Remember Tomorrow

by James Axler

  “Too dark,” the albino replied. “Better stop. Bad feeling about this.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Ryan stated. “Find out where the hell we are before we lose the way back. Besides which, I don’t like this smell.”

  “It is like a charnel house, but not one which has been well maintained,” Doc interjected, his voice high and strained, cracking from the dust that had caught in his lungs despite his body’s attempts to expel it. His frail physique was showing the strain. Doc’s body, stressed in unimaginable ways by the hardships of his previous life, was sometimes apt to react in ways that baffled the others. He had been less buffeted by the storm than Ryan and J.B., but was taking longer to recover.

  But there was nothing wrong with his sense of smell. The dark caves, riddled with a dank, damp aura now that they had obviously been traveling downward, were filled with the sickly sweet odors of flesh in varying stages of decay. Come to that, their heavy combat boots had already crunched underfoot what may have been wood, but which may also have been old bone. They had sheltered in caves on numerous occasions, and had come to discover that caves could be the homes of some triple-dangerous creatures.

  About their persons, among the supplies that were spread evenly between them, they carried flashlights that had been scavenged from redoubts. These were battery operated, the batteries being the harder part to obtain. As each of them found their flash, they hoped that theirs would still be working. Almost simultaneously, they switched them on.

  Two were still giving a strong beam. Ryan’s was weak, but illuminated a small area in front of him. He moved it around and could see that Mildred and Krysty had the working flashes. J.B.’s, Jak’s and Doc’s were all dead.

  “Better than nothing.” He shrugged, turning his weakened beam onto the floor of the cave. “Shit, look at that.”

  The stronger beams cast their light over the area of the cave floor surrounding the companions. Scraps of fur and skin were littered between jagged edges of bone that covered the floor, almost like a carpet. The earth was stained dark. Some of the bones still had rotting meat attached to them, but others were old and dry. The smell didn’t come from anything that remained, but rather was the result of no circulating air. The odor of decay and death had stayed in the enclosed space until it had become embedded in the walls.

  Jak hunkered down, running his hands over the forest of bones, lifting a few to examine. “Small animal, all of them,” he said, looking up at Ryan, his eyes glittering in the beam. “Whatever did this couldn’t find big prey. Mebbe not too much danger. But mebbe a lot of them,” he added with a shrug.

  “Yeah, but what?” Mildred queried. “I thought it was only small stuff could live in this. What’s down here and where did it come from?”

  “Madam, the second part of your query is irrelevant,” Doc husked, his voice still tight and painful. “Much more pertinent would be to ask what did this and is it still here?”

  “Right, Doc,” Ryan agreed. He noted that the old man had loosened his LeMat percussion pistol in its resting place, ready to draw and fire when danger threatened. “Triple red, people, but triple careful with blasters,” he added pointedly. “It’s a confined space down here and we could end up chilling ourselves from ricochets.”

  Doc allowed himself a small smile. “A point well made.” He eased the LeMat back into place and took his sword stick from its sheath. The blade, finely honed and made of Toledo steel, glittered in the beams of the flashlights.

  “The thing is, if whatever it is knows we’re here, why isn’t it attacking us and defending its territory?” Mildred mused.

  “Sizing us up,” Krysty answered with a shudder. Her hair had begun to coil protectively around her head and neck.

  “Watching…waiting,” Jak added simply. In each hand, one of his razor-honed, leaf-bladed knives was poised and balanced, waiting for the first sign of attack.

  Using the flashlights that still had strong beams, the companions surveyed the area around them as far as the light penetrated the blackness. The tunnel system formed by the caves honeycombed off in several directions. Straight ahead of them the system plunged on into the darkness, gradually descending into the depths of the earth. To their rear, in the direction from which they had traveled, it seemed to go up…but had they arrived in a straight line? In their hurry to get away from the storm and in the confusion of carrying those incapacitated by the storm’s sudden violence, none could say if they had arrived at this point from a straight line or if they had veered into this area from one of the tunnels leading off what appeared to be the central corridor. Whatever, it seemed that all the tunnels in the cave led into darkness with no outside light source to guide them. Yet they couldn’t be that deep or have come that far.

