by James Axler
It was deserted, without any indication that anyone had ever been running down it.
“They can’t fuck with us like this, we don’t have the time for games,” she said angrily.
“Wait,” Doc cautioned. “Do not be too hasty. I suspect that they may not be as stupid as we supposed.”
But his words were wasted. Mildred was in no mood to be jerked around by people she hadn’t even seen. Every logical and rational process that usually ran through her head was thrown out, jettisoned by the red mist of anger. Maybe Doc had been right with his notion that the successive jumps had affected them in some way, physiologically or psychologically. Certainly, there was a part of her that knew what she was doing was crazy. But for the most part she just didn’t care.
She strode out into the corridor, ZKR held steady in both hands, pivoting from side to side to cover any enemy that may lurk. Where, she couldn’t say, as there were no rooms leading off this section of the corridor in which the phantoms behind the footsteps could have concealed themselves. In fact, there was nowhere that they could have gone. And it was a hell of a lot of corridor for them to have retreated up—and unheard, at that—before Doc would have been unable to see them.
Doc hurried to catch her up. He was casting anxious glances around him, and was cradling his LeMat like it was a security blanket.
“My dear Doctor,” he said in urgent tones, “I think you are being a trifle hasty over this. We are opening ourselves to any possible attack. We’re exposed here,” he said hurriedly. “I think it may be best if we try to get back to the mat-trans. This could take up too much time.”
“I don’t get it,” she muttered, almost ignoring Doc. “We heard the bastards, and there’s nowhere that they could be hiding. Nothing on the sides, nowhere ahead that I can see—oh shit!” she suddenly exclaimed, flinging out her right arm so that it caught Doc across the chest and pushed him back. “Back, for God’s sake, back.”
The old man was on his heels, stumbling backward and falling as her actions caught him completely off guard. It was only as he fell that he realized what had caused her outburst, and by then it was far too late. As she turned, Mildred found herself entangled in Doc’s flailing limbs. Despite her best efforts, she found herself becoming entwined with him, and falling as his momentum carried her down.
They hit the concrete floor with a bone-jarring crunch, but that was nothing compared to the hubris that Mildred felt as the net fell gracefully from the ceiling and covered both Doc and herself.
“Don’t move,” she whispered, her fingers exploring behind her to try to feel the type of net. She was facedown, and it was difficult. “Doc—”
“No need,” he cut in. His own fingers had grasped the netting and were feeling for any weaknesses. It didn’t seem likely that there would be an easy way out. They were covered from head to foot and beyond. The netting didn’t feel like the kind of rough twine that was usually encountered. This had been taken from within the redoubt, and was of a man-made plastic fiber. Even with the blades, it would take some time to cut through it. And he doubted very much that they had that kind of time.
“I fear, dear lady, that we are trapped. It would take some time for me to cut us free, even if I had the tools. We must face the fact that we are, perhaps, stranded.”
Mildred could feel tears pricking at her eyes—not of sorrow or pain, but of frustration and anger. How could she have been so stupid as to let this happen? She shifted her weight, hoping to be able to turn around so that she could, at least, see whatever fate was about to befall them. But as she moved, all she succeeded in doing was pulling the net tighter around them.
And now there were footsteps again. Four pairs of footfalls, approaching at leisure and with an ease that led her to a deeper frustration. She wriggled onto her back and lifted her head so that she, like Doc, could see the four men that approached them.
All four were lean, the leanness that comes from battle rather than hunger. They were dressed in an assortment of old military camou, presumably looted from the redoubt, and all of it looked as though it had seen some action. They were armed with SMGs and handblasters, though the latter were in unsecured holsters, and the former were carried at ease. They walked in a loose formation—one on front, one at the rear, and the middle two fanned out on either side. At least it gave all of them a clear view of their captives. Any attempt to fight back might claim one of them, but would be Pyrrhic. All were unshaved, and dirty in a way that meant that Mildred and Doc could smell them before they could pick out details by sight.
