Shatter Zone

by James Axler

  “Really? I guess the bastard pipes were just waiting for me to leave before they decide to work,” Ryan said, giving a rare chuckle.

  “Seems likely,” Krysty said softly, placing a bare foot on a chair. She removed the towel and started drying her legs, slowly working her way upward.

  “Dishwasher works in the galley, too,” Ryan said, his heart starting to pound at the delicious sight. He watched her every movement. “So Doc finally got a chance to thoroughly clean the hogleg.”

  Raising her head, Krysty laughed at that. “I remember the first time I saw him tuck the LeMat into a dishwasher and turn on the machine, I thought he’d gone insane.”

  But Ryan didn’t reply, his eyes feasting on the statuesque beauty standing naked in the subdued light of the mil lamp. There were no scars on her skin; it was smooth and perfect. Briefly he recalled the first time he’d seen her in that burning barn, and once more felt the exact same electric punch to his guts he had on that fateful day.

  “Been a long time since we had any privacy, hasn’t it, lover?” Krysty whispered, moving the towel across her taut belly and then drying under her full breasts.

  “Too bastard long,” Ryan replied huskily, gingerly flexing his gloved hands. “Almost forget what you looked like this way.”

  “Then we better refresh your memory.” The woman dropped the towel. Stepping away from the chair, Krysty held out both arms in an unmistakable invitation.

  Kicking back his chair, Ryan strode around the table and took Krysty in his arms, pulling her close. For a long moment they simply stood there, savoring the delicious feel of skin against skin. Then Ryan took her by the chin and tilted her face to meet his. They kissed, tenderly at first, then with growing passion as the physical need for each other washed away the events of the day, and soon there was only the here and now of their intimacy.

  Moaning in pleasure, Krysty moved her soft hands along the rock-hard body of the man, touching every scar. So many battles, so much pain.

  Kissing her velvet throat, Ryan slid his gloves down to cup her buttocks, then jerked them away. Krysty could feel his passion ebbing and took his gloves in her hands to place them on her breasts.

  “Yours,” she whispered. “I am yours, forever.”

  Ryan looked into her eyes, asking a silent question. She answered by leaning closer and kissing him passionately, her tongue darting into his mouth, her hands caressing his manhood until he was firm and ready.

  Scooping her up in his strong arms, Ryan walked Krysty to the bed and put her down gently. He took her by the hips, trying to be tender as he pushed between her knees and slid into the electric wetness of her moist folds. But her hips thrust forward, driving herself onto him, so he responded with increased urgency. Their sweaty bodies rocked back and forth, soon finding the rhythm eternal, until they were one, a single groaning entity. Not a word was spoken. None was needed.

  As Ryan plunged deep inside, Krysty laced her fingers behind his muscular neck, her living hair reaching out to brush his face as the two lost themselves in the wondrous pleasures of the night.

  Slowly the long night passed. Secrets were shared, fantasies fulfilled. All too soon dawn would come and the work would begin. But for now, at this time, there was only each other and a precious few moments of joy to savor, a private celebration of life primordial from deep within the burning heart of the savage Deathlands.

  Chapter Eight

  After everybody was washed and fed in the morning, the companions got to work. A few hours later, they were ready.

  Getting into a Hummer, Ryan turned the engine on and revved it a few times until it was running smoothly. Shifting into gear, he started driving along the zigzag tunnel that led to the exit. The rest of the companions walked closely behind the wag, their arms loaded with supplies. The rear of the Hummer was packed solid and there wasn’t room for a spare brass cartridge.

  Reaching the end of the tunnel, Ryan got out and helped J.B. tie a heavy rope to the rear of the wag.

  “Sure hope that holds,” Doc rumbled, lighting the oily rag tied around the neck of a glass bottle filled with fuel and soap flakes.

  “It’ll hold,” Ryan stated, leaning into the Hummer. As he wedged a short stick between the front seat and the gas pedal, the engine roared into overdrive, the needle on the dashboard almost going into the red. Once the engine settled down a bit, Ryan pressed down hard on the brake with a gloved hand and shifted it into gear. The wag trembled but didn’t move.

