by James Axler
As the companions raised their blasters, Liana bent and reached for the deadly killer, softly singing a wordless tune. The snake paused in confusion, then began to move in tempo to the telepath music. Ready to shoot, the others said nothing, afraid of breaking the spell. This was clearly not just a mutie; the snake was some bastard mixture of rattlesnake and cobra.
Smiling at the deadly killer as if it were a kitten, Liana tilted her head, and the snake finally slithered past the companions, moving down the tunnel and out of sight.
“A present for the barons in case they follow,” Liana said, rising to dust off her knees.
“Well done, girl.” Doc smiled, slapping her on the back. “Very well done, indeed.”
However, Ryan shrugged and felt a new worry grow inside his gut. Fireblast, what couldn’t this woman do if she ever learned how to master her special talents? Maybe she could figure out a way to order all of the stickies to go jump off a cliff. That sounded wonderful, a world without stickies. But then, what would stop her from learning how to sing to norms, making them her slaves? The one-eyed man did not think that was likely to happen, but had learned from bitter experience to always plan for the worst. Nine rounds out of ten, it came true. Liana could be the greatest blessing to ever grace the Deathlands, or the harbinger of a brand-new type of hell on Earth. However, Mildred often used the phrase “innocent until proved guilty” and Ryan could find no fault with that line of thinking. He would do nothing for the moment. But at the first sign of her controlling one of them, he’d blow her head off on the spot, in spite of what it would do to Doc.
If anybody else noticed the conflicting emotions on his face, no comments were voiced out loud.
Moving along the side tunnel, Krysty noted that there were no stains in the concrete between the bricks from this ever being used. Better and better. So, this was either a brand-new tunnel when skydark hit, or it was a fake.
Reaching the end of the tunnel, Krysty smiled at the sight of a blank wall, the plaster smooth and undamaged. Plaster in a sewage tunnel?
Kicking the wall with a boot, she made several large pieces of plaster crack off to expose wooden planks underneath. Now, the rest of the companions joined her, ripping off the plaster with their bare hands, then hacking into the planks with their knives. Weakened with age, the boards soon splintered apart, and out poured a small avalanche of clean white pebbles. Shoving those aside, at last was revealed a seamless steel door. There was no keypad, lock or even a handle.
“Escape tunnel,” Jak explained as J.B. got to work again. “In case trapped in bomb shelter, barons could still get out this way.”
“So we’re going in backward,” Liana said slowly, chewing over the morsel of information.
“Back door never guarded as well as front,” the teenager stated as if it was a rule of the universe.
With a sigh, the steel door swung aside to show a toilet seat and small stall. Ryan actually gave a half-smile at that. The pencil pushers had hidden the escape route inside the lav. Smart.
Holstering the SIG-Sauer, Ryan dripped some wax on the end of the barrel of the Steyr, stuck in a lit candle, then extended it forward as far as he could reach. He could see the place was a single huge room with rows of cots, workbenches and shelves stacked with cartons marked with the symbol of the U.S. government.
“Jackpot,” he whispered, easing into the bomb shelter.
Spreading out, the companions set down a ring of candles to brighten the darkness.
Heading for the workbench, J.B. fumbled with some wires for a moment. The overhead lights flickered into life, then brightened to full strength. Two of them immediately blew, but the rest stayed shining brightly.
“Nuke batteries?” Jak asked hopefully.
“Not quite,” the Armorer replied, clearly annoyed. “Car batteries.” He waved at the row of batteries and waiting bottles of acid. “Just pour some acid into the batteries, and after a few ticks, the lead plates start making current.”
“Old tech.” Jak scowled in disappointment.
“From before skydark,” J.B. agreed, tilting back his fedora. “Don’t add the acid, and the batteries last forever.”
“How long will they last now?” Krysty demanded.
J.B. shrugged. “Can’t say for sure. Couple of weeks, maybe more.”
