Anti-Grav Unlimited

by Duncan Long

  “Uh. Well—”

  “Dobrynin will pay ten times the normal fares,” I lied.

  “OK, they’ll be here in a couple of minutes,” he said grabbing his talkie.

  Nothing like greed, I thought. At the same time I felt guilty. I decided that if I got out of the prison after entering it during this time of insanity, I’d get him some sort of extra pay after this was all over. In his own way, this little person was as much a victim of Dobrynin’s crimes as we were.

  Nikki and I ran across the long gray plastic walk leading to the prison entrance which was built into the concrete dike that ringed Miami.

  “Replace the stun shells with standard flechettes,” I told Nikki. “The delay it takes before the stun shells take effect could get us killed.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’m about out of the special shells, anyway.”

  I checked my shotgun as she slipped a new magazine into hers. As we stepped on the mantle plate, the huge door opened for us, closing after we enter the glass room inside. A camera swiveled toward us and trained its lasers on us.

  “Business?” a voice said.

  “We’ve come to pick up the prisoners for Dobrynin,” Nikki said as I stood tongue-tied.

  I hoped she knew what she was doing and quietly snapped the safety off my shotgun in case we needed to try to take out the laser.

  The door ahead of us opened and we walked forward and stepped into the waiting elevator.

  As it sank down, I saw why there’d been no prison building to see from the front. The prison was under water.

  The clear plastic elevator slowly dropped us one story below the surface of the ocean. We watched as fish performed their acrobatics outside the elevator. Around us, the bottom of the ocean showed a wealth of green life amid the ruins of Old Miami. Though the battering of the waves and the caustic action of the salt water and sea life had taken their toll, it was still possible to make out the streets and blocks that extended out from the prison. Several rusty hulks of cars still stood in the murky streets, as if waiting to again be driven toward the abandoned homes.

  Far in the distance, a large sea farm was crawling through the violent, oxygen-rich waves which rolled over the ruins of the city. The farm’s surface extended as far as we could see toward the northeast of the prison.

  The prison itself extended from the central transparent bubble that the elevator opened into.

  There were few cells; there were many capital offenses, and punishment was often carried out without a court hearing.

  Each cell along the prison hallway was a small dome on the ocean floor, among the decaying ruins, each cell interconnected by clear walk ways laid on the floor of the ocean. As the waves rolled above us, the prison swayed slightly. There seemed to be no artificial lights; light filtered into the area in bright patterns of yellow, green, and blue from the bright shimmering mirrored surface above us where the ocean and air met.

  We exited the elevator, our nostrils assaulted by the damp stench of sweat and urine. I looked around, my eyes adjusting to the light and spotted the large desk in the center of the dome. An old man sat behind a small, white plastic desk, his large, sunken eyes inspecting us closely.

  “What prisoners are you talking about?” he said, breaking the quiet of the room.

  “We’ve come to pick up these prisoners,” Nikki said, sliding the paper we’d brought with us.

  He looked at the paper without picking it up then frowned making more wrinkles on his leathery face. He punched a button on the desk top and inspected the display of names that sprang onto the monitor in front of him.

  He shook his head, snapped the display off, and then rubbed a hand over his bald head. “Why can’t you people get things straight. I got the order to release these people just a while ago and—as are my orders—requested the written authorization. And never got it. You’ll have to wait until I get it.”

  “It was sent over ten minutes ago,” Nikki lied.

  “Let me call,” he removed a talkie from the surface of the desk where it had appeared to be part of the flat surface. He spoke his number then listened a moment. “Nothing,” he said. “What in the world’s going on at central? Have the riots spread that far?”

  I didn’t wait around any more. I slapped him up the side of the head with the barrel of my shotgun and he fell over his desk top in a really fine Rip van Winkle imitation.

  “A little hasty” Nikki suggested. “You do have a plan, right?”

  I shrugged.

  “I was hoping you had an idea when you tucked him in.”

  “It seemed like the thing to do. Let’s see if we can get into the cells.”

  We ran toward the metal door leading to the prison cells. I dilated it open and came face to face with a bag lady.

  She looked at me a moment, then stared past me at the comatose warden. I knew she saw the warden’s body and she knew I knew. We both pulled up our weapons at the same instant and fired. I missed and hers connected.

  Her gun was of a type I’d never seen before: a short-barreled hand gun with a heavy, lead-pellet-filled projectile about ten centimeters across. The huge slug caught me in the chest and knocked the wind out of me, causing me to keel over as I tried to breathe. Only the ballistic armor incorporated into the bag lady outfit kept me from greater harm.

  The bag lady quickly tried to reload her weapon as Nikki jumped past me and fired; Nikki’s shot missed. Rising to my knees, I fired again.

  This time I connected with the lethal flechette load of the shotgun. The bag lady fell with a large, fist-sized hole in her chest.

  I gasped for air a moment and stood up. The first thing that captured my attention was the sound of water.

  “What?” I said.

  “That’s why she had such an ineffective weapon,” Nikki said, pointing to a the streams of water gushing through the plastic of the hallway. “Anything else is too dangerous. Your first flechette load as well as mine punctured the plastic walls.”

