by James Axler
"Go open another can for yourself," J.B. said. "My beef stew's better than a lot of things I've eaten. Things like dead rat and road-killed toad."
"I confess that my soup is passingly adequate." Doc slurped another mouthful, a thread of the orange liquid running over his stubbled chin.
"How about you, lover?" Krysty asked, glancing sideways at Ryan. "What wonderful blue-ribbon delicacy did you pick off the shelves?"
Ryan stirred the bowl with his spoon, peering down at the speckled liquid, picking up a lump of something green and staring at it. "I think this is a pea. The strands of yellow are probably cheese."
"Cheesy peas," Doc said, smiling toothily. "Or is it peasy cheese? Greasy and freezy. Easy on the palate with a hint of teasy."
"Yeah, we get the idea, Doc," Mildred told him, dabbing at her lips with one of the paper napkins she'd discovered in a drawer in the kitchen.
"My apologies. That tendentious old habit of mine of thoughtlessly engaging my mouth before I have allowed my poor, tired brain to operate."
They carried on eating in silence, broken only by Jak's slurping and the rattle of spoons on dishes. The albino teenager went out into the kitchen and after several minutes reappeared with a fresh bowl of food.
"Gaia! What is that?"
"Chicken rice ginger lemon-grass. Want some? Big can. Plenty left."
She shook her head. "Thanks a lot, Jak, but no thanks. Think what I've eaten should charge up the battery for a day or so." Krysty yawned, laying down her spoon. "Right now I think I might head for bed."
Everyone seemed to feel the same, and in a minute Jak was left alone at the Formica-topped table, busily finishing off his Thai chicken.
RYAN AND KRYSTY took one of the rooms, pushing a pair of beds together and overlaying some of the blankets. The dormitory, like the rest of the redoubt, was kept at a constant seventy degrees, the air dry and slightly dusty. The faint scent of pines seemed to have disappeared. J.B. and Mildred took the second of the rooms, leaving Doc, Dean and Jak to share a third. The old man was complaining loudly that his stomach felt a little disturbed, blaming it on the curried king-crab gumbo. "Best fasten up your seat belt, dear boy," he said to Dean. "I fear that we are all in for a somewhat bumpy evening."
IT WAS RELATIVELY RARE for them to be able to spend a night feeling completely safe and relaxed. The outer doors of the redoubt were undeniably closed and sec locked, and Ryan had personally slipped the double bolts that sealed off the JA 33 section of the complex.
Ryan and Krysty went to bed naked, which was unusual. Her Smith & Wesson Model 640 double-action blaster, with the snub-nose barrel, was tucked under the pillow. Ryan had laid his long blaster— the 7.62 mm SSG-70 Steyr bolt-action rifle—on the floor on his side of the makeshift double bed. The SIG-Sauer P-226 pistol was beside it.
He worked the dimmer switch, reducing the room to near darkness before padding across to climb in next to Krysty, feeling the warmth of her body.
"Hi, lover," she whispered, reaching out to him, allowing her fingers to trail down across the scarred chest, over the flat, muscular wall of his stomach, lower, finding him instantly hard, ready for her. They teased and touched each other with the tender, sure knowledge of longtime lovers.
"Quickie to start?" he asked quietly, his fingers caressing the soft flesh between her slightly parted thighs.
"Mmm… Quicker the better, lover."
Ryan rolled on top of her, guiding himself with his right hand, starting the steady, rhythmic pressure. He supported some of his weight on his elbows, kissing her mouth, sliding a little way up the bed to make the contact deeper.
He could feel her amazing control, her body seeming to shrink about him, squeezing him tight, waves of pressure gripping him and sucking him deeper. Her body rose to meet him on every thrust, her mouth open, eyes closed.
"Not yet…" she whispered.
He held back, trying to set his mind onto something else, slowing himself to meet her readiness, aware of her muscles butterflying around him, sensing her breath coming faster.
Krysty moaned, her fingers digging into his back. "Yes, lover, yes."
Ryan closed his eye, biting his lip so hard with the intensity of his orgasm that he was vaguely aware of a thread of hot blood trickling down his chin. Krysty's back arched under him and she was motionless for a frozen moment, then she bucked and heaved, crying out in her passion.