The leader, who wore an eyepatch over the same eye as the absent Ryan, was smoking a cigar that had also presumably been looted, but had perhaps not been stored too well. It was he who brought his men to a halt a few yards away.
“You know, I always wondered if that little trap would work,” he said to no one in particular, gazing up at the ceiling where empty grappling hooks had been drilled into the concrete. “The weird thing is that I always figured the enemy would be coming down, not coming up.” He fixed his gaze on the prone warriors. “Just as well we figured out how to use that loudspeaker and vid system they had down here. Might not have seen you coming, otherwise. ’Course,” he continued, hunkering down so that he could get a closer squint at Mildred and Doc, “that ain’t the real question, is it? The real question is, how the fuck did you two get down there in the first place? ’Cause you sure as hell didn’t come past us. And as far as I know—any of us, come to that—there ain’t no other way in.”
He paused, as if waiting for them to answer. But both Doc and Mildred opted for silence. So he sniffed and stood.
“Okay, so you want it to be like that. Didn’t really expect you to spill it just like that. Not if I’m being truthful with you. In fact, if I’m going to keep on being truthful, it might just get a little painful for you until you do tell. The boys here are gonna let you loose. Don’t try and be smart ’cause we’ll just shoot through them to chill you if you’re trouble. And they know we will. It’s how we survive.”
As he spoke, he casually leveled the SMG and turned to them. The man at the rear moved up, adopting a similar stance, while the two men who had been on the flanks walked toward Doc and Mildred. There was something about the way all of them carried themselves, and the manner in which they moved, that suggested he wasn’t bluffing. Without having to communicate, the trapped companions decoded that their only option was to roll with things and wait for an opening.
They patiently let the two coldhearts free them, carefully unwrapping the netting and pushing it to one side of the corridor, ready to be reset at their leisure. Doc and Mildred were gestured to their feet, and ushered the way they had originally been headed. Not a word was said by their captors.
It was only when they were up another level that they saw how organized their opponents could be. The level on which the rooms and the offices of the old redoubt had been reorganized showed that a lot of thought had been put into the way the coldhearts had chosen to live. They may be stonecold chillers, but they couldn’t be underestimated in any other way.
Beds, kitchen equipment and clothing had been carried up to this level. The old uses of the rooms could no longer be defined as the whole level had been converted into a multipurpose living area. The armory had been moved wholesale into one of the rooms, and the supply stores had been jammed into a couple of others. The only things they couldn’t have moved were the latrines and showers. And it didn’t smell like they were too fussy about the latter.
There were seven other men that they could see, and half a dozen women who also stopped their own tasks to look around as Doc and Mildred were led into the room.
“Where the blind norad did they come from?” one of the women asked.
“That’s what I intend to find out,” the one-eyed man replied in a tone that was ominous in its matter-of-fact flatness. “Bring them around and sit them here,” he continued, pushing a table out of the way and pulling two chairs into the gap he had m
ade.
Mildred and Doc allowed themselves to be directed into the chairs, biding their time. There was nothing they could do as yet, but that didn’t stop either of them scanning the space around them for the slightest opportunity.
“Down,” barked one of the men holding a blaster on them. He spoke like he had a mouth full of stones. Looking at his teeth, it was possible that he had chewed them good and hard before spitting them out. But it didn’t really matter. What was important that he stood back from them, as did his compatriots. These were men schooled in hard knocks. They knew how to keep their asses covered, which didn’t bode well for Mildred and Doc. But for now they did as they were bid.
“Take a good look at these two,” the one-eyed man said to the inhabitants of the room, “they could be our way out of here.”
“Your way out?” Mildred asked carefully, looking around as the men and women in the room slowly gathered, studying her and Doc in a curious and detached manner that reminded her with an eerie sensation of the way she had stared at lab rats during her medical training.
