Crater Lake d-4

by James Axler

  "We can run for the elevator. Mebbe steal one of those boat wags. Doubt they'll come after us."

  "But we must destroy this nest of evil and corruption," Doc Tanner protested.

  "Sure," Ryan agreed. "But it's not up to me to order everyone to risk their lives. Chances are we can get away free if we run now."

  "I never run from fucking nobody," Finnegan said. "And you don't get better chances than this, since it's a hundred to one their fucking blasters don't work."

  "We go in and try to blow the complex. Or we get out now. Who stays?"

  The only one to hesitate was Jak; the others immediately raised their hands. The albino sniffed. "Sure. Why not?" And he also lifted his hand.

  "You don't have to, kid," Ryan said. "This isn't your fight."

  Jak shook his head. "Wrong. If it's your fight, then it's mine."

  "Then we go. Finn?"

  "Sure," he said, hefting his Heckler & Koch submachine gun. "I'll take him out on triple-shot."

  "Don't take any risks," Ryan warned.

  The blaster's chubby face creased into a broad grin. "That's way weird, old friend. Have you ever known Thomas O'Flaherty Fingal Finnegan ever do anything as fucking stupid as take a fucking risk?"

  "Yeah," Ryan said, grinning back. "Too many fucking times, Finn."

  He watched the man move out around the corner, pausing to flatten the smooth black fur collar of his gray leather coat. The sec man turned to face Finnegan, leveling the stubby laser-blaster on him.

  "Identification or termination now," the mutie's voice box croaked.

  "This here SMG's all the fucking identification I need, you mutie bastard," Finnegan growled.

  "Chill him now, Finn," Ryan called urgently.

  "Now," Krysty cried, her voice edged with sudden panic.

  Finn half turned to reassure them, just as the sec guard fired his blaster. There was a piercing hum, and a dazzling streak of amethyst light hit Finn squarely in the chest.

  He screamed, something that sounded, through the shock and agony, like "Hundred to fucking one, Ma!"

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was a hideous passing.

  Over the bloody years Ryan Cawdor had seen many men and women meet their Maker. Few of them had gone peacefully into that long night. But he had never seen anyone chilled in such an appalling way as his friend Finnegan.

  The blind perversity of the fates had dictated that the laser rifle of the sec man functioned perfectly — for just long enough.

  Unlike a single bullet, the beam of light from a high-power military laser acts more like a directional, narrow strip of extreme heat. A bullet drills a hole through flesh, the exit hole generally markedly bigger than the entrance wound. Not so with a laser. It is precisely the same size as it exits the human body as when it entered.

  Also, light has no mass, so there is no impact. As the laser struck Finnegan, it didn't lift him off his feet, or throw him backward, nothing initially as dramatic as that.

  But the power was so awesome that in the instant the blaster came to life its vivid blue beam had penetrated clean through the helpless Finn, hitting the wall only a couple of paces to the left of J.B., who immediately threw himself flat on the floor, hands over his head as chunks of liquid concrete and charred wood fell from the side of the corridor.

  Along one wall, Ryan watched the termination in impotent horror, seeing that nothing could be done for the doomed man.

  Stinking smoke erupted from the front and back of Finn's coat, tiny flames flaring red and yellow. Every staggering movement of the dying man only increased his horrific suffering. His skin was scorched black, the flesh broiled by the immense power of the blaster. The heat was so intense that the wretch's intestines began to explode and melt, and his blood boiled instantly where the laser had touched him.

  As Finn dropped, his own blaster clattering on the tiles, the sec man kept the trigger down, almost slicing the beefy man into segments with the blaster's ferocity.

  "Oh, no, no, no, no..." Krysty moaned softly, one hand resting lightly on Ryan's arm.

  As the body lay smoldering on the floor, the blue light stopped as suddenly as it had started. The sec mutie looked down at the blaster and banged his fist on the control dial, frustrated that the weapon had ceased functioning.

  "Mine," Ryan said. He stooped and put his G-12 caseless down, placing the SIG-Sauer 9 mm pistol alongside it. Then he moved out of cover, and walked toward the helmeted guard, loosening the white silk scarf from around his neck.

  "Don't, lover," Krysty said, trying to pull him back around the corner.

