Remember Tomorrow

Death Lands®

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Mankind, by the perverse depravity of their nature, esteem that which they have most desired as of no value the moment it is possessed, and torment themselves with fruitless wishes for that which is beyond their reach.

—François de Salignac de la

Mothe Fénelon

1651–1715

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

“Whoever they were, they sure didn’t believe in housekeeping,” Mildred Wyeth said dryly as she surveyed the smoke-blackened walls and the piles of trash that littered the floor of the redoubt room. Once an office, the comp terminals had been ripped from the walls, the desks had been broken up for firewood. The garbage spread across the room had the look of something long dead, a fire extinguished by the smoke-triggered sprinkler system.

Doc Tanner stood in the doorway behind Mildred Wyeth, shaking his head sadly and making tsking noises through his teeth. “Truly, this is a sad sign of the madness that descended on people when the fires rained from the heavens. Consider it, my dear doctor. From the condition of the wreckage, and the perfect stillness that seems to surround us, I would be not in the least surprised to learn that this was perpetrated some decades ago. Possibly almost a full century.”

“Your point being?” The black woman sighed. She knew where Doc was going with this, but wanted him to take the shortcut rather than the scenic route: she was tired, ached all over and had very little patience for Doc’s long-winded perorations.

“Simply this, my dear doctor. This small piece of carnage must have been perpetrated within a few years of what the whitecoats lovingly termed ‘nuclear winter,’ that age of madness…. As if giving it a natural and seemingly innocuous name would, in some way, atone for the foul—forgive me, I’m moving away from my theme,” he added, catching himself, “I merely meant to make the point that within a few years, people seemed to be reduced to the level of unthinking savages. The knowledge of old tech would not be wiped out that quickly.’

“Yeah, I know what you mean, Doc, but it isn’t always that simple, is it?” Mildred replied. “Panic sets in, rad sickness maybe…. Who’s to know the psychological state of anyone who managed to somehow drag themselves here through what was happening outside. Who’s to know, even, the psychological state of whoever was inside?”

“Myself, perhaps,” Doc uttered, his mouth set grim as memories of his time at the hands of scientists fluttered at the edges of his consciousness while he fought them back from a full remembrance that would drive him into madness once more. He shook his head, half dismissing the memories, half sorrowful at what conclusions he could draw. “If they were military men gone mad, then they were no more than the next in a long, long line,” he said softly. “Pray let us leave this as a memorial to their insanity.”

“I won’t disagree with you on that one, Doc.” Mildred turned on her heel and followed the old man into the corridor of the redoubt.

They had jumped into this place a few hours previously and their bodies were still recovering from the rigors of the mat-trans unit. To be broken down into molecules and transported across vast distances in the blink of an eye before being reassembled was hardly the ideal way to travel. The stresses placed on the psyche—let alone the human frame—were incalculable. Doc was one of those who found it hardest to recover and his mind always seemed to lag a little behind his body. Mildred was inclined to let him ramble at these times, especially if there was no immediate danger. And it did seem as though the redoubt had been invaded, looted and long-since abandoned.

The companions had split into three groups. Usually, Mildred would go with J.B., while Ryan and Krysty recced together, and Doc would accompany Jak. The sharp skills and instincts of the wiry albino teen would cover for Doc’s occasional frailties of mind and body. But after a mat-trans jump, Jak was always one of the last to fully recover. Something about his body makeup responded poorly to having itself ripped apart and reconstituted, and he was always weak for a while after, needing more time to recover. Chances were he was sharp, as Ryan always allowed them time to get it together, but chances were something the one-eyed man never took, so J.B. would ride shotgun for Jak until the redoubt was secured.

Secured—that would imply that there was anything left in the empty military base to be secured. As Mildred could see, the place had been gutted. Either a fleeing army presence or invaders who had in some way been able to gain access and had taken anything with them that wasn’t nailed down and could be of any use.

The situation worried the woman. They were short on supplies and the kitchens, sick bays and armories of these bases had come in useful in the past. It was especially reassuring when you had no idea which part of the continent you were currently walking under. Until they found a reliable map source or actually surfaced, they had no idea where they were geographically.

Mildred suddenly stopped and rubbed her eyes. She had to be more tired than she had realized, starting to let her thoughts stray in such a manner. She was aware of Doc at her elbow.

“Mildred, are you feeling quite yourself?” he asked solicitously.

“No, I don’t think I am, to tell you the truth,” she replied.

Doc’s next comment disarmed her totally. Shaking his head sadly, he said, “Madam, I fear you now know how I feel most of my life. Come, let us secure the area and report back,” he added, moving off and leaving her to gape at his bony frame receding down the corridor ahead of her.

They finished their recce, finding nothing to show any signs of life, and then returned to the anteroom adjoining the mat-trans chamber, where they were due to rendezvous.

The others were already waiting for them when they arrived. From their relaxed body posture and the fact there had been no audible signs of action, Doc and Mildred knew that theirs hadn’t been the only fruitless search. Briefly, she filled them in on what she had Doc had found.

“Guess we can rest up here for now—still daylight up top, though,” J.B. added, checking his wrist chron.

“We’re too exhausted to go into unknown territory right now,” Ryan said, shaking his head. His shaggy black mane came down over his forehead, almost but not quite obscuring the beginnings of the jagged scar that ran into his eye, continuing along his cheek beneath the eye patch that covered the empty socket. It only served to accentuate the penetrating ice-blue of his remaining orb, always focused on the task ahead. “Break out some of the self-heats we’ve got, then find one of the dorms that isn’t trashed and get some rest. We’ll have a watch rotation, even though this seems safe.”

“I figure the only thing that would chill us in here is the boredom,” Krysty added, “Which, come to think of it, wouldn’t be such a bad way to go.”

“Mebbe, but not yet,” Jak interjected.

The mood had lightened a little. Although the redoubt had yielded nothing, it seemed a safe place for one night’s rest, and rest was all they really wanted after the jump.

Moving from the antechamber to one of the dorms on another level, Mildred began to get a fuller picture of the redoubt, which seemed to be built on a smaller scale than some of the others in which they had landed. There were no levels with bays for transport beyond a few small wags and the levels seemed to be less spread out, with fewer rooms before they ascended. Mildred mentioned that and Ryan grinned.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t bring you this way just for fun,” he ventured. “Take a look in this room up here.” He led them into what had once been an office, indicating a room plan on the wall facing the door. It showed the full layout of the redoubt, with all the storage and habitation areas clearly marked. “It doesn’t look like this carried much in the way of heavy-duty equipment,” he remarked. “Mebbe it was just a kind of way station between two larger posts, carrying a few supplies and acting as some kind of lookout. Not many sec here and not many pickings for whoever got in here…unless it was them trying to get out.”

“I wondered about that—we both did,” Mildred added, catching Doc’s look. “If it was someone from outside coming in—”

“Don’t worry about that, Millie,” J.B. cut in. “Me and Jak took the top level. The main sec door is secured and we couldn’t find much in the way of damage to account for entry. No one can just hack their way in unless there’s been some kind of earth movement or they knew the sec code. And there’s only a few stress cracks in the tunnel walls near the top. If they knew the code, they haven’t been back for a long time. And if they were on their way out, they thought to close the door behind them.”

It was as close as the taciturn Armorer ever came to a joke and one of the longest speeches anyone had heard him make for some time. If nothing else, it signaled how relaxed he felt with the situation.

“So it’s okay for us to rest up here for a while before moving out,” Ryan stated. “But I wouldn’t want to hang around too long.”

“Why not?” Krysty asked. Her hair formed a titian-red halo around her head, even the cold blandness of the overhead neon was transformed into a warm glow of fire as it reflected the aura around her head. The curls and waves cascaded over her shoulders, running wild and free. This helped explain her question: the mutie genes running through her veins made her hair sensitive, and prehensile, responding to imminent danger by curling up protectively around her. The fact that it was so loose and free bespoke the complete lack of threat in the redoubt.

That hadn’t escaped the one-eyed man’s notice. “There might not be anyone around to harm us, but there are still some things I don’t trust.”

“I’m with you on that, boss man,” Mildred muttered, running her finger along the surface of the room plan and examining the gray residue that gathered on her fingertips. “Look at the dust on here,” she added.

Doc furrowed his brow. “Your logic escapes me, my dear woman. This has been uninhabited for a long while, I would guess. Naturally, there would be some kind of dust gathering.”

Krysty kissed her teeth, annoyed with herself at having missed the obvious. “Yeah, but this isn’t natural, is it, Doc? These redoubts have air conditioning and temperature and humidity control. They have some kind of weird antistatic device that keeps dust out of the atmosphere. So if there is dust, then it means that the air-filtration system isn’t working properly.”

“Exactly,” Ryan added. “If that part of it is down, then how do we know that our air is being recycled efficiently. How long will it last? Long enough, hopefully, to get some rest,” he continued, answering himself. “Mebbe it’s fine. I just don’t want to take chances.”

“Once more, I defer to your powers of observation,” Doc bowed. “Where we would be without you, I dread to think.”

“I could say the same about you,” Ryan answered with a grin. “So let’s eat, get rested and get moving.”

The companions left the room, taking another look at the one clear streak illuminating the plastic covering of the room plan beneath its tawdry layer of dust as they did so. Once they had ascended to a higher level in the redoubt and found a dorm that was relatively unscathed, they stripped down the equipment and bags that they carried, those things that were their lives and survival.

“Pity it has to be this shit again, but at least it keeps us going,” Krysty said sadly as she handed out the self-heats. The packages—cans or foil containers—contained within them all the nutrients they needed, heated by a mechanism within the packaging that was instigated by the act of opening. Unfortunately, the contents were tasteless and bland, the only traces of any flavor being colored by the chemicals that were used to preserve the contents. They were a last resort when there was nothing else to be found, but they did their job: they kept the companions alive and nourished.

The friends ate in silence, trying to keep their food down. It wasn’t easy. When they finished, Ryan was the first to his feet.

“I’m going to see if the showers are still working on this level. Mebbe it’ll wash away the taste of those fireblasted self-heats.”

Shower rooms were attached to each of the dorms and it took only a few moments for the one-eyed man to ascertain that the hot water systems and pumps were still in a roughly working order—roughly, because the temperature of the water fluctuated, despite the setting, and a couple of times the man had to be sharp enough to dodge red-hot or icy blasts of water as the old pumps faltered. Nonetheless, he felt refreshed when he emerged. Warning the others, he searched for fresh underwear in the dorm, hoping that whoever had looted the redoubt would have been looking for blasters and food, not clean clothing. They were lucky; there was enough for all of them.

It was a relaxed time; something they needed after the jump and before heading out into the unknown. They’d found one map in the redoubt, and perhaps they would find others if they looked in the morning, maps that might tell them where they had landed. But now, the only thing that mattered was to rest.

“I’ll take first watch,” Ryan announced. “Then we work it in shifts, alphabetical order,” he continued.

“Pray tell, friend Ryan, do I count as D for Doc, or T for Theophilus?” Doc questioned with a mischievous grin.

“Hell, I can’t remember the last time anyone called you anything but Doc,” Ryan laughed.

It answered the question and emphasized the relaxed mood. It was to prove an uneventful night, the only disturbance the changeover of watches. J.B. succeeded Jak, noticing that the albino youth seemed loathe to leave his post.

“Best to get some rest, Jak,” he said softly as he sought to relieve him.

