by James Axler
"Can't just fuckin' wait for the bullet," said Hennings, moving to the side of the passageway and sitting, back against the wall.
"Who do you figure this Keeper is? Some warlord? A baron?"
J.B. shook his head at Ryan's question. "Could be. Sounds old." Lowering his voice, he added, "And crazy as all hell."
They put their guns in a pile and waited, mostly in silence, for about fifteen minutes. Eventually all of them except Okie joined Henn on the floor of the corridor.
"The Keeper has considered. You are people of peace? With hearts full of contrite?"
Ryan didn't know what "contrite" meant, but he nodded anyway. Seemed the best answer. "Yeah."
"You are hungered?"
"Yeah." Finnegan got the answer in first.
"Come forward. Leave your weapons of destruction. You will not need them while under the protection of the Keeper."
"Can't wait to meet him," muttered Hunaker, standing and stretching like a big cat.
Hennings went to retrieve the radio, but the voice from the loudspeaker snapped, "No! Leave that. There is no need to communicate with the chill beyond these walls. None."
"Can hardly reach War Wag One, anyway. Range is only 'bout fifteen miles. Could be way farther off than that." Hennings put the radio back with the blasters and grenades.
Ryan led them through the circular corridor, past several doors in the roof. The smell of cooked food became stronger. Intermittently they passed beneath a tiny, silent vid camera.
"This goddamn place goes on forever," moaned Okie, kicking a wall. Sparks flew from the steel tips of her combat boots.
"Doc? You got any ideas where we might be?" asked Ryan.
Since they'd emerged from the gateway, the old man had been strangely quiet, stalking along, the antiquated hat perched on top of the bony skull. The business of the trap and the creaking voice with its orders hardly seemed to have bothered him at all. Now he started at Ryan's question.
"What was that, my dear Mr. Cawdor? Ifear that my thoughts were elsewhere."
"Any idea where we are?"
"In a redoubt, sir."
"We fuckin' know that," sighed Hunaker.
"It is a place of some size, unless I miss my guess. My memory is clouded — after a jump, I have always been a touch... there were so many."
"How many?"
"Many stockpiles and also many redoubts. Indeed, in places of the blessed land where it was thought attacks might be concentrated, I recall they built some redoubts that were also stockpiles. Perhaps this is such a place."
They'd been walking, by Ryan's calculation, for nearly fifteen minutes, covering more than a mile at their brisk pace.
When they reached a steel barrier, blocking their progress, they stood and stared at it. Finally Ryan stepped forward and looked into the nearest camera,
"I am becoming tired of this. We are all hungry and thirsty and in need of rest. We come in peace. We have laid down our weapons, yet still you treat us like an invadin' enemy."
Even as he spoke, he realized that he had unconsciously slipped into the same form of address as the person behind the screens.
"The Keeper has never seen the like," came the reply, crackling and wheezing. Either the sound reproduction was poor or a decrepit old man was talking. Or both.
"Then let us see this Keeper. Let us talk to him. We are few. This redoubt must hold hundreds of armed men."
A burst of laughter spluttered from the loudspeaker, followed by silence.
J.B. moved closer to Ryan, and whispered, "Could use the plasex and run for that gateway."
"Yeah. Get the fuck out of this fireblasted place. Let's..."
He was interrupted by the door ahead of them beginning to slide slowly upward, revealing the legs, then bodies, then heads of three people standing facing them.
"I'll eat my bastard blaster," whispered Okie, shaking her black hair in disbelief.
Two women and a man were spread across the corridor, two paces apart, each holding a gun. Ryan sized them up, trying to hide his bewilderment. He'd expected to see the cream of the redoubt's guards: a squad of uniformed sec men, helmeted and masked, each with a gleaming laser rifle or sonic stunner.
The man at the center of the trio stood a scant five feet tall, Ryan guessed. He was dressed in a bizarre assortment of rags and tawdry finery: a jacket that bore sparkling sequins, leather breeches that were hacked off raggedly above the scrawny knees, and a woman's high-heeled boot on the right foot and a stained shoe of blue canvas on the left. Numerous medals on scraps of iridescent ribbons, jingled from his left breast. A bandolier that crossed his chest contained an extraordinary range of ammunition. Even at a snatched glance Ryan could make out six or seven different calibers.