  "I'll chill him from here," J.B. said.

  "No," Ryan said very quietly. "This is what the good Dr. Tardy might call a hands-on termination, revengewise. Got to be."

  He shrugged off their warnings and stepped toward the sentry.

  Closing in on the mutie, Ryan carefully avoided the stinking corpse, where bodily fluids still bubbled and seeped. The guard backed clumsily away until his helmet rang against the door.

  Ryan looped the silken scarf in his hands carefully, his eyes locked on the reflective visor of the sec man's black carapace. The lower edge of the mutie's helmet didn't quite settle on his squat, muscular neck, leaving a couple of inches of pallid flesh exposed.

  The muzzle of the blaster rose to cover Ryan's groin and lower belly. Despite his limitless courage, the one-eyed man winced. Having seen the shambles that Finnegan had become would have been enough to make any normal man fall to his knees and bury his head in his hands, weeping.

  Not Ryan Cawdor.

  "You just chilled one of the best, bravest men I ever knew," he said in a normal, conversational voice. "Friends are rare. Good friends rarer. And you chilled him, you heartless mutie bastard!" he shouted in sudden anger as he stepped closer.

  He swung the weighted end of the scarf so that it lashed out and whipped around the guard's throat, the end coming back into Ryan's ready fingers.

  The sec man tried to get his gauntleted hands up, but he was too slow. The scarf tightened and began to bite into the tender flesh of his neck. Ryan jerked hard at it, pulling the guard forward, so close he could smell the rank sweat on the mutie's body. The helmet bobbled off, and he looked into the dull eyes of the creature who had butchered Finn.

  "Die, you fucker." Ryan kneed the guard in the groin, feeling the satisfying jarring as he caught the mutie's genitals against the bone. As the man slumped, Ryan crossed his wrists, making the silk tighten like fluid steel, immovable, inflexible.

  "Die."

  The mutie's tongue swelled, his hands fell limp, and his eyes burst from bloodied sockets. A thread of bright crimson blood wormed from his lips and nostrils, and as the creature's body relaxed, Ryan could smell the noisome voiding of bowels and bladder.

  Ryan unwound his scarf from the guard's neck, prizing it from the deep furrowed folds in the corpse's flesh. He wrapped it back around his own neck, feeling better for the killing, not stopping to mourn for Finnegan. There'd be time for that.

  Later.

  * * *

  A piece of plas the size of a button, a five-second fuse and a tiny copper detonator, that was all it took for the six to blast their way inside the holy of holies at the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement. The small explosion shook their ears, and then the outer door swung back.

  The scientists, finally realizing they were under serious attack from the primitive outsiders, had taken precautions.

  A handful of sec guards, blasters ready, were lined up to meet the intruders. There were six of them, but not one managed to fire his laser rifle. Each was gunned down on the spot in a hectic burst of shooting from the corridor.

  Leaping over jerking corpses, nearly slipping in the spreading pools of turgid blood, Ryan led his friends in.

  "Fireblast!" he exclaimed, stopping dead inside the doorway, the others nearly knocking him over.

  They'd realized the research part of the complex must be enormous, but even in t
heir wildest imaginings they hadn't figured on anything quite as massive as this.

  Spidery scaffolding rose thirty stories high, interlocking in a delicate tracery of dulled metal. A viper's nest of colored conduits and pipes wound in and out, so far above them that they seemed like thin wires. Red and green and orange and vivid blue. There were three basic sections within the research area, marked simply Land, Sea and Air & Space. Each one seemed to vanish into the diminishing distance. Each was bigger than fifty aircraft hangars.

  A long list on the wall showed the innumerable subsections of research.

  A catalogue of inhumanity and megadeath:

  Chemical.

  Medical.

  Nerve toxins.

  Sight.

  Audio-destroyers.

  Neural synapse breakers.

  RPV.

  "What's that?" Ryan asked.

  "It stands for Remotely Piloted Vehicles," Doc Tanner answered. "It was big around the end of the century."

  Sensors.

  Avoidance.

  LAMPS.

  "Tell me, Doc."

  "It means Light Airborne Multipurpose Systems. Mainly antisubmarine stuff."

  Battle-Support Missiles.

  Air-Defense Missiles.

