by James Axler
“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.
Doc and Jak took out their blasters before they hurried through the doorway, while Krysty followed a little more slowly, still reeling from the blow of her post-Gaia comedown. Mildred helped Ricky through, glancing back at J.B. as the Armorer knelt to study the explosive device. A bomb inside the mat-trans meant someone had been in this redoubt, wherever it was.
Anyone with any brains would have gotten out double-quick as soon as they had placed the explosive, but Ryan wasn’t taking any chances. He flipped the safety off his SIG Sauer blaster, left the chamber and anteroom and marched across the control room.
It was a redoubt like the one they had just exited, as most were—concrete walls, low ceilings, anteroom and control room, with winking and blinking lights and dials and comp monitors. The lights were on, but that didn’t mean anything. Redoubt lights functioned automatically when a mat-trans fired to life, which meant that the bomber could be long gone by now. Or just around the corner.
There were several cracks that ran across one side of the room, up the walls and through the ceiling, wide enough to accommodate a person’s arm. Something had struck the redoubt at some time, and struck it hard. Ryan’s people fanned out swiftly. A layer of dust was sprinkled on the age-old com terminals, but Doc noticed immediately that several screens had been wiped clean.
“Someone tried to use these,” Doc said. “Recently, too.”
Ryan waited while the rest of his friends made their way through the room. Jak keyed in the code to open the door, then they all filed into the corridor beyond. The albino youth scouted ahead, checking the immediate rooms of the redoubt, hunting for danger and for somewhere safe to position the group should the bomb go off.
While Ryan waited in the doorway, Doc helped a reluctant Krysty down the corridor.
“Ryan, come on,” she urged. “We can’t...”
“We have to try to save it,” Ryan said, his single eye fixed on J.B.
“Get her to safety,” he instructed Doc without turning.
“Krysty, I’ll see you outside.”
The redheaded beauty wanted to say something else; she was his soul mate and she usually wouldn’t leave him. But in her weakened state, leave was all she could do. And she knew that Ryan wouldn’t leave J.B. alone, not if there was a chance they could defuse the bomb.
Doc guided Krysty down the corridor. “How are you feeling, my dear?” he asked.
Krysty smiled, her usually vibrant hair hanging limply around her face. “Still kind of woozy,” she admitted, flashing him a half smile.
“Lean against me,” Doc instructed. “I may be old but I’m still good for that much, at least.”
While J.B. and Ryan dealt with the bomb, Jak employed his own natural talents to lead the rest of the group out of the redoubt as swiftly as he could.
While they had landed in an unknown redoubt, these military bases roughly followed the same basic design. Jak followed the widest corridor, turning each time it split and choosing the widest corridor again. The overhead lights flickered to life at each junction Jak stepped into, brought to life by motion sensors, filling in the void ahead with each step.
The others followed as fast as they were able—Doc helping Krysty along at his side, Mildred watching Ricky carefully as the lad struggled with his wounded side.
Mildred looked worriedly at Ricky. She glanced back at the open door to the control room—not to check on J.B. but merely to see how far they were from the potential blast. Mildred had feelings for J.B.—they were lovers—but she remained professional and focused during times like this. She had seen too many mistakes caused by people not paying attention, and as a doctor her first concern had to be her patient.
Mildred could see that Ricky wouldn’t make it to the outside in the two minutes they had left. He was slowing even now, not quite limping but certainly dragging his heels. His face was looking paler, too: blood loss.
“Jak, we’re going to have to stop,” Mildred called.
Without slowing his pace, Jak glanced over his shoulder and nodded. “We go. No point all dying.”
It was a harsh truth, Mildred knew. She turned back to Ricky, indicating an open doorway. “Stop here,” she instructed.
“But Ryan said...” Ricky began.
Mildred shot him a look. “I need to look at that wound,” she said. “In here.” She led him through the open doorway into what appeared to be a television monitoring room. The room contained two swivel chairs and a bank of television screens that dominated one wall in a gentle curve.
Ricky looked around with evident concern. “Lot of glass here if the bomb goes off.”
Mildred ignored him. “Lift up your arms,” she said, and Ricky did so.
* * *
RYAN STOOD IN the doorway to the control room, wondering how long they had.
“J.B.?”
Inside the chamber, J.B. crouched by the device, warily eyeballing it. The timer was attached to a chemical mix with an explosive and an accelerant to increase the blast. When it went off, it would appear to be a single explosion, but in fact there would be two in very quick succession, the first triggering the full payload of the device. The Armorer judged the size of the device.
“The armaglass will hold the explosion,” he called back to Ryan.
“What about defusing it?” Ryan asked.
J.B. shook his head, still holding the wire cutters in front of him. “This bastard’s wired up six ways to Sunday. I’d need hours to figure it out,” he admitted.
“How long do we have?”
“Thirty seconds,” J.B. replied, slipping his wire cutters back into his jacket pocket. Then he got up from his crouch, knowing better than to rush. Rushing only made a person careless; the one time in a million that a person would slip on the floor of a chamber and earn a concussion. Thirty seconds was plenty of time to get out.
