"Dean!" Ryan cried, reaching out for the boy, but Dean was completely beyond his father's grasp.

 

Chapter Eleven

 

 

 As Mildred and Krysty fired at the muties below, Doc looked up at Dean's cry and saw the boy coming. Instantly, the old man dug in his heels and reached out to grab for Dean. He knew it was impossible to catch the lad directlythe impact would pull him off the cliff also. But there was another way. Maybe.

Doc got a hold of the boy's belt and pulled with all of his strength, the jerk almost tearing him off the rock face. A searing explosion of pain swelled in his shoulder. Holding on for dear life, the old man swung the boy inward and Dean hit the mesa with stunning force, his head cracking against the stones and going limp.

By the Three Kennedys, Doc thought. It had worked! He successfully neutralized the inertia by using the cliff itself. The boy could be dead from the blow, but he would have died anyway. At least the boy was given a chance at life.

Sweating from the strain, Doc could see the boy was unconscious and forced himself to start climbing again. There was no other way. His knuckles were white from tightly holding on to Dean's belt, and the pain in his shoulder grew into a white-hot agony worse than any bullet wound. It had to be dislocated.

As he had done many times before in his life, Doc blocked the world from his mind and thought only of the climb and holding on to his young friend. Find another crack, shift his weight, climb, brace himself, find the strength from within, tighten the grip on the belt. Now do it once more. Again, and again. There was no time, no sounds. Only the endless cliff and a universe of distant pain.

But then there was no more rock before his face, and familiar arms reached to take Dean under the armpits to try to lift him, but Doc refused to relinquish his ward.

"Let go, Doc," Mildred said softly. "I've got him. It's okay. Dammit, you old coot, let him go!"

The man tried to do as requested, but his aching body was moving with a will of its own. Sluggishly, he inched over the edge and crawled onto the top of the mesa, still dragging the unconscious boy. When he cleared the rim, Doc collapsed onto the bare soil, pulling in lungfuls of air.

In the background somewhere, Doc heard blaster-fire and the howls of wounded apes. He tried to rise and draw his LeMat, but somebody forced him back down.

"Rest for a sec," Ryan ordered, and Doc was too weak to even nod in response.

"Thank God, Dean is okay," Mildred announced, brushing the hair from the boy's face. There were no broken bones or fractures that she could detect. Oh, Dean would have a new scar under his hair, but that was a fine trade against having his brains splattered across the landscape.

Privately, Mildred still couldn't believe that Doc managed to catch the boy. She knew his appearance of being old was merely a side effect of time travel, but she had never truly appreciated just how strong the tall man was. Until today.

As the red fog of exhaustion left his vision, the old man saw Ryan crouched alongside him, resting on his boot heels. Gently, the one-eyed man was probing the swollen shoulder with his fingertips. "No breaks," he said finally. "Must be dislocated."

"I can fix that," Mildred said, kneeling.

"Doc, this will hurt bad, but only for a few seconds."

"Proceed," the exhausted man whispered.

Mildred placed her left boot under the Doc's armpit and the other on the side of his neck. Wrapping her hands around the man's wrist, Mildred gently rotated the arm slightly clockwise to align the bones, then savagely pulled with all her strength. Doc screamed, and the electric shot of pain flooded his body with cold adrenaline.

"Better," Doc said in an almost normal voice, then after a moment carefully lifted the arm and tried flexing his hand. "Much better. Thank you, my dear Dr. Wyeth."

In an unusual display of affection, she ruffled his crop of silvery hair. "No prob."

Nearby, J.B. was standing at the edge of the cliff, reloading the Uzi, while Krysty and Jak tossed grens at the gorillas. The dull thuds of the grens faintly shook the ground, and the muties briefly shrieked. Working the arming bolt, J.B. started firing short bursts over the side, and another ape howled, the noise quickly dwindling into the distance to abruptly stop.

"Two retreating," Jak stated, thumbing rounds into the Ruger, then switching weapons back to his Colt.

His Ruger Redhawk sported only a four-inch barrel, which made it a fast draw. But the six-inch barrel of the Colt Python made a difference in accuracy. Maybe he'd keep both; they made a nice combo.

"Nobody escapes," Ryan said in a voice of ice. Sliding the Steyr off his shoulder, the man went to the edge and swept the cliff face with the telescope mounted on the longblaster. When the crosshairs found a mutie, he centered the scope on its face and blasted its features with a 7.62 mm hollowpoint round. The other tried to flatten against the cliff to escape, but Ryan winged it in the leg, and, as it doubled over to grab the wound, he planted a round into its ear. Already chilled, the gorilla went sailing off the rock face and impacted heavily into the ground.

Ryan pumped a few additional rounds into any corpse that was mostly intact. He wasn't going to have the apes come back in the night to attack the companions in their sleep.

"See any more?" J.B. asked with a frown.

"Not yet," Ryan stated, slinging the longblaster on a shoulder. "But there's no way we wiped out all of them. I'll check on the others. You stand guard."

"Done."

Holding a wad of cloth to his head, Dean went over to Doc, a trickle of blood flowing from under his dark hair.

"Thanks," the boy said, extending a hand. "Owe you."

Gingerly, the old man took the hand and they shook. "Next time," Doc said with a smile, "you catch me."

"Done," Dean said seriously.

Suddenly, a hairy arm came over the edge of the mesa and the big bull mutie rose into view. The companions drew their blasters, but Jak was first, the Colt firing as the barrel cleared the holster. Ryan was only a split second behind the teenager, and the men led the rest of the companions in hammering the beast with lead until it staggered backward and plummeted out of sight.

"That's six," Ryan said, working the bolt to drop in a fresh clip. He pocketed the spent mag and put his back to the cliff. "Let's get walking. I'm on point, J.B. cover the rear."

Moving away from the edge of the mesa, the companions wearily trudged along the bare ground. Ryan could see his friends needed rest and some food, but this wasn't the area for that. Once they put a few miles between themselves and the jungle, he'd find a secure spot where they could establish a campsite. Even he got tired after that much combat.

Lagging slightly behind the rest, Jak was shuffling along, trying to keep the weight off his foot. Doc slowed to walk alongside the teenager, then passed over his ebony stick. "Just a loan," Doc said.

Jak nodded and, switching the Magnum to his other hand, levered himself along using the stick as a cane. Some of the tension eased from his face, and his speed noticeably increased.

The top of the mesa was a flat field of bare ground, stretching before them in an endless vista of rough ground that resembled black glass.

"Cooled lava," Krysty said, nudging a crystalline spire with her boot. Squinting, Ryan looked at the two volcanoes on the island. "Too far away," he stated. "Something else slagged this ground."

"Nuke?"

"Probably so." The Deathlands warrior checked the rad counter on his lapel and saw it registering only normal background activity.

"Clear," Ryan announced in relief.

The Uzi cradled in his arms, J.B. glanced at his own rad counter and nodded in agreement. The area was safe.

Tiny cracks were starting to appear in the smooth flow, and soon small weeds dotted the black ground, the tufts highly visible against the dark material. The greenery thickened until it carpeted the land. Ahead of the companions were trees and bushes, the beginnings of a small forest that appeared to reach all the way to the towering ruins of the predark metropolis. The gleaming towers of steel and concrete rose dozens of stories high, without any apparent sign of corrosion or blast damage.

A flock of birds nesting in the grassy field took flight at the approach of the norms, and Ryan jerked to a halt. The rest of the companions froze, weapons at the ready, when the man knelt and waved them closer.

"We're not the first to reach the top," Ryan said, lifting a human skull out of the weeds.

The object was clean, without a sign of flesh, but the bone was still white, not the dusky yellow of a skull long exposed to the inclement weather.

"How old?" Ryan asked, passing it over to the physician.

Mildred turned the skull and checked inside.

"Year," she stated, biting a lip. "Maybe two. But certainly no longer than that."

"Not a predark?" Dean asked, leaning in to see.

With a crack, Mildred removed the lower jaw and displayed the pitted yellow, teeth. "All these cavities, and not a sign of dental work?" she said as a question. "No way this man is from my era."

"Man?" Krysty asked curiously.

"You can tell from the size," Ryan replied, standing and brushing off his pants. Odd there was only a head in the middle of a field.

A few yards away, Jak gave a sharp whistle.

"More," the teenager announced, lifting a shiny femur from the grass. Other than the skull, the thigh bone was the most identifiable part of the human skeleton, with its double knuckles at the top and bottom. It also made a damn fine club.

"And over here," Krysty added, scowling, looking for pelvis bones. The bones were all mixed together, cracked open and chewed by animals, and some folks carried away skulls of their enemies as trophies. Counting the number of hipbones was the only way to get an accurate number of skeletons.

"Nine," she announced after a couple of minutes. "Could have been a hunting party. Or raiders."

Trying not to step on any bones, Mildred joined the redhead. "Yeah, they're all adult males, but look there, some of these are white, some brittle and yellow." The physician lifted her head and pulled her blaster. "I think this is the dumping spot for the something that has been chilling folks for decades."

"The gorillas?" Krysty asked in concern. Mildred vehemently shook her head. "I saw the teeth of those muties. They were big, but herbivores. Meat eaters aced these men."

"Found their weapons," Dean announced, standing and wiping the dirt off a broken knife. The metal was green with corrosion, holes eaten completely through the blade.

Ambling over, Ryan saw the scattered remains of carved bone and bits of plastic mixed together, the steel weapons reduced to mere ghostly outlines of rust. Lifting the largest piece of metal, Ryan studied it carefully.

"What is this, a matchlock? No, a pipe gun," he said, the cumbersome weapon crumbling under his touch. The primitive longblaster was merely an iron pipe with a hole in the top for a fuse, and a wooden stock closed off the rear end. That was it. Load the muzzle, light the fuse, aim and wait. The device was so crude it made a flintlock look like a nuke.

"Dark night, nobody on the islands would use these anymore," J.B. stated. "This guy must have bought the farm a long time ago. A lot more than a couple of years."

Mildred shook her head. "This is new bones on top of old weapons. Layers of people died over the decades."

Glancing at the field and forest, Ryan rubbed his chin to the sound of sandpaper. "Folks must have been trying to reach the ruins for quite a while, and something always stopped them right here."

"Or trying to leave," Dean added, observing the towering monoliths, their mirrored sides shimmering in the reflected light of the noonday sun.

"Welcome to El Dorado," Doc muttered, drawing both of his weapons.

Adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses, J.B. frowned. "Don't get you, Doc," he said. "I've been to Eldorado, big ville in south Tex. Nothing but bars and gaudy houses."

"I think he was referring to the old poem," Mildred said, also viewing the predark ruins. "A fabled city of gold that nobody ever reached alive."

"However, we've got a bastard lot better than matchlocks and wooden clubs," Ryan stated, leveling the longblaster. "Okay, I'm on point with Krysty. J.B. and Dean, cover the rear. We go slow and watch your steps. Whatever aced these folks could live underground. Anything appears, shoot on sight."

Warily, the companions assumed formation and crossed the field to enter the tall grass. These plants were green and alive, not dead weeds, the grass mixing with wild wheat and barley, almost as if this had been a farm long ago. The wind made a hushing sound as it blew over the waist-high crops.

"Watch for waves," Krysty warned, referring to the disturbances animals made when they moved through tall grass. From the top the patterns resembled ripples on a lake and gave away the predator's exact position as it closed for the kill.

As the grass became taller, the ground became mushy, and the shoulder-tall plants stopped at the bank of a rushing stream, the water so crystal clear they could see to the bottom. Knowing their canteens were low, Ryan called for a halt, but had J.B. test for rads and Mildred check for chems. They both pronounced it safe to drink. Happily, the companions rinsed out the canteens before filling them again, then took the opportunity to splash some of the water on their faces, doing a brief wash. The stream was cool and tasted faintly of mineral deposits. Best they'd had since arriving in the Marshall Islands.

When they were finished, the group waded to the other side. But Jak called a second halt and passed Dean several weapons before wading back into the middle of the stream and lying down. Rigorously, the teen began rubbing himself all over, trying to remove the mud of the area from his hair and clothing. The downstream runoff was black at first, then as the layers washed away, it turned brown and finally clear.

"Better," he grunted, wading to the shore and taking back his blasters. The teenager looked like a pale drowned rat, but nobody shifted position when he came near anymore.

"Damn pigs," Jak muttered, shaking his jacket.

"You're preaching to the choir on that, my friend," Doc growled.

Then surprisingly, Krysty and Mildred did the same thing, even though they didn't seem to be very dirty.

"Goddamn, that's cold!" the physician said through chattering teeth, both hands busy wringing the water from her beaded hair. "But I feel more like a human being now."

