Chapter One

 

 

They all heard the distinctive roar of the pair of implode grens far above them, though it was muffled by the sec doors that led into the gateway. The sound was overlaid by the thunder of a quake, the noise all around them, as if the walls were about to crumble at any second.

 

"In," Ryan snapped, punching in the digital code for Tennessee. Not waiting for everyone to sit on the floor of the orange-walled chamber, he stepped in and slammed the door shut to trigger the jump mechanism.

 

Everyone knew what to do.

 

J.B. had taken off his fedora and placed it on his lap, carefully folding his glasses and slipping them safely into a pocket. The Uzi was in his lap, the scattergun within reach. He held Mildred's hand, and she reached out for Doc Tanner, who had slowly creaked his way down, laying the ebony swordstick at his side, stretching out his aged knee boots.

 

Jak, his red eyes swollen from crying at the sudden and shocking death of the little geisha girl, Issie, sat next to Doc, pressing his skinny back against the armaglass wall.

 

The rumble was becoming much louder and more insistent as Ryan finally seated himself beside, Krysty, having unslung the rifle and placed it by his side.

 

"Here we go," he said.

 

" Sayonara , my friends," Doc whispered, his voice sounding small and faraway.

 

The disks in the floor and ceiling were beginning to glow brightly, and the familiar white mist was gathering above their heads. Ryan felt as if his brain were being scooped out of his skull and whirled around and around.

 

"Tennessee," he breathed, his last sentient thought one of pleasure that they would very soon be home safely in Deathlands again.

 

At that moment the big quake finally arrived.

 

 

 

A HUNDRED FEET ABOVE the mat-trans unit, in the ravaged and polluted remains of Japan, the quake brought down the remnants of the burning mansion that had been built by the Americans. Erected well before skydark, it had been used by them as a safe hiding place for the secret gateway.

 

The place had been set on fire by a burner gren and three implodes as Ryan and company made their way toward the safety of a jump.

 

Now it was a mountain of glowing ashes in the darkness of the Oriental night, roof beams tumbled on top of the hidden elevator that ran down the reinforced concrete shaft to the gateway.

 

A column of smoke, with glittering ruby sparks, soared high into the sky. The ground shook and churned, solid rock becoming liquid under the unimaginable pressures of the earthquake. Nearly a hundred years after the missiles darkened the skies and the ultimate war began, there were no longer any scientific instruments left in the world to measure quakes.

 

But if there had been any, then the movement would have pushed the needle skittering across the roll of graph paper, indicating a gigantic tremor that would have been measured at something like 7.8 on the Richter scale.

 

It caused immense damage on the southern fraction of old Japan that remained, nearly wiping out the population and triggering a series of tidal waves.

 

The six-sided chamber with its sturdy wall of fiery orange armaglass only resisted the force of the quake for a handful of seconds. In the room beyond, desks and comp consoles slid sideways, shorting out the nuke-powered electrics. The whole system failed in less than a dozen heartbeats.

 

As the walls splintered and a torrent of fluid stone flooded into the chamber, Ryan and the others had already left it.

 

Just left it.

 

Their bodies had been disintegrated, coded by the mat-trans digital controls by the door, to be reassembled in a similar gateway in the heart of old Tennessee, in Deathlands.

 

But the process was crucially interrupted by the quake.