  Another problem was the height of the cave. Nowhere had they been in a position where they could stand straight. At some point, Jak had been able to avoid stooping but even he was now inclined forward. And as he was just under five feet in height, it gave them some idea of how low the caves were. Bent forward, calf and thigh muscles aching under the strain, all were aware that they were in the worst position to defend themselves from attack. Whatever lived in these caves and had left these remains, they could be pretty sure it was on all fours.

  “Why won’t it show itself?” Doc whispered.

  “Mebbe there’s only one of it and it knows it’s outnumbered here. Mebbe it doesn’t want to fight in the place it keeps its kill. Mebbe a lot of things. The only thing I know for sure is this is too confined a space to fight and we should get the hell out without disturbing it, if possible.”

  “Too late for that,” Jak said with a shake of his white mane, ghostly in the beam of the flash. “Can hear something move…” He paused, furrowing his brow as he tried to listen. The others didn’t dare breathe. Jak chewed on his scarred lip. “Too many cave, too many tunnels. Sound getting messed up.” He looked Ryan in the eye. “More than one, though.”

  “We move now,” Ryan snapped. “Keep going straight back, keep close, go single file.”

  “Ryan, we got a problem,” J.B. said softly. The Armorer had been quiet since they had stopped and only spoke now because he had to. “I’m still fucked by that crack on the skull. I don’t trust myself to cover your asses.”

  Ryan’s jaw set. Without J.B. at the back, there was a chance that an attack from behind could take them out. His best option was to put Jak there, but he had wanted the albino at the front, using his keen senses to detect any danger that may be ahead.

  “Jak, take the back for me. J.B., go in the middle in case you need help. I’ll take the front. Someone give me one of the strong flashlights.” Krysty didn’t hesitate to hand over hers.

  Proceeding with caution, Ryan began to lead them back—hopefully—the way they had come. He scanned the floor of the cave for any sign of footprints, but the earth was too thin, too easily disturbed to keep much shape. Their progress was slowed, too, by the necessity of checking every branching tunnel leading off their path. The darkness could hide any number of secrets and he used the flash to either illuminate the enemy or scare it away.

  The sounds that Jak had been able to pick up faintly were now growing. The honeycomb effect of the caves meant that it was impossible to detect direction in the overlapping acoustics that threw echoes around them. The only thing for sure was that the creatures were getting closer—for that amount of sound could only be put down to more than one creature.

  “Triple red, people,” Ryan breathed, drawing his panga from its sheath on his thigh. He had that familiar churning of the gut, that instinct that told him the enemy was about to attack. The only problem was from where…?

  Behind him, Doc had his sword blade ready, and J.B.—despite his unsteadiness—had unsheathed his Tekna knife. The only blasters were those held by Krysty and Mildred, who didn’t carry blades.

  At the rear, Jak was ready with his knives, casting glances behind him. He had taken Mildred’s flashlight to illuminate the rear,
leaving her with Ryan’s dimmed flash to aid them in the middle of the group. He was sure that the flash was catching something as they turned corners—the sudden gleam of a watching eye, but always just out of reach.

  He killed the light and counted five, listening to the lowing cries of whatever tracked them. He could smell them now and smell their readiness for attack.

  Suddenly, he hit the switch on the flash, and the tunnel behind them was illuminated. This time there was no mistaking what was at their rear.

  “Ryan!” Jak yelled.

  The one-eyed warrior whirled in the enclosed space and as he did so his flashlight caught more of the creatures coming at them from one of the side tunnels. The pack had been smart enough to split into two to attack. He hoped that they wouldn’t be any smarter than that in battle.

  The only good thing about the attack happening at this moment was that they were between cave branches. There had been a tunnel ahead of Ryan, and a couple of tunnels some thirty yards to their rear, but at each side was solid rock. They had to deal with attackers coming from only two directions, but the downside was that they were now trapped in a pincer movement.