Making an inarticulate noise of pleasure, Krysty wildly shook her head, the animated filaments splaying out to facilitate drying, then slowly returning to the gentle crimson curls.

"This will do until we can find some soap," she said, squeezing the sleeves of her jumpsuit.

Greatly refreshed, the three companions dried as the group walked toward the forest, the formation of trees proving to be only a slim windbreak a few yards wide. Leaving the forest, they traversed a rubble-filled culvert, with half of a predark bridge high overhead, the span ending in the middle of empty air.

Reaching the top of the culvert, the group easily crawled under a heavy wire fence, braided with plastic strips that hid whatever was beyond. The companions found themselves standing on the gravel berm of a predark road, the smooth pavement extending out of sight in both directions. Across the road was a collection of warehouses, rusty cars with flat tires standing at ancient parking meters. Streetlights hung from power cables over every intersection, more cars stopped forever at the faded crosswalks. An assortment of houses lined the side streets, the front yards wild tangles of ivy and flowers, a few of the homes completely buried under the unstoppable advance of the resilient ivy. Not a window was broken, doors were closed and telephone lines were still connected to the poles. An unnatural silence lay heavy over the predark metropolis, and the companions fought a small shiver.

"Don't like this," Ryan said with a frown. "The damn place is in perfect condition. As if everybody simply stopped moving for a hundred years."

"Not quite everybody," Doc rumbled, pointing upward with the LeMat.

Rising above the factories and homes were the monolithic skyscrapers of downtown. Stretched between two of the high rises was a giant web, exactly like the one they had seen on Spider Island.

"Now we know where the bones came from," Ryan said.

"Gonna need some Molotov cocktails," J.B. stated, hefting his unusually light munitions bag. "Those worked last time."

"Sort of," Mildred corrected.

"There's a beer plant," Dean said, indicating a building down the street. "We can get bottles there."

"Keep your eyes peeled for a gas station," Ryan said, starting down the middle of the street.

"Need the soap powder from a laundry, too," Krysty added, the Webley feeling heavy in her hand. Her knuckles had been badly skinned in the rock climb, and the weapon was already christened with specks of blood.

 

HIGH ABOVE the silent streets, something watched the seven people proceed deeper into the heart of the city.

The newcomers were wounded and poorly dressed, but with good boots and very well-armed. This indicated a high probability that they were scavengers who had raided a supply dump. Thus additional weapons may not be in visual range. Grens were almost a certainty, and possibly even an energy weapon a portable microwave beamer, or Bedlow laser. Such lethal armament was not to be taken lightly, and willful self-termination was authorized only as a last resort. More data was required to form a course of action.

Closing the blinds, the Walker moved away from the window, stepping off the ceiling and through the door to stealthily make its way down to the ground level. Clearly, further reconnaissance was necessary until it could decide exactly how and when to exterminate the humans.

 

Chapter Twelve

 

 

 Walking down the middle of the street between the lines of dead cars, the companions tried to keep a watch in every direction and found it impossible. There were just too many windows, sewers and doorways in the metropolis. If somebody wanted to hide, there was no limit to the places where they could ferret.

"Creepy," Mildred said, fighting a shiver. "I've been in plenty of ruins, but this place, well, it isn't ruins. It's just old and empty. I keep expecting the traffic lights to click on, and the cars to start moving again."

"This was no nuke attack," Krysty said, watching the tattered remains of cloth curtains fluttering in the open window of a second-floor apartment, a red ceramic flowerpot balanced precariously on the sill. "Mebbe poison gas."

"Or a neutron bomb," J.B. said, watching the reflection of the passing companions in the plate-glass window of a millinery store. "Damn thing only aced people and machines but did no damage to the buildings. Got no idea how it worked."

Mildred started to explain about jacketing a tactical nuke with deutronium-rich water and tritium injectors, then stopped herself. The details weren't important. Only the results.

Going to a police car, Ryan studied the interior, then smashed in the glass with the barrel of his Web-ley. The green squares of the safety glass scattered underfoot. Reaching in, he took the pump-action shotgun out of the skeleton hands of the dead officer and racked the slide. A shell came out and he closely inspected it. The plastic was firm, not brittle, the brass bottom shiny and without any signs of age or corrosion.

"Looks good," he said, tossing it to J.B.

The Armorer made the catch. "Yeah, if the whole place is like this, we'll be ass deep in supplies."

"This city is so dead," Krysty said. "I can feel the death laying over these buildings."

There were skeletons inside almost every car with the windows closed, piles of bones behind the steering wheels, briefcases on the passenger seats, foam coffee cups still perched on the dashboards.

"You sensing anything alive?" he added.

"In every direction," the redhead said. "Plants, animals, things I can't describe, but no human life." She paused. "Or rather, nothing I call human."

"'For a thousand silent ghosts trod the ancient way, seeking a speaking to those warm and alive,'" Doc said softly in his singsong voice.

Rattling the handle of an ambulance, only to find it locked, Mildred turned at the quote and frowned. "Don't know that one. Is it Emerson?"

"One of my own efforts, madam," he answered, staring into the distance. "From when I wrote poetry and thought it a very important thing to do. A million years ago."

"You're a poet?" Mildred chuckled.

He offered a wan smile. "In due honesty I must admit my works were very poor things, indeed."

"Quiet. We're being watched," Ryan said, the hairs on the back of his neck stiffening. The man raised the Steyr and gently worked the bolt to chamber a round. This clip was the first of the ammo from the armory of the pirates, and he hadn't had a chance yet to check the cartridges. He was going to find out real fast if it was any good.

Using the Uzi to tilt back his fedora, J.B. said, "Yeah, I can feel it, too. Just like when we were traveling with the Trader, and the convoy would roll into a pass. There was nothing to see, but we could tell the bastards were there anyway."

"Gorilla or spider?" Jak asked, reaching for a knife and biting back a curse. Damn pirates took everything. He needed to get more soon. Had to be something in this city he could use or adapt.

Slowly turning, Ryan didn't answer, his eye staring hard at the alleyways and rooftops. That's where he could launch an attack from. And he had learned from experience to always consider what the enemy could do, not just what they might do.

With a cry, Dean turned and fired. A rat exploded into gory fur off the hood of a car, the .460 Nitro Express round continuing onward to slam into and punch a hole through a brick wall. The blast of the Weatherby echoed along the concrete canyons of the city, slowly fading into the distance.

"If the locals didn't before," Ryan growled, "they damn well know we're here now. Put away that long-cannon, Dean, and use the Browning."

"Sure, Dad," the boy said. He cleared the breech of the heavy rifle, then slid in a third round before slinging it over a shoulder. The .460 rounds of the big-bore longblaster were so huge, the breech could only hold two spare cartridges in the internal mag, plus a third up the pipe. Not a lot, but the thing hit like a bazooka.

Pulling out his Browning semiautomatic blaster, he clicked off the safety and jacked the slide.

"Ready," Dean announced somberly.

Ryan gave a nod, then continued scanning the multitude of buildings. Five, six, ten stories tall, the buildings stood in lines along the downtown like mountains reaching for the stars.

"First thing we need is to recce this burg," he said, annoyed. "Be here for years if we have to check every building."

"That seems to be the tallest," Krysty said. "We could see the whole island from the top."

"Not going to find a redoubt from above," Mildred countered, then added, "but we're not going to see people walking the streets, either."

The redhead frowned. That was true. Somewhere in this city there had to be a redoubt, or a gateway. But where could it be located?

"Check gov office," Jak stated casually. "Or base."

"And after that?" Doc inquired politely.

Unconcerned, the teenager shrugged.

There was a shattering of glass, and the companions spun to see Doc reaching through a busted car window to withdraw a map. Carefully, he unfolded it on top of the vehicle's hood, then crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed the wad away.

"Fiji," he said succinctly.

"Okay, top of the skyscraper it is," Ryan decided, hoisting his longblaster. "Should be easy to spot the dome of the capitol building or a military base from there."

"Easy enough to get there," J.B. agreed, looking at the granite monolith towering above the metropolis. "We just keep making rights and lefts until we're there."

"Unless we pass a hardware store," Ryan said. "Army-Navy, camping outlet, anything like that. We need supplies."

"How much food does each of us have?" Krysty asked, patting the pockets of her bearskin coat. She had six MRE envelopes and a small can of soup. That was iteverything else had been abandoned in the horse cart.

"Combined, we have enough for three days," Mildred replied. She considered it part of her job in the group to keep track of the food. "After that, we hunt for cans."

"Or hunt," Jak said, leaning heavily on the ebony stick. Then he glanced backward at the stain and frowned. "Not partial to rat."

"Should be no shortage of food," Ryan said. "If it really was a neutron bomb that chilled this place, the stores should have tons of canned goods. Neutron blasts make cans last forever."

"Just watch for rust," Mildred reminded curtly. "Somebody gets ptomaine poisoning, there's nothing I can do to help."

"A feeb in swamp ate from rusty can," Jak said. "Saw it. Died screaming."

Instantly, everybody became alert as a warm wind blew down the street, carrying a faint whiff of sulfur. Nervously, they scrutinized the sky overhead. A flock of condors was lazily winging over the city, and endless sheet lightning was booming amid the fiery orange-and-purple clouds. But there was no sign of the dreaded acid rain coming. The smell of sulfur had to have been from the windward vents of the local volcanoes. Nothing to worry about.

"Let's get a move on," Ryan said, starting along the parked cars in the street. "And if a spider attacks, blow out a store window and get inside. It's too big to follow us through most stores."

As the group went along the city streets, the smell of sulfur got consistently stronger, then eased away just as fast as it came. Taking a cross street, they found no cars about, and the sightless eyes of the countless glass windows became a hall of mirrors reflecting their images against one another, forming a multiple of ever smaller companions. Ryan fought the urge to start blowing out glass, and gratefully left the visual labyrinth of the city block behind as they took another turn, getting ever closer to the skyscraper.

But then just for a moment, Ryan spotted a new reflection in a silvery window. It was a tall man with his silvery hair tied back, and wearing a fancy embroidered duster, with a long white eagle feather in his hair.

Ryan stared at the sight, feeling his guts twist and heart pound like predark artillery. It was the same man who appeared in the Deathlands just before Trader took the long walk to nowhere. Instinctively, Ryan started for his blaster, then thought better of it.

"Hey," he called out in a friendly manner.

The reflection turned and was gone. Charging forward, Ryan ran around the corner and found himself staring at a long empty street. A breeze blew some dust off the roadway into a ghostly cloud, and a lizard scuttled under a rusted-out mailbox to escape from the heat of the day.

"Ryan," a voice said.

The man spun with a finger tightening on the trigger of the Steyr, to see Krysty come about the corner.

"Hey," he repeated, the word sounding flat in the dry air. "Just saw the strangest thing."

Almost worried, Krysty studied his face for a moment. She had never seen him this way before. "Looks like you just saw death itself," she said, adding a smile to let him know it was a joke.

But the big man didn't laugh or smile. Instead, Ryan turned and stared hard at the empty street again.

"Mebbe I did," Ryan muttered, feeling as if he had just been given a warning of some kind. A damn important one, too. But whether it was to go, or stay, or what, he had no idea. Only one thing was certain; something terrible was about to happen. Right here and now.

Just then, a sharp whistle shrilled, and the pair rushed back to the others. The rest of the companions were gathered around the front doors of a four-story building, a dark neon sign stretching across its second-floor facade proudly proclaiming it a department store.

"Might be just what we were looking for." Mildred smiled, cupping hands to her face in an effort to see inside. But another set of doors stood a few yards away from the street doors, and the exterior light couldn't penetrate strong enough for the woman to be able to make out anything clearlyonly vague outlines of display cases, racks of clothing and what she hoped were mannequins. Sure had a lot of them, though.

Lying on the sidewalk, J.B. was busy tricking the locking mechanism set into the bottom steel rim of one of the glass doors. "Stupid ass place for a lock," he mumbled, both hands full of probes and lock picks. Rattling the door, he tried again and this time was rewarded with a dull clank.

"Damn good lock," the Armorer said respectfully, getting to his feet and tucking away the collection of tools.

The next set yielded much faster and as they opened it, out flowed dry, lifeless air that seemed to suck the very moisture from the skin as it rushed into the street and was gone.

Moving through the wind break of the two sets of doors, the companions entered the department store. The interior was as dark as night, false walls blocked the sunlight from coming in through the window, the hundreds of electric lights in the white tile ceiling cold tubes and bulbs. Going to a rack of dresses, Ryan ripped the arm off a mannequin and wrapped a silky frock about the wooden limb. Then dampening the material with a few drops of gun oil, he flicked a butane lighter and the torch crackled alive, filling the area with bright illumination. The rest of the companions did the same, and soon everybody was carrying a torch. They began to prowl through the cavernous building.

