by James Axler
Ryan was a tall man with broad shoulders and a mop of unruly black hair. His face had two days of stubble and a black patch over the left eye where he had lost it in a knife fight with his brother a lifetime ago. A scar ran up the side of his face, a pale line that cut through his emerging beard like an arrow pointing to the missing eye. Ryan had lived with it a long time.
Krysty Wroth crouched next to Ryan with her back against a tree, her expression fixed as she listened for an ambush. She was strikingly beautiful with vivid red hair and the kind of athletic frame and long legs that, once seen, men fantasized about long after the woman herself had departed.
The woman wore a red shirt and blue jeans, with blue cowboy boots whose heels added to her tall frame. She held a blaster in her hand—a compact Smith & Wesson .38 loaded with .158-grain lead slugs.
Ryan watched through the scope as J.B. and Ricky reached the end of the road. California was a lot different since the nukes hit. This place, for instance, was nothing more than a splinter of an island surrounded on all sides by blue ocean. For another, the place was maybe two miles long and a mile across, and it was covered in orange groves. Again, if they’d known that when they’d jumped into its mat-trans they might have had the sense to get the hell out of here before the scalies took umbrage at their appearance on what they obviously thought of as their own private island.
When the nukes had struck way back in 2001, a lot of California had gone missing. The San Andreas Fault had finally cracked, dropping a good portion of the western coast of the United States of America into the ocean and drowning millions with it. What was left now, besides the abbreviated West Coast itself, was a group of isles known as the Western Islands. This minuscule piece of land, it seemed, had once been the home to some out-of-town mall. “Twelve Starbucks and a JCPenney” was the way Mildred had described it to him.
Ryan guessed that visitors to the mall had been oblivious of the redoubt on its doorstep. He took another breath, watching through the Steyr’s crosshairs as the scalies swarmed toward J.B. and Ricky. He had known J.B. a long time, all the way back to their days with Trader when they had roamed the Deathlands, part of the crew of War Wag One. The two men were equals and as close as brothers, and they had an understanding that went beyond words.
The scalies were slowing now, wary of what J.B. and the kid were going to unleash on them. The flare had gotten their attention, which was just as they had planned it, ensuring Doc, Mildred and Jak could get to the redoubt safely without the scalies hot on their heels. Ryan watched the scalies emerge from the tree cover in ones and twos. He took another deep breath and slipped his finger behind the guard so that it rested against the trigger. Shoot on the exhale, he reminded himself automatically, when the body is at its steadiest.
* * *
J.B.’S BOOT HEEL scuffed against the cliff edge as he took another step backward, the sound of the ocean loud in his ears. Ricky was hunched over next to him with one arm around his belly. There was blood leaking through his fingers.
“Hang in there, kid,” J.B. murmured as scalies swarmed from cover.
There were more than two dozen of them now, closer to thirty, J.B. estimated. They were hairless and buck naked. Some had added rudimentary tattoos across their bodies, blue swirls and lines across shoulders and chest; one displayed a shape across his face that reminded J.B. of a bat.
As he emerged from the trees, the bat man said something, but J.B. couldn’t make sense of it. It sounded like a dog snarling, a low kind of growl. Around him, the other scalies began to laugh louder—now that was something J.B. did understand, the universal laughter of the mocking bully.
Several of the scalies were sticking close to the trees as they reloaded their muskets. They were cumbersome weapons, and J.B. could see that the shot they fired was large and ball-like, approximately the size of an old table-tennis ball. It was one of those that had hit Ricky, large enough to tear clothes and skin, but not refined enough to pierce through the flesh.
The Armorer calculated that Ricky had two bullets left before he would need to reload, which meant, unless he got his shotgun reloaded, the odds were lousy.
“We going to chill them,” Ricky whispered, “or what?” The kid trusted J.B. to make these decisions. He had volunteered to carry the flare even when J.B. had tried to dissuade him. “Two blasters are better than one,” he had told the Armorer, “and you’ll have my back, right?”
