Chrono Spasm

by James Axler

  Stuck in suspended animation for a hundred years, Mildred had been awakened by Ryan and his companions to a world recovering from nuclear holocaust, where humankind had been culled to just one-tenth of what it had been before the war, where society had broken down entirely and where mutants with genetically manipulated bioweapons roamed the lands. It was, not to put to fine a point on it, a rather rude awakening.

  Ryan followed Doc, assisting Ricky through the door. “Deep breaths,” Ryan told him. “Take it slow.”

  “I’m all right now,” Ricky said, wincing. “It was nothing.” The young man respected Ryan a lot, thought he was the kind of man he would like to grow up to be. He didn’t like Ryan to see him in pain like this; it made him look weak.

  Ryan smiled, recognizing the lad’s false bravado. It reminded him of his early days with Jak, the group’s second youngest companion, who had become a man at fourteen without ever knowing a childhood. In those nascent days, Jak had been so reticent to show emotion that he seemed more like an animal than a boy. In some ways, that was mebbe still true now, Ryan reflected.

  He walked Ricky over to a chair that had been placed to the right of the chamber door. “Sit and take deep breaths,” he said again. “In and out.”

  With that, Ryan left the youth in the recovery position, head ducked low between his knees, while Doc took up a position nearby to keep watch on the lad.

  The room outside the mat-trans chamber was as familiar to Ryan as the chamber itself, despite having not visited here before. Located in a military redoubt hidden behind thick walls of concrete and steel, the mat-trans was contained in a purpose-built chamber surrounded by armaglass. Outside its hexagonal walls lay the familiar anteroom, then the control room, computer monitoring desks arrayed in rows. At the far end of the control room was a set of steel-reinforced doors that led into the long-abandoned military complex. The doors were propped open, their steel plating shimmering beneath the flickering fluorescent lights overhead that had come on automatically with the operation of the mat-trans. The system of redoubts dated back to the twentieth century, before the nukecaust, and was largely automated, which meant that it still operated despite the fact that these redoubts hadn’t been accessed in over a hundred years. The level of automation sometimes gave Ryan the sense he was walking in a dream, as if a kind of hidden hand was bringing things back to life.

  Mildred sat at one of the desks closest to the center of the room. The contents of her medical kit were spread out across two desks as she took stock of and reordered her meager supplies, rationalizing them into less space and discarding the used packaging. The arrayed contents consisted of recovered drugs, ointments and a selection of wicked-looking scalpels, their blades honed to razor-sharpness. Mildred also had a blaster on the desk, uncocked and within reach of her right hand should anyone happen to rush into the control room. The weapon was a Czech-made ZKR 551 target pistol, a neat, matte-black .38 caliber with plenty of punch. She glanced up as Ryan approached.

  “You want me to look him over?” Mildred whispered, her eyes flicking to their new companion where he sat doubled over in his seat.

  “Not necessary,” Ryan told her quietly, shaking his head. “Doc’s right—the kid’s strong. He just got caught unawares by the jump.”

  As they spoke, their remaining companions returned, entering the control room through the double doors.

  Leading the group was John Barrymore Dix, a compact man much like the weapons he favored. Also known as the Armorer, J.B. was the group’s weaponsmith and an expert with just about any firearm or detonation device. What he didn’t know about blasters wasn’t worth knowing. He and Ryan owed their companionship to their time spent with the Trader, a legendary survivalist and trader who traveled the Deathlands with his own band, each an expert in his or her own field. J.B. and Ryan had formed a close bond over the years, so close that they often seemed to know what the other was thinking.

  Despite being inside the warm redoubt, J.B. wore his usual battered brown fedora and a leather jacket. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses was perched on the bridge of his nose, through which his eyes assessed everything he saw.

  Though J.B. appeared squat, that was in fact an illusion created by the shape of his jacket, whose voluminous pockets had become bulked out with various weapons and devices he carried out of necessity. The Armorer was happy to maintain this illusion, preferring that potential enemies underestimate him on first glance for it often ensured they never had the chance to realize their mistake. You only needed to chill a man once to survive, J.B. would insist.

