by James Axler
Between the juxtaposition of past, present and future, Doc had managed to hang on to his sanity, but only by his jagged fingernails. However, Ryan thought he looked good for a change, spry, almost.
Ryan coughed and spit out another mouthful of the vile-tasting water. "Thanks, Doc. Only I'd feel a damned sight better if I could stop puking my guts out."
"A joyous noise is a joyous noise," Doc said, "regardless of where the sound comes from."
"Only Doc could find joy in vomiting," Dean said, grinning in spite of his earlier worry about his father's welfare. "I'd hate to see how happy he got if you took a shit."
"That's probably next, and watch your language," Ryan muttered, feeling his stomach gurgle ominously. Still, he was already feeling better after ridding his guts of what he had swallowed. His left knee still felt like a strand of wet string, but sensation was quickly returning to the limb. "I had one vicious nightmare while I was out. Head feels like someone was playing a rowdy game of Blood Stamper with it."
"I must say I've never played that sport," Doc noted. "Sounds painful."
Ryan eyeballed Doc's lean frame. "Yeah, you don't have the build for it, although you'd probably last longer than I would right now. How come you're looking so good, Doc?"
"No visions of demon fate, my friend. Other than awakening with my trousers sodden from the water on the chamber floor, my journey was unencumbered by dreams."
"None of us experienced the usual nightmares," Krysty said. "I'd say our bodies must be getting used to the mat-trans process—except from the look on your face, I'd say you weren't so lucky."
"Guess my mind game was enough for all of us," Ryan answered, and quickly sketched a verbal portrait of his unreal underwater experience for his friends.
"Gaia, but that's a harsh way to die," Krysty said in sympathy when Ryan had finished. "Perhaps your subconscious was trying to tell you something."
"Yeah, roll over," a new voice said with a snort. "Figure we'd all come through okay for a change, except for you," J.B. noted dryly as he elbowed past Doc. "This was a smooth and easy jump. Hell of a way to die, though, drowning facedown in a gateway."
"Wasn't my choice. Dying's dying," Ryan rasped back, the memory of his underwater vision fresh in his mind. "Once you're chilled, doesn't matter how or why."
"Still a bastard way for a man to cash in."
"I have to admit, I can think of better ways to go," Ryan agreed.
"Indeed," Doc stated. "A most ignoble end for such a brave sort as yourself, my dear fellow."
' 'I wonder…'' Krysty began, then let her voice trail off.
"What?" Ryan asked.
"Well, last time we all came through a mat-trans jump without feeling real sick or having the nightmares was back in the Amazonian basin," Krysty said. "You know, where the natives thought Jak was a god?"
"So? What's your point?" Ryan prodded.
"So, I wonder if heat has anything to do with easing the effects of the jump. There was no air-conditioning working there, either, and it was as hot as Hades inside the chamber. However, we all felt fine. Maybe heat at the destination site makes the mist less invasive.
"Oh, listen to me. I'm starting to sound like Mildred." Krysty laughed, suddenly feeling like she was the center of everyone's intent scrutiny. Her fair skin blushed as she turned her attention to the chiseled silver points on the toes of her dark blue Western boots. "I don't know anything about these mat-trans units."
"You know just as much as the rest of us," Ryan said, "it's a good theory. Even if it doesn't help us out now, it might prove handy sometime down the trail.
"I wonder where we ended up this time?" Ryan said to no one in particular. He knew the Armorer wouldn't have ventured outside the underground redoubt as of yet.
J.B. lifted a hand and swiped at the speckled mold that covered the armaglass walls of the chamber, revealing the surface color underneath to Ryan. The leader of the group stared at the wall for a second, trying to place the color as J.B. said, "I won't need my sextant this time. We're in Florida swamp country. Greenglades, if memory serves."
"Yeah, I remember these blue-green walls from the last time, too. Give me a hand—I'm tired of sitting in this bastard water," Ryan grumbled, and J.B. and Krysty helped him to his feet. His leg was still tingling as feeling returned. The one-eyed man was silent for a moment as he checked his weapons. The pistol seemed to be none the worse for wear and he had noticed earlier that Dean was holding the Steyr SSG bolt-action rifle.