Sure, J.B. had his back all right. And look where that had got them.
The leader with the bat tattoo was walking purposefully along the overgrown roadway toward J.B., its dark eyes flicking down to the open shotgun where J.B. had not had a chance to reload. “Outta time tuh load blasta,” Bat Tattoo taunted as he approached the Armorer. His voice was rough, like sandpaper, the accent all but impenetrable. The leader’s lips pulled back from his sharp teeth and he began to laugh. And then his head burst like a watermelon and a thunderclap echoed through the grove.
“Dark night, Ryan, but you took your sweet bastard time!” J.B. muttered as the mutie leader went caroming past him and over the cliff edge, his head a ruined mess of brain and bone.
Around him, the scalies were reacting with shock at their leader’s death, scrambling this way and that as they searched for their new attacker. Another shot cut the air and one of the musket-carrying muties went sailing to the ground in a sprawl of limbs.
J.B. slipped new ammo into his shotgun’s breech as he moved, then stroked the shotgun’s trigger, sending a fearsome burst of fire at the two nearest scalies. They went down with yelps of pain, blood splattering across the blacktop.
Beside J.B., Ricky had sunk to one knee and was firing shots from his own blaster before switching to his second weapon, a reproduction De Lisle carbine. The De Lisle was about half as long as Ricky was tall, with a bolt action and mock-wood finishing. It boomed with each shot like a miniature rumble of thunder, and each time another scalie dropped to the ground. Despite the pain in his flank, Ricky felt alive.
* * *
THINGS WERE A mess inside the redoubt. Located underground, it was like a concrete rabbit warren, flickering lights illuminating gray walls on which were painted dusty stripes of red, green and yellow. Bird caws echoed down the corridors. There was sand and dirt splashed over the walls by the wind, and bird droppings and insect husks carpeted the floors. Some of the corridors ended in rubble while others ended in sheer drops that looked straight out onto the ocean. Mildred followed Jak, trusting his keen tracker instincts to retrace the path they had taken a few hours ago when they had arrived.
They had left Doc at the redoubt entrance, either to welcome Ryan and J.B. or to blast the living crap out of anyone—or anything—else who tried to enter.
The redoubt itself was set half out to sea, one entire side cut away by the quake that had turned this strip of land into an island decades before. Despite that destruction, its automated facilities still functioned, including the ceiling-mounted fluorescent lights and, crucially, the mat-trans unit. Quite how the mat-trans could still operate when so much of the building had been wrenched away was beyond Mildred’s comprehension. They’d built these old places tough.
The mat-trans was a twentieth-century invention designed to move troops and matériel between locations with the minimum of fuss. The matter-transporter units were located in dozens of abandoned military redoubts across the old United States of America and several other parts of the world. While the redoubts remained mostly untampered with by the locals, locked up and hidden away as they were, Mildred and her companions had utilized the mat-trans units for a number of years, zipping from location to location as they sought a better life away from the routine bloodshed of the Deathlands. Finding somewhere to settle had proved a lot harder than Mildred had expected.
Leading the way, Jak stepped into the redoubt control room. Twin aisles of desks ran lengthwise across the room, facing a screen that was blotched with the white stripes of bird feces. The desks, too, were smothered
with droppings, and as Mildred entered the room she saw a gull flap its wings in surprise as it rose from one corner. The bird had a nest here, tucked out of sight. Mildred ignored the gull as it swooped around the room, cawing in distress.
The two companions made their way to the door to the anteroom, where they waited for their friends to join them.
* * *
IT WAS PANDEMONIUM. Scalies were running in all directions.
While most of the muties had scattered in blind panic, several came searching for the sniper who had executed their leader. Krysty watched from her hiding place in the bole of a tree, the Smith & Wesson .38 clutched close to her breast as two figures broke from the tree line where the bodies hung, running toward Ryan where he lay on the grass picking off their companions. One of the scalies held a knife, and it flashed as it reflected the sunlight. Glass, Krysty realized.
