Chapter Eight

 

 

"Lover," Krysty said soothingly, "come back to me."

 

Chilled to the bone, his heart thudding rapidly inside his chest, Ryan forced his eye open. "Dean?" he croaked.

 

"Not here," Krysty said. "School. Remember?"

 

"Fireblast." Ryan made himself sit up against the walls of the mat-trans unit. He'd been dreaming that his son, Dean, had been snatched by Burroughs. The nightmare induced by the jump reluctantly left him. His stomach rolled, and the familiar headache throbbed at his temples.

 

The others didn't move much, either. J.B. rested beside the door, the Uzi nestled comfortably in his hands. Mildred was beside him, on her back and breathing slow. Jak had curled into a fetal position, a trickle of blood seeping from his right nostril.

 

"Doc?" Ryan asked.

 

"Still among the living, my dear Ryan," the old man answered hoarsely. "Thank you for inquiring."

 

Ryan craned his head and spotted Doc wiping weakly at the pink-and-yellow worms of vomit staining his black frock coat and blue denim shirt.

 

"Could do with a bit of a wash, I suppose," Doc said.

 

"Mebbe in a little while." Ryan studied the indigo-colored armaglass, then squinted his eye when he saw the frost clinging to the outside of it. Puddles had formed inside the mat-trans unit.

 

Ryan focused on gathering his mind and energy. With Krysty's help he got to his feet. "Anybody else cold? Or is it just me?"

 

"We all are," Krysty admitted.

 

He put his hand against the window and the chill soaked into his palm readily. "Wherever we are, the climate's definitely gotten bad on us." His thoughts turned to winter. There were redoubts up in Alaska and in the northern areas of Deathlands. The group had been there and seen them. It wasn't a prospect he wanted to consider.

 

He peered hard through the armaglass, trying to make out the details of the outside chamber. The room looked tidy. Small and angular, only partially revealed by the light streaming from the mat-trans unit, the chamber appeared deserted.

 

Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer and walked toward the door.

 

"Got to think about the men who were following us," J.B. declared. "They were still alive. Could be they'll use the mat-trans to try to come after us. If that corridor Doc and Krysty mined caved in real good, they aren't going to have many choices."

 

"First order of business," Ryan said, "is to try to figure out where we are and how we're going to keep from freezing to death. Everybody up and at the ready. We're on double yellow. Don't see anything moving on the other side of the glass, but that doesn't mean it isn't there."

 

The rest of the friends got up, falling into position by memory and conditioning. No one was moving too well.

 

"Do it," he told Krysty, who was ready to open the door. "And when we go out, keep the doors open! Could be Burroughs's men won't be able to make the jump unless this unit's ready to go."

 

She nodded. Her sentient hair was pulled in tight to her scalp, and her eyes were on Ryan.

 

"Be careful," Krysty cautioned.

 

"You feel anything out there?"

 

"No, but that isn't how I'd treat it."

 

Ryan nodded. "The door."

 

She hit the security code. A heartbeat later the mat-trans unit doors opened. The warm air inside turned into a frosty breath as it charged out into the empty anteroom.

 

Ryan moved outside, keeping himself in a crouch to be a smaller target. His eye strained against the gloom, and he was conscious of J.B. standing watch over him.

 

The mat-trans unit was in the back third of the room. Shelves lined the walls around them. There where two doors one dead ahead of Ryan and one on the right. Both were electronically keyed, which meant neither would open without giving some type of warning.

 

The chill outside the mat-trans unit was more pronounced. Ryan saw his breath fog up the air in front of him. He reached into his pocket for a packet of self-lights. Working one-handed, he slipped one out, then cracked it to life with a thumbnail. He held it away from him so it wouldn't directly highlight him for any potential attackers.

 

"J.B.," Ryan said.

 

"Yeah."

 

"The other door."

 

"Got it." The Armorer moved almost silently despite the tomblike quietness of the redoubt.

 

Ryan moved toward the other door. A rectangle of wire-meshed glass was set at eye level. Peering through it, he tried to see beyond but couldn't. He raised the self-light. The weak yellow light bounced off some metal surfaces, but didn't give a clue as to what they were. The thin layer of frost overlaying the glass retreated, running down the metal skin of the door in tiny, diamond-bright tears.

