by James Axler
"Can I offer you some assistance, my dear lady?"
"Don't be kind to me, Doc. Way I feel right now, I could just burst into tears."
The old man was first on his feet, steadying himself with the sword stick. "I believe that John Barrymoie Dix will soon be with us again," he observed.
Dean had slithered over on hands and knees, touching his father on the cheek. "Real hot," he said, so quietly that nobody else heard him.
J.B. opened his mouth, and a trickle of dark, vein-ous blood ribboned between his lips.
Mildred had just managed to drag herself into a sitting position. "Probably bit his tongue, or the inside of his cheek," she said. "I think." A pause. "I hope."
"Dad feels like he's on fire," Dean said, louder this time.
Mildred sighed. "I'm sure he's okay, son."
"Feel his head."
"All right." She edged over until she was beside Ryan and the boy. She put the flat of her hand on the man's forehead and her eyes opened wider. She took her hand off, then replaced it.
"Well?" Dean caught the expression of concern on the doctor's face.
"Yeah. He is hot, Dean. Got a real fever there. Soon as we get out of here we should try and do something to bring it down again. Feels a couple of degrees over the hundred."
It snapped Krysty out of her own comatose state. "Must've slipped asleep again," she said, fingering a small bruise that had sprung up on her cheek. " What's wrong with Ryan?"
"Fever," Mildred replied.
"Could be that scratch he got on his neck from those swift and evil muties."
Mildred half rolled Ryan over, noticing to her own private worry that he seemed utterly unresponsive, moving with the inert weight of the dead. She checked his pulse, which was fast, but regular, without any of the flickering erratic speed of a serious illness.
The chamber was brightly lighted, and it was easy to see the wound, see the way that it had altered for the worse within the past couple of hours.
"Well?" Krysty prompted.
"Not too good," Mildred admitted.
The wound was a jagged tear, slightly deeper at its top, narrowing. It was impossible to be sure, but it didn't look too deep. But it was obviously seriously infected. There was a yellow streak through its clawed center, liquid and leaking, and an inflamed red at the core of the wound that seemed to be extending in livid streaks, both up and down the side of the man's throat.
As Mildred touched it, Ryan gave a small gasp of pain, registering it through his darkness.
"Not too good at all," Mildred said.
J.B. sat up with a sudden, incisive gesture, fumbling for his glasses and perching them on his narrow nose. "Ryan looks ill," he said. "And Michael. You checked his breathing?"
Mildred shook her head. "Not yet, John. Ryan hasn't come around, and he's running a triple-high temperature. The wound in his neck's gone bad."
"Not surprised. Anything connected with that filthy place was probably poisoned."
"Except the candy," Dean said. "Anyone want any? I brought a few of those sticks with me."
"Save them." J.B. realized that the boy had been hurt by his curtness. "Save them, Dean. Could be we'll be real grateful you thought about bringing them."
"Sure. Thing I want most is a good drink. A cold and clear pool of Sierra meltwater." Dean licked his dry lips. "Trade it for most anything."
"Air doesn't seem too bad." Doc took several sniffs through his prominent, beaked nose. "Hardly the nectar of the gods, but at least it lacks that ghastly bitter, sort of chlorine odor of those foggy canyons."
"And it's not too hot, either." Mildred straightened. "Better take a look at Michael. I think we have to get Ryan to some water as fast as we can. Cool him down before he burns up. Might be water in some part of the redoubt. Assuming that there is a redoubt around us."
Krysty had been leaning against the wall, eyes closed, concentrating on trying to pick up some "feelings" from the place. The atmospher e was typical of most of the complexes that they'd visited, flat and slightly stale, as if it had been recycled a million times-which it might well have been during the century since skydark, the hidden nuke gens working away toward infinity and a day. Most redoubts still functioned, with light, heat, air-conditioning and cleaning all working to the comp-controlled program.
"Nothing to report," she finally decided. "Can't pick up any life vibes."
"How's Michael?" Dean asked, standing close to Mildred as she examined the teenager.
"Move back a little. Give me some space." She peeled back his eyelids and looked intently into his eyes. "Pupils dilated. Breathing very slow. Pulse the same. Almost like he's slipped into some kind of concussive, clinical shock."
"Mebbe the third jump was one too many." J.B. had already picked up the Steyr rifle and strapped it over his shoulders, handing the Uzi to Dean.
Mildred sniffed. "Don't know. Hopefully Michael should snap out of it. Probably come around all at once and wonder what on earth could have happened to him. I suppose that it might be a psychosis induced by the mat-trans."
"Delayed reaction to being trawled?" Doc looked worried. "I do trust that none of you are aware of this fact, but I confess that my own mind is not always the efficient reasoning machine that it once was. I blame those white-coated demons for that. And for much besides."