As the two scalies vaulted over a fallen log, Krysty emerged and popped off two shots from the .38. The first plowed into the chest of the scalie on the left, and he seemed to flip over himself as he was driven back and to the ground. But her second shot missed, whipping away just an inch over the right hand scalie’s shoulder. Tough break—he was the one with the knife.
The scalie changed direction. He ran not for Ryan now but for Krysty, drawing the glass knife back in preparation to swing. Krysty whipped up the .38, but the scalie was on her before she could squeeze the trigger.
The two of them went down with a thud of bone-jarring impact. Krysty fell backward as the knife swished through the air just inches from her face. The scalie spread his legs to hold her down, crouching over her crab-style to stop her from escaping. The knife swung again, eight inches of blade flashing with the sun’s rays.
Krysty brought up her blaster and squeezed the trigger. The .38 fired at point-blank range, but the bullet deflected on a callused section of her attacker’s armor-like flesh. The scalie howled in pain and, in the same instant, reached out with his free hand and grabbed Krysty’s blaster by the muzzle, shoving it aside.
Krysty groaned as her wrist was bent backward. The scalie’s grip was as strong as a vise and she could feel the bones of her wrist grinding together as he clenched tighter.
Looming above Krysty, the mutie brought his glass blade down toward her face, hissing through clenched teeth in some eerie victory trill, the blade racing toward her.
Gaia help me, Krysty thought as she watched the blade carving the air. Hear my prayer and come to my aid in my time of need.
Then everything seemed to slow down; the blade hovered in the air as if it was a static object.
Krysty had grown up in Harmony ville where her mother, Sonja, had taught her how to tap into a wellspring of energy that she called Gaia power. Quite how that ability worked, no one could explain, but it drew on the Earth Mother herself to feed her with a burst of incredible strength and stamina. That “Gaia power” had saved Krysty’s life on numerous occasions, but it came at a cost—each time she used it, it ran out fast and she was left as weak as a kitten. Right now, Krysty figured that cost was worth it.
As she focused on her chant, Krysty could feel the power of the Earth Mother race through her like an electric current charging her veins. Krysty’s emerald eyes seemed to shine as she snatched the scalie’s wrist and pulled, altering the angle of the stabbing knife and yanking the scalie with such force that he went sailing from her with a howl of surprise. An instant later the scalie’s flying body slammed against the trunk of a nearby orange tree, and Krysty heard his neck snap.
She lay there breathing hard as the Gaia energies coursed through her, making her feel every whisper of breeze, every blade of grass, as it seared through her body like a fire. Moments later the power ebbed, then was gone.
Still lying in the grass, Ryan picked off the last few stragglers of the attacking party, watching through the scope as the remaining scalies ran for the safety of their pyramid-like home.
“You okay?” he asked, his single eye still fixed on the rifle’s scope.
“Been better, lover,” Krysty replied weakly. She was shaking, and her voice had that familiar tremble, the result of using the Gaia force.
When he looked at her, Krysty was checking her right wrist where the scalie had tried to break it.
“Time to go,” Ryan said.
Krysty nodded. Her wrist was still working, although she may sport a bruise there for the next few days. Ryan bent to help her to her feet. He put his arm around her shoulder and they headed toward the redoubt.
* * *
THEY CONVERGED ON the redoubt entrance. Doc was using his faithful LeMat to, as he put it, “dissuade the locals from investigating too thoroughly.”
“Good thing, too,” J.B. said as he carried Ricky through the doors and into the corridor beyond. “Wouldn’t do for muties to learn about the mat-trans system. Before we know it, the redoubts would be overrun with crazed scalies only too happy to consume or destroy anything they come across.”
Other than sending another warning shot into the trees overlooking the redoubt entrance, Doc didn’t bother to reply. He pulled back from the entrance, his LeMat still jutting out the doors in search of new targets.
A moment later Ryan appeared with Krysty at his side. As they entered the redoubt, Krysty looked exhausted; her hair hung limply now and her movements were slow and heavy, as if she was underwater.