  “Place is all cleaned out,” he announced, throwing Ryan a new magazine for his SIG-Sauer. “Plenty of ammo, but not much we can use.”

  Ryan snatched the magazine from the air and pocketed it. “What about food?” he asked.

  The beautiful red-haired woman who followed J.B. through the doors shook her head regretfully. “There’s been an interruption in the power supply at some point, lover,” she told Ryan. “Refrigerator’s open and everything’s spoiled with mold all over. I wouldn’t touch it.”

  “We might have to,” J.B. added, scratching at the day-old stubble that lined his jowls.

  “Let’s hope not,” Ryan said. “Mebbe this time we landed in a nice field full of tomatoes and strawberries.”

  J.B. laughed at that. “’Cept knowing our luck they’ll be the kind of strawberries that got themselves irradiated and have taken to eating folks who come to pick ’em.”

  The redhead shot the Armorer a mock-serious look as she joined Ryan. “If you’ve jinxed us, J.B., I won’t ever forgive you,” she chastised as Ryan ran a hand over her back. Krysty was the one-eyed man’s lover. A striking woman, tall and svelte, Krysty’s red hair drew the eye. The hair seemed almost alive in the bright fluorescent light of the control room; and in truth it was—Krysty was a mutie, with prehensile hair that reflected her emotional state. She had other abilities, too, that sat outside the realm of the average human—some precognition and the ability to tap an incredible well of superhuman strength that came from calling upon the Earth Mother, the goddess Gaia. These bouts of incredible strength lasted only moments and left Krysty drained and as weak as a newborn. Dressed in a red shirt, jeans and blue cowboy boots with silver pointed toes, Krysty had a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver secured at her hip, its burnished silver finish worn from years of service.

  Krysty kissed Ryan on the lips, then mouthed a promise of “later” before hurrying across the room to fetch the coat she had left on a seat behind a comp desk.

  Doc placed his hand to his brow as Krysty passed, tipping an imaginary hat. Beside him, Ricky was bringing his breathing back to a more normal level, his teeth still gritted in pain. The Latino eyed Krysty for a moment before her eyes met with his, and then he turned away with embarrassment. Ricky thought Krysty was the most beautiful woman in the world.

  The last member of Ryan’s crew was waiting in the doorway, his red eyes almost flashing in the flickering lights. “Don’t like pisshole,” he spit. “Stinks.” Jak Lauren, a man not yet twenty years old with the white skin and hair of an albino, and the thin body of a teenager. Jak’s eyes were twin orbs of a cruel, ruby red, and his face was a series of scarred white planes like some brutal sculpture carved by a careless knife. Jak’s chalk-white hair brushed past his shoulders, sweeping against the glistening razor-sharp slivers of glass and metal that he wore sewn into his camou coat—especially the collar and shoulders—to ward off any would-be attacker.

  Though he followed Ryan, Jak was very much his own man. Semiferal, Jak had grown up in the swamps of Louisiana, where a cruel dictator called Baron Tourment had demanded absolute fealty. Jak’s father had rebelled against Tourment’s rule and it had cost him his life. At fourteen, Jak had assumed his father’s place, leading a revolution against the sadistic baron and overthrowing him with the help of Ryan and his companions. Other than the time Jak had spent with his now deceased wife, the albino had remained with Ryan ever since, and his exce
ptional tracking skill and his deadly use of a knife had proved invaluable. Jak saw the world in terms of black and white, but he was a good man to have at your side. Ryan had trusted Jak with his life more times than he could count.

  Ryan nodded, agreeing with Jak’s assessment. “Okay, people,” he said, glancing around the control room. “Let’s check out what the local area has to offer.”

  Doc helped Ricky get to his feet while the other companions grabbed their belongings and prepared to leave. Up ahead, the redoubt’s lights burned brightly, each concrete-walled corridor brutal and soulless beneath the unforgiving fluorescent glow. Ryan led the way, his companions following him through the familiar corridors to the redoubt’s exit.