 

"Too dark," he told the others as he shook out the self-light. "J.B." Without the light, crazy black-and-yellow patterns danced in his vision as the rods and cones tried to reassess the darkness.

 

The Armorer cracked a self-light, and the sharp sulfur smell lingering in the room grew even stronger. "Can't see," J.B. stated.

 

Ryan tested the door in front of him and found it unlocked. "Okay, here's the drill. We take one door at a time, leaving our retreat open and an attack front on two sides impossible. Krysty, you're with me. Mildred and Doc, you follow. Jak, you're with J.B."

 

The albino teenager nodded and moved off to join the Armorer.

 

"Ryan," Krysty said, "I've found a lamp." She took it from one of the wire shelves. A half-dozen others were racked behind it.

 

"Light it. If anyone's out there, they're bound to know we're here by now."

 

Krysty struck a self-light and held it to the wick of a small oil lamp. The flame caught quickly, burning through the wick rapidly and throwing wavering shadows against the plain concrete walls. "Dried out. It'll burn fast for a time." She put the glass back in place and held up the lamp. The reservoir was a third empty, and the thick fluid coiling in the bottom looked briny and gelatinous.

 

Embers whirled from the wick, then the corona of the flame died down as Krysty twisted up more of the oil-soaked sections. "It's been here for a while."

 

Doc sniffed. "It seems someone was trying to better a vile concoction with apparently little true success."

 

"Smells like bad chili fart," Jak commented. But he took another lamp from one of the shelves and removed the hurricane glass to get to the wick.

 

"A precise observation, lad," Doc agreed, "though it certainly lacks something in polish."

 

"Now," Ryan said, opening the door and going through.

 

The room was bigger than the one they'd just quit. More shelves lined the walls, filled with boxes, crates and cylinders.

 

In the center of the floor, though, was a wag. It was small, only a four-seater, but had armor plating around the sides and a rack across the back for tying other cargo on. A .50-caliber machine gun was mounted on an arm that swiveled out in front of the back seat.

 

Krysty held the lamp high so the light could flood the room.

 

"I found a generator," Mildred called out.

 

"See if you can get it started," Ryan said. A cursory once-over of the wag gave him the impression that everything looked as though it would work. Directly in front of the wag was an electronic door. There were no windows. He tested the lock, but nothing moved. "I'm going with J.B. and Jak to see where that other door leads."

 

"I'll get an inventory going," Krysty replied.

 

Ryan nodded and walked back into the other room. The smoke from the two lanterns was already starting to fill the air. Within a half hour or so, the air inside the redoubt would be acrid enough to burn their nasal passages.

 

"They must be trying to come through," J.B. said as Ryan approached. He pointed his chin in the direction of the mat-trans unit. "Control panels in there keep cycling through color codes, and the disks heat up occasionally like they're going to do something."

 

Ryan glanced at the unit. Krysty had blocked the doors with a trenching tool, but they'd pulled in hard enough to warp the working end of the blade.

 

"Be better blow it up," Jak commented. "Mebbe damage. No work no more. No danger."

 

"Yeah," Ryan agreed. "Except we don't know if we can get out of here ourselves yet. And there's no telling what's waiting for us outside if we do. Let's look around a little more and see what we turn up before we go doing anything too rash."

 

He nodded at J.B. "The door?"

 

"Unlocked," the Armorer answered.

 

"Let's go, then."

 

J.B. pulled the door open, and Ryan fell into position along the other side. Jak used the reflector on the lamp to aim the light into the room.

 

Dormant computer hardware lined two walls. The third held video equipment. Besides the door, the fourth wall was totally barren. In the center of the room, a long table sat between two cryo units.

 

"This isn't a regular redoubt," J.B. ventured. "Too small. More like an emergency hidey-hole."

 

"That's how I see it, too," Ryan replied, walking farther into the room but keeping the SIG-Sauer at the ready. He heard his footsteps against the bare floor over the rattling hiss of the burning lantern wick. "Who was the dead man back in the office in White Sands?"