“If can rest with nightmares,” Jak replied. “Always bad after jump. Not able to really rest until on outside, when need to be triple red.” Jak shrugged as he walked away and left J.B. to his post. Not for the first time, one of the companions found themselves wondering what really went on behind Jak’s impassive exterior.

Krysty snuggled in next to Ryan, feeling the warmth of his hard, muscular body. It was a rare occasion when they got to be this close, with this much security around them. He responded to her touch and moved in to fit closer to her. They didn’t talk as they joined together. They had a closeness that Ryan had never known with anyone else. Love was a word that had little value in the world in which they lived, but if there was anything between them, it was love.

Across the dorm, the same thing was happening for Mildred and J.B. For Millie it was a difficult thing. She had known the predark world and had some inclination of what the word love had come to mean. J.B. was from a different world—one into which she had fitted rather than buy the farm, but still one that was alien to all she had learned in her formative years. It wasn’t often that there arose the opportunity to stop and think about it—only occasions such as this. As she lay with J.B. nestling against her, she did stop to think about it. It was just as well that there was so little time, as any amount spent pondering on this would be enough to drive her insane. Mebbe she was insane. How else could you get by in this world?

It wasn’t a pleasant thought on which to drift into a—mercifully dreamless—sleep. If only the same could be said for Doc, who murmured and muttered to himself, twisting and turning beneath the sheets as his mind replayed incidents from his past, confusing the three centuries into which the man had been mercilessly born, dragged and thrown. Images and people, half-memories blended into fictions, wild dreams from the edges of reason: all these assailed him as he slept.

And so they passed the night, each in their own cocoon of silence.

“TIME TO GET TO IT, people,” Ryan said as he rose from his bed. He left the dorm to find Mildred, who had taken last watch and had been glad of the wakefulness to keep her darkest thoughts at bay.

“Five o’clock and all’s well,” she said with a grin as Ryan came into view.

The one-eyed man looked at his wrist chron. “It’s past eight,” he replied in a puzzled tone.

Mildred shook her head, rubbing her eyes as she did. “Forget it Ryan, it was just some old joke that would have been funny if you were as old as me. What’s the agenda?” she added, without giving him time to respond to her previous comment.

“Eat—if we can face more self-heats—then try and find something that’ll tell us where we are when we hit the surface. Mebbe even take another chance with that shower system. Last chance we may get to stay clean for some time.”

“Y’know, even the thought of a self-heat and getting scalded is good right now,” Mildred answered with another shake of the head. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

Ryan laughed. It wasn’t often that the one-eyed man had the opportunity to do that. Far, far too often there was nothing whatsoever to give him cause for laughter. But these snatched few moments, underground and secure, gave them all time to relax momentarily, just enough to stop their minds snapping with the tension of living outside.

After breakfast Ryan and J.B. mounted their own small recce of the office units in the redoubt, leaving the others to shower and get ready to leave. Neither man knew if he would find what he were looking for, and both would have been grateful for just a sign.

“Ryan, back here,” J.B. called after a short while, sticking his head through the doorway of an office unit where Ryan was breaking open a filing cabinet. The comp terminal stood useless on the desk, long since fused and failed. “I’ve got a comp that works and is tied in to what Mildred calls the mainframe.”

Ryan left his task and followed his comrade along the corridor to the office in which he had been scavenging. Finding remnants of what had been before was always a problem: much of the information in all the redoubts had been stored on computer, but these were erratic now, prone to either break down, be broken, or be inaccessible to people a century or more on who don’t have a password. There was some paper information, but then it is a matter of hoping that it could be found or that it hadn’t been destroyed by looters or by the original inhabitants before they bought the farm.

To find a comp terminal working anywhere other than a low-level, sealed chamber was rare; one that was still connected to the redoubt’s mainframe comp was even more rare.

Maybe they were about to get lucky for once.

The two men hunched over the desk, the terminal casting a glow over their faces, shadows and light accentuating the crags of Ryan’s weathered face and the lines of worry and battle that etched the Armorer’s visage. Their mouths were set in grim concentration. There was nothing to be happy about until they actually found some useful information.

“Got it,” J.B. declared in triumph as he managed to call up an outline map of the area surrounding the redoubt. A couple more keys punched and the map pulled back to reveal the larger area.

From the outline, they could see that they were in the middle of what had been Arkansas before the nukecaust. There was a large town within a day’s walking distance to the northwest of the redoubt.

“Worth checking it out?” J.B. queried.

“Old villes like that are never totally deserted. Usually some kind of life attaches itself. We just have to be triple red until we find out what kind it is.” Ryan paused, his brow furrowed in concentration. Eventually, he added, “Arkansas—that name’s familiar. We ever come this way with Trader?”

J.B. blew threw his pursed lips as he racked his memory. “Think we might have at one time. Weird land up there, part dust and part sand. Gets real dry and then they have monsoons that sweep everything away. Yeah,” he said suddenly, snapping his fingers, “there was that time when one of the wags got driven off the road in a mudslide after one of the rains. We had to chain War Wag One to it and pull the bastard back onto the blacktop. Trader cursed all the while about the fuel it was taking, then cursed about losing the wag when we said he should just leave it if he felt like that.”

Ryan smiled wryly. “Came out with some shit about a rock and a hard place.”

“Yeah, and you told him that he wouldn’t be having this trouble if there had been some rocks and a hard place ’stead of all that mud.”

Both men laughed at the memory. J.B. shook his head. “I thought the old buzzard was gonna blow you away where you stood, he looked that mad. ’Stead, he just started laughing.”

“Crazy man and a wise man,” Ryan said softly, remembering the wily old man who had taught them so many of the things that were still keeping them alive. Then something clicked in his brain. “Got it!” he exclaimed. “Listen, I think I remember something. If this is where I think, then there’s a ville near here on one of the surviving blacktops. It was about one day away from where that fireblasted wag hit the mud. Mebbe about two days from the remains of the old ville—About here,” he added, pointing to an area on the screen that was to the west of the predark conurbation.

“That’s good. It’s somewhere to aim for.” J.B. nodded. “Only one thing, though…”

“What’s that?” Ryan asked. J.B. grinned. “I hope it ain’t mud season. I just had another shower this morning.”

The two men left the office and returned to the rest of the companions. They were in the dorm, preparing for the trip outside. Ryan and J.B. outlined their position and destination, giving everyone—including themselves—a half hour in which to be ready to leave. By their wrist chrons, they could see that it was light outside and without knowing how hot the sun got during its peak, Ryan wanted them to make some distance and scout out any shade or shelter should it be necessary.

Such was their efficiency and experience in getting ready to move out that long before the half hour had elapsed, the companions were making their way to the upper level and the sec door that exited onto the outside world. As J.B. had said, the walls, floor and ceiling of the tunnel leading to the highest level had taken the brunt of whatever earth movements had occurred during and immediately after the nukecaust. Cracks ran along the concrete that constituted the tunnel and, despite the concrete’s thickness, some were large and deep enough for moisture to have seeped through over the decades. Spoors of mold and fungus peppered the areas around these cracks, small pools of stagnant water gathered on the floor.

“Can’t have been too bad, as the walls are still pretty sound,” J.B. commented. “Figure the door should work okay. The mechanism on all the others has, so it’s only gonna be a warp that jams the bastard.”

“Let’s hope not,” Krysty added, almost to herself. Some of the upper level sec doors had been shut when J.B. had recced the day before, but had responded when he had punched in the sec codes scratched on the metal plates above the keypads. One of the plates had “Help me” scratched on it, and another “Next stop hel.” The sec man had either been interrupted or he couldn’t spell. Not that it mattered. J.B. wasn’t much of a reader and it was too long ago for him to care. All he was worried about was whether or not the doors would respond. Fortunately, whatever damage the earth movement had caused, the electrics on the doors were still working. So the only thing that could prevent the exit door rising was if the earth movements had buckled the frame, jamming the door.

All this went through Krysty’s head and the anticipation of potential danger made her hair start to move gently, the flowing curls tightening almost imperceptibly.

Almost, but not quite. Ryan caught sight of her. “Everything okay?”

She smiled ruefully. “Yeah, everything’s fine, lover. It’s me getting nervous, not any immediate danger.”

Ryan didn’t answer; it wasn’t like Krysty to get nervous, but if she was sure there was no intimation of danger—No, he wouldn’t take chances.

“Okay, J.B. When you hit the lever, I want everyone back in a defensive position. Can’t be too safe, right?”

The others followed his command without question. Too many times they had walked straight into danger. They knew the wisdom of the one-eyed man’s words. The tunnel was supported by a series of buttresses that formed a semicircular arch from floor to floor, arcing over the ceiling. Some of these housed sec doors, others stood alone. The companions drew back so that they took cover by these arches, blasters ready if there was a need to fire. J.B. stood alone by the final sec-door panel. Ryan stayed nearest and gave the bespectacled Armorer the nod when J.B. cast him a questioning glance.

J.B. blew on his fingers, tapped in the code, pressed the lever and brought his Uzi up to waist height.

The outside atmosphere had obviously had some effect on the outer door, as it rose far more slowly than the interior doors. There was a grinding in the mechanism and the shriek of metal scraping against protesting concrete as it began to move. The earth movements had caused the frame to warp a little. The redoubt had been looted. At some point, someone had to have got in through the outer door. The question was, had the earth shifted any more since then?

The light of midmorning was intensely bright as it began to show itself under the shuddering, slowly moving sec door. Compared to the bland fluorescent light that lit the redoubt corridor, it was incandescent. More than one of the companions cursed as the brightness made them squint, unable to see any dangers that lay beyond.

By the time that the sec door had fully opened, they had adjusted to the light and could see that the entrance to the redoubt lay in the side of a shallow valley, with a dirt track running up around the edge and over into the land beyond. The earth in front of them was dry, sandy soil, littered with small rocks and pebbles. Whatever else, they could see that it wasn’t rainy season and it looked like it had been a long time since it had been.

The area looked deserted. Ryan signaled them to wait, listening intently for any movement beyond, stretching the tension to a point where he hoped that any waiting enemy would lose their nerve and force an attack, showing their hand.

There was nothing. Ryan looked back at Jak and at Krysty. The red-haired woman shook her head, her hair now flowing free. If there was any danger out there, she would sense it. Jak also shook his head, his white, stringy hair framing his impassive face, red eyes glittering in the new light. Although he had no mutie capabilities, he was a natural hunter whose abilities had been honed to an almost preternatural degree. If someone was out there waiting, he could sniff them out.

Ryan gestured for his people to move out, still keeping their defensive formation. The one-eyed warrior himself was in the lead, with Jak, Krysty and Mildred fanning out to scan the area surrounding the narrow valley. Doc came out before J.B., who kept to the rear and guarded their backs.

They would have felt faintly absurd, if not for the fact that they had seen people buy the farm for less caution over the years. Absurd because the area was deserted, with no signs of life beyond a few lizards and scrub plants that struggled to survive in the harsh environment.

Ryan gestured to J.B. that it was clear and the Armorer tapped in the sec code, the door grinding ponderously shut behind them. He followed the others until they were gathered on the highest ridge of the valley. It was only about eight feet above the valley floor, but it still afforded them a decent vantage of the land surrounding.

“Dark night, it’s bleak,” J.B. said with admirable understatement as he joined them, casting his eyes over the terrain. The valley walls had to have been higher at some time, but the nuclear winter and the harsh climate changes over the past century had beaten them down to the dry husks of hillocks that they now were. The topsoil and any grasslands had long since blown away, only the hardiest of scrub remaining, shallowly rooted in the powdery dirt. The land had been flattened by the intemperate climate, leaving nothing but a flat, despairing landscape that tried and failed to support life.

