Watersleep

by James Axler

  "You came from down below!" It was an accu­sation, not a question.

  "Good eyes. Wrong assumption. There's no ele­vator there. Just an empty shaft. I was in here al­ready—came through Greenglades park. Got lost in the swamps. After I nearly had one of my feet gnawed off by a mutie frog, I decided to look in here for some shelter," Ryan lied, making up the story as he went along. Not that he cared one way or another if the boy believed he'd come up from the bottom of the redoubt, but why give the scoop to a child who'd previously tried to stab him in the gut with a hidden shiv?

  "How old are you?" Ryan asked.

  "Fifteen."

  "Got any folks?"

  "Got an older sister."

  "Any message you want sent after I've chilled your flannel-wearing ass?"

  "Fuck you," the boy snarled.

  "I can spell that. She can chisel it on your tomb­stone." Ryan raised the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer and pointed it directly between the boy's eyes.

  Damnation! Fifteen-year-old murderers with pistols and knives. This might have been Dean's future if Ryan hadn't come along when he did, or if Sharona's plan to see to the boy's welfare had fallen by the wayside. Ryan tried to smother the flicker of guilt that raced up the back of his spine, a flicker that whispered aloud his doubts about letting this boy rejoin his cara­van and report to his boss, the elusive Mr. Rollins.

  Ryan sighed audibly. "I guess I have no choice," he said aloud. "Turn around and start running, and don't stop until you're long out of Florida."

  Breaux, already considering himself dead and bur­ied, blinked in shock. "You'll shoot me in the back!" he squeaked.

  "If I was going to chill you, I would have done it already. Now scram."

  "But my blaster—"

  "Wrong. My blaster. And I'll have your balls as a keepsake, too, if you don't pack up and roll out of here. Now go on, get out of my sight." Ryan took a step forward and gestured with the blaster.

  Breaux glared back at Ryan for a few seconds, his face a mix of fear and distrust, then he was around the corner and out of the redoubt in a matter of sec­onds.

  Ryan stepped softly around the bend of the hall­way, listening as the boy's footsteps retreated. He holstered his blaster and stepped back to the elevator.

  Krysty was already up and out. Ryan extended a helping hand, which she took to pull herself to her feet. She looked around the corridor at the bodies among the debris.

  "And I thought this redoubt couldn't get any sor­rier," she commented.

  "We need to move. That kid may be back with buddies soon."

  "You let him go," she said curiously.

  "That's right. So?"

  "Why?"

  "Why not? Only a scared boy running with the big dogs. Been enough chilling for one day. Besides, by the time he gets back to wherever he's headed to tell about discovering us inside, we'll be long gone," Ryan said.

  "You saw Dean, didn't you?"

  Ryan didn't answer.

  "You took a long look and saw your own son perched at the receiving end of a blaster, and you couldn't blow him away," Krysty said flatly.

  Ryan kept silent and turned away, walking over to the elevator. He peered down in the darkness of the shaft and waved at a shadowy J.B., who had contin­ued to cling patiently to the ladder in wait for a signal.

  "About freakin' time," the Armorer griped.

  ON THE OTHER SIDE of the forced-open elevator doors were the remains of the ransacked redoubt. During the group's first pass through this complex many months earlier, the rooms on the upper floor had of­fered a safe haven with food, clothing, weaponry and ammunition. This time there was nothing for the trav­elers but utter devastation. The walls of the compact redoubt were cracked and blackened with soot and bullet holes from random firings or disagreements such as the one glimpsed between the four dead men below. Evidence of cooking fires could be seen on the floor, ashes mixed with dirty water that stood on the floor in shallow puddles.

  In the sleeping areas, the dormitories were ran­sacked. All bedding had been stolen or ruined. Only a few skeletal bed frames remained. The dining area and kitchens were in the same condition, and all of the supply larders were empty, their steel shelves bar­ren of any cans or boxes. The freezers were also clean, each of them offering nothing but a few inches of foul-smelling water in the bottom catch pans and long-emptied steel cans and paper boxes.

  Although the failing power supply would probably have ruined any unused frozen edibles, everyone's stomachs still ached for the loss. No tinned ham or recon eggs or cans of beans and self-heat blueberry muffins this time around. Nor would there be fresh clothing or new weapons and ammunition. This re­doubt's treasures had been plundered, removed, squandered.