"Here, Dad," the youth said, extending the long-range blaster. "Didn't want it to get wet."
"Thanks," Ryan replied, and smiled back at Dean as he carefully opened the gateway door and stepped out into the small anteroom beyond the chamber. The room appeared to have been untouched since last time except for the increase in mold and dampness. A baseball cap with a torn fastener that Ryan remembered from his previous visit was in one corner, half floating, half submerged in the brackish water on the floor.
"The colors of the armaglass in these gateways has always been different shades of the rainbow, no matter where we've ended up," Doc said thoughtfully. "There has been no duplication as of yet, for reasons lost to me. Our benefactors were indeed lovers of a wide variety when it came to gateway decoration."
The same didn't apply to the actual layout and furnishing of the redoubts themselves.
Like most of the other redoubts they had visited, this one offered row upon row of gun-metal gray desks holding a vast array of computers. However, this time there was a major difference.
All but a handful of the monitor screens in the control area were dark.
"Comps down. Wonder we got here," observed Jak Lauren.
"I couldn't agree with you more," Ryan said, and entered the large control room under his own power, grateful the tingling sensation in his leg was gone. He glanced up and noticed the strip lights overhead were almost all dark. The ceiling was cracked, as well, and showed an array of damage from where water had seeped in from above.
"If this is the redoubt in Greenglades, this entire complex has been flooded," Mildred stated, idly running a finger over a dirty comp keyboard. The gritty coating smeared under her touch, revealing the functions of the top row of keys. "I'd say most everything was underwater for hours. Maybe even days. And even if some of the hardware is still up, I'd have to question the software."
Ryan took a deep breath. The air in the comp room was damp and humid, but infinitely more breathable than what passed for oxygen in the mat-trans unit. "This hole smells like Florida, at any rate."
"So where did the water go?" Dean asked.
"We know from past experience these redoubts are equipped with emergency drains, Dean," Krysty replied. "The redoubt apparently got rid of the water. Unfortunately for your dad, the gateway chamber didn't."
"From the looks of this control room, I wouldn't want to make an attempt at jumping out of this redoubt. I think we should take pains to completely disable the unit. We might not be so lucky on a return visit," Mildred said.
"In other words, we could end up back here on another go-round with our eyes where our asshole is supposed to be," Ryan noted with a glimmer of grim humor.
"Right. Or with our atoms scattered to the four winds," Mildred responded.
For a second, Ryan's mind went back to the green sea he'd experienced during his dream. Undoubtedly there were worse places to end up than inside one of the mat-trans units, atoms scattered or not.
"Not that we'd be alive long enough to enjoy the sight," the black woman continued. "Molecular dissipation and regeneration isn't the most pleasant thing to endure when the mat-trans works properly. I'd hate to think about what could go wrong if the receiving unit was malfunctioning. Since we have no control over where we jump, I say let's take this stop off the tour—permanently."
"You forgetting the fail-safes, Millie?" J.B. asked, referring to the past theory the group held that if a mat-trans unit was malfunctio
ning or incapable of receiving, the computers automatically rerouted the incoming transport to a second location. All of the friends had agreed the nightmares brought on by the jumps were at their worst if this occurred, due to the longer time spent in-phase.
"No. But we don't have any proof the theory is right, and this dump barely brought us in safe this time," Mildred said, idly watching the coded messages dance across the dirty and streaked computer monitor screen as Dean stepped up beside her.
"We had a comp back at the school," the boy said casually, peering over Mildred's shoulder.
"Learn anything? Programming? Word processing?" the woman asked, gratified to hear that Brody had been savvy enough to include basic computer training and usage at his school.
"Not much. On. Off. Diff between a disk drive and a CD-ROM drawer. One of my buds, Rodney, showed me a game or two. Hot pipe!"
