by James Axler
J.B. passed the Uzi to Mildred and swung around the S&W M-4000 shotgun. Pumping the action, he frowned at how stiff the slide was. It had to be choked by salt residue. It still worked, but not very well. Aiming at the biggest group of crabs, J.B. fired and the deafening spray of fléchettes from the shotgun blew away the sea creatures by the score, chunks and pieces flying everywhere. J.B. fired three more times, destroying the front line of the clattering muties, then reloaded as fast as possible. The rest of the adult muties hastily retreated, the old and young scuttling about in total confusion.
“How many you got left?” Ryan demanded, working the bolt on the Steyr to clear a jammed round from the breech.
“Ten more shells,” J.B. reported, thumbing a fat cartridge into the belly of his weapon. There were loops sewn into the shoulder strap used for carrying the scattergun, most of them empty now. “And there’s gotta be fifty or sixty more of these things.”
A crab was on the wall beside him, and Ryan crushed it flat with the heavy wooden stock of his longblaster. They could try to blow a path through the gathering creatures and escape off the peninsula, but it was too close for a gren. Besides, the crabs would only follow until the companions dropped from exhaustion and were overrun. Hundreds to six were bad odds in any fight. And even with the fresh ammo, he was down to thirty rounds for the SIG-Sauer, and even less for the Steyr.
Jak shot a crab off Mildred’s leg, then holstered his piece. Krysty placed three .38 shells in his hand, and the teen nodded in thanks as he hastily reloaded. The main reason he carried the Colt Magnum blaster was the fact it could use both .357 rounds and regular .38 ammo. More than once that had kept him off the last train west.
“Dean, hurry!” Krysty shouted at the top of her lungs, blowing away an old blue with deep scars in its chitin armor. There was no reply from the lighthouse or chimney, and she sent a silent prayer to Gaia to watch over the boy. He was alone in the dark; at least they were in a group.
“Here they come again,” J.B. shouted, readying his weapon. The crabs were advancing once more, but slower this time, as if testing the deadly firepower of the two-legs. They had seen what the shotgun could do and were afraid now.
The cylinder of his blaster empty, Doc slid the selector pin to his one shotgun round. After that, he’d be down to hammering the creatures with the gun butt. The sword hidden inside his ebony stick would be useless against these armored muties.
Conserving ammo, Krysty and Mildred both waited until the last moment to fire. Crabs died, but the horde kept advancing as steadily as the rising tide.
“We could try for the ocean,” Doc suggested above the clacking of the creatures. “Crabs do not swim well, and we could easily outdistance them in deep water.”
“We gotta get some distance first,” Ryan stated, firing a fast three times. Two more crabs died; the third was only wounded, green blood seeping from the gash in its thick shell.
“Got any plas or grens?” he asked, brushing black hair off his face with the hot baffle silencer.
The Armorer reached into his munitions bag and passed over the last. Ryan ripped off the safety tape, twisted loose the firing pin, dropped the handle and dropped the charge on the ground directly at their feet. Instantly, the companions broke ranks and raced around opposite sides of the lighthouse while the crabs poured after them, sensing victory.
Counting to eight, the companions stopped and covered their ears as thunder shook the tiny peninsula. A minute later a couple of bleeding crabs crawled into view from around the building. Those were easily stomped to death by Jak and Doc, while Ryan chanced a quick recce around the building. The rest of the crabs were still retreating from the smoking crater of the blast, the old and young actually going over the other adults in their haste to leave.
Then Ryan spotted the large blue sitting away from the others on top of a tree stump. It sat there like a general surveying his troops in battle. Ryan swung his blaster in that direction, and the big blue dropped out of sight behind the rocks. Holstering his piece, Ryan felt a cold shiver run through his body. A mutie with intelligence. Unbidden, a memory of Kaa and his terrible army filled the man’s mind, and Ryan shook off the thoughts. These were just crabs, nothing more.
“Did it work?” Mildred asked hopefully as he returned.
“No. Only bought us some time,” Ryan stated grimly.