It was tough to estimate his age. He was so stooped and bent that he might have been ninety. His long white beard was stained amber, seemingly with nicotine, and strands of orange and green ribbons were plaited through it. His hair was streaked silver and gray, and straggled to his shoulders. His face was in shadow, but it was possible to make out a narrow mouth, a hooked nose and deeply set eyes beneath beetling brows.
On the right was a woman of a similar age and garb. Her jacket and leather breeches were so dirty that their original color was indeterminable. She wore a cap, pulled to one side and decorated with cheap glass brooches. She was grinning, showing a picket fence of broken and chipped teeth.
Ryan finally rested his eyes on the other woman. Close to six feet tall, she had natural poise and elegance. Her hair was a tumbling mane of bright gold over a red satin blouse. Her belt had an ornate silver buckle. Her skirt was pale maroon suede — it ended well above the knee — and her legs were encased in high boots of polished crimson leather, the high heels ornamented with tiny silver spurs that tinkled softly as she moved. A pearl-handled pistol hung at her right hip.
Her eyes were a deep summer blue, gazing frankly at Ryan and each of the others in turn. The touch of her eyes was like a caress across Ryan's cheek, and he was astonished at the girl's power. She couldn't have been more than sixteen.
All three of the strangers carried the same weapon and held them with the casual ease of professionals. Yet there was something about them that gave Ryan pause. Their ease was studied, almost as if they'd mastered it from a picture in a book. Real killers had a constant tension to them; they never relaxed.
"Heckler & Koch silenced sub-MG," whispered J.B., at Ryan's elbow.
But Ryan had already recognized the guns. He'd seen odd examples in uncovered stockpiles. The model was the MP-5 SD-2. Loaded, they weighed nearly seven pounds. Not that accurate over any distance, but twenty paces away, as they were now, the trio of guns would rip them apart.
"Greetings from the Keeper of this redoubt, strangers," croaked the old man. "Never have there been such outsiders here."
Ryan was utterly confused. Where were the sentinels? The platoons of armed sec men? Who was this dotard with the two ill-matched women?
"Thank you. Are we welcome here?"
"We think so. The Keeper thinks you are. What are your names?"
"I'm Ryan Cawdor. This is J.B. Dix." The Armorer took off his crumpled fedora and nodded. "Hennings and Finnegan. Lady with the green hair is called Hunaker, and the lady with the red hair's Krysty Wroth. Tall one's Okie."
"What of him?" The barrel of the machine gun swung toward Doc, who was lurking at the rear of the group.
"Name's Doc Tanner. Dr. Theophilus Tanner. I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, sir," he said, bowing deeply, swinging his tall hat behind him. "And you, ladies."
Ryan was thunderstruck. "Tanner? Theophilus Tanner! You said you didn't know your fuckin' name, Doc! How in the?.."
The old man shuffled his feet in embarrassment, like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He grinned expansively and shrugged. "Guess a door sprang open that I'd thought had closed forever. Just came, like that."
"Theophilus," said Krysty. "What kind of a name is that, Doc?"
"My name, madam. A poor thing, perchance, but mine own." He backed away, mumbling to himself. "How could I have forgotten it? How could I?"
"Day of surprises," said J.B.
If Doc's memory had really returned, then there were many questions that Ryan wanted to ask him. But that would have to wait until later.
"You had best come. That is the invite of the Keeper. There is food."
"Our blasters?" asked Okie.
"Later, my pretty little chick. All things later. First come and eat. There is enough."
For the first time, the old woman spoke, laughing in a bubbling snigger like air rising through molasses. "Oh, but there's plenty for us all for eternity." She seemed likely to choke on her own merriment. "Eternity, or even fuckin' longer!"
The stunted old man made sure his "guests" went ahead of him. The two women stayed behind them on either side, and he stayed right at the back, calling out instructions.
"This place is bigger'n most villes," said Ryan, walking beside Krysty. They walked another nine or ten minutes, moving into a part of the redoubt with side rooms, all with closed doors. Twice they reached junctions, taking first the left fork, and later the right.
