by James Axler
"Plastique," Ryan stated. "Homemade, weak stuff."
"No shrap," Jak added, kicking away some unidentifiable wreckage. "Diversion."
The hairs on the back of Ryan's neck were starting to rise, and he loosened the 9 mm pistol in its belt holster. "Yeah, but a diversion for who? There's nobody here."
"And no bodies."
"Found them," Krysty called out, holstering her pistol and looking at something on the back side of an overturned couch. Jak and Ryan quickly joined her.
There on the dirty floor, locked in each other's arms were two corpses. Human, male, and both long dead. The skin was drum tight over their bones, teeth exposed in the rictus of death. Their hands were locked around each other's throat, fingers buried in the mottled flesh. A pair of knives lay nearby, as did a rusty U.S. Army Colt .45, the slide kicked back showing it was out of ammo. At the base of the wall was a badly rusted Browning Automatic Rifle, its bolt action open and showing it too was out of bullets. The men were dressed in the usual scavenged rags of a dozen different styles, only their boots and the holsters in decent shape. Two bandoliers of empty cartridge loops crisscrossed the chest of the blond man on top' while the bald man on the bottom wore a vest made entirely of rectangular pockets to hold ammo clips for an autofire blaster.
Satisfied, Ryan whistled sharply through his teeth, once long, then short, and the others cautiously walked into the ancient battle room.
"Died killing each other," Mildred said, studying the desiccated corpses. "Been dead four, maybe five weeks. Air system has kept down the smell."
"But not removed it entirely," Doc admonished, sniffing delicately. "I must say, this locale is getting decidedly most pungent."
Loudly blowing his nose into a handkerchief, Jak inspected the bloody residue and barked a laugh. "Don't breathe."
Stoically, Ryan looked around the room. "Nothing much here to fight over. Bar's empty, no weapon cabinet in sight, and they clearly knew nothing about the mat-trans behind the wall. Must have been personal."
"None of their equipment is from standard military stores," J.B. added, lifting the BAR and working the bolt a few times. "So they didn't get it out of storage here. This is old and been patched many times. Seen a lot of work, too. Probably mercies, or coldhearts."
"My question is how did they get inside the redoubt?" Mildred asked, wiping off her hands on her pant leg. "Could the door be down?"
"Must be. No other way in."
Resting the butt of his rifle on his hip, Ryan chewed that over. "So they somehow blasted through the nuke-proof door? Not likely. Somehow, the bastards figured a way to open the door." He paused. "Or worse, they were let in."
"Sleepers?" Dean asked.
"Always a possibility."
Nudging the blond corpse with the silvered toe of her cowboy boot, Krysty frowned, her long crimson hair tightly circling and uncurling about her lovely face. "This is getting worse by the minute. Secret panels, suicide norms, now sleepers? I vote we go."
"Check," Jak said, pocketing a knife from the floor.
"No," Ryan stated, grimacing. "After that trouble we had with Kaa, anything odd with the redoubts warrants a recce."
"I agree," J.B. said, shoving back his fedora and scratching underneath. "I don't care for it, either, but we gotta know. These things are our lifeline."
Jak scowled but didn't voice a differing opinion, and after a bit, Krysty shrugged her acceptance. Mildred remained neutral.
"Lay on, Macduff," Doc said, extending a hand toward the door.
Gingerly, J.B. went to work using flexible tools that slid under the jamb. A loud click made everybody jump, except the Armorer. He beamed a smile and the door swung into the room. Attached to the handle was a simple affair of a old-fashioned pineapple grenade and string.
"Kid's stuff," J.B. said with a grin, snipping the string and pocketing the grenade. The checkered ball and slim activation lever, or "spoon" as it was called in the predark days, was a predark model from one of the world wars, but still deadly.
The corridor in front of the office was dark, and a quick check showed the overheads were also smashed. In the dim light from the mat-trans unit, they could see the standard redoubt map on the wall. This was level five, office and communications. Below them was storage, power and life support. Above them was the barracks, kitchen and hospital, and the top level-unmarked with a designation.