  Surface-To-Air Missiles (Fixed Emplacement).

  Forward-Area-Guided Projectiles.

  The list was seemingly endless, and it was color-coded and had a variety of letters and numerals after each item. By far the largest number of entries was under the subhead Antipersonnel Weapons.

  "Don't tell us, Doc," Krysty said in a subdued voice. "It just means lots of ways of killing ordinary people. By Gaia, but this has to be wiped clean!"

  But with Finnegan dead, only J.B. and Ryan had the basic explosives knowledge to start a chain reaction that would destroy the whole complex. Jak was fine on small, localized sabotage, but nothing bigger.

  "Split up," Ryan told them. "Krysty and Jak with me. J.B. to take Doc and Lori. Check chrons. I have 11:13... now. Meet back at the bottom of the main elevators in... How long, you figure, Doc? J.B.? How long?"

  The old man shook his head, as if overwhelmed by the pressure and the killings. "This gilded palace of sin, my old friend... It's walls of sardonyx and chrysoprase. Its mighty towers of sapphire and chalcedony, inlaid with wondrous lapis lazuli." His voice was dreamy. "Is that not the most wonderful name for a gem?" He drew it out slowly, savoring it. "Lapis lazuli."

  Ryan shook him by the arm. "Don't fuck us up now, Doc. Not fucking now!"

  His eyes cleared and his jaw set. The old man squared his shoulders and stared Ryan straight in the eye. "My most humble apologies, my dear friend. What can I have been thinking of? You were asking?"

  "How long? How long to try and find the right places to blow this dump out of the world?"

  "Their security is lax and almost useless against fighters with intent. It's odd, is it not? They have been locked in here for a hundred years, doing nothing but researching ways of killing the planet. Yet in all that time the poor devils have quite forgotten how to fight."

  "So it'll be a slide, huh?" J.B. asked.

  "I think not. They will eventually gain access to their own defense systems. Dr. Avian spoke of hordes of sec muties locked safely away, waiting only the press of a button to release them all. No. I think we can spare no more than an hour."

  "Where's best to go?" Krysty asked, pointing at the massive board.

  Doc sighed. "Missiles, I suppose would be best. Find some good old-fashioned dynamite or nitro and place it right. Should be enough. An explosion down here has nowhere to go. Could bring the roof in. Then the lake. Blow down and set off the volcano." His eyes turned dreamy again. "That would be a wondrous consummation — to be born in fire and to end in fire."

  Ryan turned away. "Fine, then. We'll split up like we said. Both groups will head toward the missiles, one left and one right. Kill anything moving. I now have...11:15. Meet back at the base of the elevator at 12:20. First there waits, if they can, until 12:25. Then they go. Up and run. Head back through the ville for the gateway. Wait there twenty-four hours. Then..."

  "Then, goodbye," Jak finished.

  * * *

  Most of the next hour passed like a dream of action and death for Ryan and his two companions.

  By his calculations they'd taken out three of the sixty-one scientists and a sizable part of their sec men. Unless some of the hordes of mutie sleepers had been released, there couldn't be more than about seventy living humans within the entire Wizard Island complex — a tiny number in that rambling techno vastness.

  "Someone," Jak Lauren hissed, running a little ahead of Ryan and Krysty.

  It was the frail dwarf scientist in a spidery frame of plastic tubing. Its silent motor allowed him to be suspended a few inches above the floor. Seeing them, he stopped his machine.

  "Take him," Krysty said.

  Ryan put the G-12 caseless on single-shot and aimed at the center of the scientist's great spongy nodding head between his moonish eyes. Just as he had when they'd last seen him, the scientist managed to control his trembling features long enough to smile at them — a wonderful, warm smile that filled Ryan with a wave of almost magical happiness. He smiled back and lowered his gun.

  "Ryan," Krysty said.

  "Can't. Not to... to that."

  The wheelchair floated nearer, the tiny flipperlike left hand working intricate controls. The head nodded, the smile unchanging. Ryan glanced at Jak and saw him grinning helplessly at the scientist.

  The delicate, harmless little...

  Then there was the sharp crack from the mirrored H&K P7A-13 pistol in Krysty's right hand. A small ruby hole, black-edged, appeared miraculously in the dwarf's massive forehead above his glittering left eye. His chair weaved and stopped, and the scientist slumped dead in it, the smile still stuck in place.

