Dectra Chain

by James Axler

  "Five up and two to go," Ryan said.

  Jak was next, hair plastered to his angular skull like a snow-plas mask. He was sobbing for breath, and he joined Lori, doubled up.

  Last was J.B., his trusty fedora jammed down the front of his jacket. His glasses were totally misted with sea spray, but he climbed the last few steps as sprightly as if he'd been out for an afternoon scramble with a pair of maiden aunts.

  Ryan had found a small iron door, covered in lichen, at the rear of the platform, and he left the others and pushed at it, finding that it swung open easily. His eye winced at the brightness of light inside, startling after the long blackness.

  But he could see enough to make out a slackly grinning mouth and shadowed eyes that seemed to mutter brain death. And below that the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun.

  Chapter Five

  "HI. WHOOOOO YOU?"

  The fluting, owllike voice was like that of a young child. But the face above the scattergun was at least sixty years old, lined and furrowed, with a pale, unhealthy sheen to it, overlaid with a gray patina of dust and grease. The crazed eyes stared at Ryan out of pits of scoured bone, deadly flat and so dark a brown that they blurred into black. There were no teeth in the yellowed gums that leered at Ryan Cawdor. His hair was the color of rotting corn, pasted thinly over the crumpled scalp. Both ears pointed backward instead of forward. The man wore a shapeless suit of crudely woven wool, dyed a sickly green-yellow. Ryan wrinkled his nose at the foul smell of damp and decay that billowed around him.

  "Whooooo you?" the voice repeated.

  "Name's Ryan Cawdor. What do they call you?"

  "Don't knooooow. Nooooo name for meeee. How you come?"

  "Up the ladder. Had a boat wrecked below on the rocks. Climbed up. Long way, ain't it?"

  The head nodded, but the gun never shifted. The stranger's finger never moved off the twin triggers of the battered Remington.

  "Long waaaaay. Sure is. Upanupanup."

  The man was a perfect target for anyone behind Ryan, with that bright light haloing him, and he wouldn't be able to see any of the others in the blackness outside. However, any of the other six would also be able to see the shotgun pointing just below Ryan's breastbone. It was way better than evens that a bullet through the toothless mouth could also mean a hole in Ryan's guts.

  "Why the gun?" Ryan asked, taking care not to let his own fingers stray toward the blaster in his belt.

  "Why not? There's a riddle, innit? Riddlemereeeeee. You come the ladder?"

  "Yeah."

  "Up it?"

  "Sure."

  "Now you gooooo down it."

  "How's that?" The muzzle jabbing toward Ryan made it clear what the mutie meant.

  "Down, down." The movement stopped. "You got any Cokes?"

  "Drinks, you mean?"

  The face split wider in a smile of delight. "You know it."

  In a few of the redoubts that Ryan Cawdor had helped to uncover, there'd been rooms full of supplies. The familiar red-and-white cans were sometimes there, still good and drinkable after all the long years.

  "Could have," Ryan said cautiously, hedging his bets for the crazie.

  "Where?"

  "In the boat. Out there." He pointed behind him, where he could sense the others waiting, tensely, for a chance to chill the stranger.

  "I been here lotsa days. Found a room with cansa Coke innit. Had—" a look of concentrated effort crossed the man's face "—had meeee same cans as fingers every day. More lotsa times. All days been here all life been here."

  Ryan's mind boggled. If this gibbering dotard had really been in this redoubt all his life and had been drinking ten cans of soft drink every day, he must have finished off…hundreds of thousands of them. Somewhere there must be a graveyard of tins bigger than a dozen war wags.

  "Not had any for days now. Lotsa days. How many you got?"

  "Lots." Ryan held up both hands to show ten fingers, clenching and opening them, drawing the sunken, mad little eyes.

  The barrels of the scattergun wavered for a moment, which was all that Ryan needed.

  He slashed down with his left hand, parrying the blaster away, simultaneously diving low and to his left, inside the doorway.

  "Chill him!" he yelled.