“But not for swimming,” Krysty said, glancing at the jagged rocks filling the shoals below them.
“More grens?” Jak asked, pulling back the hammer of his revolver and firing repeatedly. In his other hand, the teen held a knife by its blade, ready for a fast throw.
Scowling, J.B. thumbed in his last shotgun round. “That’s it.”
Shading his good eye, Ryan glanced upward, then unexpectedly shouldered his longblaster. “Krysty, guard the right. Mildred, the left. We’re gonna form a pyramid and get to that balcony. J.B. on my back!”
“But your leg,” Mildred stated in concern.
“Fuck it. Move!” he bellowed.
Watching the ground, the women assumed firing positions as Ryan placed his hands flat on the rough granite blocks. The Deathlands warrior grunted in pain as J.B. climbed onto his back, bracing his boots against Ryan’s hip bones and gun belt. Doc went up next and finally Jak. Balanced precariously atop the tall scholar, the teenager stretched out a hand as far as he could and just barely managed to brush his fingertips against the rust-streaked bottom of the steel posts supporting the railing.
“Not enough!” he cried. “Gonna jump!”
On the ground, a small crab scuttled into view, then another.
The lower men braced themselves and the youth lunged upward, his hands grabbing the lowest pipe. But the thick layer of rust crumbled under his grip, and one hand slipped completely off the railing. Supported by only one arm, Jak dangled helpless for a moment as he fought to reach the railing once more. Then a pair of hands reached over the balcony and helped the teenager up and out of sight. More crabs arched around the lighthouse, and the women opened fire as a bundle of rope sailed over the balcony, uncoiling as it fell. It hit the rocks, landing partially in the surf, and the muties immediately attacked the new invader with their sharp pincers.
The men climbed to the ground and stomped the old crabs to death, rescuing the rope. There was a large loop at the end for no discernible reason.
Shouting a warning, J.B. cut loose with the M-4000 as the first of the big crabs appeared around the lighthouse, and the others started to scramble up the length of rope. One by one, as they reached the top, each companion gave cover fire to the remaining people below until only Ryan was left. Working as a team, the people hauled up the big man, his wounded leg hanging limply behind. As he ascended, a crab jumped after him, but it missed and fell to its death amid the other bloody corpses.
Reaching the top, Ryan stiffly stood and shot a half smile at his son. The boy was bleeding from a scratch on his cheek, and had the beginning of a black eye, but otherwise seemed fine.
“Good job,” Ryan grunted.
“Thank God you found some rope in time,” Mildred panted, holstering her piece after two tries. Exhaustion draped over her like a shroud. “But why is it knotted at the end?”
“It came that way,” Dean replied.
“What mean?” Jak asked suspiciously.
“I got it off a dead guy. Come on, I’ll show you,” Dean said, and started to walk into the bowels of the old lighthouse.
Chapter Three
“Hold it a sec,” Ryan said, going to the edge of the balcony.
Looking out over the island, he could see only sand and weeds, the crumbling ruins of some predark skyscrapers jutting from the earth like the bones of a colossus. Then he studied the ruins more closely and realized those were the skeletons of warships, not houses. Carriers, battleships, destroyers, the maritime might of the predark world lay embedded in the dunes, their vaunted armor peeled away to reveal the bare inner layers of struts, and rusting keels. Those were us
eless. Anything valuable on board had been long ago destroyed by the wind and the surf.
Out to sea, there was empty water to their left and right, the calm expanse broken only by the occasional splash of a fish jumping at the reflected light of the setting sun. However, to the east were neat rows of thin islands, each slightly higher than the one before, steadily rising toward the north. Their island was about in the middle of the formation.
“Looks like the sea bed buckled upward from nuke quakes,” he said, waiting for the throbbing in his leg to subside.
Krysty shielded her vision from the setting sun. “Some sort of a ville three, no, four islands over,” she said, gesturing with her chin. “I see a big wall, and smoke.”
Extracting a device from his munitions bag, J.B. extended the antique Navy telescope to its full length. The device compacted to smaller than a soup can, but had much better range than even the best predark binocs.