  "Krysty, we could..." Ryan began, shaking himself as though he were covered in cold water.

  "Lover, we don't have the time," she said, pushing past him, edging Jak out of the way and taking the lead.

  * * *

  Word had finally got out among the scientists that death had come stalking them. Ryan and the others saw lab coats of pink, green and light blue scurrying away from them, up stairs and into rooms that opened off the main part of the complex.

  Oddly they saw no more sec men.

  "Here," Ryan said, pointing to a section marked with a skull and crossbones and the words over the doorway: All Personnel Caution. Explosives. Alpha-Sec Only. Others Quadruple Negative Entry.

  They entered a laboratory filled with glass vials that bubbled and hissed. There was more scientific equipment in the room than Ryan had seen in his entire life. Strapped into a peculiar upright wheeled chair was the huge giant they'd seen previously, this time without his mutie escort. His face, with the distorted, swollen features of an acromegalic, turned incuriously to look in their direction. Then he glanced back to the bench where he was working on an experiment that seemed to involve whirling steel spheres in a huge vacuum jar.

  "They said he was an astrophysicist," Krysty whispered. "What's he doing in here?"

  "Don't know," Ryan replied. "And I don't care."

  His first bullet drilled clean through the giant's torso to the left of his twisted lordotic spine. The bullet smashed into the apparatus, causing a gigantic implosion that sucked the retarded giant forward, his face and upper body almost disappearing into the whirling inferno of splintered glass and metal. They heard a bull-like roar of pain, interrupted by a choking, drowning cry as the body slumped across the bench.

  Without giving the massive corpse a second glance, Ryan led them on.

  "This is it," he said.

  They were in a wing of the sprawling building only forty paces of so from the body of the gigantic scientist, along a corridor that ran parallel to the center aisle of the research section.

  Jak smiled, running a tongue over bared teeth. "Look at that. Blow up the world with that." />
  "What they intended, kid," Ryan replied, shaking his head at the sight. If any baron in Deathlands had access to power like this, he could rule unchallenged. It had to be the largest collection of explosives anywhere.

  Row upon row of shelves, with crates upon crates. Thousands of tons of every kind of explosive in raw and refined form, lots of it with long chemical names that Ryan didn't even recognize. Some of it, like good old unstable nitro, he knew well enough. There were miles of wires of varying thickness and hundreds upon hundreds of detonators.

  "Timers," Jak said, leaping about the store like a child surrounded by a paradise of dream toys.

  "Time's passing, lover," Krysty warned, glancing at her wrist chron.

  "Keep watch," Ryan said. "Got to link this up with some of that napalm we saw back yonder. Get everything tied in so it blows together."

  She clicked away, the heels of her designer western boots ringing on the stone floor. Watching her, Ryan felt one of those unexpected waves of great affection that come between people who are very much in love.

  "Project Eurydice is under threat," the loudspeaker suddenly blared. "All personnel report to HQ section. Central must be obeyed always. Sec men reactivated. Move toward research section where intruders are believed to be." It was the unmistakable little-girl tones of Dr. Tardy. "In event of action take any steps, terminationwise, in lethal mode to protect all."

  The speaker clicked off as suddenly as it had come on.

  Then it returned to life. There was the noise of coughing, then labored breathing. "Ryan. Doc Tanner here. Do you read me? Over." A pause. "Sorry. My apologies. Course you can't answer, can you? No. Well, we've found what we wanted. Linked in some of J.B.'s best to some of our chum's demonic little games. See you back where we said at the exit. Over and out."

  "Fuck," Ryan said, finishing looping a dozen strands of wire into one detonator. "Doc's blown our meeting. Hope nobody was listening in."

  But he knew they needed an awful lot of luck for no one else to have heard.

  So, with time running out, Ryan hurried Jak and Krysty along through the weapons complex. The timers had been set to go in just thirty minutes. It didn't leave them much of a margin, but it would also make it hard for the scientists to manage to defuse everything. And he'd even scattered a few clever boobies in the shelving, ready to be triggered if anyone was careless. Either way, the subterranean redoubt should go up around 12:40.