Briefly checking the medical cabinet, Mildred muttered unhappily at the poor condition of the supplies. Mice had gotten inside and nibbled almost everything, puncturing the protective envelopes, and then abandoning the pungent chems. Broke the seals then left, allowing the medicine to slowly dry into the consistency of a brick. There were some hypodermic needles still in good shape, but that was all. Still, better than nothing.
Unexpectedly a soft breeze came from a wall vent, blowing out a cloud of bitter dust. But soon that was cycled away and the air began clean, tinged with a smell of chems. Then warmth began to pour from another vent and a radio crackled to life on a small table in the corner, then sputtered and died.
Going to a cardboard box on a shelf, Krysty quickly checked the expiration date listed on the canned goods. “Oh, for the love of Gaia, this is from 1950!” she exclaimed. “We’re not going find anything usable among this junk.”
“But hold, what have we here!” Doc exclaimed, opening a metal cabinet. Stacked neatly inside was a small arsenal of revolvers and shotguns.
Eagerly opening a box of .45 rounds, Doc extracted a cartridge and used his knife to separate the lead from the brass. Pouring out the contents, his hopes sank at the sight of the dull gray gunpowder. Applying the flame of his butane lighter to the stuff, it merely sizzled a little, but that was all.
“Dead as Descartes.” Doc sighed, brushing off the residue on his pants. “This ammunition must be from excess stores they had left over. The brass is loaded with actual gunpowder, not cordite, or that silvery stuff modern blasters use.”
“Nitro cellulose,” J.B. supplied. “Too bad. If the fools had used cordite, we might have found something still in working condition.”
“Forget it, we’re just here for the exit,” Ryan replied, walking toward the front of the bomb shelter. There was a slab of lead standing kitty-corner in the room, and sure enough, there was a large door set into the wall behind, truncating the corner. The inside of that was also thickly lined with lead.
Opening the door, Ryan found the way blocked by a large pile of skeletons, most of them with broken bones or bullet holes in their heads. On the floor was a dusty collection of blasters and knives. The damn fools fought one another to get inside, and so nobody had. What a bunch of feebs, he thought.
Pushing aside the dead, the companions moved into the basement of city hall. Rubble was everywhere, along with dozens more skeletons.
“You better be right about this, Doc,” Krysty said, trying not to step on the old bones.
“Right about what, my dear lady?” Doc asked, obviously confused. Then a wave of panic swept over the man. “Have…have I been here before?”
“She meant about the brass, ya old coot,” Mildred lied hastily.
As the worried face of the time traveler eased, Liana looked hard at Krysty, and the redhead shrugged in response. Sooner, or later, she would have to learn about the lapses in his scrambled memory.
As the companions probed the darkness, every step raised a small cloud of dust, and soon they were forced to tie cloths around their mouths to be able to breathe. Searching for the least damaged section of the building, they soon located a corridor ending in the furnace room. Some of the bricks in the wall of the corridor had come loose over the decades and fallen away to reveal the armaglass slabs reinforcing the walls. The sight renewed their hope. The mat-trans units of the redoubts were made of armaglass.
Inside the furnace room, they separated for a recce and easily located a small keypad set into a concrete wall. Almost holding his breath, Ryan tapped the entry code for a redoubt into the alphanumeric pad. There was only a brief pause before a section of the concrete wall br
oke away from the rest and slid aside to reveal a long ferro-concrete corridor extending far out of sight.
Sluggishly at first, panels set along the ceiling flickered into life, illuminating the corridor for a hundred yards. But then, just as quickly, they died away, leaving it in total darkness.
“Never saw that happen before,” J.B. muttered.
“Yeah, I know,” Ryan answered with a grimace.
With no other choice in the matter, the companions entered the corridor and grimly started forward with a growing sense of unease.
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-One
Once, the theater on the fifth floor of the office building had shown movies, or people had performed live plays, even the occasional radio play had been acted out on the elevated stage to record the laughter of a live audience. But now the electrical equipment had been removed, the wires used to rig snares, the heavier cables made into crossbow strings.