  “What are they?” Mildred breathed. It was a rhetorical question and she knew that no one would have the time to answer. It was nothing more than an exclamation of surprise.

  For the creatures that attacked them from two directions were nothing more than dogs, animals whose ancestors had been domestic pets and had perhaps strayed from villes nearby and become lost in the wastelands above, seeking shelter beneath. Part of her brain—that part not switched automatically into combat mode—could see that the pack was a mongrel mix. All looked rabid, sores and welts littering their bodies. They had suffered from pack inbreeding and being rad-blasted, some of them had only one eye, some bulbous growths on their heads, others moving fast but with an awkward, almost lame gait.

  One thing they all had in common was their teeth: jaws that were strong with sharp teeth that glinted yellow. Their low cries increased in pitch and volume to excited howls of anticipation for the battle and fresh meat.

  Given that they were moving in packs from two directions, a load from J.B.’s M-4000 and the shot chamber of the LeMat would have decimated their ranks and made the fight easier. But the dogs moved too fast, closed too quickly. How many of them there were it was difficult to tell, but they closed with a speed that meant there was no time to draw and fire.

  The dogs were on them in a blur of fur and muscle, flashing teeth and tearing cloth. The carious breath of the creatures was enough to make any of the companions want to vomit, but they had to choke it down: heaving would have been effort wasted, would have given the creatures that fraction of a second needed to get the first snap of the jaws, tearing at their flesh and scenting blood, spreading disease into any wounds.

  The flashlights hit the floor, the beams low and casting shadows up the rock wall, making it dark above a height of three feet and difficult for the companions to see what was happening. They would have to fight according to touch, smell and hearing alone. It wasn’t the first time they’d been in a situation like this.

  Jak’s knives moved in a whirl as he ducked the snapping creatures, the razor-sharp metal tearing through fur and flesh into muscle, jarring against bone. Whimpers and squeals of pain mixed in with the frenzied howling as some of the dogs went down, injured or dying. The scent of blood filled the air, driving the surviving dogs on. But some turned on the injured and vulnerable, their feeding frenzy enough to make them turn on their own.

  Ryan’s panga sliced through the air, one pass of the blade hitting a dog in an artery, the hot blood spraying across his face, making his eye sting as it hit, filling his mouth and nose so that he had to spit it out, spluttering as it blocked his breath. But he didn’t stop cleaving the air.

  Some dogs were getting through between the two point men. Doc thrust at them with the blade, the tightness of their confined space stopping him from using the blade as he would have wished; a sweep of the blade was as likely to strike Mildred or Krysty as it was a dog. At Doc’s back, J.B. was shaking his fogged head to clear it, using the Tekna knife to slice at the attacking creatures with short jabs and thrusts, keeping them at bay.

  Which left Mildred and Krysty to pick their targets with care. The men had tried to protect the two women, as they had no blades. Blasterfire was something that all of the companions wished to avoid. There was the danger of missing the target and hitting one of your own; the danger of ricochet and also the danger of any instability in the tunnels themselves. The honeycombs of rock had seemed secure enough, but there had been earth movements at one time. If the caves were in any way unstable…

  Using their blasters was the last thing either woman wanted, but the dogs had swept over the companions with such force that, no matter how hard the men worked with their blades, they needed assistance. Claws and teeth were causing scratches to skin, tears to clothing. How long before a set of jaws sunk into flesh? If one went down, how long before the others? Without knowing how big the pack was, there was no way of knowing if they were ahead of the game or falling behind.

  “Pick one of the bastards and chill it. We’ve got to,” Mildred yelled.

  “Better get it right first time,” Krysty yelled back.

  Almost simultaneously their blasters exploded, the sound filling the caves and echoing around, drowning the howls of their attackers.

  Only two shots, but they were enough to rebound and reverberate around the cave system, unsettling the delicate balance weight that kept the caves’ roofs from hurtling down. A few pebbles and small rocks dislodged, the sheets of stone, slate and rock that constituted the cave system moaning, those few small stones enough to start a chain reaction that would cause the whole of the system to move.