  “Everybody ready?” Ryan asked, trying not to let the pain from his hand show in his voice.

  “Let her rip,” Krysty said, standing near the keypad.

  Gratefully, Ryan let go of the brake and the wag lurched forward only to stop again as the thick rope attached from the rear stanchion became tight. The other end was anchored to the front of the LAV, but going around so many sharp corners, the companions had been worried the old rope might not be able to stand up to the job. Stretched as tight as a guitar string, the thick rope quivered from the jerking urges of the trapped Hummer, but showed no sign of fraying or giving way.

  “Hit it, lover,” Ryan growled, pulling the SIG-Sauer from his belt.

  Moving quickly, Krysty punched in the code, pressed the lever and the blast door started to slide aside.

  “Now!” Ryan shouted, and the others hurtled a barrage of Molotov cocktails at the black metal portal. The bottles crashed on the floor to form a crackling pool of flames that stretched from side to side.

  As the tunnel came into view, at first Ryan thought it was empty. Then something black peeled away from the ceiling to drop into the water and rise horribly, the twinkling skeleton inside the translucent creature flexing and shifting position as it began to move toward the redoubt. Then it paused, finally sensing the presence of the flames.

  Just then, the blast door boomed as it opened completely, and the black guardian came closer, rising tall as if to attack the group of people standing behind the small puddle of burning fuel. But even as the portal stopped moving, Krysty hurriedly punched in the code and the door started to close once more.

  “Do it!” Ryan said.

  With a slash of a knife, Jak cut the rope and the straining Hummer lurched forward. Unfortunately the timing was off by a hair and the blast door hit the Hummer just as it charged through the fire. The wag rebounded from the impact and slammed against the jamb, the pool of flames licking upward directly beneath the armored chassis.

  On impulse, Ryan took a half step toward the Hummer, unable to take his eyes off its stacked fuel cans and satchel charges filling the rear cargo area. If those went off inside the tunnel, the companions would be obliterated.

  Then in a squeal of rubber, the studded tires of the Hummer dug in and the wag shot outside. Instantly the guardian dropped on the Hummer, covering the windshield and reaching in through the sides with ropy pseudopods of gelatinous ooze. Then the moving blast door took it from their sight.

  The opening was down to a mere crack, but J.B. still waited until the very last tick before flipping the detonator switch in his grip. In a titanic blast, the C-4 plas, M-2 blocks and condensed fuel ignited into a strident blast that merged with the hollow boom of the nukeproof door as it solidly closed.

  Allowing themselves to breathe again, everybody strained to hear what was happening on the other side of the portal. But there was only silence, which was hardly surprising. Built to withstand a near-direct hit from a thermo nuke, there was nothing known to exist that could even scratch the material.

  “Think that did it?” Krysty asked, hesitantly reaching out to touch the portal. The black metal was cool and smooth, giving no indication of what was happening on the other side.

  “Fragging well hope so,” Ryan shot back sourly. “But we’ll have more Molotovs ready the next time we open that door.”

  “Tunnel could collapse,” Jak said, hunching his shoulders. For the briefest moment, the razor blades hidden among the feathers and other camou on his jacket twinkled
in the overhead halogen lights. “Might be trapped worse than before.”

  “I know explosives,” J.B. said firmly, straightening his fedora. “The tunnel will hold. Trust me.”

  “John?” Mildred said, putting a wealth of questions to the single word.

  “It’ll hold, Millie,” he answered confidently.

  “Let’s find out,” Ryan growled, holstering the blaster and starting back down the tunnel.

  Returning to the garage, Ryan studied their chosen war wag with satisfaction. Even in the predark days, the LAV-25 had been a mighty machine. These days, it was all but unstoppable. The Light Armored Vehicle was a rolling powerhouse of steel and mil tech. Eight great wheels supported a multiton chassis, the tires bulletproof even at point-blank range. The independent suspension allowed the juggernaut to cross the most rugged terrain imaginable with little or no reduction in speed. The hull was waterproof up to depths of five feet, and would float after that depth. Two small propellers in the rear could propel it through water at a speed of nearly 30 mph under ideal conditions, but it generally moved a lot slower than that. The belly was armored against landmines, the front window was made of bullet-resistant Armorlite plastic, and the louvered gunports could be closed tight enough for the LAV to be gas-bomb proof. There was even a heavy-duty winch on the front to assist the wag to traverse steep hills or to pull itself out of a swamp. The companions would have used that to rein in the Hummer, but the cable couldn’t be cut quickly and timing had been of the essence.

