Chapter Seven

 

 

Jak woke them next morning, knocking on the door. "Hungry. Go look food?"

 

Ryan squinted at his wrist chron. "Only six, Jak. Kind of early."

 

"Real hungry. Haven't eaten for whole day or more. Others are awake."

 

Ryan sat up. "All right, all right. Just give us a couple of minutes."

 

Krysty opened an emerald-bright eye. "Do this mean what I think it do?"

 

He laughed. "Yeah. It do."

 

 

 

THERE WAS NO FOOD in the redoubt.

 

At least there was nothing in the sections to which they had access. They could get into the kitchens that had prepared meals for the entire command of the fortress, probably two or three thousand strong at its height, but the kitchens were a melancholy fugue in dull, echoing chrome.

 

Row upon row of stoves, storage closets and garbage disposals stood silent and unused. Most were in amazingly good condition, with very little evidence of decay, looking as though they could be made operational again at a few minutes' notice if the call came.

 

"The call never came," J.B. said.

 

The main commissary section of the redoubt had also been stripped totally bare, emptiness wall to wall with scratches on the concrete where equipment had been moved.

 

"Soon as we get out of here we'd best get some hunting done. Or fishing." Ryan patted the walnut stock of the Steyr SSG-70 affectionately.

 

"Long as we don't walk out into some raging rad hot spot," Jak said.

 

"Think this is Tennessee?" Jak asked.

 

"No way of knowing." Ryan looked at the Armorer. "Any thoughts, J.B., on where we might be?"

 

The glasses glinted as he shook his head. "Jump code said Tennessee. Didn't say where. We've been around the state with Trader and the war wags."

 

Ryan grinned. "Good times and bad times, huh? There's some places around here where Trader's name's as fragrant as a straight-edge razor."

 

"Be good to see old Muddy again. Been awhile."

 

"I visited Memphis once," Mildred said. "Wanted to see Graceland."

 

"What's that?" Jak asked.

 

"Place where Elvis lived. And if you ask me who Elvis is, young Jak, then I shall be happy to kick you into the middle of next month."

 

"Some kinda singer?" the teenager asked innocently.

 

Mildred shook her fist at him. "Some kinda singer? Yeah, he was some kinda singer."

 

 

 

THEY HAD CHECKED OUT everywhere except the mysterious section labeled ART.

 

According to the master plan of the redoubt, this lay roughly between where they'd slept and the main entrance.

 

They were still coming up with fresh guesses as to the meaning of the letters.

 

Doc, not surprisingly, had gone way out on a limb with some of his more bizarre theories.

 

"A shrine dedicated to the goddess Artemis? Or some reference to a cult who tried to follow the spirit of King Arthur? Or, as we all obviously know, there was a son of Xerxes the First of Persia, whose name was Artaxerxes."

 

"I reckon it's short for Artillery," J.B. said. "Now, that would be something."

 

Ryan whistled softly between his teeth. "A whole segment of a redoubt dedicated just to artillery. Now, that would be something that most barons would give their right arms for. Never thought of that."

 

Krysty smiled at Mildred. "Want to leave the boys to play with their toys, honey?"

 

"Sure could do that, sweet thing. You and me can go down to the club and get in some serious dancing."

 

"I would not be averse to cutting a rug with a hot patootie myself," Doc said, twirling the ends of an imaginary mustache. "Big guns are not my idea of fun."

 

Ryan shrugged. "Fine, fine. Have your little jokes, friends. If it really is artillery, then we could mebbe make us some triple-serious jack out of it."

 

"Then let's go," Krysty said.

 

 

 

THE SEC DOOR HAD BEEN LEFT shut on a manual override, like the entrance to the gateway units, a plain green lever that was lifted up to raise the door.

 

They found themselves in an open area, with three rooms opening off it.

 

"Entrance is along there," J.B. said, indicating the right-hand entrance.

 

"So the ART place must be through those two." Ryan had the SIG-Sauer unholstered.

 

There was a warning notice just inside the first doorway, explaining just what ART meant.

 

It wasn't artillery.

 

In fact it wasn't any of their guesses.

 

 

 

This section is closed to all personnel below B6 grading, and a special written pass is required at all times. No smoking and no food to be permitted in this section. Everything contained within this section is the property of the Tennessee Museum of Modern American Art and is not to be damaged, altered, moved or removed without proper cognitive authority.

 

 

 

"ART," Mildred said. "It means 'art.' Simple as that. Pictures and stuff."

 

J.B. tutted his disappointment. "Paintings! And I hoped for artillery."

 

 

 

DESPITE HIS REGRET, the Armorer was as enthusiastic as any of them once they entered the rooms and started to look at the pictures that hung there.

 

Each of the friends had his or her own particular favorites, but there was a general agreement that certain artists struck a common chord for all of them.

 

"Georgia O'Keefe," Krysty said. "The way she captures the light down in the Southwest is wonderful. And that early picture of the lights of old Newyork. Magical."

