by James Axler
The tunnel opened onto a small room filled with stacks of crates and machines. The walls were lined with shelving packed with boxes and mysterious objects wrapped in vacuum-form plastic. Closed blaster racks were filled with military weapons, and tarpaulins covered large piles that could be anything.
"Jackpot," J.B. said, almost smiling.
The silenced muzzle of the SIG-Sauer sweeping the room ahead of him, Ryan strode through the maze of boxes, looking at everything but touching nothing. Doc stayed near the grille, a hand resting on the lion's head of his swordstick. Sometimes they found others waiting for them in a military supply dump—sec men, muties that had sneaked in through the ventilation system, wild animals and on a couple of occasions a sec droid, almost unstoppable machines designed to kill unauthorized intruders.
Warily, the companions spread out and started to hunt through the piles of supplies for specific items. Later on, they would do an inventory and decided what to take, but first and foremost it was ammo and food. Everything else was secondary.
"MRE packs." Dean grinned in delight, going to a nearby shelf and pawing through a plastic box marked with the military designation for the long-storage food packs. Prying off the lid, he felt another rush of trapped gas and started running his fingertips carefully over the assortment of foil envelopes searching for even the tiniest pinprick or corrosion.
"Perfect condition," the boy announced happily, filling the pockets of his jacket until they bulged.
Snapping the pressure locks on a large plastic box, J.B. flipped off the lid and grinned at the M-16 automatic rifles nestled in a bed of thick black-green grease. Another crate yielded an M-60 machine gun, but upon closer inspection there was a crack in the case and the weapon was heavily corroded, especially its main recoil spring. As careful as if handling a bomb, J.B. closed the case and set it aside. The only way the M-60 could handle its incredible recoil was to house an eighteen-foot-long spring. Once long ago, the Armorer had been trapped without ammo, and let the spring fly loose just as a stickie was crawling in through a window. The coiled length went straight through the mutie and kept going for another fifty yards. A damaged M-60 was a dangerous thing.
"Ammo over here," Krysty reported, opening a sealed cabinet. The interior shelves were neatly filled with a wide collection of different caliber ammunition. A lot of it was in 10 mm, which they couldn't use. They often found the ammo, but never a 10 mm blaster. However, there were a few boxes of the older 9 mm rounds, and some civilian grades. Probably stored here to trade with any survivors outside. Pushing aside the .44 and .45 packs, Krysty discovered quite a lot of plastic-wrapped 5 mm ammo blocks for a Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless rifle. Ryan used to carry one, and gave it up because ammo was so hard to find.
On a lower shelf behind some cleaning kits, she finally found some boxes of .357 ammo, whistled sharply and threw one to Jak. The teenager made the catch and nodded in thanks. Going to another locker, Krysty uncovered a staggering cache of .38 rounds and took every box, stuffing her coat pockets full. Never had enough of this caliber. It was used by herself, Mildred and Dean. Jak, too, sometimes.
Clearing some space on a workbench, Jak opened the cardboard box and reloaded his blaster on the spot, then he tucked a few extra rounds in his pockets and put the rest in his backpack. Armed once more, Jak continued his search for clothing. Their pants and shirts were in tatters, underwear and socks always in short supply, and his left boot had a spot worn thin as a baron's promise. Unfortunately, he was only finding things like flak jacks, scuba suits, rain gear and a lot of those computerized helmets that attached to the telescope mounted on a MR-1 rapid-fire blaster. J.B. had told him you could stick the blaster around a corner and see what was on the other side on a tiny vid screen suspended from your helmet. Then flip a switch and see in pitch darkness, or track an enemy by his body heat. Amazing stuff. When it worked. But that tech required heavy batteries, and all sorts of computer software. None of which they had ever found in any redoubt. Now where the hell were the boots?
Heading directly for a large red cross on the far wall, Mildred found a small medical section, most of the chem in the bottles only dust now. The latex gloves for surgery cracked apart from sheer age when she tried to put one on, and the rubber on a stethoscope was as brittle as glass. The frustrated physician located the M*A*S*H field-surgery kit mentioned in the journal stuffed in the fridge. She had hoped it would be in there. The refrigerator would make the morphine last longer, and even with the power off, the fridge should keep out most of the moisture and air. The med kit was almost identical to her own, except in much better shape, and Mildred immediately began transferring the contents of her old med kit into the new bag.