 

"Don't know," J.B. said. "I saw his name on his desk for mebbe a minute before we heaved it. Walker, I think it was."

 

"Doc or Krysty say anything about him?" Ryan peered into the glass plate at one end of the nearest cryo cylinder. Dust obscured the view.

 

"No. But they did find the room."

 

"Whole setup scans like something done oh the qt," Ryan said.

 

"Way I read it, too," J.B. agreed. "Tighter than a gaudy slut's lip seal."

 

"Let me borrow that light over here, Jak," Ryan said.

 

The albino passed it over. "Dead place. Nothing here."

 

Ryan brushed at the accumulated dust with his forearm again. The post trauma nightmare shakes had faded some, and movement had restored his circulation to a degree, but it was still cold. One thing was for certainthe desert was a thing of the past. He shifted the lantern and peered in the cryo chamber more closely.

 

The light was weak, diffused by the lamp cover and the cryo chamber's window. It took some concentration to separate the shadows from the contents inside.

 

A dead man peered back at Ryan. The corpse's eyes were open, but the orbs sat like eelskin-wrapped marbles in sockets that had grown too large for them as the fluids leached away. The skin was sallow, stretched tight and looking like wax, the bones breaking through along the cheeks and chin. He'd been wearing a suit, all tidy and neat perhaps at one time. Now there were holes in it, and a powdery layer of dust covered them.

 

"Man died hard," Ryan said.

 

J.B. walked over to have a look. "Unit must have lost power somewhere along the way. Left him trapped inside. Suffocated, I'd guess."

 

The flesh on the hands was torn and ripped. Fingernails were pulled loose and lying askew in the skin on the remaining fingers.

 

"Mebbe," Ryan said. He moved the lantern again and saw some of the shadows shift. Black-and-brown cockroaches nearly as long as his thumb scrambled through the dead man's clothes and dessicated flesh, scuttling away from the light. One of them clambered out from behind one of the shrunken eyeballs and perched on it covetously. "Mebbe starvation or dehydration. There a latch?"

 

The Armorer felt around the cryo chamber. Ryan did the same on his side. It was slightly different than any they'd chanced across in the past.

 

"Got it," J.B. said. He yanked, and there was a series of snaps. Inside the cold crypt the cockroach fled back into the dead man's skull. A second later J.B. had the cryo chamber open.

 

Ryan moved the lantern's light over the corpse. Cockroaches scattered with the fury of an Old Testament plague, their carapaces clicking against the concrete floor when they hit.

 

Ryan stepped closer, drawing the panga. Cockroaches popped underfoot when he moved. He raked the big knife through the dead man's clothes, turning up a wallet inside the jacket.

 

"Bugs not from here," Jak said. The albino stood out starkly in the shadows against the wall. "Crawl in somewhere."

 

"You think mebbe we ought to follow them around?" J.B. asked.

 

Ryan lifted the lantern so the light would fill the room more properly. Dozens of cockroaches littered the floor, dashing madly to the safety of the computer hardware. More were steadily dropping from the dead man, sounding like a light pattering of rain.

 

"No." Jak looked at the ceiling. "Let me borrow lantern."

 

Ryan passed it over, then followed in order to have enough light to read through the identification papers he'd discovered. "Harlan Sitwell. Says here he was a computer-systems analyst working for the National Security Agency."

 

"United States?" J.B. asked.

 

"Yeah. Home address was in Maryland."

 

The Armorer adjusted his hat and looked at Sitwell's remains. "Well, I don't get the feeling that this is Maryland. You see the paper jack sticking out of that wallet?"

 

Ryan opened it up and looked. The bills were odd colors, not the familiar green of the paper American jack the group had seen from time to time. Instead of men, some of these bills had a fat woman wearing a crown on them. He sorted through them quickly. "All dated before 2001. He's been chilled for a long time."

 

"One way," J.B. replied, patting the cryo chamber, "or another."

 

"Look," Jak called, holding up the lantern. "Smoke goes through."

 

Moving closer, pocketing the wallet he'd recovered after making sure no cockroaches lurked inside, Ryan peered up at the twisting spiral of black smoke coming from the lantern.