Dean reached out and punched the Escape key on one of the working computer keyboards, despite Mildred's telling him such an action was a vain one since the programs were locked out to prevent tampering from unauthorized personnel. All of the group of travelers remembered previous jumps where Mildred had taken the time to prod and examine the redoubt computers in a futile attempt to gain some kind of control over their destinations.
"Let's see, let's try pushing Control, Alt, Delete," Dean said, using three fingers to press the keys simultaneously.
And for once, despite the odds against it, the pushing of a button in a mat-trans control room had an effect.
Before the pair's shocked eyes, the digital display began to change faster than the eye could catch. The monitor and base comp flickered into frenetic life, colored lights glowing and dancing, internal disk drives whirring, and a series of coded messages and graphics began to pop up on the screen. The other operating computer stations also fired into new life, each of them linked.
Directly behind Mildred and Dean, at the same time the boy's hand had pressed down the three keys at once, one of the massive-information storage units suddenly erupted into a white shower of sparks. A sizzling sound instantly followed, as the flickering lights on the master comp unit went out. An acrid-smelling haze of smoke hung in the air as a second, then a third comp unit followed suit within the span of a second.
Mildred swung back while Dean dived for the ground, pulling her Czech-made target revolver—a ZKR 551—from her hip holster. She leveled the pistol at where the sounds had erupted from, ready to take out whatever had caused the commotion with a 38-caliber Smith & Wesson round.
Until she saw what it was, and who had caused it. Dean looked sick in the wrath of her glare, slouching in his hiding place from beneath one of the mildewed steel desks. Mildred opened her mouth to speak, then turned on her booted heel and faced the gathered party, all of whom had drawn their own various weapons when the fireworks started.
"What the hell did you do, Mildred?" Ryan barked.
"It wasn't me!" the stocky woman protested. "Look closer to home, Ryan!"
She pointed to the ashen-faced Dean. The comp terminal where he had pressed the keys had stopped functioning. The screen was no longer blinking, and the tiny green light at the bottom of the console had winked out. All of the ambient noise in the room had also stopped with the deaths of the last few operating systems.
"If that had happened when we were reassembling in the mat-trans chamber, no safety would have saved our asses—thirty-minute automatic reset be damned," Mildred added as Ryan stepped around the desk to face his son.
"It was an accident—" Dean began, but was cut off when Ryan picked him up by the upper arms and slammed him on his butt on the dirty desktop.
"Is this the way it's going to be?" Ryan bellowed, his normal raspy tone going up in pitch as he stood, glaring at the shaken boy. "You lose most of your survival skills during your stay at Brody's? If you have, you're going to get all of us chilled real fast."
"Sorry, Dad." Dean started to cut his eyes away from his father's piercing glare until the one-eyed man grabbed the boy by the chin and pulled his face back up. Ryan sighed, a long, extended exhalation from deep within his belly, and brought his anger back in check as Krysty's words whispered through his mind, the advice she had given to him back in Vegas when Dean had rejoined them only to fall back into unsafe habits that could get them all shot.
He's still a child, Ryan, no matter how quickly you want to mold him into a man.
Ryan didn't agree. Dean was becoming as seasoned as any of the rest of them. He was just being slack. After nearly a year of being locked away at the Brody school, the boy's survival mechanisms were rusty. Hopefully they'd get a proper oiling before the boy got himself—or one of the group—chilled.
"I know I screwed up, Dad."
"Fine. Don't do it again."
"Actually," Mildred mused, "Dean might have solved the question of whether this redoubt's gateway was safe for future use."
"Mildred's right," J.B. agreed. "The kid did us a favor. We've pushed our luck and then some with this redoubt. If I had any doubts before, this made the decision for me. I'm for walking."
Ryan turned from Dean to look at Mildred and J.B. "All right, then. Mildred, you make sure all the mat-trans control comps are really dead. We can leave the sec door open for extra safety in case something else happens. Close the door when you're through and come out after us. While you're checking the comps, we'll fan out to the stairwell and see about making our way up to the top of the redoubt."
"I take it we're here to stay for a while in sunny Florida?" Krysty said sarcastically.