Reaching a clear area situated before a steel desk, Ryan saw a complex radio wired to a nuke battery from a Hummer. Checking the dials, he found the batteries had been left on, and were totally drained.
Even those amazing devices had limits. It was a sobering thought. The radio would have been worthless anyway, but they might have been able to use the nuke battery to power some electric lights. Too bad. They often found wags, or at least parts of vehicles in the redoubts. No chance of that in a bomb shelter.
He found a chem bathroom in the corner, next to a row of shower stalls carpeted with mildew, and a line of bunk beds attached to the wall, the pallets reaching from the ferroconcrete floor to the ceiling. Accommodations for a full company of soldiers. Only a single bed was disheveled, but another was stripped, the mattress gone leaving only the bare metal springs and frame. The scene of the crime, as Mildred would say.
Following the power cables attached to the bare wall, Ryan soon located the generator, or rather, what was left of it. A tiny drip from a water pipe in the ceiling had slowly reduced the huge machine into a pile of rust over the long decades.
"Never get those going again," J.B. stated, joining the man. He pushed back his fedora. "This isn't the prize we thought. Half this stuff is useless."
"But half isn't," Ryan stated. He gestured. "Any fuel in those tanks?"
The Armorer rapped on the side of the tank with a knuckle and got a dull answering thump. "Sure, lots," J.B. answered, puzzled. "But it's diesel. Turned to jelly decades ago. Even if we got some to the gateway, it would be too thick to ran the turbines. Need to cut it with something."
"Shine?"
"Anything that burns would be okay."
"Good, save a gallon to take with us," Ryan said, then paused to let the throbbing in his leg ease. They had been on the run, fighting every step of the way for too damn long. The half-healed cut on his gun hand was starting to stiffen, seriously slowing his speed. Not good. Across the shelter, Krysty was rubbing her bad shoulder, and the others looked as if they had been ran over a couple of times by a war wag. Everybody was scratching at the itchy dried salt on their clothes, and down here in the close confines of the shelter house, the rank smell of unwashed bodies was starting to leave an oily taste in his mouth. Mildred was always touting cleanliness for health, but more importantly, when they went outside the stink would reveal their presence to anybody in the vicinity, and leave a hell of a fine trail for dogs to follow. And those triple-blasted crabs.
"We'll start on the juice tomorrow," Ryan said, sitting on a wall bunk. The mattress was a hell of a lot softer than the sand dune he awakened on that morning. "I think we'd better stay here for a while, get clean, catch some sleep. We have to cross three waterways to reach the island with a ville. Got the blasters to try now, but we're never going to make it if we're dragging ass every step of the way."
"Wouldn't mind a hot shower myself," J.B. said, glancing at the rusty stalls. "We could probably get those running in short order."
"How long?" Jak asked, padding over in his bare feet. The teenager was sliding laces through the holes of a brand-new pair of combat boots.
Ryan dropped his backpack and flexed his shoulders. "A week," he decided, laying the Steyr nearby. The blaster desperately needed to be completely disassembled a
nd oiled. "We'll have to guard the fireplace for crabs, and have somebody in the lighthouse to watch for the baron's men. Place a few C-4 charges along the stairwell in case of trouble. But we should be safe enough down here. For a while, at least."
Dropping their backpacks with sighs of relief, the companions got busy rearranging the crates to make more space and started settling in for the night. After establishing a firing line for defense, food was gobbled straight from the MRE packs, and the exhausted friends took turns sleeping and standing guard. Soon, the soft breathing of exhausted sleep filled the bomb shelter.
But all through the starry tropical night, the army of crabs crawled around the peninsula outside like flies on a corpse, endlessly searching for some way inside.
Chapter Four
A hundred nautical miles away on another island, Lord Baron Maxwell Kinnison was driving a pre-dark Hummer along the edge of a steep cliff at breakneck speed. Slowly, dawn began to tint the east sky, the polluted storms clouds overhead rumbling with thunder.