“Sure as heck won’t be many folks trying to eke a living round here,” Mildred commented. “And not much shelter from the elements for us, either.”

“I figure that ville me and J.B. were talking about must be north-northwest from here, so if we head in that direction…” Ryan looked to J.B., but the Armorer was ahead of him. Taking the highest point of the land and using the sun and the mini-sextant he always carried with him, J.B. was sighting their position and plotting their direction. “It might be a couple of days hike from here,” Ryan stated, “so we need to keep a sharp eye for water and shelter.” He looked up—clear skies with nothing to shield the sun as it beat down. “I don’t like skies this clear when there’s land this dry. It gives me a bad feeling.”

“My dear Ryan, it would give me the perfect opportunity to top up my tan. I feel all this living underground is giving me somewhat of an unhealthy pallor,” Doc remarked with a crooked grin, the irony of his words emphasized by him removing his hat to mop his already sweating brow.

Direction defined, they set off on the long march. Strung out in a line with J.B. now on point, they kept their heads down, avoiding the glare of the sun as it grew brighter in the sky, and remained silent. What was there to say? They were hiking through a desolate landscape with nothing to remark upon and wasted words would just use energy, making them thirsty when they needed to conserve water.

Apart from scrub and the occasional lizard, there was little sign of life. In the distance they occasionally glimpsed a solitary bird of prey or the intimation that there were flocks of smaller birds—a misty cloud moving in the blue that could be a wisp of cumulus or a flock on the wing. Nothing closer. Any mammals that scratched some kind of a living from the land were safely burrowed away, the occasional hole in the ground being all that betrayed their presence.

The companions trudged on, measuring the tedium of time only by the achingly slow movement of the sun across the sky. At least it wasn’t quite as hot as they feared. They had been through worse. In fact, there were even a few breezes that gently crossed the empty land, relieving the beat of the heat.

Breezes that slowly, almost unnoticeably, grew stronger.

It was Mildred who first noticed it. Quite by chance, she looked to her left to relieve the boredom of looking at the ground in front of her.

“Oh shit…Ryan,” she said softly.

Lost in some reverie of his own, Ryan snapped back to attention when he heard her voice. He looked back at her and followed the direction in which she was pointing. All the companions followed the direction of her finger.

“By the Three Kennedys,” Doc breathed. “It was Montana, 1878, when I was last privy to such a sight.”

“Yeah? And this might be the last time you see it unless we can find some cover,” J.B. murmured.

What had caught their attention was awesome and beautiful, but almost certainly deadly. In the distance, gaining ground rapidly on them, a zephyr was whipping the earth into a turmoil. Clouds of dust and dirt were flying at strange trajectories as the currents of air flung them from their path. Now they understood why the breezes had become more insistent. The outlying currents had stirred the air for some miles around, and were increasing with every second. In fact, at the speed the zephyr was moving, it would reach them very shortly.

The storm surrounding the air currents was violent, ripping up great chunks of earth, hurling rock and stone about at vicious speeds.

“Cover,” Ryan yelled, already aware that the noise of the approaching storm was growing, drowning him. He cast about for some kind of shelter, something that would cover them until the zephyr passed over. That wouldn’t take long, the speed at which it was moving, but long enough to injure or chill them.

“There,” Jak yelled, indicating a cave that seemed to disappear down into the ground. It wasn’t set into a hill of any kind, but seemed to be the only indication that there had once been raised land. It was more like a pothole. But it was shelter.

“Okay, let’s go,” Ryan yelled, running toward it, tracking back to one side to help Doc, who was slower than the others. Mildred, Krysty and Jak gained the entrance, with J.B.—who had been farthest back—catching up to Ryan and Doc, grabbing the old man’s arm and helping Ryan to speed him along. Dirt and stones rained on their backs; wind plucked at their clothes.

The zephyr was almost on them as they dived for the entrance to the cave.

Chapter Two

The sudden darkness was engulfing and all Ryan, J.B. and Doc could feel was the scouring dirt whipping against their backs, rocks and stones thudding into them and the dry, powdered earth forming a choking mist that swirled around them, clogging their mouths, noses and lungs.

Lights exploded all around behind closed eyes, coughing spasms racked their bodies and the hard rock of the cave floor, covered with the thinnest layer of dirt, was hard against their bodies as they landed flat and awkward, unable to see where they were going.

“Grab them, get them back in,” Krysty yelled, taking Ryan by one arm and hauling him farther back into the darkness of the caves. J.B. felt two hands on his body, searching for a hold. As he felt himself dragged in one direction he dug his boot heels into the cave floor, pushing with his calves to aid his rescuer by propelling himself as hard as he could. It was more than Mildred expected and she nearly stumbled and fell, the sudden momentum taking her by surprise.

“Don’t, John, it’ll be okay,” she whispered.

He marveled that he could hear her above the noise of the storm, then realized that it had lessened. Was that because they had moved into the caves or because the speed of the zephyr was taking it past them already? He had always thought that zephyrs were supposed to be complex but quite harmless combinations of air currents. Someone should tell that to the motherfucker outside. He knew his thoughts were rambling; he had to have hit his head when he fell. It would be good to stop pushing and just relax. He felt himself go loose.

Jak took hold of Doc. The old man had fallen well and wasn’t too hurt. He was coughing and retching, strings of bile and dirt splattering the floor around him, but he was conscious and aware of Jak’s hands upon him.

“Heavens, sir, I can manage myself. I’m not that decrepit that I—” He failed to finish as another spasm racked him, the effort of speaking dragging more dirt from his chest. He wretched once more.

“Talk later, walk now,” Jak murmured, taking Doc beneath the arms and lifting him into a semi-upright position. “You walk okay? Just nod,” he added, not wanting Doc to succumb to more spasms. When Doc assented, Jak spoke just once more. “Keep head low—not high in here.” Jak’s red eyes were better suited to the darkness than anyone else’s in the group, but even he was having trouble adjusting to the almost total darkness.

Stumbling, crashing into the jagged rock walls and trying to avoid cracking their skulls on the low roof of the cave, the companions made their way back. As the air cleared of dust and Ryan and J.B. were able to breathe more easily, their senses began to return. They hawked and spit the dirt from their lungs; the strength began to flow back into their limbs. Doc, despite the rigors of puking so frequently, found himself able to breathe a little better and, after what had seemed an age but had only been a couple of minutes, the dust storm caused by the zephyr was far behind them.

“Fireblast, it’s darker than a coldheart’s soul in here,” Ryan uttered. “I can’t see where the hell we’re headed.”

“None of us can,” Krysty added. “Not even Jak, I’d reckon.”

“Too dark,” the albino replied. “Better stop. Bad feeling about this.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Ryan stated. “Find out where the hell we are before we lose the way back. Besides which, I don’t like this smell.”

“It is like a charnel house, but not one which has been well maintained,” Doc interjected, his voice high and strained, cracking from the dust that had caught in his lungs despite his body’s attempts to expel it. His frail physique was showing the strain. Doc’s body, stressed in unimaginable ways by the hardships of his previous life, was sometimes apt to react in ways that baffled the others. He had been less buffeted by the storm than Ryan and J.B., but was taking longer to recover.

But there was nothing wrong with his sense of smell. The dark caves, riddled with a dank, damp aura now that they had obviously been traveling downward, were filled with the sickly sweet odors of flesh in varying stages of decay. Come to that, their heavy combat boots had already crunched underfoot what may have been wood, but which may also have been old bone. They had sheltered in caves on numerous occasions, and had come to discover that caves could be the homes of some triple-dangerous creatures.

About their persons, among the supplies that were spread evenly between them, they carried flashlights that had been scavenged from redoubts. These were battery operated, the batteries being the harder part to obtain. As each of them found their flash, they hoped that theirs would still be working. Almost simultaneously, they switched them on.

Two were still giving a strong beam. Ryan’s was weak, but illuminated a small area in front of him. He moved it around and could see that Mildred and Krysty had the working flashes. J.B.’s, Jak’s and Doc’s were all dead.

“Better than nothing.” He shrugged, turning his weakened beam onto the floor of the cave. “Shit, look at that.”

The stronger beams cast their light over the area of the cave floor surrounding the companions. Scraps of fur and skin were littered between jagged edges of bone that covered the floor, almost like a carpet. The earth was stained dark. Some of the bones still had rotting meat attached to them, but others were old and dry. The smell didn’t come from anything that remained, but rather was the result of no circulating air. The odor of decay and death had stayed in the enclosed space until it had become embedded in the walls.

Jak hunkered down, running his hands over the forest of bones, lifting a few to examine. “Small animal, all of them,” he said, looking up at Ryan, his eyes glittering in the beam. “Whatever did this couldn’t find big prey. Mebbe not too much danger. But mebbe a lot of them,” he added with a shrug.

“Yeah, but what?” Mildred queried. “I thought it was only small stuff could live in this. What’s down here and where did it come from?”

“Madam, the second part of your query is irrelevant,” Doc husked, his voice still tight and painful. “Much more pertinent would be to ask what did this and is it still here?”

“Right, Doc,” Ryan agreed. He noted that the old man had loosened his LeMat percussion pistol in its resting place, ready to draw and fire when danger threatened. “Triple red, people, but triple careful with blasters,” he added pointedly. “It’s a confined space down here and we could end up chilling ourselves from ricochets.”

Doc allowed himself a small smile. “A point well made.” He eased the LeMat back into place and took his sword stick from its sheath. The blade, finely honed and made of Toledo steel, glittered in the beams of the flashlights.

“The thing is, if whatever it is knows we’re here, why isn’t it attacking us and defending its territory?” Mildred mused.

“Sizing us up,” Krysty answered with a shudder. Her hair had begun to coil protectively around her head and neck.

“Watching…waiting,” Jak added simply. In each hand, one of his razor-honed, leaf-bladed knives was poised and balanced, waiting for the first sign of attack.

Using the flashlights that still had strong beams, the companions surveyed the area around them as far as the light penetrated the blackness. The tunnel system formed by the caves honeycombed off in several directions. Straight ahead of them the system plunged on into the darkness, gradually descending into the depths of the earth. To their rear, in the direction from which they had traveled, it seemed to go up…but had they arrived in a straight line? In their hurry to get away from the storm and in the confusion of carrying those incapacitated by the storm’s sudden violence, none could say if they had arrived at this point from a straight line or if they had veered into this area from one of the tunnels leading off what appeared to be the central corridor. Whatever, it seemed that all the tunnels in the cave led into darkness with no outside light source to guide them. Yet they couldn’t be that deep or have come that far.

Another problem was the height of the cave. Nowhere had they been in a position where they could stand straight. At some point, Jak had been able to avoid stooping but even he was now inclined forward. And as he was just under five feet in height, it gave them some idea of how low the caves were. Bent forward, calf and thigh muscles aching under the strain, all were aware that they were in the worst position to defend themselves from attack. Whatever lived in these caves and had left these remains, they could be pretty sure it was on all fours.

“Why won’t it show itself?” Doc whispered.

“Mebbe there’s only one of it and it knows it’s outnumbered here. Mebbe it doesn’t want to fight in the place it keeps its kill. Mebbe a lot of things. The only thing I know for sure is this is too confined a space to fight and we should get the hell out without disturbing it, if possible.”

“Too late for that,” Jak said with a shake of his white mane, ghostly in the beam of the flash. “Can hear something move…” He paused, furrowing his brow as he tried to listen. The others didn’t dare breathe. Jak chewed on his scarred lip. “Too many cave, too many tunnels. Sound getting messed up.” He looked Ryan in the eye. “More than one, though.”