“Let’s not get too curious now.” He grinned coldly. “We’re the ones asking the questions here. See, it’s almost impossible to get in the front way. And even if you did, chances are that you wouldn’t have much chance of getting past all those old vid cams that still work. We keep a close eye on those and the ones to the outside, see. So you’d have to have come from down below to get in. Fact of the matter is that we know you did. Of course we do. That’s how we saw you, on one of those old vid cams. Thing is, what I can’t figure is how.”
Mildred was sure that he was going to ask them about the mat-trans. She would stonewall for as long as possible if it meant giving away the secret, but maybe they could use that fact to get back down there in time to somehow shake these bastards off and make the jump before their time had elapsed. She was weighing these odds when Doc threw a curve ball into the room.
“So,” he said with an intimation of calm that Mildred didn’t feel, “you are aware of the tunnels that were built in and around these old bases then.”
“See, Jeb? I told you, didn’t I? I knew these fuckers could never have been built with only one way in and out. That would have been too stupe.”
The coldheart with the mouth of marbles was plainly excited by the prospect, and couldn’t contain his exuberance. The savagery with which the one-eyed man turned on him was both a clue to the nature of these people and the atmosphere he was endeavoring to build in the interrogation. “Shut the fuck up, Maddock,” he replied. “We don’t know that for sure…” His voice faltered. Not much, but just enough to catch Doc’s gimlet attention.
“I think you should listen to your friend Maddock, Jeb,” he said. “Just because you have not found it does not mean that it is not there. After all, how else would we have gotten in here? Ask yourself that.”
Mildred suppressed a smile. She had to hand it to Doc. If they had any suspicions about the mat-trans unit, this would force their hand while at the same time reinforcing the idea that the man Maddock’s obsessions with the tunnels were well-founded.
The one-eyed man Jeb looked around at the people in the room. They were staring intently, their attention divided equally between their captives and their leader.
“Okay,” he said with just the slightest tremor of hesitancy in his voice. “Suppose there are tunnels—”
“How else would we have gained an entry?” Doc slipped in smoothly.
“If there are,” Jeb emphasized, “then how come we haven’t found them in the time we’ve been here?”
“And why is it so important that you find them?” Doc prompted, sensing he had his man cornered. Jeb needed to keep face with his people, and Doc would give him no room to maneuver.
The one-eyed man stared grimly around him. The faces that stared back at him were hardened by battle, fatigue and by the rigors of a bandit life. They would, Doc thought, have been happy enough to have ended up in such a place as this redoubt. Certainly, they had taken advantage of the resources they had found within, albeit adapting them to their own mode of life. Yet there was something about them now, as they looked to their leader, which was contrary to the way they should have been—an almost keening sense of despair that seemed to sing off their very being.
It made Doc’s heart sing, too, albeit in a very different key. There was a weakness here that he might just be able to turn to their advantage. And he knew that Mildred trusted him enough to let him run with it, even though she may be wondering what he would do.
The one-eyed man took a deep breath. “We need to find another way of getting out of this place. It’s a fine and dandy place, sure enough, and we’ve got us enough weapons here to win a war with a decent-size ville. But it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to go out the way we came in. Don’t matter why. Now we all know there must be some way out. Maddock’s right about that. No way would those predark bastards build somewhere that they could get their asses trapped in. But they were smart, and they hid it well so that only they would know about it. Which would be okay for us, except that those fuckers have been feeding the worms for too long to be any good at telling us their little secret.”
Doc smiled. It was expansive and leering. It spoke of an arcane knowledge that might be shared…for a price, of course.
“Precisely. Except that now, my friend, you have us in your hands. And for whatever reason that you cannot tell, we seem to hold the key to that old secret. Which makes us a valued item to you, does it not?”
Careful, Doc, Mildred thought. Don’t overplay your hand.
Jeb’s eye reminded her of Ryan’s. Although a single orb, it seemed to burn with a greater intensity than the stare of a normal, twin-eyed man. It bore into Doc, and for a moment she wondered if Jeb had seen through him. Certainly, his next words were edged with caution.