"Stranger and stranger," Ryan said, the muzzle of the Steyr SSG-70 sweeping back and forth in perfect rhythm to his own single eye. "We'll head for the elevator. One on one coverage, single yard spread. Soft penetration."
"Top floor?" Jak asked, his head tilted forward. "Check. If there's anybody here, they'll have supplies or people near the exit."
"Make sense."
"Check"
Keeping near the wall, they felt the air move constantly over them in artificial breezes from the ceiling vents. There was no dust or musky smell of mildew.
"This base must have been absolutely airtight until the recent intrusion," Mildred whispered. "Any supplies in the storerooms should be in perfect shape."
"Could be what those two were fighting over," Krysty noted, straining her spirit to sense any danger.
"Triple stupe," Jak snorted, crouched to offer as poor a target as possible. "Share goods and live."
"Wisdom indeed, my young friend," Doc whispered, patting the teenager on the shoulder. "Share and live. The Oracle at Delphi could not have said it better."
The albino teen ignored the compliment and concentrated on the job at hand.
The end of the hallway was completely dark, and there was no way to see if the elevator was there, or the location of the door to the stairwell. Ryan realized there was no gentle breeze from above.
"The ceiling!" he roared, firing the Steyr upward, working the bolt action. The flashes from the muzzle showed a human figure holding a machine gun as he dropped out of the darkness.
Fast and neat, the group split apart, their pistols and rifles barking a staccato reply. The figure jerked at each deadly impact, but he didn't fall or drop his weapon. Oddly, neither did he return fire. Then the impossible happened. Without dropping his rifle, the stranger opened both of his hands as if majestically offering a holy benediction and two heavy black balls landed on the carpeting with soft thuds, breaking apart and releasing their slim handles.
Chapter Two
"Grenades!" J.B. yelled, dropping his Uzi and diving toward the black spheres. Landing hard on his stomach, the Armorer punched out hard with both hands. He scored a double hit, and the charges bounded down the hallway, disappearing into the darkness.
"Three!" he yelled, covering his head with both arms.
"Open your mouths!" Mildred added, dropping fast.
"Two!" LB. roared, "One!" Ryan said, closing his eye.
Double explosions blossomed at the end of the hallway, filling the corridor with flame and thunder. Briefly the fireball silhouetted the hanging man, then violent concussions slammed into the group. A searing wave of heat washed over them, closely followed by a rain of broken ceiling tiles and smoking debris. It made Ryan think of an ant in the barrel of a cannon. Somebody cried out in pain, and a rifle discharged.
In rumbling fury, the blast expanded over them and moved down the corridor, smashing lights and slamming aside doors. Glass shattered somewhere, and an alarm began to sound. Partially deafened and battered, Ryan took heart at that. It meant power was still on somewhere in the redoubt, and each passing second brought them closer to safety. He knew a person died in the first few seconds of an explosion or else survived.
Slowly the strident force died away in ragged stages, leaving in its wake a ringing silence with streamers of acidic smoke moving in the air toward the ducts like ghostly fingers.
"Sweet Jesus!" Mildred coughed. "I.. .I've had fun before and this isn't it!"
Rolling onto his back, J.B. sat upright and worked his jaw a few times to try to pop his ears clear. "Yeah. Close one."
&nbs
p; Leaning against the wall, Krysty hawked and spit to clear her throat. "Too damn close!"
"Everybody okay?" Ryan asked, using the rifle to lever himself uptight. Fireblast and hell, he'd felt better after torture.
A ragged chorus answered in the affirmative, then a sudden movement in the smoky darkness caused a wild fusillade of blaster fire.
"Cease firing!" Ryan snapped, shouldering his long blaster. "It's just the meat. He isn't alive."
"Not anymore, you mean," Dean corrected, removing the spent clip from his Browning and slamming in a fresh one. He stuffed the exhausted clip into a pocket where it rattled against others.
"No, he never was alive," Mildred said, patting her hands over her body in a quick check for wounds. There were a couple of holes in her shirt, but nothing worse. "Not for us, anyhow."
Whitish smoke drifting past his pale face, Jak was almost invisible in the dim corridor. "Possum?" He frowned.