“Yeah, it’s a ville,” he said. “Big one, too, with one hell of a good wall.”
“Cold Harbor?” Dean asked anxiously, his young face fiercely stern.
“Nope, someplace new.”
“Good,” the boy grunted. “Any place better than there.”
Leaning against the railing to support himself, Ryan took a turn at the telescope. “These nearby islands are only a hundred or so yards away from each other. Be an easy swim.”
“Except for the crabs,” Krysty said, pausing so they could hear the endless scraping from below.
“Let’s go inside,” Mildred suggested, heading for the open door of the beacon room. “Get away from those things.”
Trundling inside the framed structure on top of the granite tower, the companions found it stifling hot behind the glass walls. But as the heavy glass door closed, the sounds of the fighting crabs and crashing waves completely vanished. Silence reigned supreme.
“Perhaps it would be wise to leave the door open,” Doc suggested. “We shall be needing cross ventilation from the chimney to breathe downstairs.”
“Right,” Dean said with a nod, and propped the door ajar with a pile of the rope.
The central area of the beacon room was small, the huge lens assembly taking up most of the space. The walls were thick glass with massive support columns every few feet. The floor was only three feet wide and circled the beacon until reaching a steep set of wrought-iron stairs with no railing. Support was offered by grabbing hold of the steel column the stairs wound around.
Ryan looked at his son. “Any problems downstairs?”
“The place is empty,” Dean replied, scrunching one side of his face. “Except for the dead guy.”
“Hey, what if the crabs get inside through the chimney flue!”
“I closed the flue,” Dean replied. “No way they’re getting through plate steel.”
“Good. Smart move.”
“Mighty hot,” Jak said, loosening his collar.
“Greenhouse effect,” Mildred muttered, a bead of sweat trickling down her cheek. “Sunlight comes in and the heat gets trapped.”
“Like a magnifying glass?”
“Sort of, yes.”
Screwing the cap back on his canteen, Ryan wiped his mouth on a sleeve. He knew that explanation wasn’t quite right, but let it pass.
Taking a sip from his canteen, Doc wandered closer to the huge prism and lens assembly that dominated the middle of the room. The intricately carved glass lens stood six feet high, with concentric circles cut in short arcs on the thick glass, the reflective prisms spaced evenly around a central bull’s-eye-style magnifying glass. Behind the lens was some sort of a mechanism with a silvery reflecting dish.
“A first-order Fresnel lens,” Doc said, sounding impressed. “This must have been some very bad water. These are extremely powerful.”
“Yeah? How far?” Dean asked, fingering the pattern on the thick glass.
“Twenty miles, or so I have been told,” Doc replied. “And since the horizon is only seven miles away, that gives it quite a decent range.”
Jak scowled at the information. After night fell, they could see far, but the beam itself would broadcast their presence to the world. No good. He had no wish to face another of the baron’s PT boats until they had more blasters. Maybe even some of those Firebird rockets, too.
“Fresnel?” Mildred asked curiously, rubbing her neck with a damp cloth.
Leaning on his ebony swordstick, Doc pursed his lips. “A Frenchman, I believe. I have a cousin who retired from the Navy and became a lighthouse keeper. He used to regale my dear Emily and I at every opportunity with stories about the new types of lenses, and such. Poor man was always afraid the Confederate Army would smash his beacon to make Union Army supply ships crash on the shore. Odd fellow.”
His smile fading, Doc blinked several times. “Why, even after the Civil War was over…” The gentleman paused, his voice taking on a soft quality. “Is the war over? Only last week, we heard about Lee crossing the Potomac. Or was it last month?”
As he wandered off, the others paid the man no attention. Doc often slipped into the past, but always returned if there was trouble. Privately, Mildred envied the man slightly. At least for a few brief minutes, he was back among his family and friends, a land without radiation or muties. As time passed, she found it ever harder to recall her life before awakening in the cryo unit and joining Ryan. Sometimes, she even imagined that this had always been her life and the past was but a dream from childhood. On impulse, she reached out and took J.B. by the hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. The man turned and smiled at her, maintaining the intimate contact.
