the blazing red of his eyes as he shakily raised himself up. Ignoring his own condition, the albino youth continued. “Dark. Lights fail, or waiting for us?”

  Ryan grinned. It was the grin of a predator. “Only one way to find out. You ready for this?”

  Jak’s teeth shone white and sharp. “Do it.”

  Ryan opened the door of the mat-trans. He stood to one side, using it for cover, and gestured for Jak to dart into the control room. Like Mildred and Doc, they were met with silence.

  But there was something different about this redoubt. Jak sniffed the air experimentally.

  “Empty, Ryan,” he said, standing from a crouch. “Were people, but long since gone.”

  Ryan had stepped through the anteroom and into the control room. He held the SIG-Sauer ready, but he could feel the emptiness, too. He looked up at the ceiling. The lights were out because they had been smashed, not because of a power failure. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they could see that the lights on the comps around the room were still illuminated, flickering as the programmes ran their preprogrammed course. They may have still been working, but there were other signs of damage. The floor was littered with broken chairs, and the sides of the desks looked dented, as though they had been hit in incoherent frustration.

  “Think it was the original inhabitants went a little crazy?” Ryan questioned.

  Jak shook his head. “Smell too fresh. Not taken out yet by air con. Recent, but not much.”

  Ryan nodded. “Should be okay, but stay frosty.”

  The pair moved toward the exit. The door showed signs of taking a beating. Someone had been in one hell of a hurry to get out. Presumably they had. Otherwise, it would be a real pain if the mechanism was broken, and Ryan and Jak were stuck in the control room. The one-eyed man held his breath as he punched the standard numbers in to the keypad…then sighed with relief as the door slid open, showing no signs of damage.

  The corridor was brilliantly lit. The floor was littered with detritus—paper, wood, metal, pieces of equipment that had been mangled and smashed, and the remains of what might have been food but could equally have been waste.

  “What the fireblasted hell happened here?” Ryan murmured.

  “Looting,” Jak replied simply.

  “Yeah, but who and why?” Ryan asked, puzzled. “Why make a mess like this and try to break up the mat-trans control room? They haven’t smashed these lights like they did in there.”

  Jak looked at him. “Mebbe some got in unit.”

  Ryan considered that. He could remember the shock he had felt the first time he had used a mat-trans. And then how he had felt just a short time before when he had been on the outside of the unit as the jump process started. Jak could have a point. Say someone stumbled in and the door closed. The comp would automatically trigger the jump, and who knew where the poor bastard ended up? But those with him, on the outside trying desperately to free him… How would that feel?

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” he agreed. “It could be why they got the hell out instead of staying. Assuming they didn’t stay, that is.”

  Jak shook his head. “No one here, Ryan. Chilled like grave.”

  “Yeah, reckon you’re right. But a little caution never hurt anyone.” The one-eyed man shrugged. “We’ll keep our blasters on red.”

  Jak nodded. He had little doubt that the redoubt was empty, but was always mindful of the fact that caution had kept him alive this far.

  They headed upward. This redoubt seemed to be smaller than many of the ones they had visited in the past. On the next level up they found dorms and washroom facilities for about fifty people. The dorms were empty. The bed frames remained, but the mattresses and linen had been taken away. Whatever wasn’t looted had been ripped up and dumped in corners of the rooms, some of it smeared in excrement.

  The washrooms were in a similar condition. The cleaning materials had been left, or randomly broken and scattered around, while the shower areas had been used as latrines. Disgusting as it was for them to see, Ryan and Jak checked the detritus left behind. By the hardened state of the feces that had been smeared or dumped randomly, it had to have been some time since the redoubt had been invaded.

  “Scum,” Jak murmured simply as he examined the mess.

  “Agreed,” Ryan stated. “Wonder how much other damage they did.”

  They left the dorm and shower areas. Next was the clothing stores. As they expected, these had been thoroughly looted. Those clothes that hadn’t been looted had been left lying on the floor. They had been tried on and then randomly discarded, some spoiled and ripped. One pile of clothing was discolored by dark stains that looked like dried blood.

  “Fucking animals,” Ryan muttered. “It’s like they couldn’t even find what they wanted without trying to split eac
h other’s guts over it.”