  Not that the companions knew anything of that. Temporarily deafened by the noise of the blasterfire and still battling against the almost total darkness above waist height that handicapped them against the ravenous pack, they were fighting what was beginning to feel like a losing battle. The fur and muscle came hurtling from all angles. The slavering jaws and fetid breath, the snap of the teeth as they grasped thin air or snagged cloth and the growls that were low in the throat, infused with the bloodlust unleashed by the cuts and bruises on the companions as well as the wounds of their own injured: these were all that could be discerned.

  Krysty yelped in pain as she was cut by the sweep of Doc’s sword stick, slicing through more rabid canine flesh in the attempt to drive it back.

  “A thousand pardons—would that I could see clearly in this pit of hell,” Doc yelled with what, for him, was a remarkable brevity. Krysty didn’t reply; her attention was taken up by the sudden onslaught of mad dog from another position.

  Jak could feel the blood of his enemies cover him. Yet as one creature fell back, another seemed to take its place, unheeding of the leaf-bladed knives as they sliced as cleanly through the dogs as they cut through the surrounding air. Paws with sharp claws, honed on the rocks of the caves, cut at his camo jacket. The sharpened pieces of metal and glass that were sewn into the jacket, making it so heavy, served their purpose as they cut the pads on the dogs feet, making them yelp and pull back. The sounds and smells of combat, the hot blood that splashed across his face, drove him on. Jak switched from being Jak Lauren to being a predatory animal that sought to eliminate its prey before it became the prey.

  Mildred, already bent double in the confined space, felt one of the creatures thud into her as it leaped against her chest, driving her back against the wall of the cave, the jagged rocks cutting into her spine and driving the air out of her body. Her back muscles twisted and spasmed. The yellow teeth and bloodshot eyes of the dog suddenly loomed into view with a clarity that was hideous, even in the near dark of the tunnel. She raised her ZKR, her hand pinned to her side, twisting her wrist against the body mass of the dog, even as she felt the ligaments tearing with the effort. She felt her hand against the warm, matted fur of t
he creature, could feel the barrel of the pistol against the ridge of muscle along the dog’s rib cage.

  She squeezed the trigger and felt the impact shudder up her arm as the shell ruptured the creature’s muscle and bone, shattering and spreading damage internally. She only hoped that the creature would have enough muscle and bone bulk to deflect and trap the shell, lest it burst out the other side of the creature and take her out in some way. Thankfully, the sudden impact for which she had braced herself didn’t come and she felt the creature lose all life, falling away from her. She eased herself away from the wall, her back protesting as the released pressure allowed her muscles and ligaments to ache freely. But there was no time to pay heed to them, as another blaster shot went off beside her already ringing ears and started a low rumble that grew in volume around them.

  Krysty, off balance from Doc’s sword blow, had been driven even more so by two dogs that sensed her sudden vulnerability and attacked. She lashed out at one dark shape with her foot; the pointed silver toe of her cowboy boot, with all the power of her calf and thigh muscles behind it, connected with the point of the dog’s jaw by chance and rendered it senseless. The other dog managed to evade her defenses and jumped for her throat. She raised a defensive arm and brought up her .38 Smith & Wesson blaster to fire. But her timing was awry and as the blaster exploded in her grasp she knew that she had missed the dog. She felt its jaws close on her arm, only the thickness of her bearskin coat stopping it from driving its sharp teeth into her flesh. She clubbed underneath its body with the butt of the blaster, catching it in the balls and making it yelp in sudden agony and surprise, its jaws loosening enough for her to pry her arm free.

  But the real damage had already been done. The stray shot ricocheted around the rocks of the cave, taking out chunks and causing fissures to open along weaknesses in the tunnel walls. The tunnels trembled. The ripple effects of the fissures spread and the walls and floor began to move, rock dust powdering from the ceiling of the cave.