  Designed for a crew of six, plus two officers and a driver, the LAV had more than enough room for the six companions, plus numerous boxes of supplies from the Deep Storage Locker. Blasters, ammo, grens, food, bed rolls, medical supplies; the wealth of the ancient world filled the deck, secured under camou netting or strapped down into empty jumpseats set along the metal walls.

  Watching Jak pour yet another canister of condensed fuel into the machine, Ryan had to privately admit that although the LAV was impressive, it was far from being perfect. All of the fancy electronic gear was useless, zapped by the EMP of the nuke storms or chilled by the long decades. The smoke generators were clogged solid with grease, and the control circuits for the 25 mm minigun were fried, the deadly rapidfire was chilled.

  But those were minor considerations in comparison to the incredible rate that colossal Detroit engines consumed fuel. Even after the earlier fight with the guardian, the tanks of the redoubt registered half full, which meant there was enough condensed fuel for a hundred trucks working for ten years. Juice enough for an army on the move. However, the huge tanks of the LAV could only hold so much, and Ryan had grudgingly allowed spare canisters of juice to be attached to the wag’s armored back end. Those would be a prime target for any coldhearts they encountered. A single round into one of the gas cans and the LAV would be covered with flames. The wag was supposed to be fireproof, but a single crack in the armored hull, or in the louvered gunports, and the companions would burn alive. If the jelly was still alive outside, Ryan had decided that running away would be the best plan. How fast could the damn thing roll, anyway? Faster than a running person; that only made sense. What good was a guard that coldhearts could outrace? But faster than a wag? No nuking way.

  “Tank full,” Jak announced, screwing the cap back on to the ten-gallon container. “What do?”

  “Set it aside. We’re carrying enough as it is,” Ryan stated truthfully.

  Nodding in agreement, the teenager carried the sloshing container to the fuel pumps and put it out of the way. When Jak had first joined the companions and learned about the incredible redoubts, he could barely believe the tales of condensed fuel. The stuff looked and worked like regular juice, what Mildred called gasoline. Yet the fuel refused to evaporate, and an open cup of the stuff would still be there a month later, while gas would evaporate and be gone in less than a day. The mat-trans were useful, but it was the condensed fuel that truly impressed the teen. It was perfect for regular engines, or diesel engines, which even Mildred couldn’t explain, and nothing was better in a Molotov cocktail. Just amazing stuff. Condensed fuel was even better than the nuke batteries, in his opinion.

  “One last check,” Krysty shouted to the others, cradling the MP-5 rapidfire in her arms. All the while they had been working, the companions kept a careful watch for any suspicious movements in the redoubt. They knew from experience that a Cerebus cloud could gain access to a redoubt, so if the black jelly was another guardian, then it could also get inside.

  In an effort to counter that, Doc and Jak had stacked a dozen full cans of fuel near the mouth of the access tunnel and disabled the fire-suppressant system in the ceiling. If the blob appeared, a single gun shot in the cans would engulf the thing in flames. Unless they missed or there were two of them…

  Meanwhile, J.B. had tried to attach the Vulcan minigun from the middle level of the redoubt to the top of the LAV, but Ryan had done too good a job of ripping out its control circuitry. Most of the normal mechanical controls were missing, and after several disastrous false starts, J.B. had finally admitted defeat. It was a rare occurrence when the Armorer couldn’t master a wep, and he took the news in ill humor.

  Thankfully, the LAV wasn’t completely unarmed. Aside from the rapidfires and grens of the companions, Jak and Doc had skillfully wired several Claymore antipers mines to the angled sides of the wag. Anything coming within thirty feet of the LAV would be blown in two by the stainless-steel ball bearings and C-4 plas packed into each Claymore.

