by James Axler
“I think he was referring to the old poem,” Mildred said, also viewing the predark ruins. “A fabled city of gold that nobody ever reached alive.”
“However, we’ve got a bastard lot better than matchlocks and wooden clubs,” Ryan stated, leveling the longblaster. “Okay, I’m on point with Krysty. J.B. and Dean, cover the rear. We go slow and watch your steps. Whatever aced these folks could live underground. Anything appears, shoot on sight.”
Warily, the companions assumed formation and crossed the field to enter the tall grass. These plants were green and alive, not dead weeds, the grass mixing with wild wheat and barley, almost as if this had been a farm long ago. The wind made a hushing sound as it blew over the waist-high crops.
“Watch for waves,” Krysty warned, referring to the disturbances animals made when they moved through tall grass. From the top the patterns resembled ripples on a lake and gave away the predator’s exact position as it closed for the kill.
As the grass became taller, the ground became mushy, and the shoulder-tall plants stopped at the bank of a rushing stream, the water so crystal clear they could see to the bottom. Knowing their canteens were low, Ryan called for a halt, but had J.B. test for rads and Mildred check for chems. They both pronounced it safe to drink. Happily, the companions rinsed out the canteens before filling them again, then took the opportunity to splash some of the water on their faces, doing a brief wash. The stream was cool and tasted faintly of mineral deposits. Best they’d had since arriving in the Marshall Islands.
When they were finished, the group waded to the other side. But Jak called a second halt and passed Dean several weapons before wading back into the middle of the stream and lying down. Rigorously, the teen began rubbing himself all over, trying to remove the mud of the area from his hair and clothing. The downstream runoff was black at first, then as the layers washed away, it turned brown and finally clear.
“Better,” he grunted, wading to the shore and taking back his blasters. The teenager looked like a pale drowned rat, but nobody shifted position when he came near anymore.
“Damn pigs,” Jak muttered, shaking his jacket.
“You’re preaching to the choir on that, my friend,” Doc growled.
Then surprisingly, Krysty and Mildred did the same thing, even though they didn’t seem to be very dirty.
“Goddamn, that’s cold!” the physician said through chattering teeth, both hands busy wringing the water from her beaded hair. “But I feel more like a human being now.”
Making an inarticulate noise of pleasure, Krysty wildly shook her head, the animated filaments splaying out to facilitate drying, then slowly returning to the gentle crimson curls.
“This will do until we can find some soap,” she said, squeezing the sleeves of her jumpsuit.
Greatly refreshed, the three companions dried as the group walked toward the forest, the formation of trees proving to be only a slim windbreak a few yards wide. Leaving the forest, they traversed a rubble-filled culvert, with half of a predark bridge high overhead, the span ending in the middle of empty air.
Reaching the top of the culvert, the group easily crawled under a heavy wire fence, braided with plastic strips that hid whatever was beyond. The companions found themselves standing on the gravel berm of a predark road, the smooth pavement extending out of sight in both directions. Across the road was a collection of warehouses, rusty cars with flat tires standing at ancient parking meters. Streetlights hung from power cables over every intersection, more cars stopped forever at the faded crosswalks. An assortment of houses lined the side streets, the front yards wild tangles of ivy and flowers, a few of the homes completely buried under the unstoppable advance of the resilient ivy. Not a window was broken, doors were closed and telephone lines were still connected to the poles. An unnatural silence lay heavy over the predark metropolis, and the companions fought a small shiver.
“Don’t like this,” Ryan said with a frown. “The damn place is in perfect condition. As if everybody simply stopped moving for a hundred years.”
“Not quite everybody,” Doc rumbled, pointing upward with the LeMat.
Rising above the factories and homes were the monolithic skyscrapers of downtown. Stretched between two of the high rises was a giant web, exactly like the one they had seen on Spider Island.
“Now we know where the bones came from,” Ryan said.
“Gonna need some Molotov cocktails,” J.B. stated, hefting his unusually light munitions bag. “Those worked last time.”