Moving in their nimbus of firelight, the companions proceeded along the aisles with their weapons primed. For a moment, J.B. stopped at an eyeglass display set into a wall, and looked longingly at the hundreds of pairs of frames, then moved on reluctantly, knowing from past experience that the frames held clear glass. His glaucoma hadn't gotten any worse in the past while, and he forcibly reminded himself to stop worrying about things he couldn't change. If, or when, he started to go blind, he knew exactly what he would do.

Holding his torch away from the flammable clothing, Dean grabbed some fresh socks off a rack and stuffed them into his hip pockets. Nearby, Doc was doing the same in the men's section with underwear.

"Camping gear!" Jak reported, hobbling in that direction.

Converging on the area, the companions ransacked the shelves finding mess kits, rain ponchos and new backpacks. It was merely civilian equipment, not sturdy Army haversacks for soldiers on field maneuvers, but the canvas was camou-colored and better than nothing.

Krysty took an extra pack and loaded it with plastic packs of beef jerky and instant soup. Ryan located a display of field lanterns, and carefully drained a hundred partially dried-out bottles of oil to fill three reservoirs. Then he worked the attached pump to build the pressure inside the reservoirs and lit a steel gauze wick. It glowed like a red ember, but as he turned up the pressure flow, the field lantern gave off a wealth of brilliant white light. Quickly, the other two were ignited and the smoking torches stomped out underfoot on the terrazzo floor.

Rifling through a box of magnesium flares for making campfires, J.B. froze, a hand easing toward the Uzi. For just a moment, he could have sworn something moved away from the bright lantern light. But as minutes passed and nothing happened, he began to relax. It had to have just been the shadows flickering as the lanterns changed position. Yeah, made sense. But J.B. moved the selector switch on the rapidfire to full-auto, just in case. There was something disturbing about this store, although he couldn't quite put his finger on what.

Smashing open a locked case, Jak removed a dozen knives from the wide assortment. Using his teeth, the teenager ripped off the plastic-and-cardboard backing from the first blade, then used the shiny weapon to slice open the rest of the packs. Expertly, Jak tested each blade with an artful flip, tucking only the best of the leaf-shaped throwing knives into his clothing. Then he shifted his leather jacket a few times to get adjusted to being properly armed again. He had felt naked without steel up his sleeve.

Taking a pair of shoes, Doc replaced his old worn pair and stood flexing his feet in sublime pleasure.

"Any combat boots?" Dean asked hopefully.

"No, but lots of sneakers."

Disappointed, the boy walked away.

Closing the gun-rack case, Ryan turned and walked away in disgust. Some feeb bastard had put an open can of soda in the case, and the moisture of the soft drink had ruined every blaster in the case over the long decades. Underneath the case were multiple shelves filled with stacks of ammo, but most of the rounds were half-load wadcutters that would only foul a gun barrel if used too much, and anything live was the wrong caliber, .22 short and long, .32, .360, .45APC, .475 Nitro, 8- and 10-gauge shotgun shells, and a special order for 10 mm AP roundsnothing they could use. There were several spots where other boxes of .38, .357 and 9 mm bullets had been neatly stacked, but those were gone. Typical. The predark world had to have been getting pretty rough and more than once he found a gun store with most of its weapons and ammo gone, sold off in a panic of a war that lasted only three minutes.

Regrouping, the companions exchanged some items, then moved toward the rear of the store. As they went past the housewares section, Krysty paused to snare a nonstick frying pan and stuff it into her new backpack. But Mildred stopped to examine sports bras and took two, stepping around a display of sexy lingerie to come out again adjusting something under her shirt.

Ignoring the toy section, they swept through the pharmacy. Mildred emptied shelves of aspirins, rubbing alcohol, bandages, antiseptic mouthwash and iodine, filling her med kit. The men took disposable plastic razors, the women passed by the perfumed soap to take only unscented bars and everybody grabbed a replacement toothbrush. Dentistry these days was a pair of pliers and a shot of shine, an event to be avoided at any cost.

Passing by the liquor store, the companions moved slowly up the powerless escalator, knowing the lanterns were revealing their advance to any onlookers. Ryan darted out first and took cover behind a rack of music boxes. He whistled when it was clear, and the others eagerly spread out, wondering what treasures they would find on this level. It was incredible that the city hadn't been looted to the walls by the pirates, in spite of the mutie gorillas.

This level of the department store was packed with useless items more clothes, purses, jewelry, cosmetics, wicker baskets, towels and linens, beds and easy chairs. The companions prowled farther into the dark recess of the building, hoping for better.

Bypassing a hair salon, J.B. slipped inside a photo shop and returned with a half-filled plastic bottle, grinning as he tucked it away into the munition bags. Then pausing at a display of cigars, he lifted one from a humidor, and inside the plastic wrapping the leaves crumbled into dust. Sighing in resignation, J.B. wiped off his hands and moved on.

"Eureka!" Doc called out, removing a velvet rope from a brass stand. "We have located the dreams of To Chi!"

Situated prominently on a carpeted dais were half a dozen brand-new Harley-Davidson motorcycles on display. Huge placards from the manufacturer advertised the new model, with improved gas mileage, piston jets for a cooler engine and the old-fashioned chain linkage replaced with a state-of-the-art geared transmission.

"Just like those BMW bikes that Silas used," J.B. grunted.

"Think mebbe they'll run?" Dean asked, running palms over the chrome handlebars and leather seat.

"Tires are flat, batteries dead," Ryan said, working out the drain plug and feeling inside. The motor was slick with the residue of oil, only a few drops falling to the floor.

"Also needs lube," he said, wiping his hand clean. "But I don't see why these shouldn't run with some work. They burn alcohol, and there's liquor on the first floor."

"Saw lots vodka," Jak stated.

"Save us a week of walking," Krysty noted.

"That's a live round," Ryan agreed. "Doc, go with him and grab some wicker baskets to carry the stuff."

"Certainly, my dear Ryan," Doc rumbled, and, taking a lantern, led the way to the escalator with the teenager limping behind. The halo of their lantern receded into the distance and was gone.

"Probably need some ether to prime the carbs on these Twin-Cam 88s," Ryan continued, checking over the shiny chrome-plated engines. The big V-shaped motors were tough brutes. "Dean could check the electronics department for cleaners for computer equipment."

"I'll grab some oil from automotive, too," Dean said, and, taking the second lamp, he grabbed a wicker basket and disappeared into the darkness.

"I'll lend a hand," J.B. stated, adjusting his glasses and walking outside the circle of light of the last lantern.

"Anything else needed?" Krysty asked, squatting alongside the man.

"Not really. Everything else we can cobble together here," Ryan told her, starting to disassemble the machine.

"But check around for a repair kit. That'll have a hand pump to inflate the tires. If not, there'll probably be something we can use in the automotive section."

"On it." While Krysty got busy searching, Mildred stayed on guard. The redhead found the pump under the hinged seat and filled the first of the studded tires, when Doc and Jak returned with baskets full of vodka.

Soon, the second floor was filled with the sounds of mechanical repairs, mild cursing and then the sputtering cough of an engine struggling to life before settling to a smooth purr.

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

 

 A few hours later, Dean cocked open the exit doors on the ground floor and the companions rode their bikes out onto the street one at a time.

Arching about, Ryan throttled down the 1450cc Twin-V engine and waited until Dean climbed on behind him, his shoulder bag clattering from the dozen Molotov cocktails. Most of the motorcycles were equipped with riding pegs for the drivers to rest their boots on for comfort, but a couple of the Harleys had floorboards to accommodate passengers. Those were the bikes that the companions doubled on. Ryan and Dean, Jak and Doc. Everybody else was solo, and loaded down with supplies and bedrolls.

The sky was turning gray, the shadows of downtown stretching inky fingers across the preserved city. A swarm of squeaking bats poured from a parking garage, and rats scurried from the sewer gratings as the nocturnal creatures left their nests to hunt for food in the starry night.

"Getting too dark to recce," Ryan said, gunning the engine. "We better find someplace to hole for the night. Hit the scraper in the morning."

"Not want fight spider at night," Jak agreed.

"We could camp in the store," Dean suggested, tapping his father on the shoulder. "Lots of big beds."

"And no security," Mildred stated, twisting the throttle, careful not to redline it. They were still breaking in the motorcycles and knew better than to push them too hard too fast, or they'd blow a ring. Machines were a lot like horsesa person had to stay in absolute control, but also give them lots of attention.

"If those hunting gorillas attacked," she went on, "there'd only be some window glass between us and them."

"Agreed," Krysty added, flicking on the headlight and checking the few gauges that worked. "Should we head for a jail or a bank?"

"Bank," Ryan decided. "Muties are strong, but they can't bust through six inches of Plexiglas."

"An excellent suggestion," Doc rumbled.

"Damn," Krysty said, staring at the rearview mirror. "Nobody turn around, but check behind us."

Trying to act casual, Ryan shifted his head to look into the mirror mounted on a chrome rod attached to the handlebars. At first he saw nothing unusual, but then a subtle movement on the third floor of the department store riveted his attention.

Some sort of a machine was slowly easing out of an open window. The device resembled a mechanical spider, even though it only had four impossibly thin metal legs. The jointed limbs attached to a tiny oval no bigger than a human head, with a video camera lens sticking out of the front, and some kind of a weapon swiveling about on a belly mount.

"Droid," Dean said softly, sliding the Weatherby from the gun sleeve strapped to the frame.

Surreptitiously as possible, the others started doing the same, but as small as the motions were the sec droid leaped off the side of the building. In a blur, Ryan drew and fired three times, the 9 mm slugs tracking the descent of the machine until it crashed in a riot of crunching metal and shattering glass on top of an ancient car at the curb.

But it straightened immediately and started toward the companions, the device hanging from its belly strobing with a hellish green light. A wave of heat swept over Ryan, and a sharp hiss to the right made him turn and stare at the molten crater in the granite cornerstone of the apartment building only yards away. A laser!

"Take cover!" he shouted, slipping off the Harley to hit the pavement behind a compact car.

Swinging up the LeMat, Doc triggered a round, and the machine recoiled from the impact of the .44 mini-ball, its legs stumbling for a few seconds until it righted itself. But now there was a dent in its armor.

Mildred stepped into view from around a minivan and fired the Thompson at the droid, the slugs making its legs buckle and pounding more dents in its armored skin. The Walker simply stood there and accepted the punishment, then the laser glowed as it charged. Mildred dived for cover and the energy weapons strobed rapidly, the condensed light stabbing a line of holes through the predark vehicle, nearly cutting it in two.

From the pavement, Krysty fired off the last two rounds in the Webley, as Ryan and J.B. both tossed grens. But as the spheres bounced along the street toward it, the droid scurried over a limousine. As the charge ripped loose, the resulting double blast gouged a jagged hole in the asphalt and sent out a corona of gravel as shrapnel. The stones hit cars, windows and signs everywhere, instantly turning the area into ruins.

Then a thunderous crack sounded and the Walker was slammed against the glass doors on the department store in a shattering explosion.

Working the bolt on the Weatherby, Dean darted to a closer car and tried another shot. But deflected by the thick glass, the .460 round missed the droid standing only a foot away. Stepping behind an undamaged pane of glass, the machine stayed motionless for a few moments, before crashing through the glass, its pulsating laser sweeping the line of parked cars.

Ryan hit the ground and rolled for safety, coming up behind a luxury car. If these had been working vehicles, that light show would have ignited the fuel in most of the wags, the resulting hellstorm of fire and shrapnel chilling the companions on the spot. But the dead wrecks gave no reaction as sizzling holes went through their engine blocks and fuel tanks.

Taking a step backward, the droid paused as if puzzled by the lack of reactions from the vehicles. Ryan knew there wasn't enough space in its body for a powerful computer and the power plant to run the laser. Its builders had made a decision, and now the companions were going to prove it had been the wrong choice.

Flicking his lighter, J.B. lobbed a Molotov at the droid. The bottle hit directly in front, the mixture whoofing into a huge fireball. Unconcerned, the Walker strode through the flames, as the glow around its laser slowly increased until the weapon fired again, the scintillating beam riddling the cars to no effect.

"Ten-sec recharge!" Krysty shouted, dropping the exhausted Webley and shooting her Samp;W .38 at the video lens on top.

"Wait for it!" Ryan ordered, hunching low, switching the SIG-Sauer to his left hand and sliding the Steyr SSG-70 off his shoulder.