“You came from somewhere,” he said carefully, “and you can bet your ass you won’t be going back there in any kind of a hurry if you’re screwing with us. You telling me, old man, that Maddock is right, and there’s a way out of here from more than just the big door?”
Doc allowed himself the smallest of smiles. He knew at this moment that he had them hooked, and all he needed to do was to play them in like a prize pike on a hook.
“There is, indeed, another way to exit this mausoleum,” he said at length. “As your friend suspected, the old ones from before the nukecaust would not allow themselves to be trapped…as, I suspect, you feel you are. Tell me, why are you so afraid to use the entrance that you know?” he asked.
Jeb’s eye narrowed. If anything, it made it seem as though his glare was even more fiery and sharp than before. “I wouldn’t ask too many questions like that, if I was you. You might not get to ask too many more.”
“And you might not find out how to escape from here,” Doc snapped in a tone that made Mildred wince. He was pushing, maybe too hard. Jeb’s initial reaction—snatching at his SMG so that it was leveled at the old man’s chest—certainly indicated this.
But Doc was smarter and cooler than Mildred reckoned. For once he was in full and total control of his faculties. This was a coldly calculated mood. He stared down the barrel of the SMG, keeping his voice as hard and level as his gaze when he addressed the coldheart leader.
“So, a slight misunderstanding with whoever waits at the gates for you, eh? Well, it can happen to the best of us. It’s happening now.”
“Don’t fuck with me, old man. If you ain’t afraid of dying, then your bitch might be,” the one-eyed coldheart whispered, shifting the aim of the SMG so that it was leveled at Mildred. She kept her face as impassive as possible, but she was sure, as she looked around, that everyone in the room could see that her heart was pounding visibly against her rib cage. Their faces were tense and expectant. Doc had been right about one thing—there was something or someone out the front of the redoubt who was pinning these people in. For all the riches of ordnance and supplies they had found, they were as imprisoned as surel
y as if someone had put bars around them.
Let’s just hope that Doc’s guessed the rest of it right, she thought as she felt cold sweat prickle at her hairline and in the small of her back.
To her amazement, Doc actually laughed. She could feel the sharp intake of breath from the assembled watchers, and could see her own life flashing at the periphery of her vision.
“My dear man,” Doc said, sighing, “I meant that it was happening to us. Are we not in the same situation as yourselves? Chilling my friend will do you no good. You do that, and I would rather buy the farm myself than speak. It would be a poor piece of judgment on your part. And if I am any judge of a man, then I do not think you are a man for poor judgment.”
Her vision of her past life receded. She could see the flicker of doubt on Jeb’s face.
Damn, but Doc was good when he was on form.
“So you’re gonna tell me, then?” the one-eyed man questioned.
Doc grinned slyly. “I’ll do more than that. I’ll show you.”
The surprise on the faces of the assembled throng was so forceful that it was almost laughable. Not that Mildred was laughing. She was too busy being astounded by Doc’s assertion. What the fuck was he playing at?
“How you gonna do that, old man?” Jeb growled suspiciously, unconsciously echoing Mildred’s thoughts.
“Hellfire, Jeb, what does it matter?” Maddock exploded, unable any longer to contain the excitement he felt at Doc’s revelation. “We’re gonna get out. Ain’t that all that matters?”
“Mebbe,” the one-eyed man said slowly. “We’ll see… Just what are you gonna show us, old man? And how do we know you ain’t gonna use it as an excuse to get the hell out, leaving us here?”
Doc shook his head with an equal slowness. “I would not underestimate you, my dear sir. I look around at your people, and at the way you have thoroughly plundered this place, and I can see that you have an observant eye. There are, after all, two of us.” He gestured at himself and Mildred. “It does not take a genius to work out that you will hold one of us prisoner while the other shows you the egress you may use.”