A dozen lanterns shone bright with fish oil, extracted from the denizens of the nearby lake, and two large torches crackled on either side of the Skull Throne. Piled on the stage were blasters, knives, spears, machetes and even a couple of swords, recovered from predark museums. On the throne sat an angry woman, her face streaked with blood, her clothing ripped and torn until her leather bodice was all that kept her from being completely naked. But her blistered face shone with victorious contempt, and a loaded military longblaster lay across her lap.
“Kneel! Kneel before your baron!” Brenda Wainwright bellowed, sitting in the throne of bones.
Openly bleeding, the last of the cannies kowtowed before the woman, splaying their hands on the carpeting to show their complete and utter subservience. The plump outlander had won the battle against the stickies, and had then taken on the cannies. Now they were her property, to do with as she pleased. That was the ancient law.
Proudly holding their weapons, the twenty surviving sec men from Royal Island walked around the cowering mainlanders. The poor stupe bastards had never seen a boomerang before, and laughed as the first salvo went sailing by them. Then they were aced in droves as the ’rangs came curling back to smash open their heads from behind. After that, chilling the rest had been easy, and now their massive collection of blasters belonged to the barons. Wheelguns, scatterguns and more different types of rapidfires than anybody had ever dreamed. Some of the sec men had already taken to calling the mainlander ville by the new name of Blaster Haven.
“At least they know how to bow, if not fight,” Baron Griffin said with a sneer, dangling a leg off the stage.
“Good thing, as I do not plan on leaving,” Wainwright stated, shifting to a more comfortable position on the Skull Throne. “These gleebs have the wealth of the predark world just lying around them, and they choose to live in one cabin?” She dismissed that nonsense with a wave. “Ten stories tall is nice, damn impressive, but this could be the ville of all villes!”
“Agreed.” Griffin shrugged in acceptance, then he worked the pump action of his newly acquired remade Neostad scattergun. “But first, we have some more chilling to do.”
“Not me,” Wainwright declared bluntly. “I’m done with that. They took my ville, but now I have a better one! Forget the one-eyed fool, and rule with me, cousin. Side by side!” She lowered her voice to a lusty growl. “In everything.
“We can be lovers here, Nolan,” she purred. “That is allowed here as there is no Book of Blood. I asked, and they’ve never even heard of such a thing. Which means all the sex partners, and children, that we want. Two, three, ten. There is no limit.”
So I could have her at last, as more than a secret ride, but as my new wife for life. More than tempted, Griffin massaged a broken rib, and considered the proposal. Aside from the limitless sex, more important the ville had unlimited land, unlimited metal, and these feeb man-eaters knew how to make black powder, while he knew how to convert it into the much more powerful gunpowder. Side by side, the two barons could make this a truly formidable fortress, perhaps even take over another ville, then a third, a fourth, ten! They could create an empire unseen since the glory days of North America!
Then Griffin recalled the face of his wife as she lay on the cold ground, and the glorious dream faded away. He could never rest, never stop, until the man called Finnigan was chilled, and hopefully in as painful a way as possible. His heart ached from the loss of his wife, and his rage was reborn at the thought of abandoning the quest for vengeance to a life of luxury.
“Keep it. You can have the ville,” Griffin stated. “It’s yours, all of it. I will lay no claim, aside for asking a single price.”
“Name it,” Wainwright said cautiously, ready for betrayal.
“Half of the sec men, horses and blasters and brass.”
“Hot pipe, are you still…” But she paused at seeing the determined look in his face. He would never give up the hunt for revenge. “Most of the horses were aced in the battle, you can have half of those that survived, and enough sec men to ride them.” She smiled now, sweetly, but with no warmth. “You’ll need speed, dear cousin, if you’re to catch up with Finnigan.”
“Exactly how many horses are we talking?” Griffin demanded, rising from the stage.
“Ten.”