For several long, soft moments, they clung to each other, letting their breath return to normal, feeling each other's heartbeat.
"Another?" Ryan asked.
"Why not?"
JAK HAD FALLEN instantly into a deep sleep, on his back, snoring quietly. He had stripped off to a T-shirt and pants, using only a single blanket to cover his skinny body. The taped hilt of one of his throwing knives protruded from beneath the Army-issue pillow.
Dean, as well, had fallen asleep quickly, his blaster on top of the neat pile of clothing beside his cot.
Doc had peeled off his cracked knee boots and the ancient frock coat and breeches, then stretched out on a bed. His swordstick and the ponderous Le Mat blaster were on the floor at his side.
Though he felt very tired, partly due to his recent experiences in Puerto Rico, sleep refused to come gently to him from out of the good night. He found himself slipping into that uneasy land that dwelled part in light and part in dark, where gibbering specters came unbidden and restful slumber was an eternity away, where madness waited in the shadows.
Doc lay on his back, staring sightlessly up at the white ceiling, trying to steady his breathing, but he was all too conscious of the blood pounding in his ears.
He carried a silver half-hunter watch in one of the pockets of his frock coat and he finally sat up, leaned down and fumbled for it. Angling it toward the dim light, he tried to catch the reflection off the slender hands. "Five and twenty minutes past two," he muttered.
A nagging headache pounded behind his temple, and his stomach was still churning from the predark soup, a churning that was becoming more insistent.
"It would be wise to go to the toilet," Doc said, standing, knees creaking and cracking. He stooped to pull on his pants, then padded barefoot toward the door.
Jak stirred at the movement, blinking open a ruby eye, his hair spilling across the pillow like frozen spray. "Where goin', Doc?" he mumbled, still half-asleep.
"I must worship at the shrine of Thomas Crapper," Doc replied. "Back in a jiffy, or less."
As he left the room, his head was spinning, and he began to fear that he was about to lose control of his lower bodily functions. He moved fast along the short stretch of corridor, past several other doors, until he reached the white-tiled washroom.
Doc sighed with relief as he sat on the flush. "Welcome to the cloacal throne, Theophilus," he said quietly. "For which relief, much, much thanks."
HE WAS RUNNING after a steaming locomotive, along a deserted platform. The train seemed to be empty, apart from the last car, where the window was down and an attractive young woman was peeking out, her arms around the shoulders of two little children. A boy and a girl.
"Run faster, my dear one," she called. "And we can be safe together."
"I am trying, sweet Emily. Before God, I am trying my very best!"
But the train was pulling away, smoke billowing from the stack, floating along the platform, covering the last car, hiding the dream vision of Doc's wife and children.
"No," he said so loudly that he woke himself up, finding he was still sitting in the bathroom, trousers crumpled around his ankles.
Doc sighed, then cleaned himself and pulled up his pants. He washed his hands, then left the bathroom section, emerging again into the passage. He was still half-asleep and he turned right instead of left, so tired he was barely able to keep his eyes open, stumbling along toward the dormitory.
He reached what he thought was the correct door, turned the chromed handle and pushed it open. Part of his waking mind was aware that the room was unexpectedl
y cold. The opening of the door triggered stark overhead lighting, showing him three metal tables, with a sluice drain at the foot of each, and eight rows of labeled steel cabinets. One of them stood partly open, showing Doc that it was big enough to conceal a fully grown man.
It was bitterly cold, his breath pluming out around him like fog.
"By the Three Kennedys!" he exclaimed. "But this is not our sleeping quarters."
Behind him, the entrance door had been hissing silently closed, shutting with a solid click. Doc spun and found that some kind of internal lock had operated, and he couldn't open the door from the inside.
At the same moment, he saw the notice above the entrance and the single word Morgue.
Doc began to bang on the door, yelling for help at the top of his voice, feeling the first feather touch of panic.
Chapter Four
Ryan slid the SIG-Sauer into the greased holster, stooping to lace up his steel-toed combat boots. "You're sure about the sec lock out of this section?"