  No dry clothing or toiletry supplies was one thing. An absence of a decent haven to lie down and rest one's weary head and body was another. But the ab­sence of food was the most disappointing of all.

  "No grub," Jak said. He added as an afterthought, "Shit."

  "Well said, my friend, well said," Doc whispered bitterly.

  "Damn. I'm starved, Dad," Dean piped up.

  "We all are, son."

  "This place was swept clean," J.B. said, walking back from the empty redoubt armory and shooting range. "There isn't anything left worth taking. Which leads to the obvious question…"

  "Why were there guards posted in an empty re­doubt?" Krysty finished as she slammed closed one of the large steel freezer doors. "Who knows? Pride? An overinflated sense of security?"

  "Or maybe this Rollins boss the kid told me about expected visitors from down below, and that's why the elevator was sabotaged," Ryan said. "Blow out the steps, and there isn't any other way into the lower levels of the redoubt except for where they had a guard at the top of the shaft, and in through the back door by using the mat-trans unit."

  "You think Rollins knew about the mat-trans chamber?" J.B. asked.

  "Hell, J.B., these gateways aren't the great secret they used to be," Ryan answered. "Even back when we first hooked up with Trader, he knew about the redoubts, and there were always rumors floating around about some kind of magic superscientific transportation devices hidden inside."

  "However, there was no way they could have entered the mat-trans control room without the access codes," Mildred said. "But all the warning signs and other sec bullshit stationed around the door would have been a tip-off that there was something big in there."

  It was a sobering thought.

  "Maybe word about the redoubts is starting to spread among the general population, lover," Krysty said. "Once a secret like this starts to travel…" She let her voice trail off.

  "Right. Next thing you know, we're walking out of gateway chambers and into the waiting ambushes of scavengers," Ryan finished.

  "There's nothing here worth taking, so let's get out," J.B. declared, wiping sweat from his brow. The heat was becoming stifling.

  The walk to the main access door of the redoubt took only seconds. Ryan and the others saw that the blond youth had spoken the truth. A big hole replaced the vanadium-steel-reinforced sec door, which had been capable of withstanding a direct hit from a nuke.

  "Dark night," J.B. whispered. He ran a hand along the jagged edges of the remains of the reinforced door frame.

  "I'd say whoever came through here last didn't bother to knock," Mildred said.

  Chapter Five

  The friends stood together in front of the remains of the sec door and stared out through the gaping hole into the green of the world. Waves of warm, damp air wafted out over them. Even with his long jacket and weighted white scarf off, Ryan felt a new patch of sweat start to spread across his lower back. They'd all be smelling ripe soon enough in this climate.

  Greenglades was just as he remembered it: lush and beautiful, and as humid as hell.

  And this time there was an added bonus.

  "Raining," Jak said.

  "Gaia, but it's hot," Krysty commented, reaching her arms behind her neck and graspi
ng fistfuls of her long red hair in her hands. She began to twist the hair into a makeshift bun to keep it off her neck.

  Dean slapped at an insect. "Little shit." He scratched at a fresh pink bite on the back of his neck.

  "Get used to it," Ryan said sharply. "We're going to be slogging through this mess for a while. And watch your language—you've been cussing more than I do! Didn't Brody teach you manners in that school of his?"

  "Yes, sir," Dean said. "Taught me plenty. But he didn't teach me not to cuss."

  "Funny, I thought manners were on the agenda," Ryan said. "Leastways, they were when I dropped you off there at the school."

  "A lack of vocabulary is nothing to take pride in, young Cawdor," Doc interjected.

  "Words is words, Doc," the boy said. "Why use big ones when the little ones will do?"

  Ryan had to grin in spite of himself at that bit of logic. Even Doc was speechless.

  "Out of the mouths of babes, Doc," Krysty teased. "But I'd appreciate your taking more care, Dean. For my sake."

  "Okay, Krysty," Dean replied, scratching again at the bite.

  J.B. examined one of the broken sides of the door­way where the vanadium-steel sec door would nor­mally have been entrenched and whistled apprecia­tively. "Somebody wanted in here bad."