  “Damn. I wonder if it will hold up?”

  As if to answer my question, a large chunk of plastic broke off from one of the tiny streams of water and a torrent of water gushed in. Moments later, the other hole widened to admit more water.

  “Come on,” I said, “We don’t have much time. We’ve got to get the prisoners out of here or they’ll all drown.”

  We splashed down the passage to the fork in the hallway, ” I’ll take the left,” Nikki said.

  I dashed down the right. I was glad to see that most of the cells were empty. I stopped at the first occupied cell I came to. I tried to open it. It appeared to have an electric lock of some type. I heard a shot down the hall. Trouble?

  “You OK Nikki?” I yelled over the racket the water was making.

  “Blasted the lock,” Nikki yelled.

  Might as well try it, I thought. I motioned the young man inside the cell to stand back and placed the muzzle of the shotgun on the plastic lock while trying to aim downward so any flechettes that went through the lock wouldn’t harm the prisoner or puncture the plastic bubble of his cell.

  I pulled the trigger and the lock exploded apart. My ears rang.

  “Get going,” I told him as I pushed the heavy plastic door back, “the prison is flooding.”

  He didn’t need any prompting. He scooped up a small bag of belongings now floating on the rising water and jumped out of the cell and sloshed toward the elevator.

  The water was now ankle deep. I ran to the next cells and had soon blasted eight more open freeing three men and two women (none of whom I knew) and also freeing three of my team members who—to my surprise—didn’t recognize me. Then I remembered my bag lady get up. I didn’t take time for reunions but just ordered them to the door and hoped they didn’t try to attack me since I looked like one of the old hags they had undoubtedly learned to hate.

  That completed the release of everyone on the wing. The water was now knee deep and rising rapidly.

  I half waded, half
swam toward the fork. “Nikki, you almost finished?”

  She came splashing up with two bedraggled women, “Yeah. That’s it. Let’s get out of here.”

  We made our way to the main chamber. I looked through the clear dome and water at the load of prisoners getting out of the elevator above us. I scooped up the little warden who was still draped across his desk, the water lapping at its top. The elevator was coming back down for the five of us when the power went off.

  The water was chest high and the elevator was frozen half way down.

  “We’ll never get out,” one of the women said.

  And it looked like she was right.

  Chapter 22

  “Listen,” I said over the gushing roar of the water, “We could last a long time if we had to by getting up to the top of this chamber. It’s air tight and the dome top would create an air pocket.

  Someone would eventually come and rescue us.”

  Maybe, I added to myself. The idea wasn’t all that reassuring.

  “It’d be better to get out,” Nikki said.

  Especially since no one will probably be coming to help, I thought. I didn’t say that since I didn’t want to panic everyone. “Yeah. It would be better if we could get out on our own. The only way up is the elevator. So let’s see if we can get up the elevator shaft.”

  It sounded easy; it wouldn’t be, I thought.

  The plastic was as slick as only the new plastics can be. Like trying to get a hold of a greased stick of frozen luber. The first order of business was to cut some hand holds into the plastic.

  “Stand back,” I said, throwing off my bag woman mask and hat so I could see better.

  Some great sage in the dark and distant past said that guns were only tools. So far that theory had held up; the shotgun had worked well in opening the prison locks. Now I was going to test it out as a chisel. I fired three times at the tube of the elevator. The projectiles chewed three jagged holes, fortunately without punching more holes in the dome beyond the elevator shaft. Each hole was about a third of a meter higher than the next. They were the perfect size for climbing, I discovered as I pulled myself up on them and was nearly against the base of the elevator.

  I placed the muzzle of my gun against the clear elevator floor above me and fired, creating another hole. I quickly fired another six shots around it, trying to ignore the splinters of plastic that threatened to put out my eyes as they splattered from of the impact of the flechettes.

  The holes made, I used the gun for a lever and broke out the area around the shots until a man-sized hole was created over my head.

  I tossed the shotgun into the elevator, held the jagged edge of the hole, and scrambled through it. I turned and reached down toward the two women and Nikki who held up the floating warden, below me. “Who’s next?”

  One of the women climbed up and I grabbed her hand and pulled her through. She sat on the floor as I pulled up the second woman. The warden was the tough one. The water had risen nearly to Nikki’s neck was but she had a foot on the lower hole I’d punched in the plastic and now half lifted the floating warden out of the water as I grabbed the fabric of his jacket.

  “He looked little, must have gold bars in his pockets,” I gasped. One of the women in the elevator grabbed his arm and together we hauled him up through the hole. Nikki scrambled up behind him and brushed her wet hair back out of her face.

  “Now what,” one of the women asked.

  “Just blast some more holes,” the other said.

  “Not that easy,” Nikki spoke. “The shaft is next to the water now. Any shots at the wall of the tube will bring in water. It only worked below because we were in the bubble of the chamber.”

  I thought a moment, then blasted another large hole in the roof of the elevator. “At least we can climb a little closer to the surface,” I yelled. Nikki fired several shots in the same area and we soon had carved out a large hole above us. I pushed my shotgun up into it and broke out the few sharp points left in the crude circular opening.