Jak nodded. "Soon as saw Doc gone, Dean and me went looking. Still locked and bolted from inside. No sign Doc anywhere. Sure would've heard if attacked."
"We've got to find him, Dad. There's no telling what could happen in here!"
Ryan straightened. J.B., Mildred and Krysty were all fully dressed, sitting on beds in the dormitory. By his wrist chron it was nearly five in the morning.
"Don't worry, son. We'll find him. He couldn't get far." The one-eyed man turned to Krysty.
"You feel him, lover?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Not really. You know I can't properly distinguish one person from another. Not when there's several of us around."
"You check the bathroom, Jak?" J.B. asked. "Didn't have a stroke or heart attack on the John, did he?"
"First place looked. Clean as knife blade in there. Shouted for him. No answer."
"Are there some locked rooms?" Mildred bit her lip worriedly. "Old fart's got to be someplace."
Ryan stood a moment, locked in thought, nibbling at a ragged edge of a torn nail. "Best we stay together," he decided. "If he hasn't gotten outside of the section, then there aren't many places he can be."
"MORTUARY," MILDRED SAID, trying the handle. "And the lock's engaged."
The friends stood in a silent half circle. They'd checked the outside sec bolts to Section JA 33, confirming what Jak had said. And they'd gone all through the whole section, calling out for Doc, waiting together in the oppressive stillness to try to catch the sound of a possible reply, filtering through the thick concrete walls.
But there was nothing.
Now there was only this one locked door.
Ryan rapped on it with the butt of his blaster, pausing to listen for any noise from behind the gray sec door. He knocked again, shouting out, "Doc! You in there, Doc?"
"Silent as a grave," Mildred muttered. "Likely to be cold in there, if the power system's still working. Yeah, likely to be real cold."
"Best shoot out the lock." Ryan gestured for the others to move back out of the way. "Shouldn't be triple vanadium steel, just for a mortuary."
"Doc used to sing that song," J.B. said. "Why build a wall around a graveyard, 'cause nobody wants to get in? Why build a wall round a graveyard, 'cause nobody wants to get out?"
Ryan nodded. "Yeah."
He positioned the four-and-a-half-inch barrel within a couple of inches of the lock, turned his head away and squeezed the trigger three times.
There was an eruption of orange sparks, and the high-powered rounds shattered the fastening on the morgue's door, the shock of the triple explosion jolting clear up his arm to the shoulder. Ryan holstered the blaster and reached out, turning the handle, pushing the door open.
Cold air rushed into the passage, like white spray, all of them feeling the biting chill.
"Doc!" Mildred called, her voice ragged with the first edge of panic, pushing past Ryan, running into the disinfected, freezing room.
"Here." The voice in reply came whispering from the deep shadows at the very rear of the mortuary, near the rows of deep cabinets.
Doc was sitting, arms huddled around himself, ice frosted in his hair, his face as white as polished ivory. Only his pale blue eyes showed any sign of life.
Mildred knelt at his side, finger going to the angle of neck and shoulder, feeling for a pulse. "Very slow," she said urgently. "Got to move him and warm him up."
Ryan and J.B. bent down, locking their hands beneath the old man's thighs, steadying him as they lifted. Doc's head lolled to the right, his eyes closing.
"What about the hot water in the showers?" Krysty suggested. "Raise his temperature."
"Yeah. Make a bed ready for him with plenty of blankets. Get him stripped off."
Now that the first shock of finding Doc so close to his unexpected date with the Grim Reaper had passed, Mildred had assumed her calm, professional demeanor.
DOCS BODY FELT FROZEN, the skin like parchment. The flesh was white, blotted with patches of blue and a deeper purple. Veins stood out on the back of his hands like dark whipcord. The frost melted away once they got him out of the freezing mortuary into the rest of the complex.
"Strip him off," Mildred ordered. "One of you should…maybe both of you should get in the shower with him to support him. Jak, you and Dean and Krysty get the bed ready for him." Ryan and J.B. carefully laid the motionless body on the tiled floor, peeling quickly out of their clothes, modestly keeping on their underwears, while Mildred had turned the chrome faucets, releasing a steady stream of warm water.