"See for yourself," J.B. said, gesturing. Then he froze and touched his bare head. "Damn!" He turned and started down the corridor, scanning the floor.
Blaster in hand, Jak advanced carefully and pulled a match from a pocket. Striking it on his belt, he studied what remained of the hanging man in the tiny flickering light.
"Dead," he pronounced solemnly. "For while." Sharp spikes of rusty metal jutted from a wooden board that pierced the man's body in a dozen places.
Ryan stepped beside the albino teenager. "Nailed in place." He craned his neck to see into the smashed ceiling. The other end of the board was screwed to a truck-door hinge attached to the concrete roof. The match sputtered and died, so Jak struck another and lit a candle stub. Doc and Krysty did the same. In the soft glow of the triple flames, the scene lost its ghostly feel and became merely another killzone, as familiar as their own faces.
Nudging a lump of twisted steel and plastic on the floor, Dean bent and lifted the dropped weapon. "M-16 A-i carbine," he said.
"Good?" Doc asked.
"No." He tossed the broken weapon aside.
"Yeah, the gren did a good job on him," Ryan agreed. "Like it was supposed to do on us."
"Simple enough trap," said the returning Armorer, clutching his fedora. "When we approached, the chill swung down, and everybody would naturally shoot at him. Then when you put enough holes in the ropes, he drops the grens and goodbye." Smoothing out the crumpled brim, he smiled grimly. "Exactly the sort of thing I'd do."
Blaster in hand, Dean moved to inspect the corpse. Chunks of the man were missing, his clothes only rags, and the ropes holding him in place were burning in spots, allowing an arm to hang freely. What little remained of his clothes appeared to be a tan leather jacket, blue jeans and sandals made from car tires. Only one sandal was still on a foot, the other, and the foot inside it, were missing.
Pushing aside the homemade tan jacket, Doc uncovered a picture on the exposed chest of a curved knife backed by the rising sun. "What is that?"
Jak squinted against the candlelight. "Knife and sun?"
"Looks like," J.B. said, adjusting his hat to a proper cant.
"It's not paint," Ryan stated, trying to rub it off with a thumb. "Can't be a birthmark."
"This is a tattoo," Mildred said knowledgeably. She brushed fingertips over the cold torn flesh. "A lost art these days. See the ulcerations and pitting? It was done with a sharp pencil and machine oil. Very crude and must have hurt worse than double hell."
"Some sort of initiation?" Krysty asked.
"Mayhap. And more importantly, very difficult for an outsider to forge," Doc noted. "Good way to identify your own people."
"Not exactly a photo ID," Mildred added, inspecting the lividity of the flesh, "but efficient."
"Exactly."
"ID means more than two," J.B. stated, glancing about.
"Yes, there could be a lot," Krysty agreed. Holding her S&W in a steady grip, she dumped the spent cartridges, trained hands pocketing the spent brass and sliding in fresh rounds.
"Wonder if the others had similar marks," Ryan mused, scratching his chin. "If not, they were probably invaders fighting for turf. If so, it was a mutiny."
Doc sighed. "Internecine, the most uncivil of wars." Gently he prodded the corpse with his swordstick, a few more pieces coming off from the movement. "However, it would be rather valuable data to know if we are facing two gangs, or just one."
"I can check," Mildred offered, puffing a flashlight from her med kit. There was a click and a brilliant cone of white light leaped from the device in her hands, illuminating the corridor with unforgiving clarity.
"Go," Ryan commanded.
Mildred nodded. "Be right back." As she hurried away, the circle of light on the hallway walls bobbed until it angled to the right and disappeared. With the departure of the flash, the darkness seemed even more pronounced than before.
"How'd she get batteries?" Dean asked.
"Doesn't need any," Krysty replied. "When you were at school, Mildred saved the life of the captain of a steamboat. He gave her the flash as payment. It doesn't use batteries. Recharges in sunlight."
"Wow."
"Here," Jak said, passing the boy his own candle. "Hold high."