The laser flashed, and the store windows behind the companions violently shattered from heat expansion, thousands of shards of glass raining on them. Writhing in agony, Krysty screamed, clutching her glass-covered hair.

"Now!" Ryan shouted with blood trickling down his cheek. He stood, firing both blasters.

Rising into full view, the companions opened fire on the Walker with everything they had, the barrage of lead making a leg buckle, and then the video lens exploded into sparkling trash.

Blind, the machine began walking around in a small circle, firing the laser every ten seconds randomly.

"Some sort of autoprotect program," Mildred muttered, working the bolt to clear another jam in the breech of the heavy Thompson.

At her words, the Walker rushed at the wag, climbing over the vehicle, its legs stabbing through the thin decorative metal. Poised on top like a cougar on a rock, the sec droid remained motionless, its lasers glowing into full power, and then nothing. It simply stood there, waiting for another sound, the scrape of cloth on stone, a cough, anything to pinpoint its human prey.

With her back pressed to the granite wall, Mildred sat on the sidewalk, the Thompson held in both hands, the bent brass shell still sticking out of the ejector port. The laser was pointing right at the physician and her ZKR was tucked into its holster. Maybe it was only the coming darkness of night, but the glow emanating from the laser seemed to be increasing as if it were going to fire. With no choice, the woman licked suddenly dry lips, and began to sneak a hand toward the arming bolt.

Towering above her, the Walker shifted its stance a little bit from the evening breeze.

Covered with glass, Krysty froze in place, afraid to make any move or the falling pieces would announce her position. Moving extremely slow, Dean was trying to lower the Weatherby and draw his Browning semiauto blaster. Caught in the middle of slapping a fresh clip into the Uzi, J.B. started to swing the weapon toward the machine, aiming the lone round in the barrel start for the muzzle of the laser.

Silhouetted by the headlights of the purring motorcycles, Ryan tossed away his blaster and charged. At the sound of his boots, the Walker spun, then the weapon landed with a loud clatter on the hood of a police car. The machine paused for only a moment at the trick, then swiveled right back and fired the laser at the sidewalk. But that brief lapse was all Mildred had needed. She was already gone, and the beam merely vaporized a deep hole in the concrete.

Ryan leaped on the hood of the car, then on the roof. Grabbing the laser in a hand, he crushed the lens, then grabbed the sparking remains of the video camera and pulled with all of his strength. Both of the items broke loose from their weakened housings, and there was a brilliant crackle of blue light, writhing tendrils of electricity crawling over the Deathlands warrior.

The companions rushed closer as the Walker limply slid off the roof onto the street and Ryan collapsed onto the roof.

"You okay, lover?" Krysty asked, brushing the black hair off his still face. Faint wisps of smoke were rising from his clothes, and there was the terrible smell of burned flesh.

"Mildred, get over here!" J.B. shouted as he felt for a pulse in the wrist. Nothing. Quickly, the Armorer tried the main carotid artery in the throat. There was no detectable beat.

"Isis he?" Dean started, unable to finish the sentence.

Even as Mildred sprinted toward them, a heavy silence descended upon the darkening street. Krysty bent over to cup the still man's face, and J.B. closed his eyes. As much as he wanted to speak to the others, he said nothing. There was nothing to say.

"No," Jak whispered, dropping the stick and walking closer.

"Yes, goddamn it, he's dead!" Mildred cursed, shoving the man out of her way.

But as the woman came around the vehicle, the damaged Walker rose into view on its telescoping legs. Her hands full of the medical bag, the physician fumbled to draw her blaster, when Doc strode toward the machine. A finger holding down the trigger of the LeMat, he fanned the hammer like a Western gunfighter. Six shots struck the Walker with trip-hammer blows, slamming aside the buckled armor to expose the delicate circuit boards inside.

Attacking from the side, Dean jammed the Weatherby into the guts of the droid and fired, the whole interior momentarily awash in flame. The .460 Nitro rounds blew out the other side of the hull and the Walker crashed to the street. Working the lever to open the breech, Dean thumbed in another round and blew apart the largest piece of intact circuitry. Instantly, the droid burst into flames, black smoke pouring from every vent.

Only seconds had passed in the blitzkrieg against the Walker, but Mildred was already working on Ryan, her hands pressed to his chest and pushing hard three times, followed by a pause, then three more hard pushes.

"Keep giving him air!" she ordered.

Krysty didn't reply, but pressed her mouth against Ryan's and continued blowing into his lungs. The Deathlands warrior's chest rose and fell, but there still was no pulse.

"Strive to live," the redhead whispered between breaths. "Please, lover, live."

Straddling the man, Mildred began pounding on Ryan's chest with both fists clasped together. The thumps sounded hollow and empty.

"Follow my mark!" the physician commanded. "One, two, three, mark!" She punched as Krysty exhaled.

"Again!" Mildred commanded. "Again! Again!"

A minute passed, then another with only the sounds of the fists hitting flesh disturbing the silence of the dark street. The crackling light from the burning Walker cast bizarre shadows on the walls of the pre-dark buildings.

"Give it up, Millie," J.B. said softly. "He's gone."

"Fuck that!" she raged, and slammed the man in the chest even harder. "Live, you son of a bitch! I've lost enough patients in this godforsaken hell. You're not gonna be one of them! Come on, you one-eyed bastard! Live, goddamn it! Live!"

Suddenly, a tremor shook Ryan's body and his eye fluttered open. He drew in a ragged breath. Krysty pulled back, as the man began to cough, then weakly turned on his side to lose his breakfast over the bumper.

"Motherfucker" Ryan panted in a whisper, gasping for breath. "Whathit me?"

"Got electrocuted," Mildred said, grabbing his wrist to check the pulse. The beat was irregular, but getting stronger. "It, ah, knocked you out for a while."

Accepting a canteen from Dean, Ryan washed out his mouth and spit, then drained the container to fall onto his back exhausted from the effort.

Krysty took his hands and held them to her breast. "Glad to have you back, lover," she whispered.

"Thanks. Hurt worse than losing the eye," Ryan croaked, then impossibly slid off the minivan and stood on wobbly legs, one hand palming the damaged hood for support.

Astonished, Mildred couldn't believe the sight. Anybody else would need bed rest for a few days.

"I don't doubt it hurt like blazes," the physician said, massaging her hand. Punching the man in the chest was like punching a bag of potatoes. Solid muscle. "Back in my day, we used to kill criminals by electrocution until the folks realized just how horrible a death it was."

"Feeling okay?" Dean asked, handing his father the dropped blaster.

"Sure." It took him a few tries, but Ryan got the SIG-Sauer in its holster. "Kind of weak," the man admitted, wincing as if the sound of his own voice was causing him pain.

"That'll pass soon enough," Mildred said, rummaging in her med kit. "Here, take these aspirin and suck on this piece of C-4."

Not quite sure he heard that correctly, Ryan stared at the items lying in his palm. "You want me to do what?" he demanded uncertainly.

"Consume plastic explosives, madam?" Doc rumbled askance. "What voodoo is this?"

"Stuff it, you old coot." Mildred scowled and turned to Ryan.

"C-4 is mostly nitroglycerine. That's good for the heart and yours just had a hell of a strain."

Hesitating for a moment, Ryan dry swallowed the pills and tucked the whitish-gray lump of plastique in his cheek. Immediately, he made a face at the horrible taste, but a few moments later there was a rush of color to his cheeks and the man stood straighter with renewed strength.

"Nuke me," Ryan said, giving a rare smile. "I feel better."

"Using C-4 for a bad ticker," J.B. said, kissing Mildred on the cheek. "That's a new one on me."

"Only for an emergency," she answered. "It can kill as easy as cure."

Unexpectedly, Ryan pulled his blaster and jacked the slide. "Where's the Walker?" he demanded, looking around in the stygian blackness. The headlights of the bikes threw great swatches of light across the parked cars, the beams crisscrossing one another.

"Dean and I terminated its prime functions with extreme prejudice," Doc answered, busy reloading the blaster. Then he raised his head to grin. "And we did so with great pleasure, my dear Ryan."

"It's chilled, Dad," Dean agreed grimly, his long-blaster resting on a shoulder.

Stepping from the darkness into the beams of the headlights on the humming motorcycles, Jak nudged the physician. "He aced," the teenager stated. "You fix. How do?"

"The technique is called CPR," Mildred said, struggling to finally clear the jam in the Thompson. The bent brass sprang clear and flew away to land on a car with a metallic ring.

"And he was only technically deceased, not quite all the way there," she continued, easing the pressure off the bolt. "There were no wounds, or physical trauma, just had his heart stopped. Sometimes a doctor can fix that, if we get there soon enough."

"Teach me," Jak asked.

"Yeah, happy to." Mildred smiled. "Might need it myself someday."

Krysty touched the physician on the shoulder, her hair cascading in crimson waves. "That's two I owe you."

"You're my family now," the physician started, then turned away, unable to finish the thought.

Walking stiffly to the still running bike, Ryan climbed on and revved the 1450cc engine a few times to clear the carb. As expected, dark exhaust blew out of the mufflers, slowly clearing away to white fumes.

"Let's find that bank," Ryan said, a flutter in his voice. The man hawked and spit. "I'm on"

"I'm on point," Krysty stated as a fact, pulling her bike alongside. "Stay in the middle of the street. Dim the headlights to low. Dean, with your father. J.B., cover the flanks. Mildred, the rear. That Tommy working again?"

"Last clip," she answered, rigging the sling so the rapidfire hung across her chest. "But the breech is clear."

"Good."

"And I, dear lady," Doc espoused dramatically, "shall watch the windows above. Where once it rained a foe, again that can occur."

Krysty started rolling forward. "Be sure to use that fast-firing trick again," she said.

"That is indeed my full intention," Doc replied, tucking the mammoth blaster behind his belt buckle for a faster draw while astride the motorcycle.

In tight formation, the companions pulled away from the littered street, watching Ryan as closely as they did the surrounding darkness. The man was hunched over the handlebars, but operated the bike without any problem. Dwindling in their wake, the burning wreckage of the Walker flared brightly as something flammable ignited, then died away completely.

Heading for the downtown area, they found several banks and chose the financial institution set between two buildings whose roofs were lower than the bank's. This gave some degree of safety from above, and allowed them an escape route by jumping from the bank's roof to the lower structures. Not perfect, but it was acceptable.

Easily opening the locks, J.B. closed and locked the doors behind them, then drew the shades and lowered the Venetian blinds to hide their presence. A brief recce showed the bank was empty of any hidden machines, the windows standard bulletproof Plexiglas.

The companions drove the bikes up the stairs and made camp on the second floor. Two of the pressurized lanterns were turned off to save fuel, the last lowered to a soft glow, barely enough to illuminate the office. Bookcases were moved in front of the windows, and the desk shoved against the door. Nothing could gain entrance without alerting them.

Taking a seat in the corner, Jak stood guard with the Thompson, while Doc formed a simple Bunsen burner from a bottle of vodka, the blue flame giving off little light or smoke to betray their position. It was Ryan's turn to cook a meal, but Dean assumed the duty over his father's objections, and started making coffee and stew, the contents of the MRE packs augmented with some beef jerky from the store.

While the food cooked, the companions took turns washing in the bathroom, the water tank on the roof giving only a tiny trickle of warm water before running dry. But it filled the sink and that was enough. Then they tended to their assorted cuts and bruises and cleaned their weaponsbut with one of them always standing guard holding a loaded blaster.

The food was passable, and during the coffee wild animal screams sounded from the streets below. Briefly, something heavy strode across the roof, then was gone into the night.

"Good meal," Ryan said, placing aside his tin plate when finished. "I'll do double meals tomorrow."

"Fair enough," Krysty said, stacking the dirty metal plates for scrubbing later. "You want U.S. Army nut cake or a granola bar for dessert?"

"A cigar," J.B. said wistfully, tucking a toothpick into his mouth.

Knowing how difficult his struggle to quit smoking was for the man, Mildred patted him on the arm in solace and whispered a different suggestion.

"That beats a cigar any day, Millie." J.B. smiled, patting her hand.

"And you have no idea how much I need it tonight," she said, sharing a glance with Krysty.

The redhead understood and moved closer to Ryan. Mildred had warned her the electric shock always hit men hardest in the kidneys. Nobody knew why; it just did. And from the grunts of pain she had heard when Ryan went to the bathroom before, they would only be exchanging some body heat in the bedroll tonight, and nothing more.

"And now allow me to offer something special. A rare treat, indeed," Doc said, producing a dusty bottle bearing a wildly ornate label. "I found this in the locked cabinet of the store. The door was most stubborn, but I persisted to victory."

"Mother of God," Mildred gasped. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Quite so, madam."