Ryan shuffled his feet, the soles of the combat boots rasping on the metal disks in the gateway's floor. The fingers of his right hand kept clenching and straightening, as if he were trying to grasp something.
"We should move," Mildred said.
"What about Michael, though? We can't just leave him." Krysty looked at the others. "Won't be easy if we have to try and carry them both."
"Can do it, if it's not too far." J.B. looked down at the two unconscious figures. "Ryan weighs in around the two-hundred-pound mark. I'd guess that Michael is probably fifty or sixty pounds lighter."
"I could take more blasters," Dean offered. "Or give a hand with Michael."
"Have to try it." The Armorer stood there for a few moments, locked into a variety of logistical calculations. Which of them should do what.
"I could carry the lad for a way," Doc offered. "I still recall how to implement what we used to call the 'fireman's carry' method."
J.B. nodded approvingly. "Fine. I can take Ryan for a start. Then, mebbe Mildred and Krysty could spell me for a time."
"What about..." Dean started.
"Don't worry. You get to be a walking arsenal for the rest of us. Doc's sword as well as the Uzi. And the rifle. Reckon that's the best we can do."
"Sure."
Ryan moaned again, his head rolling from side to side. His mouth had sagged open and his breathing was ragged. Mildred stared down at him. "Think I might have to try and cauterize that wound. But we need a fire and some decent water for that. The infection seems to be racing through him. Massive dose of antibiotics might be the ticket." Mildred sighed. "Time's wasting. No point in hanging around here."
Doc nodded vigorously, kneeling beside Michael's motionless figure. "Could someone give me a hand to get him up on my shoulders?"
Without a breath of warning, Michael's eyes opened wide, and be grabbed the old man around the throat with ghastly violence.
"Die, fucking Satan!" he screamed. "Die!"
Chapter Twelve
The attack was so sudden and so violent that it took several heartbeats before anyone reacted.
By then Doc was flat on his back in the chamber, Michael kneeling astride him, gripping him around the neck so ferociously that the old man's eyes were protruding from their sockets.
The teenager maintained a constant stream of foul-mouthed abuse, calling Doc the devil and Satan, screeching that he would exorcise him from his mind.
Krysty moved fastest.
She drew the double-action Smith & Wesson 640 from its holster and hit Michael a roundhouse, clubbing blow with the butt, striking him just behind the right ear.
He stiffened and jerked
back, his hands flying apart as though he'd just received some astounding religious conversion. Then he groaned once and collapsed forward, slumping on top of the semiconscious Doc.
"Holy shit!" Dean exclaimed. "If I hadn't been holding all these blasters, I'd have aced him.""
J.B. reached into one of the pockets of his coat and removed two lengths of thin waxed twine. "Going to
tie him up before he comes around and does some more damage."
"Think it was probably a madness brought on by the jump," Mildred said.
Krysty had bolstered the Smith & Wesson and kneeled by the shaken old man, who was rubbing at his bruised throat with both hands, struggling to get his breathing back to somewhere close to normal.
"Land of Goshen! The poor lad was possessed. I thought my last moment had come. Who stopped him from impersonating the thuggish stranglers of the goddess Kali?"
"Me. Bopped him with the blaster."
"Then you have my heartfelt thanks, my dear Krysty. My whole life flashed past me."
"Did it really, Doc?" Dean asked eagerly. "Heard people say that before."
"Well, if I lay my hand upon my heart, I have to admit that it didn't really, Dean. Just a pounding across the temples and blood filling my eyes."
J.B. quickly and efficiently knotted the cord around Michael's thumbs, behind his back, also lashing the teenager's ankles together. He straightened. "There. Might be all right, but I'm not taking a chance."
Ryan opened his eye and stared around the gateway chamber. "Pretty color of purple on the walls," he said. "Successful jump, then?" He started to lift his hand toward the suppurating wound on his neck.
"No, don't touch it." Mildred stooped quickly and checked the movement.
"What? Fireblast, but my neck feels... I feel triple sick and... where are the snows of..." His eye closed again, and Ryan slipped back into the darkness.
"Boy, but we're sure all having a load of fun here." Mildred sighed. "One mad and one sick."
"Best move it," J.B. said. "Doc."
"Yes, my dear chap?"
"Can you manage to carry Michael?"
"I shall resist the temptation to drop him on his skull, if that's what you mean. Though, if he commences to struggle, I shall regard that as an adequate excuse."
THE CHAMBER OPENED onto a small room, eight feet square, wtih a small table in one corner and two rows of empty shelves. There was a rectangle of white card pinned to one of the shelves, crumpled and fragile.
"'Paul and Danny, the Vid Men,'" Dean read slowly. "'Best Selection hi all N.H.' What's that mean?"
"New Hampshire," Mildred said. "Looks like we've finished up in New England."
Doc had already begun to pant with the effort of carrying the unconscious Michael slung over his shoulder. "Can we keep moving?" he asked. "I fear that once I lay this burden down I shall not be up to taking it up again."