Ryan was waiting for J.B. at the door to the control room. If the bomb went off early, they were dead, but Ryan wouldn’t leave J.B.—they had been brothers in arms for too long for him to do that.
J.B. made his way swiftly to the chamber door and pulled it closed behind him. Once the door was closed, the mat-trans chamber was designed to be airtight to ensure a clean jump when in use. J.B. trusted that to help protect them from the blast. There were fifteen seconds left now before the bomb went off.
J.B. turned, checking his pockets nervously as he hurried from the room. He still had the M-4000 and the Mini-Uzi he habitually carried; it wouldn’t do to escape the explosion only to find himself weaponless.
Ryan watched as J.B. strode toward him.
“What are you still doing here?” J.B. asked, irritated.
“You think I’m letting you get blown up on your own?” Ryan snapped back. “Too much water under the bridge for that.”
J.B. nodded. “Ten seconds,” he said as he followed Ryan into the stark corridor.
Then the two men started to run, hurrying for the nearest doorway, which was cracked open. They pried it open wider to accommodate their size and slipped inside.
“Four..
.three...two...one,” J.B. intoned. When he got to “two,” both men turned away from the direction of the blast and placed their hands over their ears.
A moment later a dull sound like a thump reverberated through the redoubt, followed by a much louder boom accompanied almost instantaneously by the tinkling sound of shattering glass. Ryan and J.B. fell to the floor as the shockwave rocked through the redoubt.
* * *
JAK WAS WITH Doc and Krysty when the bomb exploded. They were standing in a garage area of the redoubt, close to the surface and far enough away that they heard the explosion as a kind of distant cough. Still, they all knew exactly what it was and for a moment a solemn hush seemed to pass over them.
Krysty tensed. “Ryan...”
Doc held on to her, pulling her close. “Relax, Krysty, my girl,” he said, trying to calm her. “We don’t know what has happened yet.”
“I want to go back,” Krysty told him.
“Going back would only serve to place us in more danger,” Doc said reasonably. “They will come to us when they are ready.”
A few paces ahead of them, Jak had adopted a semi-crouch as he walked toward the door to the redoubt. The door lay on one side of the wide, garage-like area within which a few military vehicles still remained. The vehicles had been stripped down to shells, their components and armament long gone, tires removed along with anything else that anyone might be able to put to use. Worryingly, the door to the redoubt was open and showed about four feet of blue sky along with the scrappy dirt of an overgrown track.
Jak’s Colt Python had materialized in his hand once more. He didn’t like the fact that the door was open. It meant someone had been inside, which the bomb had already indicated, and that maybe they hadn’t had time to close it again, which meant they could still be nearby. Jak’s pale hand flicked at the Colt’s trigger guard absently as he approached the opening, padding toward it on silent feet.
Jak stopped for a moment at the open door and listened, isolating the sounds coming from outside. There were birds chirruping, the buzz of insects...and a being, moving amid the undergrowth, feet shuffling on leaves and grass. A moment later Jak heard another sound—more figures approaching, moving in unison with military precision, moving fast.
Blaster poised in front of him, Jak stepped through the open door of the redoubt.
Chapter Three
The redoubt door had been propped open using a web of sawed-down tree limbs and pieces of metal, Jak noted as he stepped through the opening. The construction was well planned and solid, raised on a scaffold-type arrangement. In addition, attention had been paid to the meeting point where the door slid into the wall. There was no exposed hinge or mechanism there, but someone had gone to a lot of trouble to bend the thick titanium door so that it would not snap back. Someone who wanted to get in and get out again.
There were trees all around, and it took a moment for Jak to zone out the noises of the local fauna and locate the sound of shuffling feet he had first noted from inside the redoubt. There. To the left.
A dirt track led to the redoubt entrance with a scrubby grass border to either side, wide enough to carry a wag. The scarred remains of a tarmac road had all but disintegrated, leaving black chunks of broken tarmac dotted amid the dirt. Jak stepped over the path and onto the grass, where he could ensure his passage would remain silent. The grass shone with dew, catching the morning sunlight in sparkling spots like glitter.
The sounds of marching feet were getting closer, and they were moving fast. Jak guessed at least three people were among the group, but it was hard to tell from the way the footsteps echoed. There could be three or three hundred moving in step.
Crouching, his blaster held in one hand, Jak scrambled across the scrub, weaving swiftly between stubby trees. His keen eyes spotted the figure crouching behind a bush, tiny red berries arrayed across it like beads of blood. It was a man, mid-thirties with a little gray clouding his dark beard, wearing cotton clothes, light and simple and remarkably clean. His hands were dirty, though, and there was a streak of what looked like either oil or dirt on his face. He was breathing heavy, fearful. Jak slowed as he spotted the blaster in the man’s hand. It was a Smith & Wesson, not much more than seven inches in length, its once-gleaming surface pitted and blackened with age.
