Time Castaways

by James Axler

  It was noon when they found the rest of the corridor. Smashed and broken into countless pieces, tiny shards of armaglass lay scattered across a wide grassland, the material reflecting the bright sunlight like partially buried diamonds.

  A low hill rose just ahead of the companions, the sloping sides covered with thick tufts of green grass, and set flat into the truncated curve was a large black door.

  “By the lost gods,” Liana whispered, going pale. “Is…is that the door?”

  “Oh, this is nothing,” Mildred said, patting her on the back. “Wait until you see inside.”

  “Hot showers,” Jak added in a heartfelt drawl, brushing back his greasy hair.

  Advancing warily to the blast doors, Ryan and Krysty checked the ground for any sign that the cannies or anybody had ever tried to get inside. But the area appeared clean, and Ryan went directly to the small keypad set into the black metal frame on the titanic entrance.

  Tapping in the entry code, Ryan instantly heard a deep vibration come from below the ground, and the black door rumbled aside to the sound of a controlled thunder.

  Liana could say nothing as the pristine armaglass corridor became revealed on the other side, rows of electric lights shining brightly from the clean ceiling.

  “Come on, my dear.” Doc smiled, offering her a hand. “This way to a new world.”

  Biting a lip, she hesitated only a second, then joined the others as they walked over the threshold and out of the natural world. Feeling the sterilized air from the vents wash over their faces, the companions smiled in relief and did not react as the blast doors closed with a boom.

  Startled, Liana jumped at the loud noise, then grinned sheepishly. “Sorry,” she murmured.

  “Don’t worry about it. Gaia knows I did more than jump the first time I heard the blast doors seal,” Krysty lied diplomatically.

  Following the zigzag path of the antiradiation tunnel, the companions entered the huge garage of the redoubt.

  While the others strolled around, checking for evidence of previous visitors, Liana could only marvel at the spotlessly clean floor, the neatly painted lines showing where wags should be parked, long workbenches lining the walls covered with tools. There was even a thing in the corner that Theo had called a gas pump. It was exactly as he had described it to her on the long boat trip. At the time, Liana had merely assumed he was joking to pass the time, but now saw that the man had told the absolute truth. Could it all be true? Mat-trans units, comps, droids? A moment of irrational fear swept through the woman, then she banished it with a sheer force of will. Tech was tech, how did a door differ from a blaster or a self-heat? Besides, she trusted Theo completely, and she would follow where he walked. End of discussion.

  “All right, you two stay here and watch the entrance while we do a fast recce of the place,” Ryan commanded.

  “Do you think anybody could get through that huge door?” Liana asked quizzically.

  “The wise never plan for what an enemy might do,” Doc rumbled, “but for what they might do.”

  Chewing over that morsel of military advice, Liana found the flavor to her liking. “Check,” she stated, hefting her blaster.

  Unfortunately the rest of the companions returned in less than an hour with glum faces.

  “Clean,” Jak snarled in annoyance. “Not can beans or pack salt in galley.”

  “And the armory is emptier than a stickie’s pockets,” J.B. added.

  “Just another dead redoubt,” Mildred said. “Hell, we found more supplies at that bomb shelter.”

  “Well, at least the showers must work,” Ryan said, rubbing his unshaved jaw. “We’ll get clean and grab some sack time before making a jump. Maybe we’ll do better at the next redoubt.”

  “Can’t do much worse,” Krysty retorted, fighting back a yawn.

  Summoning the elevator, the tired companions shuffled inside and descended to the barracks of the redoubt, the noise of the cables and motors completely masking the sound of the blast doors opening again, then closing.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Hidden behind rocks and fallen logs, Baron Griffin and his sec men waited for the outlanders to appear from behind the big black doors. The second they showed, a trip wire would lash across the doorway at knee level, crippling their prey and making them easy pickings.

  But long minutes passed and nothing happened.

  “You sure they went in there, Baron?” a sec man asked, awkwardly tightening his grip on his rapidfire.

  “Yes, I saw them enter only an hour ago,” Baron Griffin replied gruffly, awkwardly cradling the Neostad scattergun. There were a pair of ammo tubes on top of the blaster, one packed with steel slivers that could cut a griz bear in two, and the other loaded with homemade cartridges packed with rock salt to blind an opponent. If Finnigan didn’t lose his knees to the trip wire, then the baron would take his eyes…eye, he mentally corrected, and the result would be the same.

  “What is?” a muscular cannie asked, holding a brace of boxy blasters. “Some kind a bomb shelter?”

  “Shut up, feeb,” Baron Griffin growled, clearly annoyed. What were they doing inside the shelter?

  Incredibly, Wainwright had dealt fair, and the cannie tracker was exceptionally gifted. He easily found the path of the outlanders in the forest and followed them through the ruins and into the sewers, where the torturer got aced by a mutie snake that took a gren to chill. The blast destroyed any sign of footprints in the dust, and took down the hanging roots for several yards, but the cannie found the tracks again behind an iron gate, and followed them through a bomb shelter filled with wonders, only to lose Finnigan once more at a locked metal door situated in a basement.

