Chapter Twenty-Four

 

The cell block attached to the Freedom Mall sec force was known as the Wings. Why was a mystery, although Doc suspected the slang term might have origins in either the prevention of the prisoners from being "as free as birds" or that it was more theatrical in nature, keeping troublemakers in Freedom offstage and out of the public eye by being locked away in the wings, the wings being a reference to the areas off the main stage to the right and the left.

 

Either way, the reunited group of friends were lacking one of their own, and that was Dean Cawdor, who had been shut away, awaiting release when their terms as hired guns had paid his freightand Jak'sfor the damage to the vid arcade.

 

Retracing his steps of the daily visit he paid Dean, Ryan walked past the deserted admittance desk, through a half door, into a back-hallway annex. He looked in the empty visitor's center and waved his friends along to the rear section, where a heavy steel door with a U-shaped handle was closed.

 

"This must lead to the cells," Ryan said.

 

"Yeah," Jak confirmed.

 

Mildred drew her pistol. "We going in?"

 

"Might have to blast if the door is locked," J.B. said.

 

"Try it and see, Ryan. Open the portal and let us see what awaits," Doc added.

 

Ryan took the handle and pulled. Then he pulled harder, feeling the veins in his arms start to pop out against his tan skin.

 

"Try pushing, lover," Krysty suggested.

 

 

"Getting to that." Ryan pushed, and the steel door swung inward.

 

"Not used to the old-fashioned doors with hinges." He chuckled, annoyed and amused at the same time. "Spending too much time in redoubts, where you press a few buttons, and the sec doors slide away." Ryan's good cheer was interrupted by a sudden cacophony of a clanging alarm bell.

 

"Shit!" he cursed. "Where'd that come from?"

 

"No idea," Krysty said. "You must've missed some sec turnoff switch."

 

"You're the one who told me to push," Ryan retorted.

 

"Well, other than being annoying as all hell, I don't think it's going to bring sec men running this way," J.B. drawled. "They've got more important things to deal with now than a child's jailbreak."

 

 

Ryan turned to the Armorer. "I agree."

 

 

Doc spoke up. "Still, I shall remain back here, in case we do have visitors."

 

"Good idea, Doc," Ryan said, speaking loudly to be heard. "Hate to see all of us trapped or locked up alongside Dean. That'll be some poor bastard rescue. Krysty, you want to hang with Doc, too?"

 

 

The redhead nodded. "All right. Be careful."

 

"Always."

 

"I'll close the door. It might cut down on the racket back here," Mildred said. "That alarm bell is somewhere out front."

 

Ryan led the way inside, his own blaster drawn and ready. To his left was a blank wall with a wooden desk and metal rolling chair. On the desk were papers, a book of mug shots and an ashtray filled with the remains of a score of hand-rolled cigarettes. To his right was the cell block proper. Six cells, three per side, separated by a narrow walkway painted a chocolate brown. All of the cells appeared empty.

 

As promised, Mildred pushed the door shut and the clanging sound became much softer and bearable. The alarm was apparently meant to alert those outside of the cell block in case of a break.

 

"Dean?" Ryan yelled over the now muffled clanging. "You in here?"

 

"Dad!" Dean yelled back, rolling out from beneath the bunk of the last cell.

 

As Ryan jogged down to the last cell in the long block, J.B. examined the other, empty cells, eyeballing their sparse furnishings in case another inmate had taken Dean's lead and decided to hide in plain sight.

 

"You're supposed to sleep on those beds, Dean, not under them," Ryan said as he looked down fondly upon his son.

 

"I know. Things been going triple strange. Once that alarm kicked off, I figured I'd hide until I knew the score."

 

"Funny," J.B. mused. "All the other cells are unoccupied."

 

"Another batch of jails on lower level," Jak said.

 

"Heard talk when I locked up earlier. Almost separated me and Dean. Didn't."

 

"Morgan promised me Dean wouldn't be hurt. I made it clear I didn't want my son having to deal with horny pervs wanting to get at his ass. Guess Morgan listened. Kept this group of cells clear," Ryan said as he stared down at the locked cell door. The cell was primitive, the metal bars obviously brought in from an old police station and welded into place. The back wall was solid concrete stone, and so was the windowless left, the front and right sections being made of the bars, which were painted black.

 

"Been nobody here but me for days," Dean confirmed. "Boring as hell. Three meals and no conversation. What's going on? Where are the guards?"

 

"They've got bigger problems on their hands besides keeping watch over a kid. Freedom's under attack by some angry stickies. Guess they wanted to participate in a blue-light special with the rest of us," Ryan said with a wicked smile.