  "What do you think they used?" Ryan asked.

  "Hmm. A TOW mebbe. It's portable enough to bring into the swamps and has enough kick. I'd say it would have to be some type of heavy antitank gear." J.B.'s words were hurried as they tumbled out of his mouth in a torrent. The only time the taciturn Armorer ever showed any excitement was when dis­cussing weapons and their destructive capabilities. "Or a mortar. Might have taken a dozen or so hits to do the job, but apparently they weren't too worried about shaking up the interior since this redoubt was already quake damaged."

  "That's how they were able to get in without a code," Mildred said. "They huffed and they puffed and they blew the house in."

  "Yeah. We know these redoubts were built tough enough to withstand a lot of punishment, but even they can't hold up long against an earthshaker. After the quake did the structural damage, whoever wanted in kept hammering at the door. You hammer long enough, knowing the walls were already cracked…" J.B. let his voice trail off.

  "They brought down the walls of Jericho," Doc finished.

  "If you have the force of nature on your side, you can force your way into anything," Krysty murmured. "I should know."

  Krysty's comment wasn't lost on the group. In ad­dition to her empathetic abilities, the tall woman had been trained since childhood to be in tune with the electromagnetic energies of the great Earth Mother, Gaia. By tapping into these hidden pools of energy, Krysty called upon the strength of a sheer force of nature—but for a limited time, and the transformation took a terrific physical and mental toll.

  She rarely forced herself to go that far, for when she was in the throes of the Earth Mother, she couldn't be held accountable for her actions. Her pri­vate fear was that she might injure a friend instead of a foe during a transformation, or even inadvertently kill one of them.

  "As you were telling young Dean earlier, nobody has any manners these days," Doc said. "Still, these redoubts were built with the taxpayers' money. I suppose all have the God-given right to use them as they please."

  Doc was right. The group of travelers had grown to become somewhat possessive of the hidden re­doubts, and they were far from masters of the tech­nology inside. Mildred had once said the places were like a sick version of their home away from home. Like the old-fashioned motel chains of her youth, all of the redoubts tended to be alike, from city to city and state to state.

  Since Ryan's group was in many ways nomadic, traveling from point to point with no real destination, perhaps the doctor was right. Perhaps the redoubts were indeed becoming home.

  Not that any of the group of friends was ever going to become a homebody.

  The mass of green outside smelled of damp, and the rain was pouring down. Outside, there was the unknown, and each and every one of them would rather venture out there than remain inside even the plushest and safest of the redoubts.

  "Looks like home," Jak said about the swamp­lands, referring to his time spent back in Cajun coun­try in Louisiana. "Pretty."

  "That's right, Jak," Krysty said. "You weren't with us last time we set foot out here."

  "No. Was back in New Mexico then. With Chris­tina."

  Krysty immediately sensed a shift in the albino's entire mental aura. The mention of his late wife had caused her memory to leap back into his mind and drop him into an even deeper funk than the glum albino normally wore as a shield against the world. It was almost like a purple shroud had suddenly envel­oped his entire body, a shroud only Jak could feel, and only Krysty, by virtue of her mutant abilities, could see.

  "Oh, Jak, I—" Krysty began.

  "No. Not forget her. Never forget," the albino re­plied. "Not your fault, Krysty."

  Krysty smiled gratefully at Jak, but still mentally cursed herself. She knew that Jak cherished the mem­ories of his time spent at peace at the New Mexico ranch. Until their untimely deaths, the young man had experienced the kind of love with his wife and child that only a family can bring. For a short time, Jak Lauren had known the peace of having a place of his own away from the constant death and violence, and Krysty envied him for it.

  "Where to, leader man?" Mildred asked Ryan.

  "Straight ahead, to the farthest star, and take a left to morning," Doc interjected before Ryan could re­ply. "Or not," he added, seeing the flash of annoy­ance in Ryan's eye.

  "J.B., what do you think?"

  "Not much point in going west—that's where the Cajuns were camping out last. If we stay on the path we took before, we'll end up inside the park."

  "At least we're familiar with the layout there," Ryan said. "We'll go that way until we see or hear something to convince me otherwise."