“We move now,” Ryan snapped. “Keep going straight back, keep close, go single file.”

“Ryan, we got a problem,” J.B. said softly. The Armorer had been quiet since they had stopped and only spoke now because he had to. “I’m still fucked by that crack on the skull. I don’t trust myself to cover your asses.”

Ryan’s jaw set. Without J.B. at the back, there was a chance that an attack from behind could take them out. His best option was to put Jak there, but he had wanted the albino at the front, using his keen senses to detect any danger that may be ahead.

“Jak, take the back for me. J.B., go in the middle in case you need help. I’ll take the front. Someone give me one of the strong flashlights.” Krysty didn’t hesitate to hand over hers.

Proceeding with caution, Ryan began to lead them back—hopefully—the way they had come. He scanned the floor of the cave for any sign of footprints, but the earth was too thin, too easily disturbed to keep much shape. Their progress was slowed, too, by the necessity of checking every branching tunnel leading off their path. The darkness could hide any number of secrets and he used the flash to either illuminate the enemy or scare it away.

The sounds that Jak had been able to pick up faintly were now growing. The honeycomb effect of the caves meant that it was impossible to detect direction in the overlapping acoustics that threw echoes around them. The only thing for sure was that the creatures were getting closer—for that amount of sound could only be put down to more than one creature.

“Triple red, people,” Ryan breathed, drawing his panga from its sheath on his thigh. He had that familiar churning of the gut, that instinct that told him the enemy was about to attack. The only problem was from where…?

Behind him, Doc had his sword blade ready, and J.B.—despite his unsteadiness—had unsheathed his Tekna knife. The only blasters were those held by Krysty and Mildred, who didn’t carry blades.

At the rear, Jak was ready with his knives, casting glances behind him. He had taken Mildred’s flashlight to illuminate the rear, leaving her with Ryan’s dimmed flash to aid them in the middle of the group. He was sure that the flash was catching something as they turned corners—the sudden gleam of a watching eye, but always just out of reach.

He killed the light and counted five, listening to the lowing cries of whatever tracked them. He could smell them now and smell their readiness for attack.

Suddenly, he hit the switch on the flash, and the tunnel behind them was illuminated. This time there was no mistaking what was at their rear.

“Ryan!” Jak yelled.

The one-eyed warrior whirled in the enclosed space and as he did so his flashlight caught more of the creatures coming at them from one of the side tunnels. The pack had been smart enough to split into two to attack. He hoped that they wouldn’t be any smarter than that in battle.

The only good thing about the attack happening at this moment was that they were between cave branches. There had been a tunnel ahead of Ryan, and a couple of tunnels some thirty yards to their rear, but at each side was solid rock. They had to deal with attackers coming from only two directions, but the downside was that they were now trapped in a pincer movement.

“What are they?” Mildred breathed. It was a rhetorical question and she knew that no one would have the time to answer. It was nothing more than an exclamation of surprise.

For the creatures that attacked them from two directions were nothing more than dogs, animals whose ancestors had been domestic pets and had perhaps strayed from villes nearby and become lost in the wastelands above, seeking shelter beneath. Part of her brain—that part not switched automatically into combat mode—could see that the pack was a mongrel mix. All looked rabid, sores and welts littering their bodies. They had suffered from pack inbreeding and being rad-blasted, some of them had only one eye, some bulbous growths on their heads, others moving fast but with an awkward, almost lame gait.

One thing they all had in common was their teeth: jaws that were strong with sharp teeth that glinted yellow. Their low cries increased in pitch and volume to excited howls of anticipation for the battle and fresh meat.

Given that they were moving in packs from two directions, a load from J.B.’s M-4000 and the shot chamber of the LeMat would have decimated their ranks and made the fight easier. But the dogs moved too fast, closed too quickly. How many of them there were it was difficult to tell, but they closed with a speed that meant there was no time to draw and fire.

The dogs were on them in a blur of fur and muscle, flashing teeth and tearing cloth. The carious breath of the creatures was enough to make any of the companions want to vomit, but they had to choke it down: heaving would have been effort wasted, would have given the creatures that fraction of a second needed to get the first snap of the jaws, tearing at their flesh and scenting blood, spreading disease into any wounds.

The flashlights hit the floor, the beams low and casting shadows up the rock wall, making it dark above a height of three feet and difficult for the companions to see what was happening. They would have to fight according to touch, smell and hearing alone. It wasn’t the first time they’d been in a situation like this.

Jak’s knives moved in a whirl as he ducked the snapping creatures, the razor-sharp metal tearing through fur and flesh into muscle, jarring against bone. Whimpers and squeals of pain mixed in with the frenzied howling as some of the dogs went down, injured or dying. The scent of blood filled the air, driving the surviving dogs on. But some turned on the injured and vulnerable, their feeding frenzy enough to make them turn on their own.

Ryan’s panga sliced through the air, one pass of the blade hitting a dog in an artery, the hot blood spraying across his face, making his eye sting as it hit, filling his mouth and nose so that he had to spit it out, spluttering as it blocked his breath. But he didn’t stop cleaving the air.

Some dogs were getting through between the two point men. Doc thrust at them with the blade, the tightness of their confined space stopping him from using the blade as he would have wished; a sweep of the blade was as likely to strike Mildred or Krysty as it was a dog. At Doc’s back, J.B. was shaking his fogged head to clear it, using the Tekna knife to slice at the attacking creatures with short jabs and thrusts, keeping them at bay.

Which left Mildred and Krysty to pick their targets with care. The men had tried to protect the two women, as they had no blades. Blasterfire was something that all of the companions wished to avoid. There was the danger of missing the target and hitting one of your own; the danger of ricochet and also the danger of any instability in the tunnels themselves. The honeycombs of rock had seemed secure enough, but there had been earth movements at one time. If the caves were in any way unstable…

Using their blasters was the last thing either woman wanted, but the dogs had swept over the companions with such force that, no matter how hard the men worked with their blades, they needed assistance. Claws and teeth were causing scratches to skin, tears to clothing. How long before a set of jaws sunk into flesh? If one went down, how long before the others? Without knowing how big the pack was, there was no way of knowing if they were ahead of the game or falling behind.

“Pick one of the bastards and chill it. We’ve got to,” Mildred yelled.

“Better get it right first time,” Krysty yelled back.

Almost simultaneously their blasters exploded, the sound filling the caves and echoing around, drowning the howls of their attackers.

Only two shots, but they were enough to rebound and reverberate around the cave system, unsettling the delicate balance weight that kept the caves’ roofs from hurtling down. A few pebbles and small rocks dislodged, the sheets of stone, slate and rock that constituted the cave system moaning, those few small stones enough to start a chain reaction that would cause the whole of the system to move.

Not that the companions knew anything of that. Temporarily deafened by the noise of the blasterfire and still battling against the almost total darkness above waist height that handicapped them against the ravenous pack, they were fighting what was beginning to feel like a losing battle. The fur and muscle came hurtling from all angles. The slavering jaws and fetid breath, the snap of the teeth as they grasped thin air or snagged cloth and the growls that were low in the throat, infused with the bloodlust unleashed by the cuts and bruises on the companions as well as the wounds of their own injured: these were all that could be discerned.

Krysty yelped in pain as she was cut by the sweep of Doc’s sword stick, slicing through more rabid canine flesh in the attempt to drive it back.

“A thousand pardons—would that I could see clearly in this pit of hell,” Doc yelled with what, for him, was a remarkable brevity. Krysty didn’t reply; her attention was taken up by the sudden onslaught of mad dog from another position.

Jak could feel the blood of his enemies cover him. Yet as one creature fell back, another seemed to take its place, unheeding of the leaf-bladed knives as they sliced as cleanly through the dogs as they cut through the surrounding air. Paws with sharp claws, honed on the rocks of the caves, cut at his camo jacket. The sharpened pieces of metal and glass that were sewn into the jacket, making it so heavy, served their purpose as they cut the pads on the dogs feet, making them yelp and pull back. The sounds and smells of combat, the hot blood that splashed across his face, drove him on. Jak switched from being Jak Lauren to being a predatory animal that sought to eliminate its prey before it became the prey.

Mildred, already bent double in the confined space, felt one of the creatures thud into her as it leaped against her chest, driving her back against the wall of the cave, the jagged rocks cutting into her spine and driving the air out of her body. Her back muscles twisted and spasmed. The yellow teeth and bloodshot eyes of the dog suddenly loomed into view with a clarity that was hideous, even in the near dark of the tunnel. She raised her ZKR, her hand pinned to her side, twisting her wrist against the body mass of the dog, even as she felt the ligaments tearing with the effort. She felt her hand against the warm, matted fur of the creature, could feel the barrel of the pistol against the ridge of muscle along the dog’s rib cage.

She squeezed the trigger and felt the impact shudder up her arm as the shell ruptured the creature’s muscle and bone, shattering and spreading damage internally. She only hoped that the creature would have enough muscle and bone bulk to deflect and trap the shell, lest it burst out the other side of the creature and take her out in some way. Thankfully, the sudden impact for which she had braced herself didn’t come and she felt the creature lose all life, falling away from her. She eased herself away from the wall, her back protesting as the released pressure allowed her muscles and ligaments to ache freely. But there was no time to pay heed to them, as another blaster shot went off beside her already ringing ears and started a low rumble that grew in volume around them.

Krysty, off balance from Doc’s sword blow, had been driven even more so by two dogs that sensed her sudden vulnerability and attacked. She lashed out at one dark shape with her foot; the pointed silver toe of her cowboy boot, with all the power of her calf and thigh muscles behind it, connected with the point of the dog’s jaw by chance and rendered it senseless. The other dog managed to evade her defenses and jumped for her throat. She raised a defensive arm and brought up her .38 Smith & Wesson blaster to fire. But her timing was awry and as the blaster exploded in her grasp she knew that she had missed the dog. She felt its jaws close on her arm, only the thickness of her bearskin coat stopping it from driving its sharp teeth into her flesh. She clubbed underneath its body with the butt of the blaster, catching it in the balls and making it yelp in sudden agony and surprise, its jaws loosening enough for her to pry her arm free.

But the real damage had already been done. The stray shot ricocheted around the rocks of the cave, taking out chunks and causing fissures to open along weaknesses in the tunnel walls. The tunnels trembled. The ripple effects of the fissures spread and the walls and floor began to move, rock dust powdering from the ceiling of the cave.

“Dark night, it’s coming down,” J.B. breathed, shaking his head to try to clear it, the sudden adrenaline burst of this added danger dragging him back from the brink of blacking out.

The dogs yelped in panic, forgetting their prey, intent only on escaping the danger they now felt was more imminent. They melted into the tunnels, leaving only the dead creatures, the floor slick with their blood. They dissolved into the darkness so quickly that it was hard to believe that the tunnel had been thick with them just a few seconds ago.

But the companions now had more pressing matters than the flight of the dogs occupying them.

Ryan scooped up the flashlight at his feet, miraculously untrampled and still working. It was the only one that was still casting light. He threw the beam in an arc across the cave as far it would stretch. The cracks and falling dust seemed localized.

“This way,” he yelled, gesturing them toward an area in front of him. They scrambled forward in the darkness. If not to safety, at least heading to a place that seemed a little more stable. J.B. stumbled and Millie held back to assist him. Jak was already past them, helping Doc gain ground on Ryan and Krysty, who were about ten yards ahead, visible by the flashlight beam. The rock around them groaned, great fissures opening into gaping maws that presaged chunks of stone falling at their feet and on their heads. Jak had Doc’s arm, but the old man slipped on a slick patch of bloodied earth, losing his footing and stumbling, his arm wrenched out of Jak’s grasp by the downward momentum.