  “Good. Less scum better,” Jak stated, emphasizing his view by spitting on the mess.

  Ryan sniffed. “Wonder how much else they’ve fucked up in this place. You reckon they’ll have looted the armory?”

  Jak snorted and shook his head.

  “Yeah, me, too,” Ryan replied. “Might as well check it out, anyway. Time check?”

  Jak looked at his chron. “Eight minutes since arrived.”

  Ryan nodded. “Let’s get this done.”

  They left the wreckage of that level behind them and pressed forward. The next level housed the kitchens, food stores and dining area. Any foodstuffs that hadn’t been looted were spilled around the whole area. The level itself looked as though it had been coated in a layer of food, all now dried and caked on every surface.

  “How the fuck did they manage to do that?” Ryan blurted, exasperated and bemused.

  “Like that?” Jak asked with a wry smile. Ryan followed the line of the albino teen’s hand. One area of the floor, in front of an open floor-to-ceiling storage cupboard, was littered with self-heats that had been opened. The correct way to open them was to use the tags to trigger the heating mechanism, but there had been no attempt to employ this on the packages that lay on the floor. Instead, it looked as though the looters had been frustrated in their attempts to open the packaging, and had opted to shoot the hell out of the self-heats with their blasters. The sudden release of the high-pressure system that heated the package and its contents had caused them to explode with a release of inner tension, propelling the foodstuffs across the kitchen and dining areas. There were also ragged holes of blasterfire in the plaster of the walls, as though the blasters had been fired randomly.

  “Waste of good ammo,” Jak commented pithily. “Good food, too,” he added, looking around.

  “Yeah,” Ryan agreed. “How much other good stuff did these assholes waste?”

  “Much as they could,” Jak sniffed.

  They left the kitchen and food stores behind, moving up another level. As they did, it became clear that there was less random mess and destruction the higher they got. It was as though the looters had frustrated themselves in the kitchens and taken out their rage on the levels below, culminating in whatever had happened in the mat-trans unit. For now, as they gained the working heart of the redoubt, there was little obvious damage. The floors were clean.

  But the gaping maw of the armory and the medical facilities dashed any hopes they may have held. The looting had been thorough, no matter how stupe the looters.

  As they approached, Ryan could see that the doors of both sections had been jammed open. Light from within flooded out into the corridor, which had been cast into shadow because random lights had been shot out. Another display of temperament or just a casual testing of the weaponry they had found within? It didn’t really matter. The scattered shell casings, ammo magazines, and boxes in which they had been stored told their own story.

  “We’re not going to find jackshit here.” Ryan sighed.

  Jak shrugged. “Least no danger.”

  “Guess so,” Ryan mused, “but we’ve got to try to find something that we can use against Crabbe. He’s got all of us by the balls right now. Outnumbered back there, and undermanned out here.”

  Jak agreed. It was a problem. Distributing blasters only to the pair embarking on a mission and keeping a strong sec presence made it almost impossible for any of the companions to cut all risk. Jak had considered the possibility of just coming out of the mat-trans blasting on their return, and using the element of surprise. But the way he had felt when the jump was completed reminded him of why it was a stupe idea. To make the return jump in under thirty minutes would probably leave him spilling his guts on the unit floor again and of no use to anyone.

  By this time they were under the shadow of lights that had been blasted out. It put the medical facilities into stark relief, and as they stood outside and looked in they could only imagine the anger and frustration that Mildred would have felt, had she been with them.

  It didn’t look as though any of the medical supplies had actually been taken. It was doubtful whether the looters had any idea what most of them were for. Target practice, judging by the carnage they had wreaked in the medical room. Bottles, jars and vials were smashed, shards of plastic and glass littering the floor. The surface was sticky with the mingled meds that had run together and congealed over time. Pills were scattered around in a profusion of colored capsules that were part-melted, part-trampled into the floor. Bandages, lint and gauze were scattered and ripped. The equipment that had once been precision made, and used for healing wounded and sick bodies, was smashed beyond repair in an orgy of mindless destruction.

  For Ryan and Jak, it was a waste that was more than just pitiful. There had been times when their lives had been saved by the materials they had found in places such as this. The desecration represented chances of their lives being lost.