J.B. caught Ryan’s eye, an unspoken question there.
“She’s fine,” Ryan replied. “Just a little knocked out from her Gaia power.”
When J.B. said nothing, Ryan smiled.
“Had a bit of trouble finding a good spot,” Ryan said. “Did you miss us down there?”
J.B. shrugged. “I figured you’d come through for us,” he said. “Just, you know, quicker would have been better.”
Ryan nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I save your life. Ricky, are you okay?”
“Millie’ll look him over,” J.B. replied for the teen, “once we’re away from this rad-blasted pesthole.”
Doc punched in the code to close the doors. Once he had done that, he turned to his companions and touched his free hand to the brim of an imaginary hat. “I trust we are all ready to leave?”
Less than a minute later the five companions joined Jak and Mildred in the anteroom, then they all entered the mat-trans unit and sat on the floor, except for Ryan. The one-eyed man was last in, and he firmly shut the mat-trans door, initiating a jump. He quickly made his way to Krysty’s side and sat beside her. The mat-trans powered up.
All seven companions disappeared, leaving only the wispy trails of cooling gas and the whine of the air vents in their wake.
Chapter Two
As the companions didn’t have the destination codes for the mat-trans unit, where they ended up was totally random. The jump could take them to a redoubt five hundred miles away or five thousand—or anywhere in the world, for that matter. The companions never knew where they’d arrived until they left the redoubt and got their bearings.
The effects of traveling by mat-trans made a person feel as though he or she had caught a swamp bug. The stomach rebelled, the body went weak and there was the urgent feeling that you were about to crap your pants. Thankfully, the journey itself was momentary, and once it passed—usually—so did the sickness.
The seven companions materialized in a shock of light, and even as they appeared the extractor fans of the mat-trans hummed to life, working their magic to clear the chamber of gas.
They were sitting in a different mat-trans chamber—its dimensions and design exactly like the one they had just left, the only difference being the color of its armaglass walls, which was a sort of red-violet, Ricky thought.
Breathing through clenched teeth, he clutched his side, his eyes screwed up in pain. He still hadn’t got used to the discorporation and reintegration of his molecules that was necessary for the mat-trans to shunt him to a new location, and the jarring only served to make the wound in his side fee
l worse. “Madre—” he muttered, doubling over in agony.
“Okay, Ricky,” Mildred said, hurrying across the small room to the teen’s side and opening her satchel of medical supplies. She moved a little unsteadily, still suffering from the aftereffects of the jump. Mildred was far more experienced in this than Ricky, but it could still catch her unawares sometimes, just the same way it caught everyone unawares sometimes. She usually had a concoction she called jump juice, which was helpful in settling the stomach, but she was all out.
As she moved, Mildred spotted the box. It loomed incongruously at the rear wall of the chamber, clicking to itself in a kind of constant hum. “Um...” Mildred began, stopping in her tracks. “Ryan? J.B.?”
Ryan was still recovering from the jump, but he moved to where Mildred had halted and scanned the device with his single blue eye. “Shit.”
It was about the size of a shoebox, roughly a foot across and half as deep, and the top was open to reveal a mass of wires and a timer. The timer was analog, like an old oven timer, and it clicked quietly to itself as it counted down.
“What the hell is that?” J.B. said, peering past Ryan’s shoulder. “Oh.”
“Three minutes,” Ryan said, reading the dial on the timer.
“Get everyone out of here,” J.B. instructed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tiny pair of wire cutters no bigger than nail scissors. His instruction was unnecessary. Ryan was already rousing Krysty and the others, ushering them to the chamber door. “Triple red, everyone,” Ryan ordered as he turned the door handle. They had less than three minutes. Ryan would wait. He knew why J.B. wanted to defuse the bomb—the importance of the mat-trans was impossible to put a value on. If they’d emerged in a hot zone or a settlement of crazies—or both, as they had in California—then this chamber may be their only means of escape.
J.B. had defused bombs before. They had three minutes, which meant they still had a chance.