  It was always like this. The companions would travel from location to location, hopping across the Deathlands via the hidden mat-trans network, unable to program the system and so shooting randomly from point to point. Sometimes they would find a little oasis where kindness reigned and the locals welcomed their visit; more often they would walk slap-bang into yet another level of Hell, where the final remnants of humankind fought tooth and nail simply to see another sunrise, another day; where the weather patterns included acid rain that could strip a person to the bone, and where irradiated muties waited in ambush to tear a person apart. It was a life that knew little joy, but Ryan’s group carried on, always hoping for a better tomorrow, for a reprieve from this Hell on Earth.

  They reached the main doors to the redoubt inside of four minutes. It was a small complex, just a dozen rooms in all, sealed since before the first nuclear strike had impacted on mainland American soil a century earlier. In the years that followed, whatever had remained had rotted or spoiled or simply disintegrated to dust, little seams of powder lining the rooms like sawdust where once there had been perishable goods. The redoubt had been understocked, “probably a real haven of last resort,” according to J.B. Perhaps it would have saved someone’s life if they had got here in time; it looked like no one had ever had the chance to find out.

  Ricky struggled a little to keep up, hefting his DeLisle carbine in one hand.

  Doc strode along with the youth, thrusting his swordstick out with a flourish. “How are you feeling now?” he asked as they neared the redoubt’s external doors.

  “Like I ate something real bad,” Ricky admitted. “Is it always going be like that?”

  “Probably not,” Doc replied. “But who knows? Maybe that was our last jump and we are about to step out into paradise, right behind that door.”

  J.B. was at the door, punching the keypad with the numbers that would open it. After a moment, the door made a loud clunking sound before it started to ponderously slide open.

  The companions waited at a safe distance, their weapons poised on the emerging gap before them as the door creaked open. The first thing that they noticed as the door drew back was the cold. It struck them like a wall of ice, taking their breath away even as it fluttered like mist in the air.

  “If this is paradise,” Ricky told Doc, “then it sure is colder than I expected.”

  But before anyone could say another word, a woman’s face, emaciated with dark circles under the eyes and ragged tangles of long hair, appeared in the open doorway of the redoubt. The dirt-smeared face was accompanied by a blaster, its dull metal glinting beneath the glow of the fluorescent lights.

  “Pomoshch,” she hissed, bringing the nose of the blaster up to J.B.’s startled face.

  Chapter Two

  J.B.’s hand snapped up, grabbing the blaster before the pale-faced woman realized what he was doing.

  “Makarov,” J.B. said emotionlessly, his eyes fixing on the young woman’s. “Neat little blaster for what it is but has a lousy double-action pull.”

  The young woman glared at him, straining to bring up the blaster as he forced her hand to point at the ground. J.B. had overpowered her in a second.

  “Yours, incidentally,” the Armorer finished as he revealed his own weapon, a Smith & Wesson M-4000 shotgun, “is all out of ammo. Thought you’d like to know.”

  The woman looked at J.B. fearfully as he casually turned his shotgun on her, cocking the trigger. Behind him, she saw now, were a half dozen other people, each one training his or her own blaster on her.

  “P-pomoshch,” the woman repeated, her voice coming through clenched teeth. “Pomoshch moi!” She was a thin young woman, with sharp, narrow features and straw-colored hair that snaked down to the small of her back in a series of twisting spirals. Her face was streaked with dirt, and she had dark circles under her eyes. She wore a ragged old dress that ended just below her upper thighs, leaving her legs bare. She was barefoot and beneath the hemline of her dress, her legs were turning blue from the cold. “Pomoshch!” she cried desperately.

  “Who or what is pomoshch?” J.B. asked, still holding the woman in his grip. He eased it a little, pressing the muzzle of his shotgun against her side.

  “Pomoshch,” the woman repeated, seeing the blank expressions that J.B. and the others wore. “Help me!” she pleaded. “They’re coming. They’re just behind me. Hide me, please!”

  As she spoke, the companions became aware of hoofbeats from a little way to their right, which were accompanied by shouts coming from very close nearby.