  “Figure point looking in armory?” Jak asked.

  “No,” Ryan said sadly, checking his wrist chron, “but we’ve got some time, so we might as well.”

  If anything, the armory presented an even more depressing sight. For a redoubt of around fifty people, it had been—at the time of skydark—well-equipped. The racks that had once held rifles and SMGs attested to this. They were, however, long since empty. The boxes that had once nestled in neat and serried rows, containing grens and explosives, were now either hollow and broken husks, or simply missing with only a blank space indicating that they had ever existed. Boxes of ammo were broken open and scattered across the interior of the armory, just as they were across the corridor outside.

  “What kind of stupes were these?” Ryan said almost to himself as he stepped across the discarded ammo magazine and shells to pick up an H&K MP-5—the predark SMG of choice for the old military, it seemed to him—from where it had been discarded on the floor. The mechanism had been stamped and battered until it was dented and jammed. Or had the beating it had taken been part of some misguided attempt to unjam it? Come to that, he wondered how this polycarbon mechanism had been jammed in the first place. Uzis, like the one favored by J.B., could be bastards when on rapid-fire, but H&Ks were usually reliable. Just what had they done to make it jam in the first place?

  “Some people just don’t deserve good blasters,” he said, again almost to himself.

  Jak had been examining some handblasters and a few longblasters that had been discarded in a similar manner. He figured it was what you’d get when you had men deprived of ordnance who then had the chance to pick and choose from what had to have seemed like a treasure trove. Act like stupes, like animals. No, unfair on animals. He’d never known anything he hunted to be so wasteful. But he didn’t bother voicing any of these thoughts. What was the point? Only one thing to do.

  “Let’s move,” he said simply.

  Ryan nodded, and they made their way out of the armory with no little regret for chances lost. Picking their way over the ammo, resisting the urge to scoop some up, they carried on until they reached the next level. Here, they found what had to be the redoubt’s operations center. Sec monitors for the whole installation and the outside were housed in a darkened room. Most of them, inside and out, were dark.

  “Guess they shot out all the cams,” Ryan mused. “Just as well they left this level mostly alone…”

  It was as if they had walked past these rooms, seen the banks of comps winking seemingly at random as the automated mechanisms of maintenance ticked patiently on until their masters returned, and passed swiftly on, fearful of that that they didn’t understand.

  In truth, Ryan and Jak didn’t really understand the way in which most of this old tech worked. But they respected what it did, and how it kept the redoubt alive.

  Ryan looked over the comps, trying to glean some clue as to what the redoubt had been used for. As always, lazy predark soldiers had marked up the comps and desks with shortcuts and reminders for passwords
, key codes and the functions of different comp displays.

  This redoubt had housed a local defense force, which was to enforce military law in the locality in the event of a national shutdown. What that meant he wasn’t too sure, but the coming of skydark would certainly count as some kind of shutdown. He also figured that the term “defense force” was fluid—who or what were they actually defending, and from whom?

  Maybe that was what had happened to them—they’d ridden out into the teeth of a firestorm, never to return. And what of those who had been left behind, if any? Perhaps they had just bought the farm with age, wandering belowground, unable to emerge in daylight. Maybe the long wait had driven them crazy, and they’d gone outside anyway, preferring to face the hostile elements rather than go slowly mad. Thinking about it, Ryan wasn’t too sure which he would prefer.

  “C’mon, Ryan, get moving. Time…”

  Jak’s words shook him from his reverie. Whatever had stopped the stupe looters from breaking up this section, he was glad. It meant that the redoubt could actually support them.

  “See this,” Ryan murmured, indicating a yellowing piece of paper taped to the surface of one desk. “It says that the level above this is a wag garage with armored wags. Mebbe some of them are still there. And mebbe the looters were too stupe—or couldn’t be bothered—to get at their ordnance when they were here.”

  Jak’s expression didn’t change, but his voice was clear. “Long shot.”

  Ryan blew out his breath. “Yeah, mebbe. But if we can just find something to use, then I’d feel a whole lot better.” He checked his wrist chron. “Halfway mark. We’ve got time.”