by James Axler
His father didn't reply, but chambered a round into the Steyr. A few hundred yards later, they found the half-consumed carcass of a buck deer on the stony ground, the rotting meat completely covered with busy black ants. The ripening stench was awful, and they hurriedly arced around the clearing, staying within the canopy of the trees.
Climbing over some fallen oak trees, Ryan discovered a tiny babbling brook, really no more than a creek, cutting through a tangle of underbrush. Tadpoles and crayfish were busy in the soupy mud. The water read clean on his rad counter, so he filled his canteen and moved onward. The rest of the companions hardly broke their stride, stepping over the trickle of water. A gully cut through the trees, saplings and birch standing ghostly white amid the dark pines. Climbing onto the raised land, the companions started across a sloped field of stubby grass. Soon, a river could be heard flowing nearby.
"Sounds like it's going in the right direction," J.B. said, tilting his head toward the noise. "How about making another raft?"
"Had enough of that," Ryan muttered. Stopping abruptly, Mildred stared hard at the northern sky. "Well, I'll be damned," she whispered. "Didn't we leave the burning Hummer west of us?"
"Sure did," J.B. answered, then the man sniffed. What was that bitter smell?
Mildred pointed. "Then what the hell is that?"
A thick plume of smoke rose over the forest. The winds were thinning it across the sky until it vanished, but this close the plume was a solid black.
"Way too big to be a campfire," Dean said thoughtfully. "Mebbe the forest is on fire."
"Animals not left," Jak stated, drawing his Colt Python. "They be first."
Her hair anxiously waving, Krysty sniffed a few times. "That's coal," she stated as a fact. "A coal-burning fire."
"Plenty of coal in Tennessee," Doc said. "Perhaps it is a local blacksmith."
"Have to be a damn huge one."
"Hmm, true, madam. I stand corrected. Perhaps some local baron has built a foundry to reclaim predark metal."
"Could be anything, even a power plant," Ryan grunted. He had encountered coal-burning power stations when he traveled with the Trader. Mostly they were crude things, a rusty boiler whistling steam at a homemade turbine attached to a hundred car generators. But even a rickety machine like that made a lot of electricity. Lights, heaters, electric fences.
"Silas," Doc whispered, fingering the silver lion's head on his swordstick.
"Silent recce," Ryan declared, loosening the SIG-Sauer in its holster. "Five-yard spread. Go."
The companions spread out and started into the forest once more. After a while, they left the trees and found themselves standing on the bank of a river. The water rushed over rocks, foaming white and dangerous. On the other side was a dirt road deeply cut with rain gullies. Beyond that were thick bushes and more trees. Other than the companions, there was nothing else in sight. "There," Jak said, gesturing with his Colt. A short way up the river was another bridge, wider and more detailed than any of the others they had encountered so far.
"Odd," Krysty noted. "That's the first bridge with handrails. The others were just flat planks without railings."
"Doesn't look predark," Dean estimated. "Mebbe it's the first one the blues built. You always do the first of anything a bit fancier than needed."
"It does not go anywhere," Doc said, sounding annoyed. "They built a bridge, but not a road?"
"Changed minds," Jak suggested.
"Or ran out of slaves," Mildred countered.
Pensive, Ryan looked at the sky. Night was rapidly approaching. Should they continue to the redoubt, or check out the smoke? Tough choice.
"We'll recce the smoke," he decided. "But if we encounter any large groups of blue shirts, we run for the redoubt. Understood?" All nodded their assent.
The companions stayed within the cover provided by the trees until reaching the bridge. J.B. checked underneath from the shore, and they crossed without trouble. Past the road, they went into the woods and found the pines were only a few yards deep. They stopped in a neat line, the land beyond dotted with stumps and sloping away to a valley.
"Eureka," Doc whispered, thumbing back the hammer on the LeMat.