 

"Never did find out what those specials were supposed to be about," J.B. groused.

 

"Probably for the best. Want to see if you and Jak can find some keys around this dump?"

 

"On it." The two men went back and began looking through the drawers of the desk at the back of the cell block.

 

"You okay, Mildred? You look kind of sick," Dean said, peering at the black woman through the bars of the cell.

 

"Stickies are enough to make all of us feel queasy," Ryan said.

 

"Stickies don't scare me, it's the people," Mildred replied, running a free hand down her jacketed arm. She suddenly felt cold. "I know you've already been face-to-face with those chilly-crazy bastards, Ryan, but all I've seen running rampant so far is a horde of rioters and looters. It's almost like they were waiting for an opportunity like this to tear the mall down from the rafters."

 

"Yeah, well, you know how it is, Mildred. The more people you cram together, the more trouble you invite."

 

"We keep crawling back up, and knocking ourselves down again and again."

 

"No keys in desk," Jak reported.

 

"Not surprised. Guard usually has them on a ring on his belt," Dean said.

 

"Why not tell us?" Jak demanded, slinging out a pale hand and slapping the cell bars next to Dean's face.

 

"I was hoping for a spare set, stupe," Dean said. "Got to be a second set of keys somewhere in case the first set gets lost."

 

"Well, guess we'll have to blast," Ryan said. "We sure as shit don't have time to wait for the sec man on duty to come back with the keys."

 

While the rest of the group had been talking, J.B. had also returned from the desk search. He bent down for a closer look at the sec lock on the cell door.

 

"Oh-oh," J.B. said.

 

"What's 'oh-oh'? That's a phrase I'm not used to hearing out of you, J.B.," Ryan demanded.

 

"We got a problem. This isn't your ordinary cell-door lock. Been modified." The Armorer pointed a finger up to a box in the corner of Dean's cell that appeared to be some kind of ob unit. "There's a charge in the lock mechanism," he explained. "Don't use the key and you break a circuit. My guess is, there's enough high ex in that box back there to envelop the entire cell and whoever is dumb enough to be standing in front of it."

 

"Meaning what?" Mildred asked.

 

 

"Like I said. Oh-oh."

 

"Can't you bypass the lock?" Ryan asked.

 

 

"Mebbe," J.B. replied, taking off his fedora and running his fingers through his closely cropped hair. "I know how to, anyway"

 

"Good!"

 

"Just never done it before on a deal like this."

 

"J.B., there's a first time for everything." The radio at Ryan's waist crackled, and then an annoying squawk came out.

 

"Your radio's on?" J.B. asked. "Had to turn our sets off. Sec men screaming, yelling. Couldn't understand a damn thing."

 

"Mine's on another channel. So's Krysty's. Did that to escape the other racket. Jak didn't have a unit," Ryan replied as he took the compact box off his belt.

 

"Not want one," the albino noted.

 

 

"Ryan here," the tall man said, speaking into the comm unit.

 

"What's the holdup, lover?" Krysty replied, the alarm bell ringing under her words. "Doc and I just had to shoo away an angry mall tenant who came rampaging in here. Seems his vintage-clothing depot was ransacked and he's mad, threatening to pull his shop out and report us to the mall managers."

 

"How'd you get rid of him?"

 

"Told him to go tell somebody who cared."

 

"Good girl. We've hit a snag." Ryan went on to explain the problem.

 

"Gaia! If it's not one thing, it's another," Krysty said, her voice still clear despite the static.

 

"J.B.'s going to crack the door. Rest of us are coming back up front with you. No sense in all of us getting caught in the middle in case something goes wrong."

 

"Right. Krysty, out."

 

Ryan reached in through the iron bars with his hands and arms, drawing his son close for a brief, tight hug.

 

"Hang tight, Dean. J.B.'s the best in Deathlands with this kind of rig. You'll be out before you know it."

 

As Ryan broke the hug and stepped back, J.B. was already sitting on the floor, his legs crossed under his body. From his leather coat he'd taken a small metal box and a stained cloth. In the cloth was a series of shiny metal tools resembling surgical weapons. The box held his lock picks.

 

"Here, J.B., take my comm unit," Ryan said. "We'll keep in touch with you by using Krysty's radio."

 

Goodbyes were exchanged, then the boy and the Armorer were alone, seated on the cold floor and facing each other through the iron bars of the cell.

 

"You really know how to deactivate this thing?" Dean asked, nodding toward the lock.

 

 

"Of course."

 

"So, let's do it."

 

 

 

OUT IN THE ADMITTANCE AREA of the Wings, long minutes had passed. J.B. hadn't checked in via the comm. There was no real reason for constant chatter. If he failed at his task, the others would know immediately from the explosion.