The man turned at the albino youth’s approach, as much sensing him as hearing him. Jak was still twenty feet from the man. Even from that distance, Jak could see the man’s blue eyes were wide with anxiousness, and he brought the Smith & Wesson around to target Jak at the same time as he turned. But when he saw Jak, something seemed to change in his expression—first surprise, then relief.
“Thank heaven,” the man said in a breathless whisper. “I thought you were...”
He stopped, alert like a dog, his head turning to locate the sound of the marching feet.
Jak spotted the figures moving through the trees for the first time. Dressed in white robes, they were easy to see. They didn’t walk together but had spread out, taking different routes down the slope, but still marching in time. Jak counted five of them wending through the trees above, fluid and almost mist-like in their movements. It wasn’t like watching soldiers, it was like watching dancers.
Crouched by the bush, the bearded man glanced back at Jak, his eyes pleading. “Did the bomb go off?” he whispered. “You can’t let them—”
His words were cut short by a woman’s voice coming from upslope. “William! Will? What are you doing?”
The man—presumably William—turned back, raised his blaster and fired. The discharge sounded loud in the stillness of the woods, its thundering echo accompanied by the frightened cries of birds taking flight in its wake.
Jak ducked back, dipping behind the nearest tree and using its trunk for cover. It was a birch, and the trunk was too narrow to give adequate protection, even for Jak’s small frame. But there was no time to find better, not now that bullets were flying.
William had clearly missed his target, and he blasted again, firing another shot into the trees. Upslope, one of the figures in white moved, stepping swiftly behind a tree as the bullet struck a branch.
Jak watched the figure slip out from cover and he could discern that it was a woman—perhaps the same one who had called to William.
“Help me,” the man called, his voice raised now in panic. He glanced back to where Jak was hiding, his brow furrowing as he saw that Jak had disappeared. “Please, you know what they’ll do...”
Jak almost gasped as the white-clad figures emerged from the trees, converging on the armed man in a flurry of fluttering robes. All five were women, young and tall and svelte with long limbs and long hair styled atop their heads in some kind of elaborate braid or plait. The robes were made of a light, gauzy material, pure white like predark summer clouds, covering each woman from her neck all the way down to her ankles. There were wide pleats within the design of the robes that made the skirts and sleeves billow around them like mist, making it hard to determine where their bodies ended and the robes began. They were beautiful, angelic.
Jak watched as the women converged on the lone man. William rose from his crouch and shouted, “Die! Damn you all!” before blasting wildly at the women, again and again, shifting his aim to shoot the next and the next and the next.
Still gliding toward the man, the women moved gracefully but swiftly, sidestepping the shots with breathtaking ease. Jak watched, incredulous, as one of the women, honey-red hair piled on her head, leaped from the ground and kicked out at a tree, using it to lever herself higher as a bullet whizzed beneath her. It was an exceptional move, both in terms of speed and agility, and the timing was nothing less than perfect.
The woman landed back on the ground in a swish of billowing robes, now just three feet from the man with the blaster. He depressed the trigger again, sending another .45 slug at the woman’s f
ace from almost point-blank range. The woman darted aside at the same time, and a combination of her speed and the man’s fear sent the bullet wide.
Then the woman grabbed the barrel of the man’s blaster in her right hand, yanking it aside as he fired again. All around them, the other figures had converged on this spot and stood just a few feet away, surrounding the two combatants as the unarmed woman overpowered her blaster-wielding foe.
Jak winced as the weapon blasted again, sending another bullet toward the woman’s shoulder. It missed her but it was close, and Jak saw the wide shoulder strap of her dress shred as the bullet breezed past, a trace of red kicking into the air as the bullet clipped her skin.
The man was shouting in nonsensical sentence fragments now. Something about stopping them... Something about love... Jak could see the man’s trigger finger squeezing again and again, but there was no ammo left in his blaster.
The white-robed women converged on him. What happened next, Jak couldn’t see. All he saw was the billowing robes circling the spot where the man had gone down, fluttering there like waves.
* * *
MILDRED AND RICKY waited in the redoubt monitoring room as the explosion shook the walls. Dust escaped from the ceiling fixtures and a great cloud tumbled down from the bank of television screens that dominated one wall.
“You think...” Ricky began.
But Mildred was too focused on her task to respond. She was crouched beside him, her face close to the bloody mess that dominated the left side of Ricky’s shirt. “Ready?” she asked, and Ricky nodded. She lifted his shirt in a single, swift gesture and Ricky yelped in pain. “Okay,” Mildred soothed. “You’re okay.”
The blood made it look worse than it was, the way it had spread across Ricky’s skin. But it had started clotting and had dried with Ricky’s shirt, sticking flesh to material. That was why it had hurt so much when Mildred had ripped his shirt away.
Mildred prodded at the wound. You had to move quickly in the Deathlands, and field medicine like this was often the only option. Keeping the companions patched up was Mildred’s job, and she was damn good at it, too. “How does it look?” Ricky asked, breathing through clenched teeth.