A sprawling ville filled the floor of the mountain valley, at one end a brick building with a tall circular chimney pouring out thick smoke, insulated wires running from a battery of transformers and spreading across the valley in a black spiderweb of technology. New brick buildings stood alongside predark structures and a shiny new Quonset hut. A stone wall was being built around the enclosure, the tiny figures of sec men visible as they patrolled its top. Hundreds of people were moving about on the ground, doing incomprehensible things at that distance. Rising above everything was a huge white bowl set within a framework of steel girders and I-beams that rested on a slab of concrete. A slim pole thrust from the center of the bowl, pointing toward the cloudy sky, and tiny lights winked.
"Dark night, this is even bigger than the Anthill mock-up of D.C.," J.B. muttered, cradling the Uzi in both arms.
"Fireblast! They have a bastard tank!" J.B. snorted. "Dead tank. See there? A couple of the sec men are hammering on the top hatch with chisels, trying to get inside." Ryan relaxed slightly. "Good."
"What bowl?" Jak asked, squinting in displeasure. Even though the teenager used the redoubts and mat-trans units, he was no fan of technology, and this smacked of predark science on a major scale.
"That, my friend, is a radio telescope," Mildred said softly, as if afraid the people in the valley might her the words. "And it seems to be fully restored."
Ryan scowled. "A sky talker."
"Has Silas managed to launch something into orbit?" Krysty asked.
"Not here," Ryan stated. "I've seen space ports, and this has none of the right machines. No fuels tanks, or fire equipment, no bunkers." He frowned. "But it sure as hell was built to do something important."
Mildred said something that sounded like "settee."
"Come again, madam?" Doc asked.
"SETI," she repeated. "That dish antenna was an old project even before the nuke war. The search for extraterrestrial life. The government was trying to talk, or at least listen, to alien civilizations. See if we were alone in the universe."
Dean looked away from the dish. "You mean people on other worlds?" he asked incredulously. "Never thought of such a thing."
"Most considered it crazy. Even if we reached anybody, the messages would have taken dozens or even hundreds of years to get there and come back."
"We ask the question, and our great-grandchildren hear the answer," Doc intoned, easing down the hammer and cocking it again. "Indeed, that most certainly does seem like a waste of time and resources."
"Doesn't matter," Ryan said, sliding a finger under his eye patch to gently scratch. The salt from the Carolina basin had never fully washed out of the scarred hole, even with their bath in the fresh water river. "Some predark whitecoat tried to talk with another in space. Doesn't matter now. But this must be the home base for Silas and the blue shirts. Only question is, what is the bastard using the antenna for?"
"Not for talking with alien beings," J.B. said, snorting rudely, then removing his fedora and wiping the sweat off the inside. "Aliens, ha!"
Above them, the darkening sky rumbled ominously, lightning flashing from cloud to cloud.
"Satellite," Krysty suggested, brushing back her wild profusion of fiery red hair. The cascade moved about her fingers in a familiar fashion. "Mebbe he found something still in orbit and is trying to using this radio to talk to it."
"Weapon, recon?" Jak asked, straight to the point.
The woman shrugged.
"Recce would be pointless," J.B. said. "Got to be a weapon of some kind. Missiles, mebbe."
"Fabulous, just what the world needs," Mildred muttered. "Another skydark to finish the job of exterminating humankind."
"I want to get closer," Ryan said, starting down the hill. "We need to know what's going on." The ground sloped
even more sharply as they walked down the hillside, the angle becoming so pronounced the companions stopped walking and slid along the seats of their pants. Any attempt at running would have sent them tumbling head over heels into the valley below. A ridge in the slope dropped five feet straight down onto a gentler angle. A few yards away, a split-rail fence extended across the slope, bare wires resting on glass knobs intertwined with the green wood.
"New," Jak stated.
Picking up a stick, Dean started forward. "I'll see if it's live."
"Don't," Ryan barked, holding out a hand. "If that is electrified, a touch might send off a signal that we're where. Live wires can be rigged like the proximity fuse of a bomb."
The boy dropped the stick and backed away.
Going near the fence, Ryan aimed the Steyr at the ville below and adjusted the focus of the telescopic sights to infinity. Pulling out his Navy telescope, J.B. extended the tube to its fullest length and did the same.
There was a quarry to the south, which seemed to have had a major collapse. Tough break for the stone cutters, but of no interest to them. Both men glanced briefly at the slaves hauling boxes to the dish antenna, then scrutinized the stone wall for weak points. The gate was impressive, but the section opposite the quarry was only two courses high.