"Incredible!"

"Shine?" Jak asked, offering his plastic cup.

"Ah, but this is no ordinary beverage," Doc said, using a small knife to cut away the wax sealing the cork in place. Switching to the screw attachment on his Swiss Army knife, the old man successfully opened the bottle with a loud pop.

"Now this should really breathe for an hour," he apologized, pouring a small amount in the plastic cup of his mess kit before passing it along. "But our circumstances being what they may, I think we can dispense with that custom just this once."

"Napoleon brandy," Krysty read as the bottle came her way. "Good stuff, eh?"

"Absolutely the best," Mildred stated, pouring a splash into her cup. Crystal goblets were what this should be served in, but those were from another time, a different world. "Now don't gulp it down, take small sips."

Ignoring the advice, Jak drained his cup in a shot, and his eyes sprang wide. "Damn," he stated in appreciation.

"Indeed, Mr. Lauren." Doc chuckled, biting back a smile at the pronouncement. "Not even the genius of Tennyson could have better described three-hundred-year-old Napoleon brandy than in such a manner."

"Fucking grade-A hooch," Jak agreed, adding another inch and sipping the potent brandy. It filled his mouth with a magnificent changing flavor, and slid easily down his throat to fill his chest with warmth.

Feeling the liquor begin to ease her muscles, Mildred added another splash to her cup and raised it for a toast. This was something they had not done for many months, and somehow it seemed appropriate this night.

"To absent friends," Mildred said solemnly.

"Good toast," Ryan said, lowering his cup, the soothing liquor easing away the ache in his joints. "But we've got to do this right and give names."

"Trader," J.B. said without hesitation, raising his cup.

"My sweet Emily," Doc rumbled sadly, copying the gesture. "And dear little Lori."

"Finn and Flynn," Ryan added solemnly. "Rick and Michael."

"Rona," Dean stated.

"Christina and Jenny," Jak said softly, his hand tightening on the cup.

"Mother Sonja," Krysty whispered.

"Paddy," Mildred continued. "And Ellie, too."

Then Ryan stood and held his cup above the eerie blue flame. "Laurence," he said simply.

The rest of the companions rose and extended their cups. "Laurence," they chorused, and drank a sip, then poured the rest onto the flames, making the fire soar with a majesty that filled the office with a fleeting moment of heat and light.

After refilling their cups, little more was said for the rest of the night. The friends finished their drinks and took turns sleeping, listening to the silence of the huge city, feeling its million ghosts move by them in the darkness. But knowing that at least one of the unseen visitors would be forever by their side in any battle to come.

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

 

 In the morning, the companions decided to delay exploring for the gateway and rest until they were all back on their feet. All of the companions were stiff and badly bruised from their recent battles.

A few days later, refreshed and invigorated, the group exited the bank at dawn to quietly ride their purring bikes through the still streets. Their packs and bedrolls were strapped across the rear fenders of the vehicles, lessening the load of equipment each carried, and making driving a lot easier.

The metropolis looked exactly the same, but when they swung by the department store to check the sec droid, they found the remains of the machine were gone, and every window in the building was smashed, the sidewalks littered with torn merchandise. Parking the motorcycles a short distance from the store, Ryan and J.B. did a quick recce of the structure and found the interior had been completely trashed, clothing ripped to pieces, ceiling fixtures busted, display cases toppled over and mirrors cracked.

"This kind of destruction wasn't done by a sec droid," Ryan said, using the Steyr to touch the mutilated form of a mannequin. There were teeth marks on the torso, and the head had been crushed into lumpy plaster.

"Got to be an ape," J.B. said, indicating a pile of droppings near an empty rack of candy bars.

"At least one," Ryan agreed with a scowl. What a pesthole this burg was becomingspiders, sec droids and now the apes were here. The predark city was a treasure trove of supplies, but protected by an army of inhuman guards.

"This is a bad spot to get trapped," J.B. said, stepping over a clothing rack, the steel pipes bent and twisted. He had a feeling that something was real pissed about not finding any norms here.

"Agreed. Let's go," Ryan ordered softly, the SIG-Sauer and Steyr sweeping the darkness outside the range of the lanterns for any movement.

Staying alert, the two men took turns covering each other, one walking while the other stood still, until they backed out of the store into the sunny street. Even then, the men didn't holster their blasters until among the other companions.

"Hunters are here," Ryan said, climbing onto his machine. Tucking the Steyr into a gun boot strapped to the frame, he twisted the throttle and the big engine kicked into life.

"Robots and gorillas, behold the alpha and the omega," Doc rumbled, his frock coat billowing in the morning breeze.

"Think they're hiding on the rooftops?" Dean asked, craning his neck to look skyward. Nothing was visible above them, except for the patchy clouds, irregular breaks in the storm layer giving brief glimpses of azure blue behind the fiery rads and chems.

"More likely they're in that park we passed," Krysty said, flipping her hair over a shoulder. "Animals always return to the familiar, and that's the only greenery we've seen so far on this mesa."

"Avoid there," Jak said, sitting at the handlebars in front of Doc. Experimentally, the teenager spread his legs to stand over the bike, and was pleased with the lack of pain from his ankle. Mildred was right he needed only a couple of days' soaking in hot water. Damn odd way to heal an injury.

Just then, a window slammed shut, and something came off the ledge. The companions crouched and opened fire, blowing the plummeting object into dirty shards, the remains of the flowerpot crashing onto the back seat of a powder-blue convertible parked at the curb.

"Could have been the wind," J.B. said, sounding uncertain.

"Mebbe," Krysty replied, swiftly reloading her revolver.

"Not going to take the chance," Ryan said, revving the bike. "Let's get out of here and find someplace where we can talk. Start moving."

Traveling a few blocks, the companions took a corner and braked to a halt in the middle of a deserted intersection. The location gave them a clear field of fire in every direction, and they could see anything coming their way long before it arrived.

"Okay, before we go hunting for the gateway, we better get more supplies," Ryan ordered, tapping the fuel gauge on the handlebars. Less than half a tank. "Shine is a priority."

Wisely, the others agreed. The department store had been low on vodka. They needed to find a well-stocked liquor store.

"And additional ammo," Krysty stated. "Only a couple of rounds for my Webley, and about the same for the Smith."

"Here," Dean said, passing the woman a fistful of .38 cartridges. "I'm fine. Still have eighteen rounds for the Weatherby."

"Thanks."

"No prob."

"Watch for bars, taverns, any place with booze," Ryan said, driving away slowly. "And stay sharp. We're gonna need a lot more than a fistful of ammo to stop another sec droid."

Keeping to the middle of the streets, the companions began driving a spiral pattern around the city blocks, slowly expanding the area covered until finding a liquor store in the middle of a street lined with outdoor restaurants. The front door was unlocked, the shop open for business, and the people raided the shelves and storage room, obtaining enough vodka to fill their tanks. Always on the prowl, J.B. found a double-barreled shotgun hidden under the counter, but the weapon was empty, and no ammo anywhere. Some peaceful shopkeeper intended to use it as a prop to scare away robbers.

"Triple-stupe bastard," the Armorer snorted, disgusted by the sheer stupidity of the deceased owner. What good was a blaster you couldn't use?

On the way out, Ryan paused to break open the cash register and check the money in the till. He carefully scanned the bills, then he tossed the paper aside and departed with the others, leaving the register drawer open for the insects and mice to harvest as bedding for their nests.

Krysty noticed him inspecting the money and nodded. Smart man.

None of the pay phones on the sidewalks had a Yellow Pages book, only a short chain attached to ragged pieces of faded paper. But a nearby video store had a phone book behind the counter, and Ryan carefully turned the brittle pages to search for the address of a gun shop. Strangely, there were no listings for military supplies or gunsmiths, only a sporting-goods store, which they determined was located a couple of blocks to the east.

Arriving at the location, five of the companions stayed astride their bikes at an intersection to stand guard while Ryan and J.B. walked along the middle of the street. The dark shops were lined with dead neon signs, placards in the windows announcing January sales. A few cars dotted the curb, and a police sedan was parked at a sharp angle in front of a sleek roadster, but immutable time had reduced both cop and criminal to powdery bones on the black asphalt.

The sporting-goods store was closed, an iron grille in place across its window and door. Normally, that wasn't a problem, but unfortunately there was a broken key jammed in the lock of the grating. J.B. tried for a while, then pronounced it hopeless unless they used plastique. Holding their small supply of C-4 in reserve, Ryan checked the pawnshop across the street, the classic three brass balls hanging from a post announcing the honored profession. Pawnshops often carried weapons and ammo. The main window was coated with black paint on the inside, making it impossible to see if there were any blasters on display inside. Were the owners trying to hide from the rampaging mobs? But this city had died at the instant of skydark, and there had never been any crowd of starving people to loot the stores. Curious.

But luck was on their side. The steel grating before the establishment was drawn aside, and J.B. easily picked the lock on the door. Taking the point position, Ryan started to open the door when he stepped on something hard.

Instantly, the man froze. Only recently, he had encountered a land mine, and since then he was extremely wary of stepping on anything. His heart pounding, the man glanced at the sidewalk and slowly tilted his boot to see underneath. The lump proved to be only a small blob of congealed silvery metal on the concrete. As the puzzled man glanced around, he noticed the source of the puddled steel and felt cold adrenaline flood his body.

"Hey, Albert!" Ryan called out in forced casualness. "Get the bikes over here so we can load them easier."

Caught by surprise, the startled companions looked hastily around for the source of the danger. If any of them used a name that began with the first letter of the alphabet, that meant they were in an ambush. But from where? The streets were empty.

"Aw, push your own damn bike," Dean shouted, working the lever of the Weatherby while it was still in the boot. "That ain't my job."

With an elaborate sigh, Ryan took his hand off the door latch. "Come on, Adam," he said to J.B. "Sooner we start, the sooner we're done."

"Yeah, yeah, I hear you," the Armorer agreed, faking a smile, and the man ambled along the street until reaching the intersection.

"What's wrong?" J.B. asked out of the side of his mouth, as they climbed onto the bikes.

"Droids. It's a trap," Ryan said urgently, thumbing the ignition button to start the big Twin-V engine. "We have to get out of here fast."

Making as little fuss as possible, the companions rolled away on their bikes while nervously watching the pawnshop until they were a good block distant.

"Far enough," Ryan ordered, halting the bike. "I want you all to see what we almost walked into."

"Trip wire?" Jak asked, holding the Colt Python.

The Deathlands warrior shook his head. "Lot worse than that. Going for the door, I stepped on some congealed steel," Ryan said. "Seemed odd, so I looked around. There's a reason why the grating of the pawnshop was open. To chill us. Damn near succeeded, too."

"Those crafty bastards," Krysty said, squinting into the distance. "Look at that."

Pulling out the telescope, J.B. located the store and scanned its front, searching for something subtle he had missed before. The man spotted it when he came to the lock on the open grating. "Dark night," he muttered. The mechanism was gone; there was only a smooth hole in the grating where the lock should be located, the surrounding metal discolored from severe heat.

"That was done with a laser," J.B. said, passing the Navy brass to the others. "A droid is in that store, waiting for us. Mebbe more."

Accepting their word on the matter, Mildred waved off the telescope. But Doc took his turn with the long-eyes. "I wager the machines also placed the broken key in the lock of the sporting-goods store to divert us to their trap."

"Tricky," Jak agreed, cracking his knuckles. "Okay, what do?"

"Last time it took a hundred rounds of ammo to stop one of those things," Krysty said, loosening the Webley in her belt. "Could be a dozen in there. Two dozen! We need better weapons."

"More than that," Ryan stated, flexing his hand above the SIG-Sauer in its holster. "We need to go someplace the droids haven't thought of yet. Gun shops are obvious sources of ammo, police stations, too. Bet a live round the droids are waiting for us at both."

"Navy base is a rad crater," Dean offered, unbuttoning the flap that covered the breast pocket of his shirt. During their rest, the boy had sown the pocket into sections to hold the long cartridges for the Weatherby for easy access.

"Banks are useless," he continued. "There isn't anywhere else. Not for what we need."

"Weapons were considered unnecessary at a vacation resort," Mildred said, working the bolt on the Thompson and slinging the weapon around her neck. That way the rapidfire was instantly available, but out of the way enough for her hands to steer.

"I'm pretty sure we can find more ammo," Ryan said, wheeling the bike around. "But first we need some distance to cover our tracks."

As the motorcycles raced away, the tiny bell above the entrance to the gun shop gave a musical tinkle as the door swung open a crack, and a small video camera extended to track the progress of the departing humans. Then, just as smoothly, the lens retracted and the door closed, leaving the street to appear peaceful and empty for the next visitors.