"Don't have it too hot for starters," Ryan said. "Shock could kill him."
"Why don't you go teach your grandma to suck eggs," Mildred snapped.
Ryan didn't respond to the gibe, taking one arm and lifting, while the Armorer took the other side. They eased Doc into a sitting position under the shower, kneeling alongside to hold him steady.
"He could mebbe take it just a little hotter," J.B. suggested.
Mildred adjusted the thermostat control. "How about that, John?"
"Better."
The water was now hot enough to steam, condensation streaming down the white tiles. All three men were soaked, huddled close together.
"How's he doing?" Mildred asked, peering through the fog. "How's the pulse?"
Ryan checked it at Doc's right wrist, closing his good eye to keep out the torrent of hot water. "Still a tad slow. But not far off normal."
"Maybe we should get him straight into a bed," Mildred said thoughtfully.
Doc's eyes blinked open and he gazed around, his expression blankly puzzled as he took in Ryan and J.B. on either side of him on the floor of the shower. Then he became aware of his own nakedness. Finally he turned his head and saw Mildred staring down at him.
"By the…" he began, coughing as water gushed into his open mouth.
"Shut it, Doc," Mildred hissed. "Not the time for your humor."
"Where…? I was freezing in a desperately cold place. What…?" His fine set of perfect teeth were chattering like someone with an ague.
"Get him up and out of there, guys." Mildred had found an armful of large white towels, made from a thick, fluffy material, in a closet. The water was turned off, the last drops streaming down the sluice, vanishing through the chromed drain cover. Ryan and J.B. helped Doc out, almost carrying him between them along the short stretch of corridor to the dormitory.
"Here," Mildred said, giving J.B. and Ryan a towel each, giving a third one to Krysty, keeping the fourth towel for herself.
Both women started to rub the old man dry, scrubbing at his pallid skin until it glowed with the friction. Doc moaned, opening his eyes for a moment.
"Where is your sense of dignity, ladies?" he asked softly. "I am shamed."
"You'd have been dead, Doc, if we hadn't got to you in time. That morgue was Arctic cold."
He swallowed hard and nodded at Mildred. "For once I cannot find the means to argue with you, madam. Except—" his hands dropped to
cover his groin "—I think that I can dry myself in the private parts."
"Sure, help yourself, Doc." Mildred handed him the towel. "Scrub well, then we'll get you under the blankets for an hour or so. You'll be fine."
MILDRED'S JUDGEMENT was dead-on. Just the single hour had drifted by when the long shape under the heaped blankets began to stir. Coughing, the tangled head appearing into the stark lights of the dormitory.
"By the Three Kennedys! That place was cold as death itself. But now I am myself."
"Thought we might eat some more of them stored cans, Doc," Ryan said.
" 'Those' stored cans, lover," Krysty corrected. "Sounds like a good idea. Then we can mebbe get outside and see where we've ended up."
"Smelled that pine scent again," Dean said, sitting cross-legged on the bed next to Doc.
"Me, too," Ryan agreed. "One of the nicest smells I've ever smelled."
Doc's teeth had stopped chattering, and some color had returned to his seamed cheeks. He ran his long fingers through his mane of silvery hair. "I would not be averse to spending some time in the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines." He laughed. "And I'll shiver the whole night through."
AFTER THEY'D FINISHED EATING and disposed of the dirty dishes and cans in the clattering garbage dispenser, Ryan called them all together. "Make sure you got all of your clothes and weapons," he said. Everyone went through the motions of checking their blasters, though Ryan knew it was hardly likely that any of them, even absentminded Doc, would walk out into Deathlands unarmed.
He then led the way out of the living quarters, with J.B. carefully closing the sec door behind them. The main entrance was only about three hundred yards away, past a number of locked side doors. One of them was labeled on the central map as being the armory, and J.B. spent a little time there trying to work it open. But it blankly resisted all of his efforts.
"Wish we'd gotten some plas-ex," he muttered, finally giving up. "Though from what we've seen, they'd likely have stripped it bare before the final vac."
"USUAL CODE, DAD?" Dean asked, pausing by the control pad at the side of the enormous double sec doors.