  “That’s it for me,” Mildred announced, swinging a bag of trade goods into the rear of the transport.

  The physician had carefully gone through the vault and chosen a selection of items that couldn’t be used against them in a battle, but that would be priceless at any ville: aluminum mess kits, plastic combs, pocket mirrors, seed corn, Swiss Army knives and such. Those were trinkets for the civilians. The nobles at a ville would get U.S. Army boots, live brass and revolvers. However, nobody got a rapidfire, or grens.

  Already inside the LAV, Doc took the bag and stuffed it into a hammock rigged for carrying the more delicate of the cargo. The useless items such as the radar, radio and such had been removed to make extra space. And every little bit helped. A couple of years earlier in another armored wag they nicknamed Leviathan, the companions had filled a trailer and packed it full of supplies to drag along behind. They lost the trailer on the first day, and the resulting blast of the detonating spare ammo came perilously close to ending their lives. Since then, everything went inside a wag or was left behind. With the exception of those all-important gas cans, which would be disposed of quickly if necessary.

  Taking a jumpseat set along the wall, Doc gave a grunt of discontentment. Oddly enough, a few months back, they had encountered Leviathan again, but this time it wasn’t under their control and the resulting firefight had been hellishly fierce. The companions had won, but only due to the direct assistance of Kate, a trader. Some people thought that the woman was the original Trader, the legendary master of the Deathlands, but the companions knew the truth.

  There were so many wheels within wheels, Doc mused, wiping off his hands. The Deathlands was filled with more mysteries than there were ways to die.

  “What do you think about calling this tin can Leviathan Two?” Mildred asked with a smile, climbing into the transport.

  Stoically, Doc raised both bushy eyebrows. “Really now, madam!”

  “Okay, okay! It was just a thought.”

  Outside in the garage, Ryan did a last walk around the place, checking things over. There was no reason to think that once they departed the redoubt they couldn’t get right back inside. Even if there was another of the jelly muties hiding in the water. But he liked to be prepared. What was it the Trader had liked to say? To achieve a victory, plan for failure. Smart words.

  “Looking for something?” J.B. asked, resting a nuke lamp on top of the hood of a civie station wagon.

  “No, just doing a double check,” Ry
an answered gruffly. Then he motioned at the nuke lamp. “How many did you make?”

  “Three,” J.B. replied with pride, lifting the heavy device. “There were a lot more nuke batteries and headlights, but I couldn’t find enough of the right kind of wire to retard the voltage from blowing the bulbs. But three will be enough.”

  In spite of the fact that the companions had been traveling through the mat-trans system for years, it was only a few months ago that J.B. came up with the brilliant invention of the nuke lamp. Candles were cheap, but blew out easily and never gave off much light. Road flares smoked and smelled awful, and also burned out quickly. Most flashlights required batteries that hadn’t been manufactured in a hundred years, and survivalist flashlights like Mildred’s were incredibly rare. Then it occurred to the Armorer that all of the mil wags in a redoubt used a nuke battery to start the engines. The sealed powerpacks seemed to last forever and put out enough voltage to crank over even a tank engine. So taking some wiring from a civie car, and doing some fancy soldering, J.B. soon built a nuke lamp, a nuke battery with a predark headlight hardwired into place. The device gave off a blinding beam of white light, especially if a halogen lamp was used, and never ran out of power. Of course, the nuke lamps were much too heavy to carry in a backpack, occasionally short-circuited and always died if they fell into water, but they were still better than anything else known.

  “Whatever else, at least we won’t be in darkness anymore,” Krysty said, coming closer. She lifted one of the nuke lamps in her free hand and thumbed the switch on top. The headlight gave an audible click, and from the headlight a blue-white light beam shot out that cut across the garage like a laser.

  “Gaia, we certainly could have used these when we were underground in Tennessee,” she commented, moving the beam along the far wall.

  “Could have used a nuke in Tennie,” Ryan corrected, picking up the third nuke lamp. “All right, looks like we’re ready as we’ll ever be. Let’s get moving.”