Jak turned on his heel as he ran, trying to reach back for Doc….

The tunnel’s roof fell, slabs of rock coming between them, the impact making the ground shake under Jak’s feet, a falling shard glancing against his temple and nearly knocking him out. In the darkness and the sudden disorientation of the fall, he lost sight of Doc and lost his balance.

It may only have been a second or it may have been an hour. Jak didn’t know, but he was snapped back into consciousness by the sounds of rock being moved around him. Not the random noise of a fall, but the methodical sounds of digging.

On the other side of the fall, Ryan and Krysty pulled at the rocks with grim determination. They had no idea how far behind them the others were, but they knew that the way ahead was clear. Although the tunnel looked stable enough for the moment, they knew there wasn’t a second to waste in getting to their companions.

Jak, in a hole barely big enough to move around in, began to dig toward the sounds as much as possible. To his relief, there was only an inch or two of rockfall between them and he was soon able to make a hole, squinting against the light as Ryan shone the flash through.

“Jak,” Ryan said in an urgent whisper, “where are the others?”

“Doc just behind—fall as rocks come down. J.B. and Mildred?” Jak shrugged. He, too, whispered, aware that too much noise could bring a further fall upon them.

“Let’s try and get through to Doc next,” Krysty said softly. “If he was just behind Jak, there might only be a few inches of rock there, too.”

“We’d better hope so,” Ryan answered, casting his eye over the tunnel behind them. “I don’t reckon we’ve got that much time.”

Some distance away, unable to hear the others, both Mildred and J.B. were painfully regaining consciousness—Mildred considerably sooner than the still-dazed armorer.

“John?” She groped around in the darkness, guided by the small moans that accompanied his labored breathing. Her fingers brushed against him in the darkness. “John, are you okay?”

“Dunno—” he gasped. “Feel heavy in the legs, like I’m pinned—”

Groping blindly, it took her a few seconds to determine that the Armorer’s feet were trapped in the rockfall. She was lucky. Although confined, her limbs were free and nothing felt broken, although every muscle and tendon ached and she had a nasty suspicion that she had sprained her right wrist: touching anything with it sent a sharp pain through her arm that made her stomach lurch.

“Listen, John, I can help you move the rocks, but I’ve only got one good hand—John?” she added in a more urgent tone when he failed to respond, “John, listen to me—try to stay awake.”

“Uh-huh,” he returned in a vacant grunt.

Mildred cursed to herself and started slowly, painfully moving the rocks from his feet, careful not to disturb the surroundings. Only when she had safely done this could she even afford to think about making progress to where the others might be.

A few feet ahead of her, Jak was making progress toward Doc, passing the rocks and stones out to Ryan and Krysty. They worked in a chain; it was quicker in the enclosed space afforded them and also quieter.

The sweat dripped off Jak’s stringy mop of hair, falling into his red eyes and making them sting so that he had to blink heavily to keep focused on what was in front of him. He was able to blank it out, having experienced far worse. Besides, the flash cast some light on what lay ahead, despite the fact that his own body bulk blocked most of the beam as Ryan shone it from behind him. However, he could see a dark patch emerging through the rocks, a dark patch with a gnarled hand at the end of it. Doc’s sleeve.

“See him,” Jak croaked to the duo at his rear, redoubling his efforts. He cleared enough space around Doc to free the old man. Doc’s breathing was labored and harsh, rattling in his chest. He raised his head as the weak light illuminated him.

“Glad as I always am to see your face, friend Jak—” he stopped to cough “—never as glad as I am now.”

Jak grinned. “Talk later, move now.”

Gently, the albino teen cleared more space around Doc and pulled him clear of the rocks. The old man had been lucky: a long slab had fallen across him, preventing the smaller pieces from weighing down and crushing his back. It had made him easier to move, a few stones rattling to the cave floor behind his feet.

“John, I can hear something!” Mildred exclaimed softly, starting to pull at the rocks, testing for those which she could move without too much risk of bringing others down upon her. She began to make a path, hearing the movements of rock caused by Jak moving Doc, and figuring that they weren’t too far away.

Meanwhile, Jak had managed to pull Doc out of the pileup and while Ryan cast an anxious glance at the area beyond, Krysty checked the old man. His breathing was shallow and fast, taking in little air.

“How is he?” Ryan queried.

“Not so good. We need to get him out of here as soon as possible. All the dust and shit from the cave-in has given him some kind of respiratory problem.”

“Soon as we find Mildred and J.B.,” Ryan stated, watching the point where Jak’s body was disappearing into the rocks as he tunneled toward the missing companions.

Mildred could hear him coming nearer as she, too, cleared rocks from her path. “John, hang in there,” she whispered over her shoulder. “We’re nearly there.”

Like Doc, she had never been so glad to see Jak’s face as when he removed the last piece of rock that separated them. He grinned, but said nothing, moving back to allow her to wriggle through the small hole he had made.

“John?” She waited until John muttered an acknowledgment before she continued. “John, we’re through—just follow me.”

J.B. heard her words as though they traveled through a long tunnel.

Jak was helping Mildred to squeeze through the gap he had made when he first felt a ripple in the rocks beneath them, a trembling that foretold of a wave to come.

“Ryan—”

“I feel it,” he replied, rushing to help Jak pull Mildred through the gap. “It’s about to go.”

“John’s hurt and he’s still back there,” Mildred said urgently, turning back to see if the Armorer was following her. There was no sign of him.

She was about to speak again when it hit, like someone had taken hold of the cave and tugged it. The ripple was the forerunner of a wave that had built deep within the cave system, as though the initial rockfall had traveled down and come back on itself, magnified tenfold.

The rock around them pulsed and moved as if it were living matter. The dirt floor rose up to meet them as they were flung down. They were carried on the wave, but felt as though they were going nowhere. The bulb broke in the flash and the companions were plunged into darkness. They didn’t know if they were moving forward or backward, up or down; all they knew was that they were being buffeted. Each one felt the pain and force of being flung against rocks. Each was alone, no longer knowing where the others were…and then there was total darkness as the force of the wave, the pummeling of the rocks, was too much to take. A black curtain dropped over all of them.

Oblivion.

Chapter Three

Strange and haunting visions filled Ryan Cawdor’s head. Trader loomed large, laughing at him, spittle running down his chin, eyes wild and fiery, calling him all kinds of a stupe for getting them into this position. Then Trader mutated into his dead brother Harvey, who was dripping blood and falling over as Ryan pummeled him with blows, screaming, “You as well?” Ryan’s twisted nephew Jabez laughed in the background before coming forward with a long sword grasped in his hands. Ryan was astounded to find that he had no weapons with which to defend himself.

Jabez yelled triumphantly, charging toward him, swinging the blade. Was that Dean in the background saying “It’ll soon be over, Dad”?

With a rebel yell, Jabez brought the blade down onto Ryan…

The one-eyed man sat bolt upright, yelling into the darkness. There were several things that made him aware it had been nothing but a nightmare: it was now dark and cold when moments ago it had been warm; he ached all over, feeling as though he had taken a trip down whitewater rapids without a boat; all the blood he could feel on his body was now dried, cracking on his skin as he moved; his head felt as though someone had been using it as a hammer.

Then it hit him. He was sitting upright, but not in a cave under tons of rock. He was breathing and still alive, and although it was dark all around him, as his eyes adjusted he could see that it was actually the dark of a moonless night, a few stars visible through a cloudy sky. It was also fireblasted cold, as he was suddenly aware of his breath misting in front of him.

Tentatively, testing for any breaks or sprains as he got to his feet and disentangled himself from the few rocks and the mounds of soil that were covering him, Ryan rose and took a long look around, trying to get his bearings. In this darkness, in a landscape that had been ground down into featureless blandness over the decades, it was a thankless task. Even though his eye had now adjusted to the gloom, he could see nothing that would mark out the territory as anything familiar.

As he looked around, he found it hard to work out how, exactly, he had ended up at this point. He could remember trying to dig out Mildred and J.B., and then some kind of quake in the caves. Somehow they had been caught on an earth-movement like a wave, thrown out of the cave system when it crested at the surface. At least, he had. What about the others?

Moving slowly, still testing the range of movement he had, sharp pains reminding him of the violence his body had encountered, Ryan began to look around. He was moving more easily with each step; aching limbs that were cramped as much as bruised started to respond; his circulation pumped stronger as he exerted himself.

Ryan tried to keep down the anxiety that was rising within him. As he circled the debris, he began to feel that he was alone and that the others were lost to him. The thought that fate could have separated them after all they had fought against was something too cruel to contemplate.

He heard a groan. Whirling, trying to locate where it emanated from, he saw a pile of rocks and debris begin to move, accompanied by more moans. Moving as swiftly as his still pain-deadened and cramping limbs would let him, Ryan half ran, half dragged himself to where the moans and movement were. Falling to his knees, he began to dig around the source of the moaning. He scooped away piles of earth and small stones, picking out larger lumps of rock. He had no idea who was underneath, or what part of them he was uncovering, until a foot came into view—a foot shod in a cowboy boot that glittered, even in this fallow light, at the toe.

“Krysty,” he whispered, relief flooding him. He burrowed frantically, uncovering her prone body. She moved against him as he reached her torso, feebly batting at him with weak arms, as though trying to ward off an attacker. It was simple to deflect these movements and keep uncovering her.

By the time he was able to take hold of her, she was semiconscious, muttering to herself. As Ryan tried to lift her free, he stumbled, his legs and arms giving way under the weight. It was all he could do not to drop back onto the rocks. Sweat spangling his brow and running in rivulets down his face, he braced himself, taking the faltering steps necessary to bring them beyond the area of rock debris.

As he placed her on softer earth, she opened her eyes. But they were still unseeing and she mumbled incoherently.

“Wait, wait here,” Ryan said hoarsely, the effort of uncovering and then carrying her having drained him. “I’m going to look for the others.”

Leaving her, he stumbled back toward the area of debris. Now, as the sun began to rise and cast the first pallid glow across the land, he could see that they had been forced out through the mouth of a pothole that was almost flat to the earth. It was a little like the one they had dived into when the storm had hit, and Ryan scanned the area, hoping that he would be able to recognize the landscape now there was some light.

It still seemed alien and unidentifiable.

No matter. The important thing now was to try to find the others—if they had been as lucky as Krysty and himself. He didn’t feel lucky as pain lanced through him, and his head felt as though it had swollen to several times its normal size. But at least he was alive. What of the others?

He began to plan a methodical search, using the light to finally ascertain the extent of the debris thrown up from the pothole. It extended in a radius of several hundred yards and, looking to where he had dragged himself out and where he had found Krysty, he could see that they had been flung some ways. The question was, where would the others have been thrown?

As the area lightened with the rising sun and he was able to get a clear view, Ryan felt both positive and depressed at the same time. Krysty and himself were alive, so chances were that the others also survived. The area proscribed by the arc of debris gave him a definite area in which to make a search. That was the positive part. By the same token, it would soon start to get hot, making searching hard. Krysty was still laid out and he wasn’t exactly triple fit right now. And why hadn’t the others made any sound to indicate they were still alive? Mebbe they were somewhere in the debris…but mebbe they’d bought the farm along the way.