"Any ideas, Doc Tanner?" Ryan asked, glancing back over his shoulder.
"Just Doc does fine. No. Biggest I've ever seen. I figure there's maybe a stockpile linked. I confess that I have never heard of such a monstrous Gormenghastian pile."
"Got to be hundreds running it," suggested Krysty, but Doc shook his head.
"I beg to differ, Miss Wroth. They were designed to last millenia with no supervision. A child could manage one of these once everything was set and functioning. I recall the malfunction rate was markedly below one percent of one percent of one percent."
Ahead there was yet another barrier.
"Halt. The Keeper commands obedience. Beyond that portal is food and rest for the weary traveler. Not that we've ever had a traveler before, weary or not."
"We can take 'em," whispered Finnegan. "We all got knives. Krysty's got the three throwers. Take 'em all easy as fartin'."
"They'll take half of us. Not good enough," said J.B.
Ryan watched the doddering old man aim a small black remote control device at the top of the closed door. It was obviously a simple sonic switch that activated the opening lock.
"Move forward and enter the demesne of the Keeper of the redoubt."
They stepped through, beneath another raised barrier, and found themselves in a great mall of another century. The floor was a patterned mosaic of soft tiles. At the center of the mall, which was two hundred paces long by a hundred wide, was a glittering fountain shaped from curves of polished metal, with water burbling and chirruping from level to level. And on every side were stores. But stores of a kind that none of them had ever seen even in their wildest dreams.
Ryan looked around, his jaw sagging, his single eye dazzled wherever he stared.
"Blessed Judas Iscariot," he heard Doc whisper. "We've chron-jumped."
But the words meant nothing to Ryan, and he forgot them in the bewildering sights all about them.
"I'll fuck a dead stickie," said Hunaker in amazement.
"The Keeper will allow you to reconnoiter the parameters of the redoubt once you have eaten."
"This must take an army," said Hennings.
The old man cackled. "You think so, black man?"
"We told you our names," said Ryan. "How 'bout yours?"
"This my wife, Rachel," said the old man, pointing to the old woman, who curtsied. "And this is my other wife, Lori. She don't say much. Bein' a dummy, that's why."
"And where are the others?" asked Krysty.
"Others? Ain't none. We're everybody." He and the old woman giggled.
"Then, where's... who?.." Ryan was lost for words.
The old man had a coughing fit, and it was some seconds before he could speak clearly. He wiped some drooling spittle from his beard. "Me? I'm Quint the Keeper, young man. The Keeper of the redoubt, and my word is law, and the law is death."
Chapter Four
The blind, mewing creature tied naked to the bed bore little resemblance to a human being.
Once it had been a farmer named Ivan Ivanovich. It had struggled broken-nailed for a pitiful existence in cruel fields of poisonous soil. It had been married to a wife who had died of a bleeding illness eight years back, leaving three squabbling children. Two of them were mutants, with grotesque facial disfigurements. One had a third, soft pineal eye, exposed and raw, weeping constantly in the center of his forehead.
Now there was only darkness.
Not the comfortable darkness of a cold night, with an iron stove glowing with heat and he and his family huddled together under blankets all in one huge bed.
"Not day... not night," he mumbled through his broken teeth. But Ivan Ivanovich couldn't hear his own words, because a sharp file had been thrust into his ears, bursting the delicate eardrums.
There had been no warning. Just the shaggy men, with some devilish women among them, looming out of the driven snow and the fading light. All with guns slung across their shoulders — real guns, not the battered muskets and old bolt-action rifles that the folk of Ozhbarchik could muster.
This band of guerrillas had visited them before. That time the butchers had stolen food and killed a villager who tried to resist them. This time, it seemed, the murderers were bent on killing all the villagers.
Most of the thirty-seven men of Ozhbarchik had fallen in a bloody hail of lead, massacred by the laughing strangers. The nineteen women and three surviving children were seized and held in several of the scattered huts. The cows were each shot with a single bullet through the skull. Ivan's two chickens were chased and caught with much merriment, decapitated, then thrown into a cauldron simmering over an open fire.