Dean did as requested, and the albino teen carefully rummaged through the pockets of the dead man. There was some twine knotted into a garrote, a big gold coin embossed with an American eagle on one side and a Nazi swastika on the back, a few 5.7 mm cartridges, a Swiss army knife and a plastic butane lighter, the clear plastic reservoir half full of fuel. He pocketed the lighter and offered the rest to the others. Even though they were the wrong caliber for his Browning, Dean took the cartridges and stuffed them into his already bulging vest. He could extract the powder and primer later for his own bullets. Doc accepted the knife. Nobody took the gold.
"Amazing little thing," Doc said, opening and closing the many small blades. "My daughter would have loved this. She so liked gadgets and such." He glanced about, his voice taking on a gentler, slightly confused tone. "My, I wonder where she, Jolyon and her mother are? It has been hours since I saw them last."
Ryan looked at Krysty, and she moved closer to the old man. "They'll be along soon," the redhead said soothingly. "You wait here."
"Yes, of course," he said amiably, pocketing the knife. "I would not want to miss them. We are going for a picnic down by the river."
Just then, a faint light appeared down the corridor.
"Heads up," Ryan said, snapping his rifle into a combat position. The rest assumed a half circle, blasters ready. As if awakening from a long dream,
Doc put his back to the wall and drew the LeMat, the fog of memories clearing from his face.
"Same marks," Mildred announced, switching off her flash when she reached them. "Knife and sun."
His face masked by the moving candle shadows, Ryan frowned deeply. "So it seems that a gang somehow gained entrance into the redoubt and fought each other to the death." He glanced about. "But why? Over what?"
"Armory," Jak said as if that settled the matter. J.B. agreed. Blasters were life in the Deathlands. "I don't think so," Ryan disagreed. "These boys have old weapons, nothing new from military storage."
"Reasonable," Doc said, biting a lip. "I would not be surprised to find out there's nothing here of value."
"Yet they fought to the death over something," Dean pointed out.
"Mebbe it was for the redoubt itself," Krysty suggested. "It's a natural fort that no present-day marauders could ever breach by force."
"Which raises the question, how did they get in?" Mildred asked pointedly. "The front door is nuke-proof and locked with a code."
"Let's go find out," said Ryan, clearing the action of his SSG-70. The long blaster made smooth noises of polished steel moving easily over oiled grooves. "Shoot anything that moves, but try and wound if you can."
"Right. We want these assholes alive for questioning."
As the seven moved to the end of the corridor, the candles revealed the elevator was totally destr
oyed, its metal frame twisted in wild shapes. The ceiling was bare struts and wiring, the tiles gone, and the terrazzo floor was cracked like hot glass dropped into cold water.
The doors to the stairwell were torn apart, but the metal steps on the other side were still intact. Ryan pointed at J.B., Doc and Jak to go down. Then he tapped his bare wrist, flashed five fingers three times and pointed upward. Next he pointed at Krysty, himself, Dean and Mildred. They nodded and the group split apart, three heading downward, four going up as quietly as possible.
Moving along the stairs, Ryan and his people kept to the side of the steps where the metal would be the strongest and least likely to make noise. Old wood might occasionally creak by itself, just adjusting to temperature and moisture. But old metal was silent, until you stepped where age and rust had weakened it; then steel would squeal louder than pigs getting butchered by an amateur.
Pausing at the first landing, they listened intently, but no sounds disturbed the graveyard peace of the redoubt. Satisfied, they moved on. The doorway to the next level stood gaping open, faint light spilling from the hallway beyond. In a two-on-two rotation formation, they proceeded in, Krysty stepping to one side past the door to allow Ryan to pass her. As he went to the wall, Dean came in fast and crouched low on the floor. Mildred centered last and replaced Krysty at the door, covering their rear, as the redheaded glided past Dean. Staying alert, watching one another's backs, they covered the entire floor, prepared for another trap or ambush. This level of the redoubt proved to be the barracks, every door bearing an empty slot for a nameplate. Each small room was equipped with a single bed, closet, desk, sink, shower and rotting corpse. Some were lying in the middle of the floor with bullet wounds in their foreheads, some with arrows through their chests. A body was found in the closet gut-stabbed. Another was sprawled in the hallway, his body almost cut in two by a shotgun blast. But most of the slain were lying peacefully in bed, their throats slashed, the blankets stiff with dried brown blood.