  With no other choice, the baron and his men circled around to the outside and searched through the night, never stopping for sleep, until finally pausing for some much-needed food on top of a low hillock. Checking through binocs, Griffin almost choked at the sight of Finnigan and his coldhearts crossing a field in the next valley.

  Unfortunately the outlanders were much too far away to even try a longblaster shot, so Griffin watched them closely to mark their trail, only to see them open a huge metal door after touching some buttons in a little box. Griffin had no idea what the thing was, but marked down the pattern of the buttons, and the order in which they were touched. The baron had some vague knowledge of reading, and knew the squiggles were letters and numbers, but which was which he had no idea, and could not care less. He was a baron of the blood, not a fragging whitecoat.

  Rushing to the hill, Griffin had his men rig traps while he studied the little box, and when all was ready he tapped in the sequence. Sure enough the massive slab of metal rumbled aside. But that was it. Nothing else happened. When he tapped in the numbers again, the door closed.

  “Should we go in after them?” another sec man asked, holding on to the reins of their horses. Shuffling their hooves on the ground, the animals nickered softly, sensing the tension.

  Pensive, Griffin said nothing for a moment, juggling hundreds of possibilities in his mind. “No, not just yet,” he said carefully, as if the words were rotten wooden boards under his feet. “Let them sweat for a bit. Make them realize they’re trapped like rats in a shitter, and starting to fight each other. Then we go in with our blasters blazing.”

  “What if there’s another way out?” a sec man growled, his throat badly scarred from a poorly healed wound.

  “With that door?” Griffin snarled incredulously. “Without the secret of the buttons, there’s not enough black powder in the world to blow a breach in that fragging thing.”

  Preparing for battle, the baron hunched his shoulders. “No, they’re in there,” he whispered, as if trying to convince himself. “Trapped in an iron box.”

  A chilling box, the baron thought, his mind filled with savage images of knives and screaming. So, my dear, you will be avenged. Very soon now….

  EVENTUALLY ALL the companions had finished tak
ing showers, reclaimed their blasters and donned fresh clothing from their backpacks.

  While getting dressed, Mildred and Krysty had both given Liana a few personal items, along with a new shirt.

  “This is wonderful!” Liana marveled to Doc later, running her fingertips along the soft cotton material. “I’ve never felt animal skin like this before in my life.” Then her empty stomach rumbled loudly.

  “Alas, I feel the same, my dear,” Doc agreed, rubbing his stomach. “My dear Ryan, water has eased our pangs, but might we consider jumping immediately. Food is quickly becoming a requisite.”

  “Been thinking the same thing,” Ryan admitted, lacing tight a combat boot. “Anybody object?”

  “Fuck no,” Jak said, rubbing his gut.

  “I’m a little peevish myself,” Krysty admitted honestly.

  “Ditto,” Mildred stated.

  “Could eat a bear,” J.B. said, trying to appear casual.

  The Deathlands warrior smiled at the boast. “Fair enough,” he said, resting the Steyr on a shoulder. “Let’s leave.”

  Returning to the elevators, the companions rode down to the middle level and proceeded directly to the control room. Trying not to react, Liana gasped anyway at the humming banks of machines completely spanning the wall, the monitors scrolling incomprehensible data, and the controls twinkling with multicolored lights as if the night sky had been imprisoned behind plastic.

  Ryan walked through a doorway into the small anteroom, then proceeded to another door set into an armaglass wall.

  “And that is the trans-mat unit,” Liana said hesitantly.

  “Mat-trans,” Mildred corrected her. “A matter transmitter.”

  The woman appeared skeptical. “And this will really take us to another redoubt, somewhere else on the planet?”

  “In less than a heartbeat,” Krysty said gently. “Although the experience is not very pleasant.”

  “Most time arrive puking out guts,” Jak stated bluntly. “But can’t lose what don’t got.” His stomach roiled in empty harmony.

  “Fair enough,” Liana said resolutely, then clumsily added, “Okay, let’s leave this pop stand, Chief.”

  Chief? Mildred openly burst into laughter, while everybody else merely grinned widely. Even Ryan nearly smiled. “Get your ass in the box, Singer,” he commanded in a friendly manner.

  Startled for only a moment, Liana grinned widely in response, feeling accepted by the others at last.

  The companions entered the unit, and Ryan turned to close the door to initiate a jump.

  Suddenly the oval door to the control room swung open and in stepped Baron Griffin flanked by several armed sec men.

  “There they be, Baron!” a cannie shouted, displaying rows of pointed teeth.

  Cursing, Ryan started to draw the SIG-Sauer.

  “Surrender, murderer!” Baron Griffin bellowed, aiming his scattergun.

  “Never!” Liana shouted, stepping in front of Doc, her blaster leveled. Too late. She fell to the chamber floor, riddled with bullets as Ryan pushed the door closed to cycle a jump. The floor dropped away beneath the companions and they plummeted into the swirling void of controlled subatomic chaos.