 

The smoke pooled against the ceiling, creating a twisting cushion that rolled continuously in on itself. But tendrils reached up near the space where a three-foot section of the ceiling joined the wall.

 

"Could be just a fissure," J.B. suggested.

 

"No," Jak said. "Has shape." He pointed with a forefinger, inscribing a long rectangle.

 

Squinting, Ryan was just able to make it out. Jak had sharp eyes. "I'll be back." He returned to the other room and found a wooden box on a wire shelf that he thought would allow him to reach the ceiling once he stood on it.

 

"This chamber's empty," J.B. said, playing the lantern over the second cryo unit. He passed the lantern to Ryan, who handed it back to Jak. "If there were two, mebbe one of them got out alive."

 

Ryan stood on the crate and still had to tiptoe to reach the ceiling. He held the panga in one hand and the SIG-Sauer in the other. Straining, he edged the knife blade into the space between the wall and ceiling. The smoke started slipping through the area even faster as dust tumbled down across the computer equipment.

 

Twisting the blade to give it a better angle to hold on, Ryan pulled the panga down. It took a lot of effort, because the panel was recessed. But in the end gravity helped, and it came swinging down.

 

Bolted inside the long, hinged panel that dropped nearly to the middle of the room was a ladder. Spiders, earthworms and other insects had made their homes in tangle of roots and dirt.

 

At the top of the ladder was a crust of dirt.

 

"Getting the feeling you're crawling out of a grave?" J.B. asked.

 

"Least we're crawling out," Ryan said. He kicked the ladder hard twice, shaking off most of the live things. The odor of fresh-turned earth was muggy and thick. "If smoke was pulling through that, it can't be too deep over us."

 

"I got back, Ryan," Jak said. "Ready when you are."

 

"Let's do it." Ryan put away the panga and went up the ladder, holding his blaster. When he reached the earth mounded overhead, he tested it with his hand. It felt wet and cool, like turgid winter mud. The heavy clay content made it greasy to the touch.

 

"Look here," J.B. said.

 

Craning his neck around, Ryan looked.

 

The Armorer ran his fingers across the top of the door Ryan had pulled down. "Fake grass. Got some stuff here, too, that looks like moss. Kind of worse for the wear."

 

"Camouflage," Jak said.

 

Ryan had it figured that way, too. He turned his attention to the earth. Bending his hand back, he drove the heel of his palm into the dirt. The section of earth quivered with the blow, and bits and pieces of it rained to the floor. Twisting and curling worms plopped wetly against the concrete. Dirt and one worm slapped against Ryan's face, hanging for a moment before he brushed it away.

 

On the third blow the earth turned loose and fell away in large chunks. A cool breeze, wet with the promise of rain and night, swept into the room. It was bracing and made Ryan wish he'd dressed in something warmer. Still, wasn't going to kill him.

 

He went up the stairs, followed by the albino.

 

"Smell outside," Jak said in a low voice. "Forest. Flowers. Animal, mebbe."

 

"Yeah," Ryan said, "I smell it, too." He edged over the lip of the entrance cautiously, relying on his hearing to warn him of any threatening movement.

 

It was dark topside. The wet chill clung to Ryan as he explored around the hole with his free hand, managing the ladder with just his legs. He kept the blaster in close, so it couldn't be easily knocked from his grip.

 

Pale light, too washed-out to be daylight, poured in to his left from around a corner and a distance away. He couldn't tell how far because there were no reference points.

 

Finding a dirt clod, he heaved it in the direction of the light. It smashed against a wall and fell down in pieces, nothing moved in response.

 

"J.B.," Ryan called, "let me have that lantern up here."

 

The Armorer passed it along.

 

Holding it high, Ryan glanced around the inside of the cave. It was maybe ten feet across, less than five feet high.

 

The roof was irregular limestone, patterned by the moving water that had shaped it centuries ago.

 

"I'm going on," Ryan said. "Jak's with me. J.B., you hold the back door open."

 

"Done," the Armorer said.

 

Ryan climbed out of the hole, stepping onto the cave floor, with Jak a pale shadow at his side.