 

TEN BLOCKS LATER, Ryan turned toward the west and slowed. Checking the street signs, he took a few turns until reaching a residential section, brightly painted pink apartment houses, interspaced fast-food restaurants and strip malls.

 

"What about a courier company? They'd have some weapons," Dean suggested, bumping over a manhole cover.

Ryan glanced at the boy. "Never thought of that before," he admitted. "Good idea, but they wouldn't have anything we could use against the machines. Just some handcannons, mebbe a few shotguns, but no big ordnance."

"What we need is a Finnish 20 mm ATR," J.B. stated. "Plus a shit load of shells. That'd send those droids to the junkyard."

"Gun collectors?" Jak suggested, arching around an open car door.

"They'd have the blasters, but no ammo," Ryan said, checking the street. "There, that'll do."

"A recruitment station?" J.B. asked as they turned into the parking lot of the strip mall. Set between a vegetarian sandwich shop and an insurance agency, the small store was brightly decorated with American flags and printed inducements to earn valuable college tuition by joining the military service of your choice.

"This is why I checked the money in the liquor store," Ryan said, parking his bike. "Wanted to make sure this was still American territory and that there would be a recruitment center."

"Won't be any blasters there," Dean grumped.

"Good, that means no droids," Ryan said, going to the glass door. A bell tinkled as he walked inside. "We're here looking for maps."

"Maps?" Jak stated, blocking the door with a folding chair. "What for?"

"The location of the National Guard armory," Ryan said, going to a file cabinet and rifling the top drawer. "A lot of phone books don't list the address of the armories in case of riots. Just the phone number. Also, makes them harder for enemy outlanders to find. Ah, got it."

Going to a desk, Ryan cleared the top with a sweep of his arm and began unfolding the old map. "But these recruitment posts often do training at the armory," Ryan finished, gently smoothing out the wrinkles. The yellow paper tore, and he moved with greater care.

"These things are from my time," Mildred said petulantly, softly touching the remnants of an American flag hanging from a tarnished brass pole. "I have no knowledge of this."

"You loot enough ruins, you find these things out," Ryan muttered.

"There it is," Krysty said, stabbing the map with a finger. "Near the big lake. Good thing we have bikes. That's twenty miles away."

"Hope that's still on the mesa," Dean said. "Could have fallen off when it rose."

Using only fingertip pressure, Ryan folded the crumbling map as carefully as possible, then placed it inside his shirt. "Let's find out," he said, heading for the door.

 

AN HOUR LATER, the companions were traveling along the bypass of the city, skirting a canal that was broken in two, the jagged bottom sticking over the side of the mesa like the teeth of a saw.

 

The day was becoming hotter as the tropical sun rose in the sky, muted thunder rumbled defiantly as the climbing orb burned holes through the orange-and-purple storm clouds. Stretched across the eternal storm were the fuzzy black lines of altocumulus clouds, the dense plutonium vapors resembling prison bars, making it appear as if the whole world were in jaila dire penitentiary that the prisoners themselves had set on fire for no sane reason.

Banking the bikes to follow the endless curve of the bypass, the companions slowly circled the predark city. There were very few cars on the roadway, which seemed odd until they drove past a Mack truck hanging out of the side of an apartment building. When the neutron bomb aced people and electronics, the speeding vehicles had sailed off the bypass from simple inertia. Maneuvering closer to the berm, they could see countless wrecks in charred impact craters spaced irregularly along the suburbs below the elevated bypass.

Rich with the smell of sulfur, the wind blew through their hair, and the companions kept a watch on the quivering gauges of their motorcycles as they settled in for a long drive. The armory was on the other side of the metropolis, many miles away.

Faded white billboards flashed, and gradually the bypass began to move away from the culvert. Soon the roadway was cutting between rows of low buildings only eight or ten stories high. Mountains of concrete and steel compared to almost any ville, but were mere foothills in comparison to the monolithic giants of downtown.

"Triple red!" J.B. shouted, throttling down his bike, both hands holding the handlebars steady as he savagely braked.

Fighting his bike to a halt, Ryan said nothing as he studied the obstacle blocking the roadway. A huge spiderweb stretched between two of the low buildings, the bottom level of the thick strands only a couple of feet off the smooth concrete.

Fat white blobs dotted the precise geometric expanse, a few cawing like condors, one sounding like a weeping man, another thrashing wildly as the occupant of the cocoon still fiercely struggled to escape.

"Poor bastards," Mildred said. "Spiders eat their prey alive. It's saving them for later."

Dean raised the rifle and started to aim at the weeping cocoon, then paused. They didn't have a lot of rounds, and if they had to fight the giant insect, this single round could make the difference between running and getting cocooned. Reluctantly, he lowered the longblaster and tucked it back into the boot. Just then a weapon fired, and the human-shaped cocoon jerked once, then went still as a crimson stain spread across the silky material.

"I think there's enough clearance for us to walk the bikes under the web," Ryan said, working the bolt on the smoking Steyr and sliding it back into the gun boot.

"It's going to be tight," J.B. said, removing his hat and stuffing it inside his jacket.

"We could burn our way through," Dean suggested, nudging the satchel full of Molotov cocktails, the firebombs silent from the layers of protective padding between each bottle.

"And the smoke would tell everything in the city where we were," Ryan said, stepping off his bike, but keeping a hand on the throttle to keep the engine from stalling. The timing had to be off, or maybe there was blockage in the jets, because the bike was beginning to run a little rough. He'd have to keep a watch on that problem.

Pausing before the complex arrangement, he could see the main cables that anchored the web were thicker than a man, slimmer ropes connected each cable and small strands no bigger than a soup can closed off the sections of the web, making it impossible for anything to escape. A masterpiece of nature, the spider web was beautiful and bone chilling. From a distance, the web had appeared old and dirty. This close they could see the shading actually came from the thousands of tiny winged insects coating every strand.

Approaching the colossal web, Ryan glanced straight up the side and quickly looked back down at the road. The sheer size of the web gave him a rush of vertigo. Probably wasn't as bad for the folks with two good eyes, but for him the dizzying effect was strong.

The bottom strand stretched across the roadway at waist height. As he tilted the bike far enough over to roll it underneath, the engine began to sputter, the carburetor flooding from the steep angle. Quickly, he adjusted the throttle to keep the engine going as he stooped low and scuttled under the death web. Ryan was almost past the white net when something tugged on his hair. With blinding speed, he drew the SIG-Sauer and turned, ready to fire. In relief, the man saw the tug came from some of his long hair stuck to the web. Bolstering the blaster, he pulled out the panga and cut himself loose, letting the web keep its small trophy of hair.

Reaching the other side, he gratefully righted the motorcycle and rubbed his scalp to ease the sting. The purring of the other bikes got louder as the vehicles were pushed by the riders under the obstruction. Regrouping on the far side, Doc and Mildred were both rubbing their heads, both obvious victims of the web, and Krysty's animated hair was coiled so tightly to her scalp she appeared to have a curly crew cut.

"Made it." Dean sighed, getting on his bike, gunning the engine a few times to clear away any excess shine puddled in the carb.

Doing the same, Ryan watched in approval. The boy knew machines. With each companion teaching the boy what he or she knew, Dean was getting good lessons in survival.

"Gaia save us, it's here," Krysty whispered, drawing the Webley.

A hundred yards down the road ahead of them, the spider was crawling off the roof of a radio station and onto the roadway. Standing twenty feet high, the bulbous torso of the mutie was striped like a tiger in yellow and black. The bristly head was oversized for the body, indicating possible intelligence, and its huge ruby eyes were perfectly stationary, making it impossible to tell in which direction the monster was looking.

Instincts honed from a hundred battles flared within the man, and Ryan reviewed their situation with lightning speed.

"Follow me," he ordered in a normal tone of voice. Climbing onto the bike, he started to roll forward so slowly, that he needed to drag his boots along the road to keep the vehicle upright.

"Slow as possible," Ryan added, staying in motion. "Nothing that big can change directions quickly. We get close, then hit the gas and roar right past the motherfucker on the berm."

"And drop a few of these in our wake," J.B. said, easing a gren from his munitions bag.

"Got any Willy Peter?"

"Nope."

"Damn. Then use whatever you got," Ryan said.

Turning toward Dean, the man gestured at the web. "Give it something to worry about aside from us."

The boy nodded and retrieved a Molotov from the padded saddlebag. Holding it ready to throw, he watched as the rest of the companions began creeping forward on their bikes, boots dragging. As the spider began to start toward them, Dean quickly ignited the oily rag tied around the neck of the bottle and smashed it on the concrete at the middle of the web. The Molotov crashed into a fireball, blue flames licking at the thick strands.

Keening loudly, the giant spider rushed for the blaze, and the companions separated to roll past the huge mutie. As they came alongside, they each drew weapons but nobody fired or made any sudden moves. A pungent wave of putrescence followed the creature as it scuttled by, the reek of honey sweetness and rotten meat almost making them gag.

Once past the norms, the spider dashed for the precious web. Crackling loudly, the flames were commencing to burn through the lower cable, the silky ropes above charring badly. In frantic haste, the spider crawled onto the web, snipping lengths free with its mandibles. In only a few moments, a ragged patch of smoking material fell to the ground, and promptly burst into flames, the silky material sending off greenish smoke.

Now angling its head, the insect keened again in a lower tone and crawled off the web to charge toward the departing norms.

"Move!" Ryan shouted. He twisted the grip on the handlebars to the last stop, and the Harley lurched forward.

As the rest of the companions hit the gas, gray smoke poured from under the spinning rear tires until they caught, and then the machines shot forward. But the spider was only fifty yards behind, and closing fast. The Harleys were slowly building speed, but so was the spider.

Shifting to the highest gear, J.B. pulled the gren and used his teeth to peel off the safety tape. Grabbing the pin with his other hand, the Armorer yanked it loose and tossed the HE charge at the oncoming creature.

"Shotgun them," he ordered, wheeling to the other side of the bypass and dropping another. "No groupings!"

A rain of grens arched over the companions to hit the concrete road, and bounce toward the spider. Moving with incredible agility, the mutie dodged the pattern of spheres and was past the first gren when it detonated. Zigzagging, the spider nimbly maneuvered past the grens, the rest exploding in ragged order, throwing out great clouds of black smoke to mix with the green fumes of the burning silk.

The friends fired a flurry of rounds at the mutie as it snapped its mandibles at the rear bike carrying Jak and Doc. The LeMat boomed twice, but the .44 mini-balls did no visible damage to the creature.

Spitting curses, Ryan pulled out a gren and started to slow, attempting to reach a position where he could drop the gren and ace the mutie, but not Jak and Doc.

As it tried again, Doc fired the LeMat steadily until realizing that the creature was dropping farther behind with each passing second. In triumph, the old man gave a shout in Latin as the beast began to fall behind the motorcycles, and then receded into the distance.

 

SLIDING BACK into formation, the companions reduced their speed and put a couple more miles under their tires before they stopped watching for the mutie.

 

"Need an armored tank to chill that thing," J.B. stated grimly. "Something that size would toss an APC around like a kitten."

"If it caught the APC," Doc offered.

"Armored personnel carriers are not famous for their speed or durability," Mildred said, allowing herself to breathe once more. "The best would be an Apache gunship with heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles."

"Any chance we might find one of those at the armory?" Dean asked.

"Could be a lot of choppers there," his father said, watching the temperature gauge. "But that's not a wag you can operate by guessing, like a tank or PT boat."

On the horizon, the southerly volcano belched forth a tremendous black cloud of ash, laced with geysers of white steam. A minute later, the roadway trembled, and the companions fought to control their shaking bikes.

"By gadfrey, I think an eruption is imminent!"

Doc said, slowing his bike. "Mayhap we should take the next exit ramp and abandon this expedition."

"Relax, that was just a pressure quake," Mildred shouted as the vibrations began to lessen. "The volcano is balancing itself."

"No danger?" Dean asked, trying to watch the bypass and the volcano at the same time.

"Not until the lava arrives," Ryan replied. "And then it's too bastard late."

The bypass continued for a couple more miles, then started to bank inland toward a wide highway. Only the pillars that supported the ancient skyway still stood, topped with wild twists of iron rods, and the broken ends of steel girders. The beltway that once encircled the metropolis was gone, reduced to piles of rubble on the ground.

Slowing, Ryan gave a sharp whistle as he rolled along the side of the roadway, craning his neck to look at the buildings and stores below. There were plenty of signs along the berm, but the wind and weather had reduced them to blank steel rectangles carrying no more information than a dead man's eyes.

"Military wags over there," Krysty announced, pointing.