Only five horses were to be his? He started to argue, then realized that most of the survivors from Royal Island were from Northpoint, not Anchor. He could push only so hard before she would have the cannies put him in the pot for stew. “The best five horses,” he countered, “saddlebags of smoked fish, no meat, blasters, grens, brass, and the best two island sec men, plus the best local tracker, and the very best torturer.”
Wainwright was impressed. By the lost gods, he did think ahead.
“Everybody, but me,” sec chief Donovan stated, moving closer to rest a bandaged arm across the back of the throne. The tall man was covered with blasters, a bandolier of live shells draped across his chest.
During the takeover of the ville, the sec chief had aced a cannie about to gut the baron. Afterward, she had informed him what the reward would be, in detail. Blasters, brass and her bed forever. What man could want more?
“Accepted,” Griffin growled, furious over the betrayal, but knowing full well there was nothing he could do about it at the moment.
“Done and done,” Wainwright said, pulling a knife and slashing her palm.
Walking closer, Griffin did the same and they sealed the deal in blood.
At the sight, the islanders shouted a war cry, while the cannies only moaned in submission, still not exactly sure what was to become of them now that the lunatics had seized control of their ville.
THE SMALL SUPPLY of candles burned out after a few hours and the companions had to continue through the darkness using only Mildred’s old flashlight. The pale yellow beam did little to brighten the gloom inside the corridor, but it was just enough for them to dimly see a few feet ahead. There were no branching corridors, gates, twists or even turns. The passageway ran straight and true like the barrel of a blaster.
In the lead, Mildred said nothing, carefully watching the floor ahead of them for any sudden drops as she kept gently pumping the handle on the survivalist flashlight, trying to get as much illumination from the ancient device without risking an overload.
“At least we’ll know which direction to go if the flashlight dies,” Ryan growled, one hand tight on her shoulder as a guide, the other filled with the primed SIG-Sauer.
“Like drek through goose,” Jak quipped, his hand on the big man’s shoulder.
“Thank you for that lovely image,” Doc muttered, the LeMat held ready in his good hand.
Walking between Doc and Krysty, Liana kept mum, and tightened her grip on the tall scholar’s gunbelt, as his shoulder was a little too far out of her reach.
Moving single file, the companions walked for what seemed like hours, stopping only once for a lav break, Liana mortified by the casual acceptance of the biological need by the others. There were no bushes in the
corridor.
As their words gave a slight echo effect in the corridor, the companions stopped talking and concentrated on simply walking, when far ahead of them a faint glow seemed to infuse the blackness. Forcing herself not to hurry, Mildred maintained an even pace as ghostly pearlescence steadily increased until they could plainly see the interior of the corridor and the flashlight was no longer needed.
“Aw, shit,” Mildred snarled, releasing the pump to click off the device.
Less than a hundred paces ahead of the companions the corridor abruptly ended in a wooden glen, slanting beams of morning sunlight coming through the leafy trees to dapple the smooth armaglass floor. Softly, they could hear the sound of a babbling brook and birds singing sweetly.
“Fireblast,” Ryan drawled, letting go of the physician. “I had been afraid of something like this.”
“Must have been a nuke storm,” Krysty added, surveying the damage. The ragged end of the corridor was dotted with hard lumps where the material had been melted through, only to congeal later. “Probably the same bomb that rearranged some of Michigan.”
“Well, there are no rads,” J.B. announced, checking the counter on his lapel as he stepped into the sunlight. Blinking a few times, the Armorer let his vision adjust, then checked again, but he had heard no telltale clicks. Whatever force had sliced through the passageway was long gone, and fully dissipated.
“Been going straight for almost day,” Jak drawled, checking the trees for any muties. “Might as well keep going.”
“How long do you think it is to the next redoubt?” Liana asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.
“Only one way to find out,” Ryan declared, starting forward again at an easy stride. Normally, the companions never openly discussed the redoubts. But Liana had proved herself numerous times over their brief association, and Doc seemed happy enough. In fact, Ryan had noticed that ever since Liana had joined the group, Doc hadn’t slipped away into the past even once. Maybe all the man had needed was the attention and care of a good woman.