Ivan Ivanovich had been the chieftain of Ozhbarchik. His ownership of the pair of fowl had conferred that dubious honor on him. Now he was paying a monstrous price for that honor.
Before his eardrums were pierced, Ivan Ivanovich had heard the leader of the band, named Uchitel, ordering his followers to take what they wanted, roast the animals, eat their fill. He had warned his people to watch for concealed weapons. "A man may dine, yet feel his tripes spilled in his lap," he'd shouted.
There had been screaming; high, thin sounds, as the raiders took their pleasure with the women of the village; Ivan's sister had been taken in front of his eyes by three men at once, with others jostling in a queue behind, their breeches unlaced, and erect, hugely swollen penises thrusting ready.
He'd watched a man fail in his efforts to sodomize a woman then take out his anger by slitting her throat from ear to ear, cursing the dying woman as her blood fountained across his boots.
A huge woman with coarse skin had punched Ivan to the floor, holding him there with a muddied boot, while two other women cut away his clothes with their narrow-bladed knives. They had not been gentle, and his skin was streaming from a dozen shallow slashes from their weapons. They had mocked him as they took and bound him to the rude frame of his own bed, hands and feet pulled painfully apart in a great X. Blood trickled from beneath his broken nails from the tightness of the rawhide cords that bit into the skin at ankle and wrist.
He'd been conscious of the horrors all about him. One of his children had been butchered for refusing to use his tender mouth to pleasure a skinny killer. He'd smelled the scent of a huge fire outside and knew that some of the huts were being used for fuel to roast the slaughtered cattle. Gradually the screaming had died down. None of them had come to hurt him.
Not then. Not at first.
After an hour or so, the leader came to the bed and stared down at him. He wore a long coat made from the skin of a white bear, trimmed with soft sable. His eyes were a curious golden color, his mouth warm and friendly. Around his temples was a band of silver, a ruby at its center.
"This stinking hovel makes me want to vomit, old man. My good brothers and sisters may
become sickened from being here. But we shall not stay long."
And he smiled down at Ivan Ivanovich. That was before the pain and the blackness, when Ivan still had a name and knew who he was.
The brutish woman came then, when everyone else was outside. The others called her Bizabraznia, the ugly one. Through the open door Ivan saw the bright flames as they danced and flared, caught the rich taste of the cooking meat, heard the devilish laughter. By then he supposed that everyone in the village was dead.
Bizabraznia, grimacing and farting, lowered her bulk to the side of the bed. He could smell her sour breath, the taint of kvass. The raiders had quickly found the kegs of the sour beer.
"The men enjoy their fucking, little grandfather," she said, reaching out with her broad hand and touching him beneath the chin. He tried to pull away, but the cords held him helpless. She smiled at his efforts, chided him.
Her fingers ran through his straggly beard and the gray hair matted with sweat on his chest. Lower and lower she touched him, bringing her face nearer to his. The little eyes, buried in fat like a suckling pig's, came nearer. Her lips opened and she kissed him, the stubble on her cheeks and chin scraping against his flesh.
For a second, he tried again to resist her foulness, but she gripped his shrunken penis, whispering, "Kiss me sweet, brother, else I'll tug this off your belly easy as wringing a chick's neck. Real sweet kiss, like you and your good wife relish."
Her lips pressed to his, and he fought to respond, closing his eyes against the vileness. Her hand caressed him, rousing him. Her mouth tasted of the stolen food that once belonged to the good people of Ozhbarchik.
She reclined, releasing him, fumbling with her leather breeches, dropping them over her pallid, wrinkled thighs. Bizabraznia belched, putting a hand to her mouth in mock politeness.
"Schchi da kasha pishchna nasha," she laughed.
"The only food is cabbage soup and gruel." Somehow the child's verse was a foul obscenity on her chapped lips, and he nearly threw up. Again he restrained himself, knowing that this monstrous harridan would kill him if he didn't please her.
The woman heaved herself up and squatted over his thighs, grinning, trying to bring him to erection. "Not much for you, is there? Not in the way of a man, eh? There's a good... Something's stirring, I swear. Not much of a fucking worm, but better than... ah."