Set in a small park, near a dried lake, was a stout granite building with a curved roof and a massive concrete wall. A garage stood with its doors swung up, a collection of assorted civilian vehicles in the parking lot. An iron-spike fence topped the massive wall, and the only entrance in sight was closed with a steel gate and a large guard kiosk. But only half of the enclosed area was present. The edge of the mesa cut the rest of the location in two, the leafy tops of trees visible over the rim of the cliff. The thick jungle stretched for miles to the base of the live volcano.

"That's got to be it," Ryan said over the purring engines.

"Half of it's gone," Dean complained. "All this way for nothing."

"Might as well see what we can salvage," J.B. said, removing his hat and straightening the brim. "Even an old 60 mm recoilless rifle would give us enough punch to remove the spider and the droids."

Taking the ramp, the companions braked to a halt and were forced to walk their bikes onto the sloped grass to get past a bad crash. Several cars had plowed into a military half-track embedded into a bus full of tourists. The grinning skeletons in swimsuits had been brutally crushed under the tonnage of the military wag.

"Tourists heading for the beach," Mildred muttered, an unexpected lump in her throat. "Poor bastards."

"Hell of a crash," Ryan agreed, stepping onto his bike. "Good thing they were chilled already."

Mildred blinked. "What was that? Well, yes, they would have to be, from the neutron wave," she reasoned aloud. "First they died, then they crashed."

"Unless they knew the war was coming before anybody else," Krysty said, steering her motorcycle through a clump of weeds to reach the street.

"Not possible," J.B. agreed, pausing to clean a few tiny bugs off his wire-rimmed glasses, squashed trophies garnished from the lengthy bike trip.

"Verily, not a soul knew the sword of Damocles was falling," Doc whispered, so softly that nobody else could hear the words. "Except for the fools who cut the string themselves."

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

 

 That section of the mesa had been hit hard by the concussion from the aerial blast of the neutron bomb. Most of the structures were smashed flat, the overpass lying on the ground in jumbled piles of broken concrete and rust-eaten steel girders.

Squeaking loudly, a battered sign for a gas station swung over a blackened pit that reached for half a block. At the bottom, rats splashed in a rain pool, eating something vaguely cat shaped. Wrecked vehicles were scattered everywhere crashed into trees, through store windows and piled into mounds of corroding metal.

"They set off the neutron bomb down here," Ryan said, "to chill everybody on the island, but to not damage anything downtown."

"Mebbe there's a gateway there," Krysty said, running stiff fingers through her flowing hair. "Not exactly good news."

"Why not?" Jak asked bluntly.

"If there's a gateway downtown, then why did the whitecoats travel a hundred miles to a different island to build another gateway and jump from there? Why not use the device here?"

"Because they couldn't," Ryan stated. "That's the only possible answer. We just have to figure out why they couldn't, and then fix the problem."

"If we don't?" Dean asked, pulling the bike over a curb and onto the sidewalk.

"Have to," his father answered grimly.

Broken glass sparkled on top of the twisted car wrecks, and nobody spoke as the companions carefully walked the motorcycles down the debris-filled ramp. Ryan, Krysty and Doc each caught their long coats on sharp metal, and finally removed the garments to stuff them inside saddlebags. The day was warm, and there seemed little chance of acid rain. They would take the chance.

Reaching the ground, they uneasily surveyed the area. Potholes dominated the paved streets, weeds lined the cracked sidewalks and not a window was intact, windblown leaves piled high inside the stores and homes. In ancient days, this had been a nice section of town, but the residual rads from the nuked Navy base and the concussion of the neutron bomb had changed that. Clusters of tiny red eyes watched them pass by from the sewer drains, and fat crows sitting on a sagging roof shared something bloody and stretchy.

Suddenly, a humanoid figure moved past a broken window. Ryan caught only a glimpse of prehensile fangs and clawed hands before it was gone.

"We got company," he said gruffly, drawing the SIG-Sauer. "In the ruins, one o'clock."

"Droids," J.B. said with certainty, squeezing off the pistol-grip safety of the Uzi so it was ready to fire. "The damn things followed us!"

"That was no machine," Krysty answered, thumbing back the hammer of the Webley. "Something else."

"Stickies?" Mildred asked, dumping the spent rounds from her ZKR revolver and quickly thumbing in fresh ones. This was the first chance she'd had to reload since the spider. The physician had tried doing it on the moving bike, and stopped after dropping a live round.

"Not unless this breed has a mouth and fangs," the redhead said, listening to the sounds of the desolation around them. "It more resembled one of the People."

"Shitfire." Mildred frowned, closing the ZKR. Those blasted blood drinkers had been tough to chill. Of all the humanoid mutations encountered in the Deathlands, the New England vampires had been the most vicious, and the most devious.

"'Iron bars and stone walls do not a prison make,'" Doc rumbled, checking the load in the LeMat. "But suffice, they shall, for a repository of destruction."

"Let's get our butts in the armory," J.B. suggested.

"Jak, Dean, you're on point," Ryan ordered, and started across the street for the predark fortification. As the only companions without bikes to push, the teenager and the boy were the best choices for the job.

Showing barely a trace of a limp, Jak moved to the left with both of his blasters drawn. Dean went to the right, the Weatherby rifle appearing huge in his young hands.

As the group moved along the bumpy sidewalk, shadowy figures shifted positions in the decaying house, but none rushed the norms. Ryan hoped the muties knew what blasters could do, and were too afraid to risk an attack. Dangerously low on ammo, the companions couldn't afford even a brief firefight.

If the National Guard armory was empty, he had no idea what they could do next. Returning to the pirate ville to steal weapons would be madness. This was their best, perhaps their only chance.

There were too many potholes to safely ride the bikes, so the companions turned the machines off to save fuel, and walked the vehicles through the maze of depressions, always keeping one hand on the handlebars and the other filled with a blaster.

Reaching the front gate, the companions stood guard while J.B. checked the lock. A plump rat scurried along the top of the wall, but they withheld chilling the rodent. Dean threw a stone and missed, but the animal ran away in fright.

"Well, we're not getting in this way," J.B. finally announced, stepping from the gate and tilting his fedora. "This kind of lock can't be forced. We've got to blow it."

"Thought so," Ryan growled. "But it was worth a try."

"I could climb over," Dean offered, studying the bars of the gate, "and pull the lever in the kiosk. Easy."

"Gate's electric, not mechanical," his father stated, pointing to the exposed power cables. "Without power, it still wouldn't open."

"We could all climb over," the boy insisted.

Ryan thought about the suggestion. "Too risky," he decided. "We're going to need the bikes to carry ammo."

"Then blow the lock," Krysty said, almost firing as something large dashed from one crumbling house to another.

"Plas make lot noise," Jak pointed out succinctly, his hands crossed at the wrists to support the heavy Magnum blasters. "Gonna attract stuff."

"We could recce the ruins," Mildred suggested hesitantly, shifting her hold on the Thompson. "Find some mattress to muffle the sound of the explosion."

"Nobody goes in those houses," Ryan stated grimly. "I'd rather ask a baron for mercy.

"Besides," he added softly, feeling things watch their every move, "the muties already know that we're here."

J.B. rummaged in his munitions bag. He extracted a piece of C-4 and molded the claylike charge into a small wad the size of a walnut.

"Ten seconds," he called, stabbing a timing pencil into the plastique and breaking it off in the middle.

Quickly, the companions retreated. There was a muffled bang from the lock and the gate flew open, leaving a contrail of smoke in its wake as it loudly crashed against the brick wall.

The companions waited to see if there was any response to the noise, but only the faint noises from the jungle below could be heard, along with the ever present sheet lightning and thunder from the tortured sky.

Leaning against the wall, Jak stayed on guard while the others rolled the bikes through the gate. Dean went to the kiosk and raised the striped wooden beam blocking the entrance. As the motorcycles rolled by, he noticed that inside the kiosk skeletons were sprawled on a table covered with playing cards and matchsticks. Lucky bastards never knew what hit them.

Then a shot rang out, and the companions spun with weapons raised.

"They attacking?" Krysty demanded, taking a step.

"Not anymore," the teenager stated, walking backward into the compound.

On the street, something hidden in the weeds made a guttural noise and went still. Inside the ruins, skulking creatures retreated to the safety of the darkness, one of them consuming a squealing rat that was not long from dead.

"Mayhap I should stay here and sound a ballyhoo if there is trouble," Doc offered, pulling the spare Webley from his belt and thumbing back the hammer, only to ease it down again. Unlike the LeMat, the Webley was double action and didn't require setting the hammer as a prerequisite to firing. The scholar suddenly realized that differences between the two weapons might be confusing in a fight and cost lives, so he decided to dispose of the Webley at the first chance.

"We stay together," Ryan stated with the SIG-Sauer drawn, climbing on the Harley and pressing the ignition button. The bike purred into life.

"Dean, close the gate. Bind it with some rope, a belt, whatever you got."

"Done," the boy said, shouldering the longblaster.

Under the watchful blasters of the others, Dean pulled out his bowie knife and cut away the power cable leading to the defunct motors for the gate, then used the insulated wiring to bind the entrance shut.

"That'll hold," he said, dusting off his hands.

As the boy climbed onto the saddle with his father, Jak slid behind Doc and the companions rolled along the wide expanse of the cracked tarmac for a hundred feet before reaching the warehouse. The asphalt of the parking lot was badly cracked, stunted weeds growing in the cracks.

Braking to a halt for a brief consultation, Mildred served as the anchor with her rapidfire, while Ryan and Krysty drove a recce around the building. When they were gone from sight, J.B. went to the front door of the warehouse and studied the complex locking mechanism.

"Nobody about," Krysty reported, returning from around a corner of the warehouse and braking next to the other bikes.

A few moments later, Ryan appeared from the opposite side. "Loading dock in the rear," he added, spreading his legs to support the purring machine. "But the doors are bigger and look even stronger than the front."

"Which are also locked," J.B. reported. "Electronic keypad, palm reader and ID card necessary. Going to take a lot more C-4 than I have to open that slab of steel."

"And the rear doors are stronger?" Doc asked incredulously.

Ryan nodded. "Like a bank vault."

"Any windows?"

"None."

"So let's try Occam's razor," Mildred said, glancing at the small building with the flagpole in front. "Maybe the keys are in the main office."

"Worth a shot," Krysty agreed, turning off the engine.

Leaving Doc to guard the bikes, the others took the pressurized lanterns and walked over to the small building. On point, Ryan found the screen door locked, but the inside door was held open with a rubber wedge. Rain blown in through the screen had destroyed the front room, the chairs and carpeting reduced to rags, the legs of a dark wooden table bleached gray.

The lanterns were lit, and, cutting a slit in the screen, Ryan released the latch holding the outer door in place and entered the dim building. Immediately, he was assailed by the stink of dust and mildew, the smells as familiar to him as blood and cordite.

Spreading out, the companions found nothing of interest in the waiting room, and started along a short hallway. Side doors led to a file room, a bathroom and finally to a large office with tarnished gold lettering stamped on the mahogany door. The name shown was Major Eric K. Thomas, Commanding Officer.

Kicking the door open, Ryan immediately fired and the sheet of paper fluttering off the desk jerked as the 9 mm round punched through to slap into the wall. Entering the room, the Deathlands warrior picked up the spent brass from the floor and cursed at himself for wasting a round.

Gray sunlight filtered through the grimy windows to poorly illuminate the CO's office. In the corner was a water cooler streaked by mineral deposits on the inside. Next came a line of red leather chairs that had been badly nibbled by mice, the foamy cushions tufting out randomly. The walls were heavily decorated with framed diplomas and commendations, pictures of family and friends, each so badly tilted that a few were hanging sideways. Near a green metal file cabinet was a sofa blanketed in cobwebs, and a vid camera hung at the distant corner of the ceiling where it could cover both the door and the windows.

The door to a private bathroom was ajar, and dominating the room was a tremendous oak desk, topped with a sheet of greenish glass. A skeleton was slumped over the desktop. Tiny bits of blue fiber and tarnished metal sticking to the collar bones seemed to imply that this was an officer of some kind, possibly the CO himself. As the companions started searching the office, puffs of dust were raised from every step on the crunchy carpet.

"Stinks in here," Mildred said, wrinkling her nose, setting the lantern on a convenient coffee table. The covers of the magazines showed smiling politicians, sleek cars and skinny women in bikini swimsuits that looked painful to wear.

"Smelled worse," Jak stated, going through the file cabinet.

As with most offices, the key to the cabinet had been left in the lock, to be removed at the end of the day. But the end had come sooner than expected and the files were completely accessible. The teenager found a dried-out bottle of Scotch whiskey in the bottom drawer, along with a couple of Western novels and a rat who had made a nest by chewing the documents into shreds.