  “This way,” a man’s voice called. It sounded angry. “Don’t lose her.”

  “I’m comin’,” another voice insisted and the hoofbeats drummed faster.

  “Someone out there,” Jak hissed, eyeing the door. “Close.”

  Outside the redoubt it was night, the clear sky above a rich shade of blue-black, like writing ink. The redoubt entrance was surrounded by an overgrown tangle of bushes, and in the illumination cast by the open doorway they could see a few bloated flakes of snow drifting languorously to the ground. The ground itself was a scrubby patchwork of green and frost, snow settling in clumps and clinging to the bushes tiny leaves.

  J.B.’s brows knitted as he glared at the emaciated woman in the doorway. “You point a blaster in my face and come asking for help,” he drawled as he twisted her wrist in his grip. She squeaked in pain, dropping the Makarov to the concrete floor with a clatter. “Real friendly, sister.”

  Then J.B. stepped back, pulling the young woman inside the corridor of the redoubt where his friends were waiting. Beyond the door, they heard more shouts, the words sounding muffled by the falling snow.

  “She came through here,” a man said. “Maybe she jumped the fence.”

  The young woman looked plaintively at J.B., her haunted expression speaking an encyclopedia volume of fear. “Help me,” she whimpered.

  Around J.B., Ryan and the other companions had fanned out to cover the wide doorway into the redoubt.

  Jak sidled up to the door, pressing his back to the wall, his trusted Colt Python blaster clutched in a two-handed grip. It looked massive in his relatively small hands.

  On the opposite side of the doorway, Krysty had adopted a similar pose, pressing her back to the wall and drawing her Smith & Wesson .38, its muzzle aimed out into the open air. She was wearing her coat now, its shaggy fur design like something that had just been killed. She prowled like a cat toward the open door, footstep over silent footstep, her breath hanging in the air in cloudy puffs of mist.

  Mildred and Doc had also moved forward, and the physician had dropped her satchel silently to the floor as soon as the shouting started. Doc had something of a unique weapon in his possession, a reproduction LeMat percussion pistol styled from the turn of the nineteenth century, its .44-caliber barrel augmented with a second shotgun-style barrel that could unleash an incredible burst of shrapnel capable of punching a good-size hole in a wall—or a human torso.

  Ricky remained at the rear of the group. An experienced fighter despite his young age, he yearned to be on the front line in any combat situation. But his constitution following the mat-trans jump had left him compromised, and he was wise enough to know that trying to lead while unfit only served as a hindrance to his alli
es—and a potentially lethal one.

  The final member of the group, Ryan trusted his colleagues to keep the door covered. He had his SIG-Sauer poised not on the open door but on the young woman in J.B.’s arms.

  “Who followed you?” Ryan growled. “Quickly, tell me.”

  The young woman looked at him fearfully, still struggling in J.B.’s grip.

  “Quit struggling and answer him,” J.B. urged.

  “Mytante,” the girl responded with her strange accent. “Mytante groupa.”

  “Fireblast!” Ryan growled. “Muties.”

  As the words left Ryan’s mouth, two muscular steeds came crashing through the tangled briars at the front of the redoubt, tossing broken branches aside and snow in their wake. The steeds looked almost black in the unforgiving illumination spilling from the doorway. Each was shorter than a horse but more bulky, with sturdy bodies like great walls of muscle and a curling set of thick horns branching out from their wide, triangular heads. A honking noise issued from each creature’s snout, accompanied by a cloud of warm breath, and each steed carried a rider bareback.

  The riders were dressed from head to toe in strips of material and fur, with hoods covering their heads and dirt-streaked scarves bunched over their mouths and noses. The two riders wore goggles over their eyes, the familiar green tint of night-vision lenses recognizable to the companions straightaway.

  “Caribou,” Mildred said, startled. “They look like caribou.”

  * * *

  THE FIRST RIDER leaped from his steed, wielding a vicious-looking pike with a cruel blade attached to one end, a second spiked arm running in parallel beneath it for added penetration.