"Not much choice about being here now, but I'm not planning on staying," Ryan replied. "Too damned hot. We'll see what we can find in the quarters above, then head up the coastline and see what we find there. Mebbe grab a boat and sail up to the Carolinas."
"What about Greenglades ville, Dad?" Dean asked. "You think any of those crazies are still around? Mebbe they're the ones who flooded the place."
Ryan paused for a moment and rubbed his chin before answering. "Doubt it," he said flatly. "After all, I chilled most of the sons of bitches myself."
Chapter Two
Greenglades.
A wellspring of bad memories came back to Ryan. Memories of fat Boss Larry Zapp atop his padded throne overlooking his over-the-top concept ville of brightly colored rides and attractions. What had Mildred called the place then? A theme park. A place of lights and sounds where families went for fun and excitement, with sugary sweets to eat and trinkets for prizes for children. A land of make-believe. A land of amusement.
Only things hadn't been too amusing when they had passed through.
Not that it was Larry Zapp's fault. He could have taken them out when they arrived in the ville if he'd wanted, and the overweight baron did have reason enough to want to see Ryan Cawdor dead. A younger Ryan and J. B. Dix had crossed paths with Larry in his prebaron days during their time riding shotgun for the Trader on War Wag One. Ryan knew their encounter had been unforgettable for Larry, who was the owner of a large and successful traveling gaudy and the half dozen or so sluts inside.
Cold Beer And Hot Women was Larry's motto, and he was doing fine with his touring group until he got greedy and tried to bribe one of the war wag's crewmen with a one-eared whore named Bernice. The Trader's stockpiles of guns, ammo and fuel were legendary, and the pimp had sought a direct source to the goods. Sex and beer were profitable, but fuel and weapons were shining gold.
When the Trader found out about Larry's scheme, his response was predictable. He sent his two most trusted henchmen to teach Larry a lesson in manners.
After Ryan and J.B.'s not so friendly visit, the wags Larry had used for the gaudy were burned-out wrecks of twisted metal, the casks of golden-tinged beer were poured out on the dirt and the gaily painted girls had been threatened and fled as fast as their high-heeled feet would carry them into the nearby hills for their very lives.
All this while Larry had gotten extra special care. As his e
mployees ran, Larry had received a beating that left him broken and bleeding in the mud with both elbows bent backward in the most painful position possible, but at least he was alive.
Barely.
Luckily enough, nearly a dozen years had passed since his youthful indiscretion, and Larry didn't hold a grudge. Ryan wasn't proud of what he'd done to a tub of guts like Larry way back when, but the man had brought it on himself. The baron had gestured with one flabby arm and granted them safe harbor; telling his sec man to give the group back their blasters and full access to the park and attractions.
Larry invited them to stay and enjoy what the ville had to offer, which unfortunately included a sick bastard named Adam Traven, a self-styled cult leader who had arrived in Greenglades three months prior to Ryan and his group. Traven had his own nubile young group of followers who shared his perverted murderous fantasies—fantasies Doc found out about the hard way when a young lady named Sky had tried to strangle him during a bout of lovemaking.
Traven had also arrived with a large supply of the highly addictive—and very rare—form of jolt known as dreem, and wasted no time in hooking the hedonistic Boss Larry on the fine pink powder. To further cement Larry's dependency, Traven had also unleashed on the fat man all the sexual excess his teenage followers could provide.
A sec man named Kelly had told Ryan that Greenglades ville had once been a paradise, with working television and air-conditioning and some of the best food a man could ever hope to see before him on a plate. The restored attractions were a hobby, something to show off to visitors. Boss Larry was a regular techno brain, a genius with electronics who loved wine, women and song.
Until the drugs ate away at his brain.
That was none of Ryan's business. In one day, two tops, his party would be on their way, and Larry Zapp, baron of Greenglades ville, could snort until his fat head exploded.
But nothing was ever that simple in Deathlands, and Ryan was forced to become actively involved when Traven expressed a more than passing interest in Dean. Larry himself had warned Ryan to keep the boy away from Traven.