 

"How do you think it's going out in the mall proper?" Mildred mused.

 

"From what I saw coming in, lousy," Ryan replied.

 

"Just human nature," Doc said, twirling his swordstick between his fingers. "With all of the good, you get more of the bad. This proud beacon named Freedom was an ambitious experiment. In a smaller configuration, it might have continued to thrive. Alas, the body outgrew the head, and now it falls."

 

"Damn stickies," Jak said. "Stickies didn't help, but Doc's got a point," Krysty added. "Freedom didn't have near the amount of sec men needed to properly protect the place, either from the outside or from itself."

 

Ryan glanced at his wrist chron for the fiftieth time since he'd come out of the cell block. "Taking too long," he said, and activated the radio. "J.B.?" Silence.

 

"J.B., answer me." Silence. Static.

 

"J.B., goddammit! Answer me before I come in after you!"

 

"What?" the Armorer's voice came back. "I'm kind of busy here."

 

"Been twenty minutes. Taking too long."

 

"Working as fast as I can, Ryan."

 

"Well, work even faster!" Ryan said, his frustration mounting. "Last thing we need is to have all our asses locked up or to be backed against the wall by a group of pissed-off mall customers running from a gang of stickies."

 

"You want to get down here and do this?" J.B. retorted, his angry voice crackling back over the small hand comm.

 

"If you think it would help, yeah!" Ryan spit at the radio unit.

 

"You don't have the patience," the Armorer countered, even as his nimble fingers seemed to increase their speed on the cell door's locking mechanism. "You never did."

 

"Bullshit."

 

"Get off it, Ryan. You used to drive Trader crazy back in the old days, always wanting to go in with blasters blazing, and Trader wasn't exactly what I'd call a patient man, either, if you know what I mean."

 

Ryan's face darkened. "What I know is that those alarms are going to draw some attention, stickie attack or not."

 

"Look, if I could blast the bastard lock, I would," J.B. replied tiredly. "But we don't have that particular time-saving option available. This is delicate work. I can rush it if you want Dean back without a head. That I can do for you."

 

"That isn't an option, J.B."

 

"Okay. So, unless you want to start leading your son around by the hand to keep him from bumping into the furniture, I can't afford to rush this. If that's not the case, I suggest you back the hell off and stop pushing. When he's free, you'll be the first to know. Dix, out."

 

"Fine," Ryan said in a cold tone as he flipped the comm's voice toggle to Off. He knew J.B. was right, but that didn't make waiting any easier, nor the did remote chance that his friend might indeed make an error and cause injury to the imprisoned Dean.

 

Krysty started to say something, but Ryan held up a hand.

 

"Don't," he said. "Don't want to hear it."

 

 

 

AT THE DOOR of the sec cell, J.B. was sweating profusely. Trickles of perspiration were running down his forehead and onto the bridge of his nose and on his cheeks. His glasses were slightly fogged from the body heat, but he didn't dare try to take the time to keep wiping them when he was so close to succeeding.

 

Still, the film over the lenses was becoming quite annoying.

 

"Can't see worth a shit. These new glasses fog up a lot quicker than my old ones," he griped.

 

"Try the other pair," Dean suggested.

 

J.B. snorted. "I'd rather take my chances with these."

 

"I'm serious. Right now I'm not going to be laughing at how they might look, that's for sure."

 

Taking his hands away from the locking mechanism, J.B. quickly took out the case with the wide-framed lenses and placed the pair of backup glasses on his nose.

 

Dean couldn't help himself. he giggled.

 

"Nerves," the boy explained.

 

"Right."

 

J.B. went back to his task, making another quick adjustment.

 

"Okay. Dean?"

 

"Yeah, J.B.?" the boy replied.

 

"Oh, never mind."

 

"What?"

 

"I was going to tell you to step back to the rear of the cell, but if this thing goes off, it's not going to matter where you're standing."

 

"Oh," Dean said, debating this. "Thanks for thinking of me."

 

"I've got one wire left to cut on this sec lock. Cutting it should short the current and allow the door to be slid open without activating the charge."

 

"Guess the key word here is 'should,' right?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"You think I should crawl under my bunk?"

 

"Only if it would make you feel better."

 

"Nah. Guess I'll stand here and face it with you."

 

J.B. reached out with the miniature pair of pliers. "There is one thing you could do for me, Dean."

 

"What?"

 

"Stick your fingers in your ears. That way, you won't have to hear the blast in case I did screw up."

 

Before the boy could offer a reply, J.B. squeezed the pliers shut and cut the connecting wire.