“Something wrong, Millie?” J.B. asked softly.
Only he called her that. She had always been Mildred to her family and associates. The past had many pleasures: clean sheets, pizza, air-conditioning, cable TV, but there had never been a man in her life like John. He was worth the violence and horrors of the Deathlands. To be with him was worth any price.
“Not a thing, John,” she said with a smile. “Just thinking.”
Giving her a hug, J.B. released her hand and continued his examination of the huge lens.
“What’s the light source for the beacon?” Ryan asked, grabbing hold of a ceiling to rest his leg.
“Electric,” J.B. replied, then grinned. “Which means generators and juice in the basement.”
“Emergency jenny, if nothing else,” Ryan agreed. The generator was old, but still serviceable. “If the baron’s sec men haven’t located the gateway, we might find enough juice here to operate the generators and still leave these islands. Dean, show us the way.”
“Yes, sir!” The boy started down the steep stairs with the immortal assurance of youth.
Taking Doc by the elbow, Krysty guided the mumbling old man down the stairs along with the others. The wealth of light reflecting off the lenses and prisms of the beacon cast bizarre shadows down the circular staircase, and the companions had to light candles before even reaching halfway down.
“This is the spot,” Dean said, playing the beam of the flashlight over a bare section of the stairs. “The rope was tied here, and he was hanging over there.”
“Suicide,” Jak said, frowning. “Easier throw somebody off top. Let grav chill.”
Ryan looked down and could see nothing below. “Better check the corpse,” he said, drawing his blaster. He could get a lot of info from the corpse, suicide or not.
The yellowish cone of the flashlight bobbing about, the companions proceeded carefully down the angled steps and spread out when they reached the bottom level of the tower. Mildred took the flashlight from Dean and pumped the charging handle several times, but the beam stayed as dim as before. The battery was dying again. Turning it off, she pocketed the device to save for medical emergencies.
Now in the flickering light of the candles, the companions did a quick recce of the tower. This area was twice as wide as the beacon room, and it was much cooler, probably because they were now twenty feet under the sand. There were seve
ral large wooden lockers full of tackle, and assorted equipment for rescuing drowning people and maintaining the beacon. A heavy-gauge power switch was set on the granite block wall between a couple of windows, each showing only a smooth expanse of compacted sand against the other side of the glass.
A tangle of bones and cloth stood in the middle of the floor. Ryan and Mildred knelt alongside the mess to pull out a human skeleton. There was a terrible crack yawning wide in the skull, but the breakage was fresh, obviously caused by the fall and not from a blow to the temple while the man was alive.
“I found him hanging halfway down the circular stairs,” Dean reported, setting the candle on a wall shelf. “The rope was in fine shape, so I cut him loose and took it.”
As Ryan started to go through the pockets of the ragged clothing, Mildred lifted the skull and turned it.
“Well, he’s definitely from the predark days,” she stated, opening the jaw wide as it could reach. “Look at those ceramic fillings! That’s prime dentistry.”
“How die?” Jak asked bluntly.
“Tell you in a minute,” Mildred replied. Carefully, she laid out the bones, placing them in order. Then she ran her trained hands over the skeleton, checking for damage, and found nothing.
“Okay, he died of strangulation,” Mildred announced, rocking back on her heels. “Damn fool must have tied the noose wrong and it didn’t snap his neck when he jumped off the stairs. Poor bastard just hung there until his air ran out. Might have been a couple of minutes, or a whole day if he was particularly strong.”
“A bad way to die,” Krysty stated.
“There’s no good way to get aced,” J.B. said with conviction. “Some are just worse than others.”
For some reason, that made Mildred feel incredibly sad. Maybe it was because, while they often found dead folks, few were from predark. It made her feel a sort of kinship with the nameless man. “Ashes to ashes,” she whispered, making the sign of the cross, “dust to dust. And may God have mercy on your soul.”
“Soul,” Jak snorted in disdain. “Right.”