“Sort of,” Mildred corrected.
“There’s a beer plant,” Dean said, indicating a building down the street. “We can get bottles there.”
“Keep your eyes peeled for a gas station,” Ryan said, starting down the middle of the street.
“Need the soap powder from a laundry, too,” Krysty added, the Webley feeling heavy in her hand. Her knuckles had been badly skinned in the rock climb, and the weapon was already christened with specks of blood.
HIGH ABOVE the silent streets, something watched the seven people proceed deeper into the heart of the city.
The newcomers were wounded and poorly dressed, but with good boots and very well-armed. This indicated a high probability that they were scavengers who had raided a supply dump. Thus additional weapons may not be in visual range. Grens were almost a certainty, and possibly even an energy weapon: a portable microwave beamer, or Bedlow laser. Such lethal armament was not to be taken lightly, and willful self-termination was authorized only as a last resort. More data was required to form a course of action.
Closing the blinds, the Walker moved away from the window, stepping off the ceiling and through the door to stealthily make its way down to the ground level. Clearly, further reconnaissance was necessary until it could decide exactly how and when to exterminate the humans.
Chapter Twelve
Walking down the middle of the street between the lines of dead cars, the companions tried to keep a watch in every direction and found it impossible. There were just too many windows, sewers and doorways in the metropolis. If somebody wanted to hide, there was no limit to the places where they could ferret.
“Creepy,” Mildred said, fighting a shiver. “I’ve been in plenty of ruins, but this place, well, it isn’t ruins. It’s just old and empty. I keep expecting the traffic lights to click on, and the cars to start moving again.”
“This was no nuke attack,” Krysty said, watching the tattered remains of cloth curtains fluttering in the open window of a second-floor apartment, a red ceramic flowerpot balanced precariously on the sill. “Mebbe poison gas.”
“Or a neutron bomb,” J.B. said, watching the reflection of the passing companions in the plate-glass window of a millinery store. “Damn thing only aced people and machines but did no damage to the buildings. Got no idea how it worked.”
Mildred started to explain about jacketing a tactical nuke with deutronium-rich water and tritium injectors, then stopped herself. The details weren’t important. Only the results.
Going to a police car, Ryan studied the interior, then smashed in the glass with the barrel of his Webley. The green squares of the safety glass scattered underfoot. Reaching in, he took the pump-action shotgun out of the skeleton hands of the dead officer and racked the slide. A shell came out and he closely inspected it. The plastic was firm, not brittle, the brass bottom shiny and without any signs of age or corrosion.
“Looks good,” he said, tossing it to J.B.
The Armorer made the catch. “Yeah, if the whole place is like this, we’ll be ass deep in supplies.”
“This city is so dead,” Krysty said. “I can feel the death laying over these buildings.”
There were skeletons inside almost every car with the windows closed, piles of bones behind the steering wheels, briefcases on the passenger seats, foam coffee cups still perched on the dashboards.
“You sensing anything alive?” he added.
“In every direction,” the redhead said. “Pla
nts, animals, things I can’t describe, but no human life.” She paused. “Or rather, nothing I call human.”
“‘For a thousand silent ghosts trod the ancient way, seeking a speaking to those warm and alive,”’ Doc said softly in his singsong voice.
Rattling the handle of an ambulance, only to find it locked, Mildred turned at the quote and frowned. “Don’t know that one. Is it Emerson?”
“One of my own efforts, madam,” he answered, staring into the distance. “From when I wrote poetry and thought it a very important thing to do. A million years ago.”
“You’re a poet?” Mildred chuckled.
He offered a wan smile. “In due honesty I must admit my works were very poor things, indeed.”
“Quiet. We’re being watched,” Ryan said, the hairs on the back of his neck stiffening. The man raised the Steyr and gently worked the bolt to chamber a round. This clip was the first of the ammo from the armory of the pirates, and he hadn’t had a chance yet to check the cartridges. He was going to find out real fast if it was any good.