The control room was much like all of the others that they'd seen-rows of desks and rows of screens, all showing shimmering rows of information; endless blocks of coded numerals, relating to all the aspects of
running the redoubt; not a sign of any sort of life anywhere.
On the far end of the room were the usual double sec doors of vanadium steel, with the green control lever set to the right-hand side.
J.B. was far stronger than his slim build would suggest, and he didn't seem to be struggling at all under Ryan's weight. "Dean, you operate the lever. Mildred and Krysty, both of you get your blasters ready and crouch down on the floor. You know how to do it. Seen Ryan and I enough times. Dean, just about nine inches. No more. Understand?"
"Sure," Krysty said, Mildred and Dean both nodding their agreement.
Doc was wheezing. "Can I lay down this sleeping beauty for a moment?"
"Sure. Get the Le Mat out and keep watch."
"Wilco, Commander Dix. You mean to watch the door with the ladies?"
"No. Watch Michael."
"He's tied up safely."
"Long as he hasn't got some sort of crazie strength to break free. Just watch him."
"What if he escapes and looks dangerous?"
J.B. eased Ryan on his shoulder. "Shoot him, Doc. Just shoot him."
THE CORRIDOR WAS BARE.
Dean was sent off on a recce to the right, urged to be careful, returning within less than two minutes with the news that the passage ended in a solid wall of stone only a hundred paces or so around the curve.
The overhead strip lights glared down pitilessly, and the miniature sec cameras probed ceaselessly from the junction of wall and ceiling.
Now that they were on a level expanse of smooth concrete, Doc seemed to have a new lease on life, striding out, knees cracking, Michael still unconscious on his shoulders.
There were no side passages or doors in the first quarter mile. The corridor had been dead flat, but it now began to wind slowly upward.
Doc stopped and gently put Michael down on the floor. "I think a small rest is required."
J.B. lowered Ryan beside the bound figure of the teenager.
"Hard time of it," he said, pushing his fedora back on his forehead.
"Think it'll be much farther?" Dean asked, standing and looking worriedly at his father--who opened his eye.
"Father is farthest," he said. "Don't ask so many questions, son. We'll get there when we get there. Shit, this wound on my neck hurts."
Then he closed his eye and was silent.
"Want us to take some of the load?" Krysty asked. "Must be an elevator or some kind of intersection soon."
"I don't know where I am."
The voice was barely recognizable as Michael's, a strange, wizened, whispering voice, like a waUed-up crone in a labrynth.
"I don't know who I am."
It was Doc who knelt by the boy, brushing the hair away from the dark troubled eyes. "Your name is Michael, and you are with friends."
"You lie."
The ferocity of the earlier mood seemed to have altered to a withdrawn passivity. The planes of the you ng man's face were as smooth as a little child's.
"We are friends, truly," Doc encouraged.
"I'm trapped, deep inside my own bowels," Michael insisted. "All blackness."
His eyes were wide open, staring through Doc. Krysty noticed that he was tensing all his muscles, as if he were testing the bonds.
"Watch him, Doc," she warned. "Could be foxing."
"Either I have taken some drug that has made me mad," Michael whispered, "or I'm totally mad. I can't tell which is the truth."
"Neither. You are Michael and we are friends. I'm Doc. There's Krysty and-"
"Imps of evil. Brother Athanasius warned us against such as you. You come disguised with fucking smiles and fucking lies."
"Best get on, Doc," J.R said. "Want the ladies to take a turn?"
"Perhaps. I might go ahead on point."
"I was doing that," Dean protested. "Why don't you watch the back?"
There was an uncomfortable moment while the boy and the old man stared at each other. J.B. broke the impasse. "You've been on point, Dean. Take turns. Keep alert, Doc."
"Of course." He stuck out his tongue at Dean when the Armorer turned his back, making the lad grin.
Mildred took Michael's shoulders and Krysty his legs, while J.B. carried on with Ryan.
It was slower and clumsier with two of them, as Michael was conscious and kept wriggling, trying to kick out at Krysty, mumbling an endless stream of curses.
After less than a hundred yards Krysty had taken enough and let go of the teenager's legs. "Drop him," she said.
Mildred lowered Michael, while J.B., just ahead of them, turned around and saw what had happened. He put Ryan down again.
"Bitch fucker shit sucker."
"Nice rhyme, Michael," Krysty said. "Now, you got a choice here." She rested her Western boot on his throat, pinning him between the sole and the heel. She leaned a little of her weight down, making his face flush.
"Fuck off," he gasp
ed.
"No. That's the sort of thing you say when you're on top and under control. I'm on top, Michael and you're under control. Better understand that right now." She pressed harder, feeling the cartilage crackle
under her foot. "You swear at me again, or if you try to kick me, then I'll break your neck."