Defensively, the rodent hissed and snapped at the intrusion. Without an expression, Jak flipped his wrist and the rat fell over dead, its head neatly removed. The neck stump pumped out a gush of red blood, soaking the books and making the pulp paper swell to twice its original size.

Interrupting the search, a window rattled as a boom sounded from outside, closely followed by two sharp whistles. Roistering their blasters, the companions relaxed and returned to their task. Whatever the trouble was, Doc had handled it alone.

"Found the warehouse ID card," Dean said, pulling a plastic card from a battered wallet, then glanced at the open door. "Same name as the base CO."

"Keep it," Ryan said, standing in the middle of the dusty room, his arms crossed. "Could come in handy."

"At least it means we're on the right track," J.B. said, going through the top drawer of the desk.

Krysty made a rude noise as she lifted a ring of keys into view and started going through them one at a time. The lock on the warehouse was large and shaped like the letter H . A Vishi, or something like that. One of the few locks J.B. said nobody could trick or pick. He often joked that a sledgehammer was the best way through a Vishi.

Not helping in the search, Ryan stayed where he was and continued to carefully study the furnishings of the room. Something was out of place here, but he just couldn't put a crosshair on what was wrong.

Then he spotted it. Hung on the wall behind the desk was the classic unfinished portrait of George Washington. There was nothing obviously suspicious about the picture, and Ryan had to look twice before finally realizing it was the only thing hanging on the walls that was still perfectly plumb. This close to the volcano, the base had to have received thousands of miniquakes from pressure vents over the decades.

"There's a wall safe," Ryan said, going around the desk and pushing the office chair of bones out of the way. The deceased commanding officer tumbled to the carpet and was kicked aside, but the bones rolled under the desk. Even in death, the officer refused to relinquish his post.

Running his fingers along the frame, Ryan thought that the portrait was nailed in place, until he touched a release switch on top and it swung away from the wall on squeaky hinges. Set in to the concrete wall was the pebbled armor front of a small safe. It was regulation size, with the standard numbered dial and lever.

Ryan stepped out of the way and let J.B. sweep it with his compass.

"No mag fields," he said, tucking the compass into a pocket. "If it's boobied, I can probably bypass the trigger."

"Mebbe we shouldn't bother," Krysty said, beating the dust off her clothing. "Safes are usually cleaned out."

"Not always," J.B. replied, pressing an ear to the steel door and closing his eyes to concentrate on the task.

Artfully, he rotated the dial twice to zero, then began slowly turning the dial listening for clicks. Less than a minute later, J.B. twisted the handle and began pulling out wads of papers marked Top Secret.

"No warehouse manifests," Ryan said, glancing at the paperwork before tossing it away.

Triumphantly, the Armorer withdrew a small wooden box. Forcing the lock with a knife blade, it sprung open to show red velvet lining with irregular indentations, spaces for a dozen keys, but only four were in place.

"Front gate," J.B. said, reading the tags, "main office, fuel pumploading dock!"

"Bingo." Mildred grinned.

Leaving the office, the companions started toward the last warehouse. Blaster in hand, Doc waved in passing, a shoe resting on top of a crow, feathers strewed across the parking lot.

From the jungle, Ryan could hear a mixture of animal noises and glanced at his rad counter. The needle was near the redline and climbing steadily as they approached the rear of the warehouse. Any higher and they would have to cancel the recce or risk getting rad poisoning. That was a bad way to get aced, just about the worst.

Staying as close to the brick building as possible, the companions crept along the loading dock, the concrete ramp extending from the warehouse at shoulder height. On the dock were three rust-streaked metal doors and a wire fence closing off the dock itself. To the left was a set of stairs leading from the parking lot to a door alongside the dock, but those were also enclosed by wire fencing, this time topped by what was probably once concertina wire. Only the endless coil of razor blades had disintegrated from exposure to the elements, and nothing remained but some reddish-brown stains on the fencing.

"Dark night, it's hot here," J.B. said, checking the rad counter on his lapel.

"Which is why we're not going to waste time with lock picks," Ryan stated, firing the SIG-Sauer at point-blank range. The padlock blew apart, and the man hastily dragged off the chain holding the gate closed.

Rushing into the enclosed area, the companions climbed the stairs and breathed a sigh of relief as the rad counters eased their ominous clicking. The warehouse had to be at the very edge of the rad field, mereyards making the difference between lethal and livable.

At the top of the stairs, J.B. fired the Uzi and shattered the door lock. Instantly, a loud siren cut the stillness of the air, and the companions covered their ears, momentarily stunned by the power of the alarm. But a few moments later, the siren faded away completely.

"Impressive," Ryan commented, uncovering his ears. "The damn thing still worked after a hundred years."

"Just a fluke," J.B. retorted, pushing open the door with his rapidfire.

Just like in the city, the companions held their breath while out poured a rush of dry lifeless wind. Impatiently, they waited until fresh air had a chance to circulate inside.

Then Ryan gave it an extra couple of minutes, just to be sure. Sometimes, the corpses in the sealed buildings rotted in a strange way, maybe from the rads pouring through the walls, and the bodies filled the air with sickness. He'd seen strong men begging to be chilled only hours after entering a sealed structure.

When Ryan deemed it safe, he took the lead and entered, J.B. and Krysty close behind. In the bright illumination of the pressurized lanterns, they could see the three huge doors of the loading dock to their right, and straight ahead was a large open area with the floor sectioned in yellow stripes. A forklift stood mutely near an oil drum whose top was littered with foam coffee cups and a large thermos. Clothing and shoes lay in disarray on the polished concrete floor, obviously disturbed by small scavengers.

"Any rads?" Dean asked.

"We're clear," J.B. said, setting his lantern on top of the oil drum. A startled beetle scuttled out of the thermos and spread its wings to fly into the rafters.

A cargo elevator filled one wall, the panels closed, the controls dark. The door to a stairwell stood alongside, yellow lines on the floor marking its swing pattern, obviously to prevent folks from getting hit by the opening door.

"Safety First," Krysty muttered, reading a sign on the wall.

Straight ahead, a long central corridor stretched to the far brick wall, both sides of the passage with large doors marked in alphanumeric sequences.

"Damn predark codes," Ryan snorted, resting the stock of his longblaster on a hip. "These storage units could be filled with shoelaces for all we know."

"Got to open each," Dean said, walking his lantern closer to the first door. The portal was veined metal, unblemished by the passing of the years. If there was a lock or hinges, they were nowhere in sight.

"How the hell do we get in?" he asked, annoyed.

Jak went to a toolbox lying near the forklift and returned with a sturdy pry bar. "Got key," he said, proffering the tool.

"Hey, what was that?" Krysty asked, swiveling. The woman stood in a crouch, with her blaster searching for a target. "Sounded likewell, like popcorn."

Mildred scowled. "What makes a noise like that?"

"Nothing I know of," Ryan said, lifting a pressurized lantern high to see the rafters. Nothing moved in the shadows, and overhead there was only the bare iron rafters, some moist water pipes for the fire-control system and the silvery insulation wrapped around the electrical conduits.

Krysty listened intently, but the noise was gone.

"Rain on roof?" Jak asked, looking upward. "Mebbe birds?" There was no skylight in the warehouse, and no windows to see outside, only a hooded ventilation fan in a steel cage. The building was a fortress offering no easy way for thieves to get inside.

Slowly, Krysty shook her head. "Can't say exactly what it was," she murmured uneasily. "But definitely not rain."

Ryan went to the rear door and glanced outside. "No sign of anything," he reported. "Might have been a fan moving from the breeze of us opening the door."

"Mebbe," Krysty agreed reluctantly.

"Hear anything now?" Mildred asked, listening herself. There was only the hiss of the pressure lantern to be heard.

"Nothing," the redhead said, easing her stance.

"Good. Let me know if you hear it again," Ryan said.

"Bet your ass," Krysty muttered.

Going to the first storage room, J.B. checked for traps, and Jak stabbed the pry bar into the jamb. The teenager gave a heave, something snapped loudly and the door slid sideways. Mildred raised the lantern to see, and there was only bare floor inside the storage unit.

"Empty as a stickie's pockets," Ryan growled, lowering his blaster.

"Sure hope this isn't a bust," Dean added.

"Funny," Krysty said, wrinkling her nose. "Now I smell horseradish."

Mildred spun from inspecting the corrugated walls of the unit. "You sure?" she asked urgently, sniffing hard. "God no, please, not that."

"I smell it, too," J.B. said, puzzled. Horseradish, he'd smelled that before in a predark ruin many years ago.

Retreating a step, Krysty pointed at the baseboard of the wall. "Look!"

With a burbling hiss, thin yellow fumes began to rise from disguised vents, the vapors becoming thicker and stronger in irregular swells.

"Gas!" Ryan cursed, covering his face with a sleeve. "Everybody, out of the room!"

Dashing into the central passage, J.B. shoved the door shut, but the fumes seeped past the jamb, swelling and expanding to sluggishly fill the passageway completely. From the rafters, a beetle tumbled down to hit the floor near a twitching mouse, lying on its side. Blisters were already forming over its furry body.

"Mustard gas!" Mildred spit, backing away fast. "Don't let it touch you!"

"This way!" Jak commanded, heading for the exit.

But as the companions tried for the loading dock, the swirling yellow fumes were already waist high there, sealing off any possible escape in that direction. Retreating to the far end of the central passage, Ryan and the others put their backs to the brick wall. Steadily increasing in volume, the deadly mustard gas was swirling like a living thing, slowly filling the passage in random spurts. The reek of horseradish was becoming overpowering, their eyes painfully tearing, and breathing was becoming torture.

Pulling out a canteen, Mildred splashed some water on her face, then soaked a handkerchief and held it to her mouth.

"Make masks!" she ordered, passing over the container.

"This stop?" Jak asked hopefully, coughing hard.

The physician shook her head. "Wet masks will only buy us a few minutes. We're dead meat unless we get out of here right now!"

"Vents must not be working correctly," Ryan said, his voice muffled by the wet rag.

"Only reason we're still here," Krysty agreed, gasping for breath.

"I'll stop it," Dean growled, pulling a Molotov from his bag. Igniting the fuse, the boy threw the bottle at the expanding death cloud. In a crash, the cocktail roared into a fireball, but as the poison gas touched the flames, they dimmed and diminished in size until winking out of existence.

"Goddamn it," Mildred cursed. "Fire is useless. There's no free oxygen to feed the flames." In desperation, her mind raced to recall chemical formulas. Did she have anything in med kit to use as a counter agent for mustard gas? Truthfully, the physician wasn't even sure there was a counteragent effective against the lethal war gas.

Slow and steady, the yellow fumes moved along the passageway, getting inexorably closer.

"Got to find another way out of here," Ryan said, running his hands over the brick wall. The concrete between the bricks was flush to the surface, leaving nothing for them to use as chinks to climb to the roof.

"Blow the wall!" Dean shouted, his chest heaving.

"Wind would only bring the gas on us faster!" J.B. shot back.

"Other wall!" Jak urged, pointing down the passage.

Turning, Ryan thrust a hand into his pocket. The teenager meant blow open the loading bay doors and vent the gas out the front. Brilliant.

Pulling grens, Ryan and J.B. whipped a couple of HE spheres through the mustard gas. Moments later the charges violently exploded, but there was no change in the growth of the poison vapors.

"Dark night, it didn't work!" J.B. raged.

Snarling, Ryan pulled another gren. "Do it again!"

"No, cover your faces!" Krysty commanded, pulling out the Veri pistol. Aiming for the ceiling, she yanked the trigger and the signal gun thumped in her grip, her last flare launching on a sizzling column of colored flame.

 

Chapter Sixteen

 

 

 Streaking away, the signal flare slammed into a steel rafter and exploded into a blinding flash of colors. Almost instantly, there was a gurgling hiss and water began to sputter from the fire sprinklers lining the vaulted ceiling. As the brackish fluid began to rain upon the swirling poison, yellowish water started running along the concrete floor and into the rusty drains.

Tearing and coughing at the pungent reek of horseradish, the drenched companions held wet handkerchiefs and covered their faces. Incredibly, the cloud was getting smaller, the deluge of water diluting the gas and washing it away. But the volume from the sprinklers was already slowing, what little water had remained in the century-old feeder pipes depleting rapidly. Now, the military warehouse was fighting itself, the two defensive systems locked in mortal combat. Long minutes passed with the floor vents spitting out tiny gasps of mustard gas while the sprinklers pitifully drizzled their dwindling supply onto the reeking death mist.