Using the Uzi to tilt back his fedora, J.B. said, “Yeah, I can feel it, too. Just like when we were traveling with the Trader, and the convoy would roll into a pass. There was nothing to see, but we could tell the bastards were there anyway.”
“Gorilla or spider?” Jak asked, reaching for a knife and biting back a curse. Damn pirates took everything. He needed to get more soon. Had to be something in this city he could use or adapt.
Slowly turning, Ryan didn’t answer, his eye staring hard at the alleyways and rooftops. That’s where he could launch an attack from. And he had learned from experience to always consider what the enemy could do, not just what they might do.
With a cry, Dean turned and fired. A rat exploded into gory fur off the hood of a car, the .460 Nitro Express round continuing onward to slam into and punch a hole through a brick wall. The blast of the Weatherby echoed along the concrete canyons of the city, slowly fading into the distance.
“If the locals didn’t before,” Ryan growled, “they damn well know we’re here now. Put away that long-cannon, Dean, and use the Browning.”
“Sure, Dad,” the boy said. He cleared the breech of the heavy rifle, then slid in a third round before slinging it over a shoulder. The .460 rounds of the big-bore longblaster were so huge, the breech could only hold two spare cartridges in the internal mag, plus a third up the pipe. Not a lot, put the thing hit like a bazooka.
Pulling out his Browning semiautomatic blaster, he clicked off the safety and jacked the slide.
“Ready,” Dean announced somberly.
Ryan gave a nod, then continued scanning the multitude of buildings. Five, six, ten stories tall, the buildings stood in lines along the downtown like mountains reaching for the stars.
“First thing we need is to recce this burg,” he said, annoyed. “Be here for years if we have to check every building.”
“That seems to be the tallest,” Krysty said. “We could see the whole island from the top.”
“Not going to find a redoubt from above,” Mildred countered, then added, “but we’re not going to see people walking the streets, either.”
The redhead frowned. That was true. Somewhere in this city there had to be a redoubt, or a gateway. But where could it be located?
“Check gov office,” Jak stated casually. “Or base.”
“And after that?” Doc inquired politely.
Unconcerned, the teenager shrugged.
There was a shattering of glass, and the companions spun to see Doc reaching through a busted car window to withdraw a map. Carefully, he unfolded it on top of the vehicle’s hood, then crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed the wad away.
“Fiji,” he said succinctly.
“Okay, top of the skyscraper it is,” Ryan decided, hoisting his longblaster. “Should be easy to spot the dome of the capitol building or a military base from there.”
“Easy enough to get there,” J.B. agreed, looking at the granite monolith towering above the metropolis. “We just keep making rights and lefts until we’re there.”
“Unless we pass a hardware store,” Ryan said. “Army-Navy, camping outlet, anything like that. We need supplies.”
“How much food does each of us have?” Krysty asked, patting the pockets of her bearskin coat. She had six MRE envelopes and a small can of soup. That was it—everything else had been abandoned in the horse cart.
“Combined, we have enough for three days,” Mildred replied. She considered it part of her job in the group to keep track of the food. “After that, we hunt for cans.”
“Or hunt,” Jak said, leaning heavily on the ebony stick. Then he glanced backward at the stain and frowned. “Not partial to rat.”
“Should be no shortage of food,” Ryan said. “If it really was a neutron bomb that chilled this place, the stores should have tons of canned goods. Neutron blasts make cans last forever.”
“Just watch for rust,” Mildred reminded curtly. “Somebody gets ptomaine poisoning, there’s nothing I can do to help.”
“A feeb in swamp ate from rusty can,” Jak said. “Saw it. Died screaming.”
Instantly, everybody became alert as a warm wind blew down the street, carrying a faint whiff of sulfur. Nervously, they scrutinized the sky overhead. A flock of condors was lazily winging over the city, and endless sheet lightning was booming amid the fiery orange-and-purple clouds. But there was no sign of the dreaded acid rain coming. The smell of sulfur had to have been from the windward vents of the local volcanoes. Nothing to worry about.
