Shadow Fortress

by James Axler

  “Fuck!” Jak cried, throwing the useless blaster at the fog. The rapidfire went into the mist and vanished.

  Retreating into the tunnel, the companions could only watch as a swollen expanse of gray-white fog flowed out of the redoubt. There was no true surface, but its bulk was impenetrable, forever moving and alive with countless tendrils of mist. Heaving as if taking deep breaths, an eerie glow emanated from its core, casting the tunnel into ghostly blue shadows.

  Half of the companions had never seen such a thing before, but they clearly remembered the horror stories told by Ryan, Krysty, J.B. and Doc about the incredible monstrosity, the ultimate guardian of the re-doubts. Sometimes the underground bases were patrolled by sec hunter droids or comp-operated weapons systems for protection from invaders. But only an occasional redoubt had ever had this hellish bastard of science and insanity.

  The companions fell back before the fog, and it pulsed from the redoubt, expanding and swelling in size to fill the tunnel. A bat on the ceiling screamed at the sight of the thing, and tried to fly past the glowing fog. A tendril of mist caressed the animal in flight, and it was gone, only the bloody tip of a wing tumbling down to splash into a puddle between the railroad tracks.

  “Beware of the Cerberus,” Doc rumbled softly, the LeMat and Webley held steady, his arms crossed at the wrists to support the heavy handcannons.

  The fog seemed to react to the sound of his voice, almost as if it recognized the old man. Then a .50 cal crackled around the corner, and the fog abruptly paused, unable to decide between the two groups in the stygian tunnel.

  “Keep nice and slow,” Ryan growled, a hand on his blaster. “No sudden movements or it’ll strike.”

  “Let me try something,” Dean said, unbuttoning his shirt pocket.

  “Do nothing!” his father ordered sternly. “Only weapon that can kill this are implo grens.”

  “Don’t have any,” J.B. said, shaking his head. The man held both the Uzi and the shotgun at the ready, even though he knew they would be useless against the living death cloud.

  “Maybe we can outrun it,” Mildred suggested, feeling very small and defenseless before the colossal fog. “Trick it somehow and then double-back and slip inside. No way it could reach us past the nuke-proof door.”

  There was a sense of intelligence about the creature, and she wondered if it could actually understand their words, or if it was merely responding to the tone of their voices, as a dog would.

  Billowing endless, the fog started toward the companions, but another barrage of blasterfire from the sec men made it reconsider.

  “Trick this? Not a chance,” Krysty said, moving away from the creature. Her hair tingled from its proximity, and her skin seemed to crawl as if alive with static electricity.

  Holding the last gren, Ryan pulled the pin and dropped it at his boots. “No way we can reach the redoubt now,” he said grimly. “We can’t kill it, or even harm the bastard thing. So when I drop the gren, run down the tunnel and don’t stop. If anybody makes it to the surface alive, head for the bank. We’ll meet there.”

  “We return to the city of the gorillas,” Doc stated, holstering his piece as a prelude to running, “yet a fighting chance for life is better than none.”

  “Get ready,” Ryan said. “On my mark.”

  Pushing his way past the adults, Dean walked straight to the towering Cerberus and held out a small plastic rectangle.

  Instantly, the fog pulsed toward the boy but then stopped, and a single thin tendril extended to brush over the mag strip on the B12 identification card from the corpse on the crashed Hercules aircraft.

  Just then, bright light bounced along the walls of the tunnel and a Hummer drove into view, Mitchum at the wheel with a revolver in his hand. His face was in ribbons, blood everywhere, the dead bodies of his crew hung off the armored war wag, clusters of tiny bats still feeding off the nutrient-rich life fluids of the corpses.

  “You fucking bastards are gonna pay for this!” the colonel screamed, spittle spraying from his mouth as he fired the blaster.

  Suddenly rushing forward, the mist split apart and flowed around the companions, leaving them undamaged in its midst. But they were surrounded, unable to move in any direction.

  “Smoke wouldn’t hide you!” Mitchum screamed, firing his revolver into the swirling banks of glowing fog.

  Oddly, the bullets didn’t seem to reach the outlanders even though they were only fifty feet away. Slamming on the brakes, the sec chief climbed into the back and grabbed the .50 cal, only to notice the ammo belt was gone, completely used up in the fight against the bats. Shitfire!

  Clambering into the rear of the Hummer, the colonel lit the main fuse for the Firebirds and swung the pod at the companions. Instantly, the fog surged forward. One by one, the Firebirds launched and punched into the cloud to simply disappear.

  “Impossible,” the sec man muttered as the fog flowed irrevocably over the military wag. The headlights dimmed and a strange stink of lightning filled the air, making it hard for Mitchum to draw a breath.

  “This can’t be happening!” he screamed from within the confines of the shapeless fog. Still launching, the Firebirds left the pod and their exhaust winked out, the impotent rockets falling to the ground and breaking apart, spilling their precious cargo of black powder.