  The ceiling of the elevator was too high to reach and the water that was now bubbling up around my knees made it impossible to jump.

  “Let me boost you,” I said to the smaller of the two women.

  The water was up to our hips by the time she and the other women had scrambled up. Nikki and I lifted the warden up to them, nearly dropping his limp body before it was pulled through.

  “OK, Nikki, you’re next.”

  “But…”

  “Come on.”

  She put her foot into my hands and was pulled up by the outstretched arms of the women above her.

  I handed my gun up to them then tried to jump up to their arms and succeeded only in falling down into the water. I came sputtering back up and took a deep breath of air, lost my footing, and dropped back into the water. I came up again spitting out salt water. My eyes burned and my wet clothes seemed to weight a ton. I tore at the release on my ballistic vest so I wouldn’t be dragged under so easily again.

  When I finally got the water out of my eyes, I could see the warden’s belt they’d lowered to me. I got a tight hold on it and the three above me pulled my heavy carcass up until I was even with the hole. Holding myself with one hand on the belt, I pulled my body up in a way I’ve never been able to do since then and got my elbow over the jagged edge of the plastic hole. The three women pulled on my hands and arms until I popped onto the top of the elevator with them.

  We weren’t to the surface yet. We were in a fix. I studied the smooth sides of the tube and the three meters or so above us before we would be at the ground level of the shaft.

  “Could we get on your shoulders?” one of the women asked me.

  I thought a moment as the water lapped at my ankles. “We’d better try something.” I leaned against the side of the shaft, “Go on. Climb up if you can.”

  She scrambled up my back, managing to nearly claw my bag lady skirt off and threatening to flatten my skull as she booted herself up the final few inches. “Can’t reach it!” she called down.

  “Help!” she hollered. I realized that she was trying to contact someone outside the elevator shaft rather than calling to us. She called three more times, then lost her balance and slide off my shoulders and clawed her way down into the knee-deep water.

  Things looked bad.

  “Shall we try blasting holes in the sides of the shaft?” Nikki asked.

  “Guess so, better than drowning like a bunch of rats without even—”

  “Hello down there?” a voice came from above us.

  “Help!” the woman next to me screamed again, nearly putting out my ear drum.

  “Hang on.”

  I expected them to toss down a rope or something. Instead, a moment later the whole elevator started to rise. It jerked and stopped, then slowly inched its way up. The water was now at our necks and slowly gained on us even as we went up. Nikki held the warden’s face above water and I held the short woman up as the water started to get up to our mouths.

  “Hurry up!” I blubbered.

  A face looked down at us from above. It disappeared a moment, then returned. “Hold on, we’re having to raise the elevator by hand.”

  The water was too high for us.

  We started coughing as it overtook us, rising up over our noses. Then the elevator jerked up.

  The water dropped and we struggled for air, only to have the water suddenly bubble up over our heads again.

  I pushed the short woman struggling beside me up. Even if I can’t breath, I thought, at least I can buy her a few more minutes. As soon as I had pushed her up, her weight was lifted from me and I felt her thrashing feet graze my scalp. I floated over to Nikki and boosted her up also.

  Again, she was suddenly gone.

  My lungs felt as if they were bursting. I exhaled under water then bobbed up and grabbed a breath of air then searched about for the other woman but couldn’t find her. I opened my eyes under the water and looked about. Then I squinted downward
and saw her below me. Somehow, she had fallen through the hole in the top of the elevator and trapped under it, with her eyes closed tightly so she couldn’t see to find her way through the hole I’d broken in it. She had panicked—as anyone probably would—and was now clawing at the surface directly below me, unable to locate the opening next to her.

  I floundered about trying to dive down and finally succeeded in reaching the hole with my fingers. Grasping its edge, I pulled myself down; my ears popping as water filled them.

  I reached through the hole and got a good handful of the woman’s hair and pulled her toward the opening. She was thrashing about as I lifted her up through the hole and managed to hit me in the nose. Then she relaxed, passed out from lack of oxygen.

  I grabbed her limp body around the waist, my lungs feeling as if they’d ruptured as I kicked off the top of the elevator toward the sparkling surface of the water.

  We broke the surface and I passed out.

  Chapter 23

  By the time Nikki had emptied the brine from my lungs and managed to pump in enough air to revive me, we were halfway to the rocket port in the fleet of taxis our little driver had rounded up for us.

  Unfortunately, his good work was rewarded with only a “thank you.” Our driver was on the war path when we couldn’t pay him; I thought maybe he would chew off my knee cap before we got him settled down.

  When I told him who I was and wrote him an I.O.U.

  He finally looked me right in the face and said, “Hey. Wait a minute. You really are that Hunter guy. I saw the newscast while you were at the prison. It’s a shame it interrupted the game-

  -but it was interesting all the same.”

  “Yeah. Well, what we’d like to—”

  “I think I like your hair better the way it was in the broadcast about your new anti-gravity invention.”

  “Yeah. Well… I’ll make good on what we owe you if you give me your address and—”

  “No need,” he said tearing up the I.O.U. “Just give me a ride in the first spaceship you build with your rods. I’ve always wanted to get into space but been too short.”