 

"She resided down in Abiquiu in New Mexico," Doc said. "Lived to a great age, but went blind toward the end of her life. Amazing, amazing woman. Look at the one called Black Mesa . Marvelous."

 

"I liked those sea pictures," Ryan commented. "Winslow Homer. Way he showed light on water. I've never ever seen real famous paintings like this. Thought they'd mostly been destroyed in the skydark times."

 

Doc was transfigured with ecstasy. "Happened in Europe during the big Second War. Hid treasures in mines and places like that. Good to see that someone here in Tennessee had enough sense to save these pictures. Miraculous."

 

Jak had paused a long time in front of a reproduction of a picture by Andrew Wyeth. "Named after my wife," he said. "Called Christina's World ."

 

It showed a young disabled woman lying on a sloping field, staring away from the painter toward a group of buildings farther up the hill.

 

"Like a frozen moment," Mildred stated. "Bit like that other guy we all liked."

 

"Hoppy?" Ryan queried.

 

"Hopper. Edward Hopper." Mildred pulled at his sleeve to lead him back into the middle room, standing with him in front of a trio of Hopper pictures.

 

One showed a sunlit house with the draperies drawn across the second-floor windows. There was the feeling that someone was about to walk by or had just vanished from a window.

 

The second painting was of an office in a city, with a woman seated at a typewriter and another woman holding a mug of coffee, neither looking at the other.

 

The third Hopper featured an elderly man sitting in a canvas chair in the garden of a mansion overlooking a deep blue ocean. Once again there was that odd, timeless feeling of an event trapped forever in amber.

 

Single pictures had attracted each of them individually. Jak loved some capering little men in bright colors, but the label was missing from it; J.B. was taken by a print of an electric chair by Andy Warhol, though the others found it ghoulish; Krysty admired a geometric pattern by Frank Stella; and one of Mildred's favorites was of a stark industrial landscape, painted with great attention to detail by Charles Sheeler.

 

Doc was struck speechless by a magnificent Western painting by Frank Russell, depicting a man trapped on a ledge by a wounded cougar, high in the Sierras; Ryan was dazzled by the paintings, though they had obviously been hung in great haste, with no attempt to worry about alignment or lighting. One or two of the artists were people that he'd vaguely heard of, but he hadn't been prepared for the richness of color and texture. Even painters he didn't much care for had undeniable talent.

 

But his own personal favorite, which nobody else much cared for, was a gray picture of a misty sea with a bridge in the background, by John Sloan. It seemed to capture a feeling of isolation and loneliness that spoke directly to him.

 

"Shame we can't somehow take the pictures with us," Mildred said. "Still, just seeing them all like this has been truly fabulous."

 

"I had never imagined that such a collection of treasures still existed anywhere in this blighted Deathlands." Doc took a last look into the nearest room. "So rich."

 

J.B. cleared his throat. "Still would've preferred it to have been artillery. But the art was a good surprise."

 

"Hungry." Jak was surprised when the others laughed. "Am," he insisted. "Real hungry."

 

Ryan slapped the teenager on the shoulder. "You and me both, Jak."

 

"We going out the redoubt now?"

 

"Why not?"

 

 

 

THEY LEFT THE ART SECTION of the huge, rambling redoubt behind them and moved toward the marked entrance. Their route led them through an open set of double sec doors into a massive, vaulted hall, bigger than an aircraft hangar.

 

"Defensive positions all around here," J.B. observed. "Ready to repel the enemy."

 

Ryan nodded. "Only problem with that tactical planning was that all the enemy were dead, as well."

 

"What happened to all of the tens of millions of corpses?" Mildred asked. "I've always wondered that. Should be boneyards, shouldn't there?"

 

Doc answered her. "I also pondered that, madam. Indeed, I once was fortunate enough to visit the ruins at Mesa Verde and I asked the ranger on duty the same question. Where did all of the Anasazi bodies go?"

 

"And?"

 

"And, Dr. Wyeth, he pointed out that Nature is an excellent disposer of corpses. The weather combines with wild animals. It is close on one hundred years since the skies over the land of the free grew dark with nuclear warheads. Time enough for most bodies out in the open to have been absorbed back into the environment. Fortunately for all of us, mankind is intensely biodegradable."

 

 

 

THE MAIN DOORS to each redoubt had, up to then, shared a common three-digit code to open and close. Three, five and two was punched in to open the vanadium-steel door, then two, five and three to close it again.

 

This one was the same.

 

The code was printed on a white card, sealed in plastic under the control panel.

 

"Not all that secret, is it?" Ryan said. "Still, I suppose there were so many soldiers and whitecoats who needed to come in and out of all the redoubts, it was simpler to have the same entrance code for all of them."

 

"We using it?" Jak had moved to stand by the controls, his long white index finger poised over the buttons.

 

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. We're using it."