  As the cloud began to thin around them, Ryan raised the Steyr to try to chill the sec man, but it was too late. Already the clothes were dissolving off his body, then his skin began to sag and melt away, showing the network of muscles and veins. Gurgling horribly, the dying man swung the pod about, still valiantly trying to chill his inhuman attacker even as his organs slid from his torso and piled at his feet, white bones appearing within the raw, red flesh.

  The cloud was gone from around the companions as Mitchum’s bloody skeleton toppled over, knocking the pod to swivel about and point straight up. The last couple of Firebirds slammed into the roof of the tunnel to violently explode, broken tiles and concrete debris raining upon the companions. J.B. pulled Mildred out of the way of a falling slab of concrete, and Dean cried out as a chunk of ceiling hit his hand, knocking the card into a puddle.

  “Hot pipe!” he shouted, sucking on the minor wound while rummaging about in the dirty water with his other hand. “Where the hell is it?”

  As if understanding the words, the Cerberus cloud billowed about in a circle and started hastily for the companions.

  “Get inside!” Ryan commanded, starting for the steel door.

  “But the card!” Dean cried out, splashing in the muddy water.

  His father grabbed the boy by the collar and hauled him erect. “No time. Leave it!” Ryan commanded, pushing his son toward the open doorway.

  Tendrils of fog were already snaking along the ground as they piled into the alcove. The armored portal of the redoubt had automatically closed, and Krysty hurriedly punched in the code to open it. As before, the massive truncated door ponderously slid aside, and the companions squeezed through the widening crack to get inside.

  The door was still opening when the main body of the fog arrived before the outer doorway. Throwing the gren into the tunnel, Ryan then fired from the hip, the slug hitting the wall behind the door, the ricochet slamming it shut with a loud bang. A heartbeat later there was an explosion, and the door shook, fumes seeping around the edges. Then the fumes began to coalesce and pull the weakened barrier away from the jamb, static electricity crackling over the warping sheet of metal.

  “Molotovs!” Ryan shouted, and Dean rummaged in his shoulder bag for the firebombs.

  Doc was already at the interior keypad, tapping in the access code to try to make the redoubt door close faster. But the armored slab didn’t increase or diminish its speed. Slow and steady, it reached the far wall, paused and began the journey back home.

  Flicking her butane lighter, Mildred started igniting the greasy rag fuses and the companions crashed the Molotovs into the alcove, the combined bottles building a raging conflagr
ation that overflowed into the redoubt. Jak added a pint of whiskey he had taken from the department store. The flames soared as the materials ignited, and the companions waited breathlessly to see if the door would close before the death cloud breached the bonfire.

  The opening between the black metal door and wall was only a foot wide when the first tendril writhed out from the dying flames. The companions poured hot lead into the narrowing crack, but still more of the fog pulsed into the redoubt when the door finally slammed shut. The piece of the Cerberus lashed about wildly as if in pain, then began to dissipate and vanished from sight.

  “Safe.” Mildred exhaled, slumping against the wall. Warm currents from the life-support system were already carrying away any trace of the cloud or the firebombs. The replacement air was dry and flat, tasting of iron and antiseptically clean, the floor vibrating with a faint hum of powerful machinery. The overhead fluorescent lights were bright, with only a few dark tubes in the fixtures, and one flickering as it struggled to stay active.

  “The hell we are,” J.B. cursed, backing away.

  Faint wisps of cloud were seeping through the hair-line cracks around the massive portal.

  “Mat-trans chamber,” Ryan ordered, working the bolt on the Steyr to chamber a fresh round.

  Heading down the zigzagging antirad tunnel from the front door, the companions burst into the garage of the redoubt. The area was packed solid with the materials and supplies from the National Guard armory—vehicles, Bradleys, trucks and a dozen Hummers. Crates of weapons, explosives and blasters were stacked to the ceiling. It was the wealth of the predark world.

  “Implo grens!” J.B. cried and went straight to the case. The other companions assumed defensive positions and watched the mouth of the entrance corridor for any sign of the approaching fog.

  “Well?” Ryan snapped after a few seconds.

  “Almost got it,” the Armorer grunted, struggling to rip open the packing case. His knife slipped and hit the floor, skittering away.

  Jak gestured and handed him another.

  “Move it, John!” Mildred shouted, pointing as the first tendril of the Cerberus cloud came sneaking around the corner.

  “Buy me some time!” J.B. cried, stabbing a knife into the resilient plastic. Flakes chipped away with every blow. In just a couple of minutes he’d have the grens they needed.

  “Pray tell, with what?” Doc retorted hotly, both hands busy reloading his Civil War blaster.

  “Try this!” Dean said, throwing the last Molotov.

  The tendril retreated a bit from the small blaze, and Ryan looked over the assortment of military hardware for an answer. There was enough here to conquer the world, but nothing was primed and ready. In five minutes they would be safe, in an hour unstoppable. But they had only moments before the cloud would be here. They needed something right now.