  The blast of gunfire filled his ears, and he was conscious of the all too familiar warm rain of blood and bone splinters cascading over him. The mutie didn't even have time for a proper scream as he saw his own passing—a muffled cry and then the clatter of the Remington hitting the floor, followed by the loose flailing as he went down after the blaster. One of his feet kicked Ryan in the ribs before he could roll away.

  "You can get up, Ryan," J.B. said. "He's going nowhere."

  He stood up, dusting himself off, seeing that J.B., Jak and Krysty were all holding smoking blasters. The dead mutie lay in a jumbled heap of torn flesh, dark blood puddled all around him.

  Jak picked up the fallen shotgun, flicking it open. "Empty," he said laconically. "Not fired for fifty years by dirt."

  "Is that a mistake?" Donfil asked, stooping to get through the doorway, out of the screeching wind and spray.

  "No," Ryan answered. "Mistake would have been if it had been me down and done for. No. No mistake at all, friend."

  DOC WAS IN A PARLOUS STATE. The shock of the climb—after the immersion in freezing seawater—had carried him beyond the level of exhaustion. And, as is often the case, the mind had gone along with his body. Lori and Ryan carried him in, while Krysty finally closed the door on the bitter storm that raged outside in the night. The old man was talking incessantly, in a ragged monotone, half inaudible, the rest complete nonsense.

  "Cape Cod, summer of '95. Bitter chill it was. The crabs for all their feathers were… Emily, belly swollen like a milkmaid, smiling in the sun. Rachel tarry-hooting around like a heathen savage. We went so gentle into the far-off beating of a slackskin drum." The eyes snapped open and stared with a fiery intelligence into Ryan's good eye. "You lied who told me time would ease my pain. I miss them in the turning of the tides. I miss them in the weeping of the rain. There's a wind on the heath, Brother Ryan. Life is very sweet. Who would wish to die?"

  His eyes closed and he fell deeply asleep, even as they carried him into the depths of the isolated redoubt.

  For reasons that nobody would ever know, it seemed that the nameless mutie had been living alone in that section of the complex for most of his life. There were rooms filled with empty and rotten self-heats and ring-pulls. It had been the storage section, and there were still enough racks of food and drink to keep a small army supplied for months.

  There was also a whole wing of the redoubt equipped as dormitories, with partitions dividing off small rooms, each with half a dozen metal-frame bunk beds.

  They laid Doc on one of them, and Lori crashed out on the bed beside. J.B. and Jak joined the shaman in a room just along the passage.

  "We need a guard, Ryan?" the Armorer asked.

  "Doesn't seem to be any sign that the crazie had any company here. After the past few hours, I figure we all need some sleep real bad. Let's take a chance. The doors are bolted at both ends of this dormitory. We got our blasters at our sides."

  J.B. nodded his agreement. "Fine. I feel kinda tired."

  Ryan grinned at his old friend. "That's a first. I swear I can't recall ever hearing you say before in all the years… You must be tired."

  Krysty called to him. "Couple of beds here pushed together, lover. Not used, neither. Double spread of blankets."

  Ryan closed the flimsy hardboard door and switched off the light. There was still plenty of glow from the main overhead lamps that were never switched off in any redoubt.

  He felt bone weary. "You getting undressed?" Krysty asked from where she lay sprawled on the bed. Her sentient hair framed her pale cheeks limply, setting off the startling green of her eyes.

  Ryan shook his head. "Nope. I'll peel off what's wet and… Guess that's everything. Fireblast! Yeah, why
not?"

  She didn't move, watching him as he unlaced the combat boots, cursing the seawater that had tightened the knots. He peeled the socks off his pale, puckered feet, carefully unburdening himself of his armory of weapons: rifle, pistol and panga, the hidden slim-bladed flensing knife. He unwound the white silk scarf with the strangler's weights at both ends, then removed the heavy coat with the white fur collar and the rest of his clothes, until he stood, swaying with tiredness, magnificently naked in front of her.

  "Very good, lover," she said softly, clapping her hands gently together. "Now you lie down here and watch me."

  "Krysty," he warned her, "I'm not going to be up to this tonight. Leave it lay until the dawning. I can't do a thing until I've slept."

  "We'll see." She licked her lips very slowly, and despite his protestations, Ryan felt a tremor stirring at his groin.

  He moved past her and lay on the bed, not bothering to pull up the blankets. As in most redoubts, the automatic temperature control kept conditions comfortable.

  Krysty glanced across at him, admiring the planes of muscle across his lean torso, noticing, as she always did on the rare occasions she saw him nude, the seamed scars and weals of old wounds that mapped his body from temple to heel.

  The woman pulled off her dark blue leather boots, throwing them down by the bed, the silver points on the toes gleaming softly. The khaki coveralls peeled away from her and fell about her bare feet, leaving only the sheen of her bikini pants, strung across her hips.

  "Want me to keep these on?" she asked, hooking her thumbs in the elastic and posing like a border gaudy house whore for him, her breasts like fire-tipped cones of firm flesh.

  "Told you. I'm too damned tired," he insisted.

  She grinned impishly, pointing at the part of his body that was insistently giving the lie to his words.

  "That's not tired, lover." Krysty grinned.

  "Let's just sleep now. Make love tomorrow, when we wake up."

  Farther along they both heard Doc cry out, an anguished yelp of terror and despair, torn from his sleeping mind.

  "Poor old bastard," Ryan said. "Hope he feels more himself tomorrow."

  "Lori'll help him do that."

  "Yeah."

  Krysty walked to the bed and folded herself onto it, leaning against Ryan's raised knees. She ran her hand gently up his leg, stroking the inside of his thighs.

  Higher.

  "What d'you say, lover?" she whispered.

  "I say that I can't. Not tonight. I'm sorry, love, but I can't."

  Higher, her strong fingers proving him more of a liar.

  "I can't, Krysty."

  But he could.

  Chapter Six

  THE BATTERING ON THE DOOR of their dormitory sent Ryan's hand scrabbling for the butt of the SIG-Sauer Waster, feeling the chill of the metal against the warmth of his palm.

  But the voice outside was Doc's and he relaxed again, Krysty cuddling up against him under the blankets.

  "For gentlemen in England now a'bed will think themselves accursed they were not here and hold their manhood cheap… Upon my soul, friend Cawdor, friend Glamis, are you in there with yon wanton maiden, holding your manhood?"

  "If Doc knew I was holding it, he'd go fire-red with embarrassment," Krysty whispered.

  "He sounds in good voice." He called out to the old man. "You got first food cooked and waiting for us, Doc?"

  "Of course. Eggs fresher than tomorrow's sunrise done just the way you like 'em. Fluffy and full of get-up-and-go goodness. Rashers of orange-cured ham so thick you need a forklift to get them to your mouth. Honey-roasted chicken pieces and crisp link patties. Peaches and melons that fell off the trees five minutes ago. Coffee strong enough and black enough to float a six-shooter. Bread that hasn't even finished being baked yet awhile. And butter that was in the cow less than a half hour since."

  "Doc," Ryan said, swinging his long legs out of the bed and starting to pull on his pants, "you got yourself a couple of hungry customers. It really is good as you say?"

  "Sure! Come and get it! Come and get it!"

  A few minutes later Ryan cautiously lifted the brittle off-white plastic spoon to his lips, grimacing at the familiar gray texture and stodgy consistency of the dull mess resting like a sullen reproach in the middle of the plate.

  "You lying old bastard!" he shouted. "It's just fucking self-heat, like it always is."

  Doc cackled with merriment, eyes glinting at the success of his small joke. "Yes, dear Ryan, yes. But you had a good couple of minutes there anticipating it, didn't you?"

  A decent, uninterrupted night's sleep was such a rarity in the Deathlands that all seven of them were in high spirits as they ate their breakfast, with the possible exception of Donfil More, who was tenderly rubbing the lower part of his back, complaining that the bed was a foot too short for him.

  "Every bed too short f'you," Jak sniggered.

  APART FROM DONFIL'S Smith & Wesson, there didn't seem to be any worthwhile armament sections in the vast, rambling redoubt. Even the first superficial survey of the morning made it clear that the land, wherever they were, had definitely been subject to a major shift and drop. Whole sections of the complex had totally disappeared, corridors ending in blank walls of smeared earth, as though a gigantic knife had hacked through them.

  Some of the redoubts that had been totally abandoned at the time of the long winters had been scoured clear with fine combs; every single artifact, notice, instruction or plan had been removed. But that wasn't the case here, as they found when they finished their dreary breakfast and set out to explore.

  Every main passage and junction area had its own 3-D holo map of the entire redoubt that showed where they were at any given moment, as well as tappable info about how to move around both inside and outside.

  Since there was no sign of any danger, Ryan agreed that they should split up. Doc and Lori were accompanied by Jak, and J.B. went on a recce with the Mescalero shaman. Ryan went with Krysty.

  After studying one of the plans, Ryan realized that the gateway section could be totally cut off from the rest of the redoubt, only accessible now down the tottering ladder at the lowest turning of the tide. Once again there came the nagging doubt that he'd closed the outer sealing doors to the mat-trans section.

  The map also showed, at the highest floor level near something marked as Main Entrance, a rectangular building called Visitor Center and Initial Indoctrination Module.

  "Sounds worth a look, lover?" Krysty suggested.

  "Yeah. Doesn't sound like there's all that much around this place worth a look. It's kind of funny in away."

  "What is?"

  "We've seen redoubts cleared right out, and yet you still can find something mebbe useful around the place. You know?"

  "Yeah."

  "This looks like it was in use right up till the nukes started falling—"

  Krysty shook her head. "More than that, lover. We already saw that there's somebody around somewhere who's still using the redoubt—least the gateways—to jump."

  "I know. But apart from the big landslide, this place is filled with food and everything. We could live here the rest of our lives and never need to go outside again."

  "Call that living?"

  "No. Call it existing. Once saw some old vid, back around bloody Kansas, with some friends who got holed up in a kind of ville. Muties all around them trying to get in. They sort of existed."

  "What happened to them?"

  Ryan shook his head. "No idea. Vid player broke before we got to the end of the story. I guess they all died."

  Krysty reached in her pocket and drew out the small, gleaming black Apache tear, the smooth stone she'd brought with her from the wilderness of the Southwest. She threw it up in the air and caught it, bringing it to her lips for a gentle kiss. "How 'bout we all go up and get us some fresh air. What do you say to that?"

  "Yeah," Ryan said with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. "Why not?"

  None of the other
s had found anything of great interest in the parts of the redoubt they'd been exploring. Donfil had been fascinated by a room packed from floor-to-ceiling with boxes of tablets.

  "They were called… What was their name, again, J.B.?"

  "Tranks and sleepers," the Armorer replied.

  "Yes." The shaman nodded. "Pills to make you sleep and pills to stop you worrying. It is not the way of my people to take such things. There is wrong in the balance if such 'pills' are needed."

  Doc laughed, still sounding a little weak after his ordeal of the previous day. "One pill to make you larger and one to make you small," he chanted. "Go ask Alice, but I think she doesn't live hereabouts anymore."

  Ryan didn't take much notice, figuring the old man's skull was still a couple of rounds short of a full mag.

  THE DEAD MUTIE had obviously been an old loner, a packie, hanging around the corpses of old buildings for what he could suck out of the ruins. By far the greater threat to their safety was the mysterious, unseen stranger who'd been able to manipulate the controls of the gateway with such apparent ease. He could be dangerous.

  So Ryan led them along in full firefight order, blasters at the ready, fingers on triggers, nerves drawn as tight as bowstrings. J.B. brought up the rear of their patrol, with the rest of them strung out between.

  The journey up toward the surface was trouble-free and uneventful, and they followed the explicit maps at every turn and junction. The walls were gently curved, with the overbright lighting fading to normal as they climbed into the highest levels. It crossed Ryan's mind that it was odd the redoubt contained no corpses. Where were all the dead? The atomic generators had been built and programmed to provide air, heat and light for a thousand years. But they weren't programmed to shift what must have been several hundred iced bodies.

  "This is it." Ryan held up his clenched fist in the signal for them to stop and beckoned them all forward into the large open space. Oil stains marked the concrete floor.