"Six feet?" J.B. expertly guessed.
Ryan grunted. "Mebbe less. If we need to gain entrance, that's the doorway we'll use."
"Check. Lots of wags near the base of the dish."
"Might be the garage. Or their bolt-hole."
"It's a fort. There're no windows for ventilation."
Sweeping the compound, Ryan froze as he spied a LAV-25 parked near the Quonset hut. The metallic structure had bars on the windows, an armored door and was closed off with electric fencing. Whatever was inside was very important to the these people. Inside the fencing, a group of blues with blasters stood rigidly at attention around a tall, almost feline man with silvery hair, a pronounced widow's peak and bushy eyebrows. Dressed in a white laboratory coat, the thin man was leaning heavily on a wooden cane, obviously favoring his left leg.
"That's where Doc stabbed him," J.B. said.
"Wish it had been the heart," Doc grumbled, staring into the ville, unable to see anything clearly, but imagining every detail.
"It's Silas," Ryan agreed, adjusting the focus with fingertip pressure. The circle view through the crosshairs jumped into crystal clarity. "That other fellow must be the chief of the sec men. He's not saluting, and they appear to be arguing."
"Silas didn't exactly tolerate the opinions of others," Krysty added, squinting at the distant figures. The woman's vision was greater than most people's, but this was beyond even her best. "Much less that of his staff."
"Dark night!" J.B. cursed in frustration. "If we only had a weapon with good range, we could ace them both right here and now!"
"That would pay many debts," Doc stated, the wind ruffling his long silvery hair. His heart was pounding hard, but he somehow maintained an outward calm. Kidnapper, torturer, killer, what there words could describe the lunatic genius behind Overproject Whisper and all of its subdivisions that had taken Dr. Theophilus Tanner away from his beloved wife and children.
"Emily," Doc whispered, and for the tiniest flicker of time he thought he heard her call his name in return. But it was only the cold mountain winds, moaning through the pines of the Tennessee valley.
Stepping closer, Mildred placed a hand on the old man's arm and squeezed gently. Doc started to speak, but his voice broke and he turned away from the valley.
"Chilling the bastards would be nice," Krysty agreed. "But we still need to find out what they are doing with that freaking big dish."
"True, but it would be a lot easier to recce if the baron and his top gun were both breathing dirt." Ryan worked the bolt on the Steyr, then wrapped the strap around his muscular forearm to help steady his aim. The angle was wrong, so he lay down and placed the barrel on the lowest rail of the fence. The electric wires hummed above, but he reasoned his blaster was far enough away to not set off an alarm.
"Can't do it," J.B. said, collapsing his telescope. "Not shouldn't, but you can't. It's beyond the range of your blaster."
"Beyond the effective range," Ryan corrected him, studying the wind push as it pushed a stray piece of paper along the roof of a building. The air was moving faster up here, slower down there. That meant less sheerage, but greater density. "The rounds will reach them, just not with their full force."
"What do bruises?" Jak demanded angrily. "Means it'll only chill the mutie-maker, but not remove his entire head," Ryan said, wiggling into a more comfortable position. The short grass was itchy under him, a rock pressing into his hip. The Deathlands warrior ignored the tiny disturbances and concentrated on the silver-haired man near the APC. The element of surprise was his. But if he missed this time, Silas might stay inside until further notice, never giving the companions another clear shot. Was it worth the risk? Should he take the shot?
"Fuck, yes," Ryan growled softly to himself. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he placed the crosshairs of the scope on the whitecoat's chest, moved it a foot to the left, then six inches up, and fired.
But even before he finished pulling the trigger, Ryan remembered Overton's bulletproof jacket. Quickly, he worked the bolt and fired again, lower this time, then again, slightly to the left, and once more adjusting to the right.
"FOOL! MORON!" Silas raged, stamping his good foot and gesturing at the exposed wiring of the transformer. "Look at this mess! You have the goddamn fence wired completely wrong! I told you a looped circuit so that a break in one area will not leave us defenseless across the entire fence. Looped—don't you know the word?"