  “The lantern!” Ryan said, and grabbed it from Krysty to smash the pressurized lamp on top of a sealed wooden crate carrying the alphanumeric sequence for thermite grens. The wick ignited the oil and the flames climbed high, burning into the wood.

  “Time to go,” Ryan ordered, stepping into the maze of crates. “Take the stairs. The elevators might not be working.”

  “Just another couple of secs,” J.B. grunted, hacking away at the stubborn wood. There was already a hole in the top of the crate, and he could see a piece of an implo gren. It was only inches away. The Armorer tried to shove his hand into the opening, but it was too muscular. The splinter stabbed his flesh, making the hand slippery with blood and he forced it in deeper, a fingertip brushing the handle of the deadly high-tech gren.

  Grabbing the arm, Mildred pulled the man away from the crate. “We have to go now, John,” she shouted, firing her revolver at the approaching fog.

  Blood dripping onto the floor, J.B. glared in raw hatred at the packing crate, then grabbed his Uzi and started off at a run.

  Almost every redoubt was built along similar designs, and this was a configuration the companions knew by heart. Dodging through the crates, they reached the stairs and jumped down the steps. As they reached the third level, they plowed out of the stairwell and charged for the mat-trans chamber.

  Slamming open the door to the control room, they saw that the comps and monitors were operating normally. Going to the chamber, Krysty opened the veined door and everybody raced through. The last one in, Ryan saw a wisp of fog snake into the control room.

  “It’s here,” he stated, then hurriedly closed the door and sat quickly on the floor.

  As always, the mat-trans unit waited patiently a few moments for a destination code to be pressed into the keypad. When nothing was entered, the machine commenced to activate a random jump.

  Static electricity began crackling in the air as wild lights sparkled. Slowly, a swirling mist began to cloud the chamber, twinkling lights like tiny stars shooting through the material of the floor and the companions themselves. Only yards away, Ryan saw the door begin to dissolve under the arrival of the Cerberus fog. Seconds counted now.

  The lights grew in numbers and brightness until they were immersed in a swirling galaxy of flaring novas. The universe vanished, and the companions fell through the floor into infinite nothingness, and beyond.

  Epilogue

  A hundred miles away, Lord Baron Kinnison was driving his Hummer through the farmlands of his island, heading for the sulfur mines to review the torture status of some slaves, when a powerful quake shook the land.

  “What the fuck was that?” he demanded, braking the military wag to a fast halt amid the young green plants.

  Sitting beside the obese norm, the Lady Deirdra Kinnison looked up in terror, every fiber of her being jarring in warning. Without a word, she scrambled from the vehicle and started running toward the nearby ocean.

  Utterly confused by the strange behavior, Kinnison scowled at the woman when another quake shook the mountain range and the dormant volcano erupted.

  Hot ash and smoke thundered from the ragged peak, the noise so loud it became silence to ruptured ears. Fiery balls of burning sulfur spewed from the mountain, then the side of the range cracked open wide and out poured a river of molten lava.

  Spitting curses, Kinnison started the wag and twisted the wheel to escape even as a soft gray snowfall of pumice ash fell to blanket the ground. The Hummer traversed only a few yards before the tires slipped in the loose material. Baron Kinnison stomped on the gas pedal, pushing it to the floor, but the engine rattled and died, the air intake completely clogged by the thick ash.

  The bandages around his face acting as a natural mask, the fat man struggled from the wag and waddled hastily away, his heart pounding savagely in his laboring chest. Again and again his boots slipped in the swirling ash, and he finally went sprawling as a sulfur ball crashed nearby and the explosion tossed him away, a broken, bleeding lump of flesh. His smashed body racked with agony, Kinnison could only lie there weeping as the ash slowly covered him. Another tremor shook the island, and then the ground beneath the man yawned open wide. Helpless, the baron fell into the crevice and landed on a sluggish river of lava. Instantly, his hair vanished, his bandages caught fire, as the heat seared into his cracking bones. Saturated with jolt, the baron stayed alive for long seconds, his body sizzling until the intense heat boiled his blood and the fat man burst apart in a gory spray.

  Ripping off her new dress, Deirdra continued to sprint for her life, the terrible heat of the lava flow announcing its arrival right behind her. The mutie could feel her hair singe off, the very clothes on her back beginning to smolder. But icy adrenaline poured into her veins and the woman dashed forward with renewed strength, her velvet slippers pounding against the hot soil. The killing heat diminished slightly as she pelted across the grasslands, leaping over small bushes and a dry creek. Yes! She was going to make it! She was going to live!

  Reaching the cliff, Deirdra simply threw herself over the edge and arched her body into a diving position as she knifed for the life-saving water belo
w. She was still falling when a vent from the volcano vomited red hot lava into the sea and the shoreline began to furiously bubble from the stygian geological exhaust.

  She barely had time to cry out before she plunged into the boiling ocean, her death scream overwhelmed by the roiling fury of the erupting volcano.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-7319-4

  SHADOW FORTRESS

  Copyright © 2001 by Worldwide Library.

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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