Revving the powerful engine on the Hummer, Kinnison banked sharply around a small avalanche of rocks and cut away from the slide to go deeper into the thick jungle of Maturo Island. There was little terrain on his island ville he didn't know in detail, having crawled and run and fought pirates on every hill. His path to the throne as baron of all barons had been steeped in blood, not one single drop of it his. At least, none in combat.
Arcing through a dense copse of thorny bushes, Kinnison headed back toward the seaside cliffs, his two passengers holding on for dear life against the wag's wild rocking.
A growth of bamboo was smashed aside, and their goal popped into sight. The cottage stood on the swell of a cliff overlooking the calm sea. The roof was solid, glass filled the windows and the thick door was bolted on the inside. A clear stream flowed past the cottage and over the cliff, bringing fresh drinking water and carrying away each day's bucket of waste. The trees were heavy with fruit, the vines rich with flowers whose scent repelled most of the insects. A fence of thorny bushes cut off the cottage and its garden from the rest of the island, and at the gate was a hand-painted sign bearing the symbol of the lord baron, followed by a death's-head skull. The meaning was plain and clear. Cross the fence and die.
With the engine roaring, the Hummer smashed aside the sign and rolled over the gate as if the posts were no more than leaves on the road. The predark machine raced directly to the front door, and the three occupants stepped out, two much more quickly than the third.
Lord Baron Kinnison, ruler of the Thousand Islands, hoisted his tremendous bulk from the vehicle, grunting constantly. He was becoming weaker every day and knew that the end was near. He was wrapped in thick layers of protective cloth, the material spotted with dried blood and moist yellow patches from fresh skin eruptions. The ends had been cut off his boots to allow his toes to breathe. Circulation was very bad in his feet, and he feared gangrene daily. His face a mass of open sores, and the fingers of both hands were wrapped in strips of cloth stained black and yellow from the dried blood and pus.
Some half-mutie slut from one of the western islands had given him the Red Death during sex. The disease was incurable, and the baron had tortured the girl for a moon before allowing her to finally die.
The leprosy was eating him alive, faster all the time; the flash was no longer working. His end was near. But the baron had already prepared for that eventuality.
The slim driver and the young slave girl waited patiently as the gigantic man squeezed his bulk from the military vehicle and finally stood. Briefly, Kinnison checked the array of predark blasters hidden about his bulk. Impatiently, the driver started to speak and Kinnison silenced him with a raised hand. The soft cry of a newborn child could be heard from within the cottage.
"Boy or girl?" he demanded, staring at the slave.
She bowed her head and said, "A boy, master. A healthy boy."
"No mutations at all?" Kinnison insisted, brandishing a fist. "Are you absolutely sure?"
"Yes, my lord. He is a norm. Big, but a gene-pure norm."
"And you can smell them, little one," he rumbled, scratching inside his rags. "That's why I keep you alive, for that one special trait. You can smell the mutie on a man or woman as if it was the stink from a swamp."
She bowed. "Yes, master."
Kinnison grunted. "You have served me well this day. But I cannot allow any to know of the child's real parents. Goodbye."
The girl stared in astonishment as the baron drew a silenced pistol from inside his clothing and fired. The blaster only coughed, but the slave violently staggered backward and sat down, blood trickling from the black hole in her face. In slow stages she toppled over, as if only laying herself down for a long nap.
Holstering the piece, Baron Kinnison stared at the house. The baron had given it to a faithful servant who saved his life from an assassin's blade. He had even given the man the most beautiful wife he could find, and made sure all of the food delivered to the couple was as clean as his own meals. Everything had been done to make the idiots breed him an heir, and two years later the bitch finally whelped. Two years! He wanted to tear them apart for that, but the man had saved his life once. The reward would be a clean chill.
"Here," Kinnison said, passing the silenced weapon to the doctor. "Ace the parents as painlessly as possible, and get the child. Do not let it touch me! If it gets my disease, your punishment will last for years after my own death."
Dr. Glassman nodded, holding the weapon awkwardly as if unfamiliar with how to use it.
Kinnison continued. "Then take the newborn to my rooms and kill the pregnant woman in my bed. Burn the unborn girl, and rub the boy with the woman's blood so they smell alike. Then send the news that I have a son."