"Sir, I can handle this later," the major urged again. "We should be inside out of sight."
Silas glared at him in outrage. "Not until we have this fixed! The electric fence is our main protection from Ryan or another slave revolt, and this idiot screwed up the wiring!"
Lashing out, Silas hit the man with his cane. "Now get gloves and fix the circuits, while it's hot!"
"I'm not sure where the gloves are, sir," the sec man protested.
"Do it anyway," Silas growled.
The other sec men murmured in fear.
"While it's hot? I could be chilled, sir!" the man wailed.
Imperiously, Silas glared at the cringing man. "I have more sec men if you should fail."
Damp with sweat, the blue shirt looked to his chief for assistance.
"Do as the commander orders," Sheffield said sternly. "And next time, if you don't know what to do, ask for help before figuring it out yourself."
"B-but, sir, I—"
"Enough!" Silas shouted, hitting the trooper again. "Stop weeping like a caned child! Do your job, or die!"
Turning toward the Quonset hut, Silas took a single step and was violently knocked backward a full yard. Gasping for breath, his lungs feeling as if they were on fire, Silas groaned and rubbed his chest in pain, fingers recoiling as they encountered the red-hot lump of a flattened bullet. Instantly, the predark scientists realized what was happening and tried to scramble under the LAV. The boom of a high-powered rifle rolled over the complex, and a second round plowed directly into his throat, clearing the vest by an inch. Blood sprayed onto the stunned crowd of sec men, the impact knocking Silas sideways, arms flailing. The second boom arrived just as the third round punched a hole below his left eye, the entire back of his head exploding into a grisly spray of brains and bones.
Even as he fell, a fourth shot slammed into his vest again, driving the corpse backward into the exposed wiring of the transformer. His arms hit the bus bars. There was a crackle of power, and eighty thousand volts of direct current flowed through the dead man in a controlled lightning bolt. His hair burst into flames, his blood boiled into steam, eyes exploded and his clothes ignited as writhing tendrils of high voltage crawled over his twisting form.
Backing away in horror, Sheffield
felt a breeze brush past his face and realized what it was before the crack of the longblaster arrived. Grabbing the closest sec man, he lifted the man off the ground and swung the blue shirt between himself and the distant hills just in time. Gasping for breath, the living shield jerked and spit out a tongue and wads of brain tissue from his mouth as two more copper-jacketed rounds arrived.
Holding the corpse up, the major moved behind the nearby LAV, then tossed it aside. Safe for the moment, he could only watch as the body of Silas Jamaisvous was slowly reduced to a grinning skeleton. For a split second, there seemed to be a circuit board riveted to the man's skull, and then that vanished in a whoof of flames.
"In the wag!" Sheffield bellowed, thumping a fist on the armor. "Fire the chain gun at the hillside!"
"Where on the hill, sir?" a young voice asked from inside.
"Due south! Just above the ridge fence!" Then Sheffield quickly added, "But don't open the hatch! Stay under cover!"
Blood and teeth sprayed from the turret, followed by the rolling thunder of the longblaster.
"Damn you, Ryan," the chief blue shirt cursed, positive he knew the identity of the sniper. Who else could it be, but the man Silas so hated and feared. Suddenly, Sheffield was surprised to find a blaster in his grip, and he holstered the useless weapon. At this range he might as well throw rocks for all the good it would do. The officer wasn't even sure the chain gun could reach the fence, but it would have been worth a try.
The crackling discharge at the transformer finally ceased as the material causing the short circuit was cleaned off the fully charged bus bars. Gray ash, charred cloth and some smoking pieces of bone sprinkled to the ground.
Then a flash of rainbow from the remains caught Sheffield's attention, and he saw it was the computer disk Silas had refused to let him inspect. He started for the disk, then stopped himself. A single round from the sniper would also drive him into the transformer with the same results. The disk seemed undamaged, but was temporarily out of his reach.
Racing around a corner into the enclosure, a squad of armed sec men came into view. "Sir, we heard shots." a burly sergeant started, then stopped talking as he took in the grisly sight at the transformer.