He heard movement behind him and turned slowly to see Krysty hobbling toward him. Which was just as well, as his slow turn was supposed to have been quick, but his protesting muscles and tendons were failing to respond to his demands.

“Hey,” she said in a small voice almost as bruised as her body, “found anyone else yet?”

He shook his head. “Where to start?” he added, gesturing at the debris.

“Two pairs of hands are better than one, right? I’ll start over there—” she gestured a few hundred yards away “—and you start here. We’ll work around until we reach the other’s start point. Okay?”

“Good as any other plan.” He shrugged, watching her limp toward the point where she wanted to start digging, and realizing that she’d chosen a far-flung point to give her the time to psyche herself up for the search, pushing her tired and aching body as she walked.

Letting her go, Ryan bent his back toward his own task.

With two of them, the task seemed that much easier, despite the increment of heat that would make it impossible in a few hours. Heads down, not wanting to waste time looking up unless they heard a shout from the other, they both went about their task.

It was slow and tedious, but it did yield a result. Ryan heard Krysty call, her voice small but triumphant. He couldn’t make out the words, but he looked up to find her waving at him, gesturing urgently to the rubble at her feet.

Ryan began to move toward her, stumbling over the debris, his aching legs not as feeble as before, but still not carrying him as fast as he would wish. He careered over the rocks and soil until he reached the point where Krysty was now down on her haunches, slowly but purposefully moving earth and rock. Ryan could hear Krysty mumbling and he could hear another voice trying to answer, moaning in pain.

Falling to his knees, the one-eyed man began to dig around the voice, around the area where Krysty was already burrowing. Ignoring the sun beating down on his back, he moved earth, stone and rock until a form became discernible.

Within five minutes, Krysty and Ryan had managed to uncover Mildred. She was coated in a layer of dust and her clothes were ripped, with some signs of bleeding on her left leg, but otherwise it seemed to be shock more than anything that was keeping her down. They gave her water and she choked some of it down. Looking around with unfocused eyes, she tried to take in what had happened, squinting against the bright light, unable to discern at first that it was Ryan and Krysty who had uncovered her.

Stumbling between them, they carried her free of the debris and left her, imploring her to rest up as they resumed their search. But it was too much for Mildred to see them return to their digging while she was simply lying there. Forcing herself to her feet, she staggered over and joined Krysty as soon as she was able to keep her balance.

The sun moved farther into the sky, the Arkansas dust bowl getting hotter and more oppressive. All three of them sweated heavily, the salts in their dehydrated muscles cramping as they sifted their way through the rubble, working out from the center and clockwise. Finding Mildred so quickly had been an incredible stroke of luck, and one not readily repeated. It was a hard slog.

They had been digging for almost two hours, by the progress of the sun, when they made their next discovery. Or, rather, when they became aware of something stirring….

Mildred heard it first. Unable to waste breath on speaking, she tugged at Krysty’s arm. The titian-haired beauty ceased her own excavations as Mildred indicated where she had heard the noise. In the sudden silence, Krysty was able to divine that the noise was coming from only a short way away. It sounded like someone trying to burrow their way out. The two women exchanged glances, then made their way over to the source of the sound.

Coming upon the site, they could see that there was someone beneath the rubble who was struggling for release.

“Ryan!” Krysty yelled, her voice cracking from dehydration and tiredness. “Over here!”

Ryan looked up to see Krysty and Mildred standing over a pile of rubble that seemed to be moving of its own accord. He rushed across the rubble, his limbs stronger, feeling renewed with each step now that they had found another one of their company.

Krysty and Mildred were digging when Ryan arrived, moving rubble from on top of the moving body, desperately trying to free it. They scrabbled away the soil and rocks until a mane of white hair became visible, followed by a white, scarred face that was bruised and covered in blood and dust.

“Jak!” Ryan exclaimed, pulling the youth clear of the debris.

“Shit, thought was buying farm,” Jak muttered, coming to his feet. Despite the fact that he had been unconscious for some time and covered in rocks, the albino’s remarkable powers of recovery showed themselves as he shook himself. Despite the fact that he was aching all over, he still held himself upright and seemed less affected by their strange journey than those who had been moving around for some time.

“What happened? Where Doc and J.B.?” Jak asked tentatively, moving all his limbs, testing his muscles. Ryan filled him in briefly on both what he knew and what he had supposed.

“Start looking for others,” Jak said simply when Ryan had finished.

The albino joined Ryan on the far side of the ruins, while Krysty and Mildred resumed looking around the area where Jak had stirred.

The search continued for some time, with no further success. The sun grew high, the heat beat down and the search became harder because of the conditions, because of their weariness, and because it seemed to be so fruitless. The area of debris that was unturned grew smaller, and still no sign of anyone.

“Here!” Jak yelled suddenly. He beckoned the others toward him. Ryan was closest and as the others struggled toward Jak, Ryan could see something poking up from the rubble where the albino was standing. As he got nearer, he could see that it was the end of a black cane.

Doc’s sword stick.

As Ryan reached the spot, Jak was already on his knees, clearing away the debris on the body. Ryan fell to his knees when he was close enough and started to move the rubble, shifting soil and rocks methodically. When Mildred and Krysty reached them, they, too, fell to their knees and began to dig.

Doc wasn’t moving under the rubble—come to that, they had no way of knowing if he was actually under there or if it was merely his sword stick.

Clearing the rubble around the end of the stick, Mildred heaved a sigh of relief when she found that Doc’s fist was wrapped stubbornly around the silver lion’s-head. More rubble found his arm uncovered, while Jak had managed to unearth his head and shoulders. It took some time to clear all of the debris from around and over him, but eventually Doc was completely clear.

Mildred examined him as thoroughly as she could. He was breathing shallowly but regularly, and there seemed to be no bones broken. But he was unconscious. Opting to move him clear of the area, Ryan and Jak took him between them and carried him clear of the area. The movement stirred him and he began to speak…almost inaudibly, with no real coherence.

“…when shall we three meet…parting is such sweet—such sweet what, do I wonder? My dear, you look so sweet tonight…. I thought I would never see you again, sweet Lori…. Or is it Emily? Did either of you really exist, I wonder, or were you little more than the fevered imagining of those sweet, immortal moments before death finally claims its own? Can it be immortal if measured against death, I wonder? Ah, what a dilemma for any philosopher…a problem so simple a five-year-old could solve it. Someone, pray go and get me a five-year-old child before it drives me mad.”

Ryan was glad when they were able to put Doc down on the flat earth and he was able to return, with Jak, to the rubble and his search for J.B. Mildred and Krysty remained with Doc, trying to nurse him back to full consciousness.

“Ryan, think Doc okay?” Jak asked as they returned to their search.

Ryan shrugged. “Mebbe.”

Jak looked at Ryan’s grim visage, the fire in his ice-blue eye, and he knew that Ryan wouldn’t rest until the Armorer was found: Jak agreed with that, but was also worried about how long they could keep going out in this heat, with little in the way of water and supplies.

Jak looked up to the sky, squinting at the sun. “Past noon—soon be too hot work. Dust bowl keeps heat. No good to J.B. if wipe us out.”

Ryan drew a deep breath. “Yeah, you’re right. We’ll take the next two hundred yards, roughly, of debris, then rest up for a while. We’ll also need to work out what water and food we’ve got, see how long we can do this, though if we’re lucky we won’t have to hang around too long.”

“Yeah, mebbe,” Jak mused, noting that there was a note of doubt in the big man’s voice. Like Jak, Ryan was wondering if they would be able to find J.B. And like Jak, he was loathe to voice this doubt.

So they kept digging….

By the end of the day, as the darkness fell, there had still been no signs of the missing Armorer. There was still a vast area of uncovered debris to be raked, but they were sore and weary, muscles and bones protesting at the strain. Doc had been resting, his breathing still shallow and difficult from his problems prior to the cave-in, but the others had all bent their backs to the task. Using whatever scrub they could find, they built a fire and sat silently around it, eating from self-heats without once complaining about the taste. There was a gloomy, depressed aura around them.

“Think find him?” Jak said after a long silence, voicing the thought that the others had dared not.

Ryan looked across at the young man, the fire catching a reflection in his good eye, seeming to emphasize his mood. “We’ve got to. Can’t stop trying,” was all he said.

They mounted a watch through the night, taking it in turns to guard while the others caught some much-needed rest. Sleep came easily, as their bodies tried to recover from the rigors of the day. It was hard to rouse each other at the turn of the watch. But the violence of the earth movement had scared away any predators and there were no signs of the mutie dog pack that had caused them so many problems. Even the snufflings and shufflings of the small mammals that tried to eke a living out of this inhospitable terrain were few and far between.

Morning came, but the rising of the sun offered no release from their mood. Acknowledging how exhausted they all were, and that going full-tilt would benefit no one, Ryan organized a rota where they would divide up the remaining area. They would search in pairs, one on while the other rested. He excluded Doc, much to the old man’s initial annoyance. Although Doc’s breathing had improved, a turn in the sun would likely cause the old man severe problems as searching through of the rubble only stirred up more dust and dirt in the air.

And so the search continued. Grim, bitter, monotonous and depressing. The sun rose higher in the sky, burned down on their backs as they searched. There was no real shade, only that which they could construct with their coats and a few sticks taken from the surrounding scrub. The air was stifling. They were dehydrated, barely keeping their water levels up, striving to conserve the water they had left. On his off-time, Jak tried to search for any water holes that may be around for the wildlife. There had to be some sources of water for them to live in this harsh environment. But he drew a blank. Whatever source they had for their water was deep in the burrows, down where the water table existed, coming nowhere near the surface.

By the fall of the day, they were all beginning to give up hope. There was only a small area of the debris that hadn’t been combed; they had little in the way of supplies; and another day or two under the harsh Arkansas sun would fry them.

“We can’t stop,” Ryan said simply. “He’s got to be here somewhere. We were all pitched out here, so he must have been, too. We just haven’t found him.”

“But what are the chances of finding him alive now?” Mildred asked. “God alone knows I don’t want to think about this, Ryan, you know that. But it’s been two days. If he’s been buried and unconscious that long, under this sun….” She shrugged.

“We can’t give up now,” Ryan muttered tersely.

“I’m not saying we do. Just that we need to face the fact that we might not find him. And if we carry on looking too long, we’ll buy the farm ourselves,” Mildred countered.

Ryan’s face was grim. “You think I don’t know that? One more day, going through the last of the rocks. If he’s chilled, then we give him a decent burial, right?”

None could argue with that statement.

With the rising sun the next morning, they began again. Working once more in shifts, they searched the last area of debris. It was empty.

“Fireblast! What the fuck happened to him?” Ryan seethed with impotent rage. “He can’t have just vanished. Mebbe…mebbe he was thrown beyond us.”

“How could that have happened?” Krysty queried. “For Gaia’s sake, Ryan, look around you. Where else could he have been? There is nowhere else.”

Ryan slowly turned 360 degrees. Beyond the circumference of the debris there was nothing except flat dust bowl earth. Nowhere that the Armorer could be hidden, chilled or alive. The flat, dusty landscape seemed to mock him with its bland openness, hiding nothing and revealing nothing about where J.B. had gone.

“We’re here. All of us,” Ryan reiterated. “We got thrown out. J.B. must have been, too. He can’t have been left in there.”

“Ryan,” Krysty said softly, “it was a maze down there. It’s incredible that we all ended up in the same place. We could have been swept down any number of tunnels that didn’t immediately cave in. J.B. might still be down there.”

“I can’t leave it at that,” Ryan said with an irritated shake of his head. “We’ve got to search around here, just mebbe…I dunno, just mebbe…”

They divided into two parties, Doc joining Mildred and Jak, and they started to search the immediate area, moving out in a spiral to cover as much ground as possible.

It was a short, bitter search, fraught with frustration. All the while they walked under the burning sun, they knew it was useless. But it was something they had to do. They couldn’t rest until at least the token had been made. No matter how exhausted, no matter how dehydrated.

No matter how hopeless.

Eventually, they could search no more. They were low on supplies and water and they had to move on. Ryan acknowledged this when they came back together.

“J.B.’s gone,” he said simply. “Bought the farm. I guess we have to say that, now. We could stick around and keep looking, but where? As far as I can see, this fireblasted flatland is giving us nothing. It’s kept him down there, in a rock grave.”

No one else spoke. There was nothing to say. Ryan continued.

“Seems real weird having no body to bury, nothing to speak over, but I guess that shouldn’t stop me saying something. If he’s gone, then he deserves a send-off. I’ve known J.B. a long, long time. He seemed a strange kind of man when I first met him. I’d never met anyone who knew so much about the one thing and who was so intense about it. When I joined Trader, people talked about J.B. in a funny way. He didn’t have many enemies, but didn’t have many friends, either. He was a difficult man to get to know, but I did get to know him. And a better man I’ve yet to meet. Always at your back, always by your side. I’ll never meet anyone like him. That’s all….”

Ryan turned away. Strong emotions other than anger and fury were things that you didn’t let show. You couldn’t afford them, at least not outside of some kind of privacy. But losing J.B. was a time when he could let it show, just for a moment. Truth was, Ryan Cawdor had just lost a part of himself, a friend and an ally. And it pained him.

His back still to them, Ryan heard them all say something about the Armorer. Krysty and Jak were to the point: a good comrade lost. Mildred had a little more to say. J.B. had been the closest person to her since her revival from cryogenic suspension and to lose him was devastating. She whispered a few words, and then Doc had his turn. He, predictably, rambled on. He had good things to say, but a way of making them last forever. Ryan wanted to stop him, say they had to start moving on right now. But he owed the old man his right to say goodbye.

Finally, Doc petered out and Ryan turned to them.

“Okay. We’ve done what we had to do. Now we need to get the hell out of here. There’s nothing for us around here and it’s been a while, so I figure we should give this up as lost and head back to the redoubt. Mebbe we can jump to somewhere better than this.”

Mildred furrowed her brow, eyeing him up. “You sure about this, Ryan? We haven’t rested well since we were thrown out of the caves and we’re dehydrated. Are you sure we should jump?”

“The chances of finding a ville quickly are slim, Mildred,” Ryan replied. “And we can get some water at the redoubt. The water recycling was working okay a few day ago, right? We’ve jumped in worse states than this. It’s our best option.”

“You’re the boss,” Mildred replied cautiously. She wasn’t too sure of the wisdom involved. They had left the redoubt partly because they were worried about the air system, which cut out the alternative of resting up a night before jumping. How would Doc and Jak take a jump, given that they were the ones who suffered the most afterward?

Having said that, they had no idea how long it would take them to get to the nearest ville and it was obvious that Ryan was determined to leave the dust bowl behind. He had no intention of staying in the place that had claimed the life of his best friend. And she couldn’t, in all truth, disagree with that notion.

And so, taking their position from the time and placement of the sun, they struck out for the redoubt.

It was another grim day. The heat was oppressive. Each step seemed like an effort and in many ways it didn’t seem to matter if they ever reached their goal. They had lost one of their number and things would never be the same. Others had come and gone, but J.B. was different. And on a practical level, it meant that they had lost their ammo supplies, grens and plas ex. It didn’t matter right now, but it may wherever they landed.

The light was failing when they reached the area housing the redoubt. The fact that it had taken them so little time to reach the entrance was an indication of how far the earth wave in the tunnel had carried them.

It was quiet around the area and there was no sign of any life at all. It seemed somehow appropriate. Ryan found the hidden keypad, still recessed despite the rigors that had stripped the landscape, and tapped in the access code. The door groaned open.

They wearily entered the redoubt and made their way down the tunnel. There was nothing to make them keep alert. It was empty, just like when they arrived. Deserted for decades and likely to be deserted for an equal length of time once they were gone.

Which was why it struck Jak so hard. Something just out of the corner of his eye didn’t seem right. He looked again.

“Ryan, wait,” he said sharply. “Look.”

Ryan’s eye followed the direction Jak indicated. There, on the floor and partially up the wall, was a smear of blood with a small pool gathered beneath.

It was still wet.

“Shit! Someone else?” Ryan spun. There had been no sign of anyone approaching the redoubt from the outside and the smear was too fresh to have been left by the companions a few days before—even assuming that they had forgotten about it.

Ryan slipped the Steyr from his shoulder, gripping it in one hand while he drew the Sig Sauer and checked its status: fully loaded.

“Triple red, people,” he breathed. “We’ve got company.”

The others didn’t need telling. Already, they had blasters in hand and had snapped out of their torpor. It was a mystery how someone else came to be in the redoubt, but a mystery that was completely unimportant right now. All that mattered was locating the enemy before the enemy located them.

“Keep together—line out and stay hard,” Ryan whispered.

Stringing out in a line, with Jak taking J.B.’s usual point position, they began to make their way down into the lower levels of the redoubt. There was no sound to indicate where the intruders might be and no other signs of their presence. They cleared each room lining the corridor before progressing onward.

It was only when they reached a junction that things went haywire.

Ryan was first across, checking the corridor on the left. He got no further than the junction before blasterfire exploded out of nowhere. His momentum was carrying him forward into the firing range and it took all his strength to reverse his center of balance and pull back, large-caliber rounds pitting the walls of the corridor.

Mildred returned fire with a few shots squeezed from her ZKR.

“Incoming,” Jak yelled, snapping off a couple of shells from his .357 Magnum Colt Python as rifle fire started to pepper them from behind.

“How the fuck—” Ryan began, before realizing he was wasting breath. How had they managed to get behind the companions when they had checked all the rooms along the way? The only way would have been if they used the air-con shafts, which meant that whoever they were up against had a working knowledge of the redoubt.

Those firing on them from behind were keeping well in cover and return fire was pointless. They couldn’t turn left or right, in case they walked into a hail of fire. Their only chance was to head straight across and reach the end of the corridor, where it doglegged to the right. It was about fifty yards and they’d have to do it in shifts.

Jak kept the rear covered, while Ryan and Doc took the first run. On a count of three they flung themselves across the junction, Ryan firing to his left with the Sig Sauer while Doc was ready to pepper any fire from the right with the shot chamber on his LeMat. There was none, but to take that corridor, which ran for over a hundred yards exposed, would have left them open to fire from the rear.

When Ryan and Doc were over, Mildred and Krysty followed, with Jak between them, moving backward rapidly.

Once across, Ryan headed rapidly for the dogleg while the others covered the rear from follow-up attacks. The one-eyed man skidded to a halt as the corridor turned and recced around the corner, using the Steyr to draw any fire before risking a glance.

It was clear. He beckoned to the others and they followed.

They ran down the dogleg to the next level of the redoubt, only to find that their way was blocked by a closed sec door.

“Fuck it, they must know the codes to get that down,” Ryan breathed. “This door was up when we left.”

“Who the hell are these people?” Mildred asked, not really expecting an answer.

“People who know what they’re doing, my good woman,” Doc murmured. “You do realize that, with a minimum of firing and without showing themselves at all, they’ve forced us into a corner. And too damned easily.”

“You’re right, Doc. We’ve been triple stupe and let them run the play,” Ryan agreed. “Minds too busy elsewhere to get it together.”

“No time for recriminations, lover,” Krysty told him. “We’ve got to get ourselves out of this before we have the luxury to do that.”

“Yeah, but how? We don’t know how many of them there are or where they’re coming from. We’ve got our backs to a wall that could lift at any moment and we can’t lift it unless we want to expose ourselves.”

Ryan thought fast. There were two rooms on this leg of the corridor, both open and empty. To put themselves in one would give them cover on three sides, but would also imprison them.

Right now, cover was important. Even though he had a suspicion that this was what the enemy—whoever it was—had been directing him to, he still indicated that they should enter one of the rooms.

Jak kept watch while they built a barricade. His instincts were sharp, and were needed more than ever.

“I don’t get it,” Krysty said as they worked, the imminent danger echoed in the way her hair clung to her head and shoulders. “Why didn’t they take us out when they had the chance? Why are they driving us into this?”

“Perhaps, my dear, they wish to take us alive,” Doc mused. “This would be the best way. Force us here and then sit it out until we cannot go on.”

“But why wouldn’t they figure we’d come out blasting? Don’t they think we’d risk buying the farm?”

Doc allowed himself a sad smile. “We might, but that doesn’t increase their risk, does it? If we get chilled, we get chilled. This is, however, their best way of taking us alive with a minimum risk to themselves.”

“They’re here,” Jak said simply, pulling back into cover.

The companions took cover, blasters ready. Shapes flitted past the doorway to take positions on the far side and the companions fired. The roar of blasterfire and the stench of cordite was broken only by the screams of those they hit. From around the door, fire rained in on them. The barricade began to crumble.

“Have to take them head on,” Ryan yelled. “Otherwise we’ll be chilled meat anyway.”

They reloaded, ignoring the hail of fire around them as it ripped at their makeshift barricade and pit the walls with gaping holes of gouged-out concrete. They readied themselves for the attack. It was an almost suicidal charge, but they didn’t have the stomach to sit it out and wait to buy the farm.

“Ready?” Ryan asked. He was answered by gestures of assent.

One way or the other, it looked as though they were ready to join J.B., wherever the hell he may be.

Chapter Four

Nothing made much sense to J.B. as he lay in a pool of water, a stream gently trickling around him. Nothing except the pain he felt, as though every muscle in his body had been torn, every bone fractured, every ligament wrenched. Even the pumping of his blood sent liquid pain coursing through his veins. If he could see through the agony enough to think with any kind of rationality, he would be surprised that the levels of pain hadn’t made him black out. But everything was too painful, the world too red and full of pulsing lights for that: he had no idea where he was and only a few vague memories of how he’d gotten there.

His head—that had been the thing that hurt most to begin with. He had been in a tunnel and he vaguely recalled something to do with dogs attacking him. Then the walls have caved in on him and he remembered the crushing pain of being under their weight. And then…

And then it went really crazy. It seemed like the whole pile of rocks around him had just been picked up and flicked over, like some force had turned the world upside down. He could remember the strangest sensation, in the blackness, of feeling an immense wave of motion wash over him, pushing him forward and then sideways as he hit a solid barrier that drove the breath from his body. He was tossed around like a branch in a dust storm, hitting the sides of the tunnel that was crumbling around him as he felt himself fall. He’d hit his head again and had the idea that he was blacking out and coming to, blacking out and coming to. How many times he had no idea. All he knew was that he had kept falling down until finally he hit water.

It wasn’t deep and it wasn’t moving fast, but he still hit it so hard that it felt like falling against another wall of rock. But this one gave under him and he found himself struggling not to breath, not to drag water down into his lungs as his descent slowed until he hit the floor of the river. Some part of his brain that was working despite himself wondered about the river. He’d figured there had to be a water table at some point, but not that it would be so deep. Stupe, how the brain does this when he should be thinking about staying alive.

The wave that had propelled him this far reached the water and the sluggish stream began to move faster, taking him with it. He had no idea which direction he was going in, only that he had to try to keep his head up and breathe in only when he could suck air into his lungs. Which would have been hard at the best of times, but he kept nodding in and out of consciousness from the blows to his skull.

The water seemed to fill the tunnel as it churned harder and faster, the force of it slamming against his body almost as hard as the rocks he’d been pelted with a short while before. There was less air, fewer pockets for him to gasp in quickly when he had the chance. The lights in his head began to glow more brightly, to move around in strange, dancing patterns. There was a humming in his ears, growing louder by the second, almost deafening. His lungs felt as though someone had tossed a torch of napalm into them. They were going to burst soon if he didn’t take another breath, yet he could feel he was still underwater.

So this was how it ended? He felt unimaginably weary and a lassitude descended on him. He didn’t care if he took in a lungful of water and drowned. Anything would be better than the awful burning in his chest.

J.B. relaxed and prepared to buy the farm. He exhaled and slipped blissfully out of consciousness.

He woke up with a head that felt like someone was pounding rocks on it and incredible pain everywhere else.

At least he was still alive.

He wanted to open his eyes, but was afraid of increasing the pain. He felt around him, slowly, with his fingertips. It was a muddy soil, slimy and slippery with a layer of water about two inches deep all around him. He could feel the water moving slowly past him in a trickle. It had to be dark where he was, as no great source of light penetrated his eyelids. And the water was flowing in a direction that took it from his legs up past his head. His legs felt particularly leaden. He flexed his calf and thigh muscles, which screamed protest at him. He stopped immediately, grateful for the sudden cessation. Then, steeling himself, he tried again.

From the resistance, he could tell that his legs were trapped from midthigh down and from the give, he knew that it wasn’t rock containing him, but mud. How the hell could he have gone through head and shoulders first and end up with his legs stuck so firmly? Trying to figure it out made his head spin and didn’t matter anyway. The fact was that he was stuck. Yeah, he had to have dislodged something as he came through the hole, and it fell around him, trapping him. Stupe thing was that he felt better for that, despite the fact that it did him no good.

Dark night, he needed to get the hell out of here before the water started to rush again, either sweeping him away or sweeping over him and drowning him once and for all. But he was so tired and it hurt so much. J.B. sank back into unconsciousness once more.

“FUCK’S SAKES, Sim, I don’t see what the problem is, here. Dammit, can’t Silborg or Denning see to their own damn problems?”

“Calm down, you’re starting to really bug the shit out of me.” The tall, broad-shouldered man called Sim cuffed his companion against the ear. It wasn’t hard enough to be meant with any malice, but despite his advancing years and graying beard and ponytail, Sim was still a strong man. The blow stung, making his companion wince.

“Fuck’s sakes, watch what you’re doing,” grumbled Hafler, who was smaller, skinnier and younger. He had a sharp, pointed face and his hair was cropped back apart from a thin Mahican stripe along the top of his skull. Both men were dressed in coarse linen trousers, plaid woolen shirts and heavy working boots. They were covered in splashes of mud, some old and dry, some more recent. Both had spent the day in their own sector, repairing and unblocking wells that had been damaged in the recent quake. The tremor had been felt all over their ville and while some were repairing houses and huts, they were part of the teams that had been sent to repair wells in the northern sector.

Only now, as a favor to Denning and Silborg, who had more damage in their sector to the south than the other three areas put together, Hafler and Sim were attending to the last well that was failing to bleed precious water into the storage tanks. It was hard enough keeping the ville watered as it was—they’d had to dig deep to find any water at all—without the wells blocking up from earth shifts.

This well was the most isolated and, as it was closest to the quake, the most likely to be badly damaged. Hafler was sure that this was why Silborg had asked them to take it on—that man would do anything to avoid work. Sim figured that someone had to do it, and as they’d finished their work, why not them? Besides, he had a similar opinion of Silborg and knew that he wouldn’t bother to do the job properly. Hafler was a born whiner, but at least he always did a good job.

The two men could see the well from several hundred yards away. Its lip was built up to a height of four feet from old brick and concrete built into a round wall, augmented by wattle and daub and some cement that they had managed to dredge up from a scavenger hunt to the prenuke villes nearby. Could have traded for it, but it was difficult to come by in a usable state and they didn’t want to skimp when building a wall around a well. Water was a precious commodity, the one thing in which they couldn’t trade.

The wall kept out any small mammals, stopping them from falling down and blocking the well. But the one thing they could do nothing about were the quakes. There had always been a few as the land was unstable, but never anything like yesterday’s. The damage had been widespread, if not too serious to repair quickly.

“You want to go down, give me a report?” Sim asked as they neared the lip.

Hafler sneered. “What’re you asking me for, Sim? You know an old fuck like you ain’t going down there when you can get someone younger—like me—to do it.”

Sim gave him a mirthless smile. “How did you guess?” he said, dripping with sarcasm.

“Yeah, real funny,” Hafler moaned. As they approached the lip of the well, he began to climb up, sitting astride the top. He held out his hand and Sim handed him a rope that he tied around his waist. Then he held out his hand again and the big man handed him a flashlight. Still without a word, Hafler solemnly tested it.

“Jeez!” Sim exclaimed. “It was okay half an hour ago.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hafler replied. “But who knows when these batteries will fuck up. And you’re not the one who’ll beat the end of the rope when they do.”

Sim sighed. “Just get your ass down there, will you?” he murmured, tying the rope around his own waist and bracing himself.

“Okay, just don’t even pretend that you’re letting me fall, right?”

“Would I do that?” Sim was the picture of injured innocence.

“You said that last time,” Hafler said as he disappeared from view.

Stooping, the big man picked up the excess coils of rope, paying them out as the thin man descended down the well. If there were repairs to be done, then they would have to go and get a wag with materials. If it was a blockage, then he would pitch the rope and join Hafler at the bottom, clearing the obstruction. Strictly speaking, someone should always stay up top, but it was quicker if they took a few risks. As long as Xander never found out.

Inside the well, Hafler descended at an even speed, clutching the rope with one hand and using the other to play the flash beam around the walls. This was one of the deepest wells and he started to feel closed in as the circle of sky above him grew smaller. His boots dug into the walls of the well, earth reinforced by stanchions and wattle and daub. It didn’t strike him as the best way to keep a well open, but given the scarcity of other materials, there wasn’t much of an option. Even so, the sweat spangled his top lip and ran down his brow as he tried not to think about the walls collapsing on him.

The beam of the flash swept lower as he descended. No sign of any collapse or instability yet. In fact, it seemed as though this well had stood up to the quake much better than any of the others they had attended to this day. In which case, what the hell could be blocking it?

For the closer he got to the bottom, the more he was sure that there actually was a problem with this well. He knew the sounds of water in the wells during different seasons and this should sound like a healthy stream. Instead, it sounded like a trickle. Something was stopping the water from flowing. He cursed to himself. It was too deep to spend too much time down here moving mud and unstable earth with any kind of comfort.

Hafler played the torch toward the base of the well, expecting to see a pile of mud and rock that needed digging out. The last thing he expected was to a see a man, covered in mud, blood and bruises, laying across the channel, his legs embedded in a small mudslide.

Hafler tugged the rope urgently. Sim put his head over the top, causing the rope to give and Hafler to jerk downward.

“What’s the problem? Kinda scary in the dark, is it?”

“Don’t fuck me around,” Hafler snapped. “Look at this.” He played the beam down again until it shone across the prone form of J. B. Dix.

“Shit,” Sim breathed. “How the hell did he get there? Come to that, who is he? Don’t look familiar to me.”

“Y’know what? I don’t care if he’s your fucking cousin. He’s the block in the well and we need to get him out.”

“Sure we can’t just leave him there?”

“Yeah, right—and have Xander ask us why the water’s dried up or why it’s diseased when this fucker rots?”

Sim sniffed. “Yeah, guess so. Tell you what, I’ll let you down, then you tie the rope round him and clear that mud jam around his legs while I pull him up.”

“Great plan,” Hafler muttered sarcastically, though in truth it was the only thing that could be done.

Sim lowered Hafler down until the small man was standing in the shallow stream. There was barely room to stand beside the prone body and it was hard for him to untie the rope, squat and tie it around the limp body in the confined space. But he did find out one thing…

“Take him up,” he yelled, tugging on the rope when it was secured around the prone man. “And guess what—the fucker’s alive,” he added, giving the unconscious J.B. a savage kick in the ribs to vent his anger at having to move him. The impact made the Armorer stir. “Yeah, and there’ll be more of that, you awkward fuck,” Hafler muttered.

He flattened himself to the side of the well while the body, jerking, was tugged past him. He had the flash fixed into his belt, shining downward, and the light from above was blocked by the prone figure, which kept bumping into the walls. Scatterings of earth and pebbles fell from the construction, dislodged from the body’s upward journey.

“Careful, you old fuck, or you’ll bring it down on me,” Hafler muttered to himself before turning his attention to the floor of the well. The water was now running more freely, although uncovering the Armorer’s legs had brought down a little more mud. The depth was up to the tops of his workboots and his wet feet told him that the boots weren’t in the good condition he’d thought they were. Ignoring this, Hafler set to work clearing the obstruction and shoring it up with the slabs of rock—dislodged by the arrival of J.B.—that had been used to form a channel in and out of the well, the smaller channel being on the outward flow, acting as a dam to build the water level. While he worked, he tried not to think about the fact that he was at the bottom of the well, without any lifeline to the land above.

Up top, Sim was straining, face reddened and veins popping on his neck, as he hauled J.B. toward the surface. He was older and less fit than he cared to imagine and was having problems getting the deadweight to the surface. As the body reached the top of the wall, it caught on the uneven surface, and Sim had to strain with every ounce, bracing his feet in the dusty soil that provided little grip, to get him over the lip.

The unconscious form flopped over the wall around the well and crashed to the ground, raising a cloud of dust as it hit the earth hard, feet and arms bouncing upward with the impact. A grunt escaped from the Armorer but as he was still comatose, it was a question of air being expelled rather than acknowledgment of pain. Sim drew several deep breaths, feeling his heart pound like a hammer as he tried to return to normal. Finally, he trusted his strength enough to walk over to the prone body and bend to retrieve the rope. He lifted J.B.’s head, looking at the battered and bloody face.

“Bastard,” he hissed, slamming the body’s head back down. “More trouble than you’re worth. Let’s see what Xander has to say ’bout you.”

He poked his head over the lip of the well, staring down at the point of light below. “How you doing?” he yelled down.

“Nearly finished. Where’s that fucking rope?” Hafler shouted in reply.

Sim let an evil grin cross his face. “Can’t get that fucking knot you tied around that other bastard out,” he yelled. “Can’t get the rope down—you’ll have to climb up without it.” He chuckled as he listened to the stream of abuse that came up from the bottom of the well.

“That’ll teach you,” he said to himself before tossing the end of the rope down the well.

When Hafler had pulled himself up, they stood over the body looking down on it.

“Reckon we should just chill the fucker now?” Hafler asked. “It’d save us a lot of trouble.”

Sim hoicked up and spit on the Armorer. “Nah. Let’s see if he comes around first. Take him back and see what Xander says. I reckon he’ll be interested to know just how this fucker ended up down there.”

“Shit,” Hafler cursed, kicking J.B. again. “I know you’re right, but that means we’ve got to carry this son of a bitch back to the ville.”

Between them, the two men picked up the Armorer’s body and began the long haul back to the ville. The sun was still high, although beginning the long journey into night and the heat beat down on them. J.B. was out cold, a motionless deadweight. