Shatter Zone

by James Axler

  Just then there came a loud gurgle, as if some horrible beast had been awakened. The companions froze, then gave a nervous laugh when they realized it was merely the water pipes draining inside the walls.

  “All together now,” Ryan ordered, bracing his boots on the floor. The man tensed his legs and back. “One…two…three!”

  The companions heaved with all of their combined strength and the gate slammed into the ceiling it lifted so easily and without resistance.

  “Son of a bitch,” J.B. said, releasing his grip. “The grating must use a mag lock! With the power gone, it’s dead easy to open.”

  Stepping into the cage, Ryan let the gate slide back down, then crossed over and experimentally lifted the other side with a single finger.

  “Come on,” Ryan said. “We need to find something strong enough to use as a prop under these. With the juice turned off, we can’t use the keypad to get through the door of the locker. Besides—”

  There was a metallic crash from somewhere and bright lights came on overhead, flooding the corridor with rods of sharp illumination that marked the exit door to the stairwell and a couple of empty wall niches that probably should have held fire extinguishers.

  “Yeah, backup power,” Krysty said, casting a glance at the closed door. “Sometimes I forget that the redoubts clean and repair themselves. The main power will come back on anytime.”

  Leaving the candles on the floor, the companions headed for the stairs. Along the way, J.B. pulled out his butane lighter and lit the end of his cigar. He knew that Mildred really disliked the habit, but there was a rare time when a man needed a good smoke. Ah!

  Their blasters at the ready, the group started up the stairs with Mildred giving J.B. a stern disapproving look that the Armorer did his best to totally ignore.

  Reaching the top level, Ryan checked for any traps, but found the entrance clear. Pushing open the partly closed metal door with the barrel of his handcannon, Ryan stepped into the garage and looked around, his scarred face slowly smiling.

  The emergency lights were working here, too, casting a zigzag pattern of illumination. He could see that the entire floor was filled with mil wags, all of them parked in a wild jumble over the neat lines on the concrete flooring. Several of the vehicles seemed to have collided near the exit tunnel, their hoods crumpled and headlights smashed. But the rest of the wags were intact, including several Hummers and a LAV-25 armored transport. He didn’t stop to wonder why such a barren redoubt had so many vehicles in its garage.

  Moving past the maze of vehicles, Ryan went to the wire enclosure of the storage room, shot off the padlock and yanked open the mesh door. Inside were dozens of spare tires and burnished steel rims in assorted sizes, along with stripped engine blocks, cases of headlights, sealed pallets of nuke batteries, and everything else needed to keep the fleet of mil wags in proper working condition. Along with about a dozen heavy-duty jack stands.

  “Everybody take a pair,” Ryan directed, grabbing a couple of the heavy stands. “These things will hold about half a ton. Those gates can’t be putting out too much more pressure than that, or else the floor would crack. A dozen of these should do the job.”

  “Sure hope so,” J.B. muttered judiciously, slinging the Uzi across his back to take a pair of the bulky triangular stands. The things were damn heavy, but even with his backpack he could handle the weight.

  Holstering their weapons, Doc and Krysty each took two stands. Awkwardly, Mildred managed to lift one, cradling it to her chest and obviously struggling to keep from dropping it.

  “Set it down, Mildred,” Ryan directed, starting for the elevator. “One of us has to stay armed.”

  Grunting from the strain, the predark physician thankfully set down the jack stand, and straightened her back. “No problem there,” Mildred wheezed, pulling out her ZKR revolver and thumbing back the hammer.

  Back in her own time period, before she got frozen in a cryogenic chamber and woke up almost one hundred years later, Mildred had rated in the marksman class with the target pistol. That took a lot of skill, not brute force. Besides, physicians didn’t need big muscles.

  Returning to the cage on the lower level, the companions easily lifted up the powerless gates, lined up the jacks on the floor and set the gates into place.

  “I shall go inform Jak,” Doc offered, pulling out the LeMat before heading for the stairs.

  The other companions waited impatiently. But pretty soon, the fluorescent lights strobed in the ceiling and then came back on at full force. In gradual stages, the emergency lights died away and the two gates along the walls crashed back down into position. However, the row of jack stands across the corridor only groaned as two main gates tried to forcibly descend once more. There came a soft whining noise from the ceiling and the jack stands groaned, but nothing else happened.

  “Bet that intruder alarm would be howling like crazy now,” J.B. said, taking out the stogie and blowing a smoke ring at the smashed ruin of the speaker.

  “You can load that into a blaster,” Ryan agreed, warily studying the cage and stands. For just a second, they seemed to quiver, but then it was gone. Probably just a trick of the fluorescent tubes. Damn things pulsed in the weirdest way sometimes.

  “Those appear to be holding,” Mildred said slowly, worrying a lip. “What do you think?”

  Pivoting, Krysty kicked the steel bars as hard as she could with the heel of her cowboy boot. The metal rang from the impact, but nothing more.

  “Yeah, that’ll hold,” J.B. said, puffing in satisfaction.

  Inhaling deeply, Ryan grunted at the news, then lay down and crawled along the floor between two of the jack stands, across the cage and out the other side. Standing, he waited for the others to pass through. A few minutes later Doc and Jak arrived, and slipped through to join the rest of the companions.

  “Good work,” Ryan said.

  “No prob,” Jak muttered.

  Going over to the broken Vulcan minigun, J.B. checked the enclosed feed and yanked out a cotter pin. Something disengaged and the Armorer removed the rectangular tube of louvered steel. Removing a cartridge from inside, he inspected the brass, then used a knife to cut off the lead bullet and poured the powdery contents of the round into his palm.

  “We can use this,” J.B. stated, fingering the granules. “Even if the deeper has been looted, at least we’ll have some reloads. Two, mebbe three hundred rounds.”

  “Good,” Jak said, standing. Then the teen pulled out his Colt Python. “Let’s open door.”

  As the companions approached the frosty portal, a wave of cold swept over the group, but this time it only generated a sense of excitement. Pulling out some tools, J.B. did a pass over the door jamb and declared it clear of boobies and sensors.

  Without a word, Ryan went to the keypad and tapped in the usual sequence that opened blast doors that led to the outside world in all redoubts. The indicator on top of the keypad flashed red, yellow, then green. A series of heavy thuds banged around the rim of the door as the internal locks disengaged. Next came a powerful sigh of working hydraulics, and the truncated door noisily disengaged to ponderously swing aside. With a mighty exhalation, a bitterly cold mist flowed out to block the sight of the companions for a few anxious moments. Ryan and the others tensed impatiently as the warmth of the corridor slowly dissipated the chilling fog.

  The interior of the locker was pitch-black.

  Pulling out his last road flare, J.B. started to scratch it alive when lights rippled across the ceiling of the locker. Row after row of bright tube lights came on until the inside of the deeper was fully illuminated. The glare was almost painful.

  “Bingo,” Mildred whispered softly as dozens of packing crates came into view. Dozens, hell, there were hundreds!

  The locker was stuffed full of stored equipment, the plastic shelving along the walls packed solid with military cases designed for long-term storage, and air tight ammo drums, fifty-five-gallon barrels that held a lifetime of brass for m
ost villes. Wooden crates wrapped in thick plastic sheeting were stacked to the ceiling in huge pyramids, and banks of cabinets formed orderly rows along the spotlessly clean floor.

  Staying in combat formation, the companions eased into the locker, their weapons searching for targets. Just because a sec hunter droid didn’t come rolling out instantly, didn’t mean a hundred of the machines weren’t waiting for them somewhere.

  “Blasters, food, grens,” J.B. stated, reading the serial numbers off the sides of the assorted containers. “This place has a hundred times more supplies than the Alaskan redoubt!”

  “Thank Gaia! And no madman in charge trying to ace us,” Krysty added in a pleased tone of voice. A smile touched her full lips.

  “Okay, everybody stay in pairs,” Ryan directed, shouldering the longblaster. “Just because something didn’t try to stop us at the door, doesn’t mean we’re safe. Hunt for grens first. After that, go for ammo. Then food, you all know the list.”

  Placing two fingers into his mouth, Jak gave a sharp whistle. “Got ’em!” he announced, pulling out a knife and slicing through the tough plastic sheeting around a stacked tray of mil grens. The clear polymer resisted, but the teen finally hacked through and started to yank the resilient sheeting aside.

  Gently lifting off the top tray, Jak beamed in delight at the neat rows of colored spheres resting in gray foam cushioning. The color of the stripes said these were high-explosive grens, steel shrapnel. Excellent! Those were the best kind to find because the grens could be used for everything from chilling muties to fresh-water fishing. Mildred had once told Jak about a type of mil gren that had used plastic shrapnel that could not be seen on an X-ray machine. Weapons designed to maim, not chill. The concept was beyond foul, somehow it felt almost cowardly.

  “Dark night, now we’re talking,” J.B. said happily, removing his cigar and grinding it out on the floor before approaching the massed explosives.

  Grinning eagerly, Jak started passing out the grens. Everybody tucked several into their backpacks and then a few more into their coat pockets. When the rest of the companions were done, J.B. went to the next tray down and added a dozen more spheres to his munitions bag. The weight of the grens felt reassuring after being absent for so many months. The Armorer always felt vulnerable when he was out of explos. There were few problems in the Deathlands that couldn’t be solved with the adroit application of high explosives.

  “Ammo next,” Ryan stated, brushing back a strand of his long black hair.

  “I’m going to hunt for medical supplies,” Mildred countered, taking off at a run among the stacks of crates.

  “Stay in pairs!” Ryan barked.

  Shrugging his bag into place, J.B. said, “I got her six.” Checking his blaster, the Armorer followed after the stocky woman already racing into the maze of green metal cabinets.

  Cutting open the seal on a sturdy trunk, Krysty hesitantly lifted the heavy lid. Inside were shiny metallic envelopes.

  “MRE packs!” the woman shouted, raising a Mylar envelope. “Hundreds of them! Enough for an army!”

  “Excelsior!” Doc cried, lifting a burnished aluminum box.

  Laying the container on a worktable, the scholar began pulling out sealed plastic jars of grainy black powder, and clear plastic jars of fine-grain gray gunpowder, the slick material appearing almost oily as it moved. There were several boxes of lead rods for melting into bullets, and even a small assortment of premade balls. None of them were the right caliber for the LeMat, but Doc had enough for a couple of reloads already. He wisely took some extra lead, and all of the copper percussion nipples that he could find.

  “Why not get real blaster?” Jak said, looking over the man’s shoulder. He pointed to an open cabinet filled with cardboard boxes. “Boxes of .44 wheelguns over there. Plenty of brass, too.”

  “Let the artist choose his own brush,” Doc rumbled, his hands busy purging the spent chambers of the LeMat as a preliminary to reloading. “This has served me well, and I seek no other mistress.”

  This was an old argument between the two, and the teen shrugged as always at the impossibility of con vincing the scholar otherwise. Going to a row of cabinets, Jak began opening each door and checking inside for anything good. There were a lot of mil uniforms, combat boots, gas masks, night goggles and a few items that he couldn’t readily identify.

  Have to ask Mildred about those later, Jak decided, closing the door to continue his recce of the locker.

  “Besides, being able to fire nine rounds without stopping, this has startled more coldhearts than I wish to remember,” the time traveler muttered to himself. For a split second Doc recalled the day when he’d faced that wolfweed dealer in the dusty streets of the burning New Mex ville. Doc had known the other fellow was out of range and so he’d fired the LeMat six times, then only fanned the hammer a couple of times to make the Civil War blaster click loudly. Grinning in triumph, the dealer had charged straight at Doc and raised his ax for a fast chill. When the dealer got within ten feet, point-blank range, Doc had raised the LeMat and fired three more times, ending the coldheart’s regime of terror forever.

  “Nine is fine,” Doc chuckled, closing the fully loaded cylinder with a solid, satisfying click.