“Let’s get a move on,” Ryan said, starting along the parked cars in the street. “And if a spider attacks, blow out a store window and get inside. It’s too big to follow us through most stores.”
As the group went along the city streets, the smell of sulfur got consistently stronger, then eased away just as fast as it came. Taking a cross street, they found no cars about, and the sightless eyes of the countless glass windows became a hall of mirrors reflecting their images against one another, forming a multiple of ever smaller companions. Ryan fought the urge to start blowing out glass, and gratefully left the visual labyrinth of the city block behind as they took another turn, getting ever closer to the skyscraper.
But then just for a moment, Ryan spotted a new reflection in a silvery window. It was a tall man with his silvery hair tied back, and wearing a fancy embroidered duster, with a long white eagle feather in his hair.
Ryan stared at the sight, feeling his guts twist and heart pound like predark artillery. It was the same man who appeared in the Deathlands just before Trader took the long walk to nowhere. Instinctively, Ryan started for his blaster, then thought better of it.
“Hey,” he called out in a friendly manner.
The reflection turned and was gone. Charging forward, Ryan ran around the corner and found himself staring at a long empty street. A breeze blew some dust off the roadway into a ghostly cloud, and a lizard scuttled under a rusted-out mailbox to escape from the heat of the day.
“Ryan,” a voice said.
The man spun with a finger tightening on the trigger of the Steyr, to see Krysty come about the corner.
“Hey,” he repeated, the word sounding flat in the dry air. “Just saw the strangest thing.”
Almost worried, Krysty studied his face for a moment. She had never seen him this way before. “Looks like you just saw death itself,” she said, adding a smile to let him know it was a joke.
But the big man didn’t laugh or smile. Instead, Ryan turned and stared hard at the empty street again.
“Mebbe I did,” Ryan muttered, feeling as if he had just been given a warning of some kind. A damn important one, too. But whether it was to go, or stay, or what, he had no idea. Only one thing was certain; something terrible was about to happen. Right here and now.
Just then, a sharp whistle shrilled, and the pair rushed back to the others. The rest of the companions were gathered around the front doors of a four-
story building, a dark neon sign stretching across its second-floor facade proudly proclaiming it a department store.
“Might be just what we were looking for.” Mildred smiled, cupping hands to her face in an effort to see inside. But another set of doors stood a few yards away from the street doors, and the exterior light couldn’t penetrate strong enough for the woman to be able to make out anything clearly—only vague outlines of display cases, racks of clothing and what she hoped were mannequins. Sure had a lot of them, though.
Lying on the sidewalk, J.B. was busy tricking the locking mechanism set into the bottom steel rim of one of the glass doors. “Stupid ass place for a lock,” he mumbled, both hands full of probes and lock picks. Rattling the door, he tried again and this time was rewarded with a dull clank.
“Damn good lock,” the Armorer said respectfully, getting to his feet and tucking away the collection of tools.
The next set yielded much faster and as they opened it, out flowed dry, lifeless air that seemed to suck the very moisture from the skin as it rushed into the street and was gone.
Moving through the wind break of the two sets of doors, the companions entered the department store. The interior was as dark as night, false walls blocked the sunlight from coming in through the window, the hundreds of electric lights in the white tile ceiling cold tubes and bulbs. Going to a rack of dresses, Ryan ripped the arm off a mannequin and wrapped a silky frock about the wooden limb. Then dampening the material with a few drops of gun oil, he flicked a butane lighter and the torch crackled alive, filling the area with bright illumination. The rest of the companions did the same, and soon everybody was carrying a torch. They began to prowl through the cavernous building.
Moving in their nimbus of firelight, the companions proceeded along the aisles with their weapons primed. For a moment, J.B. stopped at an eyeglass display set into a wall, and looked longingly at the hundreds of pairs of frames, then moved on reluctantly, knowing from past experience that the frames held clear glass. His glaucoma hadn’t gotten any worse in the past while, and he forcibly reminded himself to stop worrying about things he couldn’t change. If, or when, he started to go blind, he knew exactly what he would do.