"Of course, my lord, only…"
"What?" the baron raged, his piggy eyes glaring with fury.
"Afterward you'll have to chill me to keep the secret," Glassman said bluntly. "This I know. So I refuse to do as you command."
Kinnison stared at the man in disbelief.
"Unless you set my family free," the doctor continued quickly. Already he was afraid he had gone too far, asked for too much, but it was too late to turn back now. "Give them a boat and food and black powder enough for four blasters. When the boat is out of the harbor, I will announce the news of your son."
"You dare," Baron Kinnison grated low and dangerous, drawing another weapon from his clothing. It was a bigger blaster, trimmed with gold filigree and sporting a barrel wider than a grown man's thumb.
"You would do anything to make your son a blood heir to the Iron Throne of the Thousand Islands," Glassman replied, oddly calm. "Why do you think I would do less for my son to be free?"
Without speaking, Lord Baron Kinnison raised the blaster and thumbed back the hammer. Dr. Glassman stood there with the blaster in his hand, knowing that he could never use it. The punishment for attacking the baron would bring bloody horror to his family forever. He had played his card, father to father. The gambit would be accepted, or he would be chilled. That was all there was to it.
A long minute passed with only the sounds of the ocean breeze and the soft cries of the newborn child.
"Accepted," Kinnison said, easing down the hammer with his gore-streaked thumb. "They go free and you die."
"Agreed," Glassman said, and entered the tiny cottage. There were raised voices, a woman's scream, the soft chug of a silenced weapon firing again and again, and then the man walked out carrying a tiny wiggling bundle of life.
Glassman and the infant took the front seats, and Kinnison squeezed his bulk into the rear cargo area to stay as far away from his son as possible. Kinnison opened a canvas satchel and started to toss cylindrical grens through the open doorway of the cottage.
Gunning the engine to life, the doctor drove away from the cottage and passed the fence just as there was a brilliant flash of light and the first of the white phosphorous charges ignited. Chem flame shot out the door and windows
, and soon the entire clearing was a roaring inferno, flames licking into the sky for a hundred feet. Kinnison watched the destruction with some degree of satisfaction. Willy Peter didn't burn as hot as thermite, but it made much less smoke. Let people think what they wanted, but nobody would know the source of the child but himself and the healer. And when Glassman was aced by his hand, Kinnison would order one of the steam-powered PT boats to find and destroy the runaway slaves in the stolen ship. Setting the man's family free, and letting them stay free were two entirely different matters.
As they drove over the plains of grass, the jungle rapidly approaching, a sea breeze carried the smell of the burning cottage to the Hummer and the child began to cry.
Every jounce of the wag bringing pain to his sores, Kinnison bristled at the noise. "We'll never smuggle him into the fortress this way. Silence the thing!"
Slowing carefully, Glassman offered the newborn a clean rag dipped in coconut milk, and it started sucking happily, kicking tiny legs.
"All hail Corbet Kinnison," Glassman said, "heir to the Iron Throne of the Thousand Islands, admiral of the fleet, general of the army, master of the black powder."
"Not yet," Kinnison said, glancing across the island to the imposing fortress on top of the main mountain of his island ville. "But very soon."
Avoiding the farms with their slaves and overseers, Glassman drove the Hummer through an arid stretch of land yet to be reclaimed from the last acid rainfall until reaching a rough culvert, actually a cooled river of lava from the island's active volcano. Here the baron painfully stepped from the wag and watched it drive off before starting his long journey toward the fortress on the hill.
Walking was difficult for the overweight man, and he was drenched in sweat by the time he reached the end of the culvert and emerged onto a great grassy plain.
Pausing on a low hill to catch his breath, the baron looked out upon the world he ruled. Tendrils of dark smoke rose from the mines, which delivered the basic ingredients for black powder, and a good mile away were the mills that mixed and rolled the explosive into usable form. More farms spread into the jungle hills, tiny plows pulled by slaves harvesting the grain and fruit for his table. Nearby stood the slave pens and the execution yard. Keep the dead in sight and the living will obey, his father had always said, and he had been correct.