  THEY PASSED by the shredded remains of an animated Zulu warrior and his rhino companion outside the re­doubt's doorway. On their previous visits, when they had first ventured outside, Ryan had stepped on a trig­ger switch that brought the pair to life. In retaliation, his companions had laid down a hail of bullets so fast Ryan had barely enough time to hit the grass.

  Androids. Part of the attraction at Greenglades Theme Park.

  What was left of the pair had now fallen prey to the growth of the swamp, the heavy rains and the earthquakes. Both warrior and rhino were completely enveloped by tendrillike green vines. If Ryan hadn't known where to look, he never would have spotted the pair a second time.

  "You know, now that we're not out here with our guns blazing away at those droids, something just oc­curred to me."

  "What's that, Mildred?" Ryan asked.

  "I wonder why this redoubt was located in the middle of a swamp that served as a public site for family amusement? I doubt mat-trans units were listed on the official see-and-do itinerary."

  "Perhaps it was a way of getting the top political bosses and their families into the park unseen," Doc mused. "Security for government leaders has always been a problem whenever the power elite took a no­tion to mingle with the common folk."

  "True. The First Family could step into a chamber in Washington, and in less than a minute, appear here. Want to suck up to a senator? Bring him down south.

  Got a major conglomerate head you want to grease? Impress him with a magic visit to Florida. The same could apply to visiting foreign dignitaries and heads of state. I mean, what better way to impress a Russian or Chinese leader than to transport them into the fan­tasy kingdom of Greenglades Park for a night of fun and games?" Mildred asked rhetorically.

  "That's all well and good, but you're forgetting that the redoubts and the mat-trans units were sup­posed to be top secret," Ryan said. "I doubt any lead­ers were shuttling in the wife and kids for a day's entertainment at government expense, unless he was the big boss or something."

  "Ryan, you'
d be surprised," Mildred replied, thinking of the endless parade of political scandals over the abuse of perks and privileges she'd witnessed on the six-o'clock news. Once, the leaders of the United States were on the front pages of newspapers day in and day out over using too many stamps for personal gain or playing footsie with underage assis­tants or commandeering public-funded transportation for their own personal use.

  A man who didn't hesitate to climb aboard an emergency federal aircraft for a weekend on the golf course with his buddies wouldn't think twice over hopping into a mat-trans unit to get somewhere scenic and entertaining.

  But that was a part of Mildred Wyeth's previous life, a life that seemed more like a dream or a story she'd read in a book as time passed on.

  "This redoubt was stuck in here because Greenglades offered the perfect cover. They probably in­cluded the redoubt blueprints in with the ones for the park, then built them at the same time," J.B. said flatly. "Never been any logic to where the Totality Concept placed their mat-trans units."

  "Got a point," Ryan said, thinking of the surreal journey he and Mildred had taken a few months back, secured in icy coffins that were raised up by crane through Abraham Lincoln's stone nose into the hid­den fortress known as the Anthill. There, inside the cavernous interior of the remains of Mount Rushmore, were cargo and human mat-trans units, sec droids and mad cyborgs.

  "One day, I'd like to meet the stupe bastard who came up with all the stuff the Totality Concept had their fingers in," J.B. mused.

  Ryan was surprised. His friend rarely expressed much of an interest in anything beyond weapons.

  "Why?"

  "It would be my greatest honor to personally chill him or her."

  THE RAIN WAS THE WORST possible kind to have to endure. J.B. had given up on trying to keep his glasses clear, and now walked resolutely at the back of the group, depending more on sound and his own com­bat-honed senses than his vision. He'd thought about just taking his glasses off, but his poor eyesight had quickly changed his mind. Better to be half-blind than completely in a blurry haze. The grass beneath their feet was thick and long, curling up around their ankles as they slogged through the marshland. The earth was moist and spongy, suck­ing at everyone's feet with each tedious step. The entire group was miserable. Some, like Ryan, had taken off a layer of their outer clothing, while others, such as Doc, kept fully dressed. Neither method of­fered true relief since bare skin offered up a banquet to the small, darting mosquitoes that had bitten Dean back at the redoubt, while keeping covered was like having to march in a blast furnace while wrapped in a mass of sodden quilts.