  Searing pain filled their twisting universe, and bizarre visions of the past filled their beleaguered minds. Then the mists thankfully vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

  The gasping companions fought to keep from retching, their stomachs heaving in wild rebellion. Forcing his vision to focus, Ryan grunted at the sight of the now empty antechamber, the walls a deep blue in color, with maroon highlights. Then icy cold adrenaline flooded the man, banning the usual sickness as he saw Liana on the hard plastic floor, her blaster nearby.

  “Liana,” Doc whispered, the word a prayer and a plea combined. The old man could not believe what he was seeing. The woman lay on the floor, bleeding from a dozen wounds.

  “What now?” Krysty asked, panting in exhaustion, her hair hanging limply as if soaking wet.

  “We go back,” Doc said quietly. “We must stop the madman.”

  “Can’t, too weak when arrive,” Jak warned. “Get aced!”

  “This won’t arrive puking,” J.B. snarled, pulling out his last pipe bomb.

  The companions reverently moved Liana’s riddled remains into the anteroom.

  “How long do we give them?” Mildred asked, taking a long pull from her canteen.

  “The Last Destination button is only good for thirty minutes,” Ryan said, leaning against the wall to save his strength. “We’ll wait as long as we can before going back.”

  “Doc, I am so sorry,” Krysty began, but the old man turned away, his face a study in anger.

  As their wrist chrons registered twenty-five minutes, the companions grimly got back into the chamber and sat with blasters in their hands. A double jump was always bad, and already weak with hunger, they knew this might very well end in disaster.

  Waiting until the very last moment to give the companions as much recovery time as possible, Ryan hit the LD button, and once more the mists descended.

  In what seemed like only a heartbeat later, the sparkling mists faded. The companions feebly managed to stand as Ryan slightly opened the chamber door. Incredibly, several of the baron’s men had remained in the control room, ransacking drawers and collecting bits of metal. When the gateway cycled down, they stood transfixed, not knowing what to expect. Without a word, J.B. tossed the pipe bomb into their midst. The startled men had no time to react, cut to pieces by the pipe bomb’s shrap. Jak made sure no one was possum.

  Doc lurched from the mat-trans chamber.

  “He escaped!” the old man roared after checking the corpses.

  Running into the corridor, Doc paused at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and went straight for the ele vator. Banging on the call button never seemed to bring the car any faster, but Doc did it anyway. If nothing else it served as a very small vent of his towering fury. First Emily, then Lori and now Liana…What did the universe want, his very soul to break? Would that be enough payment for his crime of being the first time traveler to ever survive the hideous experiments? Demons tugged at his mind, but the ding of the car doors opening brought him back to sanity, and he stumbled inside only a split second before Ryan and Krysty.

  “Do not get in my way,” Doc said as the doors closed and the cage began to slowly ascend.

  “Whatever you say,” Krysty answered. She could only dimly imagine what would be her reaction to the person who aced Ryan, and it frightened her greatly.

  Checking the load in his weapon, the one-eyed man said nothing.

  When the doors opened, Doc dashed across the garage and reached the door to the stairwell just as it opened and a panting Baron Griffin came into view. Ruthlessly, Doc fired the LeMat and took off the baron’s blaster hand. Shrieking in pain, the man staggered backward and tumbled down the stairs to crash in a heap on the next landing. Standing above the baron, Doc aimed and fired again, blowing off a boot, the tattered end of the leg gushing a torrent of blood.

  “Please,” Griffin begged, pitifully raising his good hand.

  His face a rictus of madness, Doc shot the hand through the palm.

  Screaming, Baron Griffin soiled the floor as he struggled to get down the concrete stairs, bleeding and crying.

  “Doc, that’s enough,” Ryan stated forcibly. But when the old man did not respond, he grabbed him by the shoulder. “I said enough!”

  For one single moment Krysty thought Doc was going to turn the LeMat on Ryan, and started to bring up her own blaster. Then the life seemed to drain from Doc, and he pointed the massive handblaster at the wretched man on the floor and put a gaping hole in his forehead.

  “No, my friend, it will never be enough,” Doc said simply. “But it will do for now.”

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  “Catch baron?” Jak asked as the companions entered the control room.

  “Yes,” Krysty replied, helping a weary Doc past the albi
no teen and into the jump chamber. For the first time since they met, the man actually appeared to be old; his eyes were full of sadness, but no tears had come yet. Anger was keeping him going. Nothing else. Soon, he would mourn. But not here, and not yet.

  “There were five horses outside,” Ryan said, radically changing the subject. “How many got aced here?”

  “Four,” Mildred said hesitantly.

  “What now?” Jak asked.

  “Now?” Doc repeated as if never hearing the word before. “Now, my young friend, we get the fuck out of Michigan.”

  Exchanging startled glances over the old man’s use of the word, the rest of the companions joined him on the floor, waiting as Ryan shut the gateway door then hurried to join Krysty. The electronic mists swirled and enveloped them once more.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-4496-6

  TIME CASTAWAYS

  Copyright © 2009 by Worldwide Library.

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