  Prying a board free from a packing crate, Krysty whistled softly at the sight of the brand-new HK G-11 caseless rifles nestled inside. The plastic boxes alongside obviously contained spare ammo blocks. There was a score of them, perhaps more. The woman started to reach for one of the angular rapidfires, then frowned and closed the lid. Dean Cawdor had really liked this weapon, in spite of its faults. Actually, the caseless rapidfire only had a single flaw. It worked too efficiently. All by himself, Dean had once stopped a pack of muties with the dire weapon, only to discover that the rapidfire was empty. The boy had used the entire ammo block of a hundred rounds in only a few heartbeats. The priceless weapon had been abandoned in the street, useless without a replacement block.

  “Find something?” Jak asked, draping a bandolier of ammo clips across his leather jacket. The teen was holding a MP-5 submachine gun, repeatedly pulling the bolt to work out the stiffness of the predark spring. The gun had been properly packed in anticorrosive gelatin, but that was easy to wash off with the accompanying solvent.

  Wordlessly, Krysty shook her head and continued to search. She truly missed Dean. Such a pity that he was gone forever.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Ryan whispered with a smile, lifting a peculiar-looking gren into view. A whole case of implo grens!

  This was the find of a lifetime. Not even Mildred had any idea how the things worked. The tech involved was far beyond her understanding of twentieth-century science. The burnished gray sphere looked like a standard mil gren, but instead of a C-4 explosion, or thermite blast, it somehow generated a massive gravity field for a split second that destroyed anything caught within the collapsing zone. An implo gren could stop a tank, and would smash a sec hunter droid like the angry fist of God.

  Judiciously deciding between weight and mobility, Ryan finally took four of the implo grens and added a fifth to his jacket pocket. For the first time since they had arrived, the Deathlands warrior allowed himself to relax slightly. Whatever came their way now could be aced. Norm, mech or mutie, nothing could stand against an implo gren. That was good enough. He wanted more—who wouldn’t?—but the first hard lesson learned in the Deathlands was that having too many weps was just as bad as not having any. It made you slow, and a single moment wasted trying to decide what to fight with could easily be the deciding factor between living another day and ending up in the hot belly of some slavering mutie beast.

  Slowly, the long hours passed as the companions expertly combed the Deep Storage Locker for all its precious treasures. Carrying bundles of equipment, they started forming neat stacks in a clear area near the open door and began to organize the materials into piles. Calling a halt for food, Ryan passed out some MRE packs, and the hungry companions devoured the predark meals of beef
stroganoff with sour cream and noodles, with the usual nut cake for dessert. It was just food, nothing more. But there was also coffee, wonderful coffee for dessert. Greatly refreshed, the companions returned to the work of choosing supplies and weapons. New backpacks were found to replace their old patched ones. Mil bedrolls were exchanged for the civie versions dug out of a collapsed department store in a distant land.

  Neat piles of ordnance were formed, and decisions made. Some of the simpler blasters were set aside as possible trade goods, in case there was a ville nearby. But for once, the companions didn’t need anything from the outside world. There was food and clothing galore, plus enough weps and brass to fight the most powerful baron in the land if necessary. Ryan took a new pair of combat boots. A case of U.S. Army socks and underwear was greeted with cries of delight, and everybody helped themselves. Placing aside her med kit, Mildred sat on a box of landmines to exchange her socks right on the spot. The stiff cloth was cast aside, and the new soft socks were gratefully pulled on, her toes wiggling almost sensuously in the clean cloth.

  After a couple more hours, the companions broke for dinner, MREs again; chicken stew with dumplings. It was better than the beef stroganoff, and the packs were licked clean.

  Fed and fully armed for the first time in a long time, the companions left the Deep Storage Locker, closing the door in their wake. It had been a long day, but there was still a lot to do before sleep could even be considered.

  Chapter Six

  As the terrible throbbing in his head slowly eased away, Edward awoke groggy on a grassy field, with the bright sun high overhead. Forcing himself to move, the man groaned from the herculean effort. His head hurt, his gut was roiling, and every bone felt as if it had been removed, then shoved back in again.

  “Well, it’s about nuking time you came around,” John snapped irritably, walking closer. The elder Rogan was holding a tin cup full of something that gave off wisps of steam and smelled incredibly like coffee. “We were starting think you’d gone on the last train west, ya lazy bastard.”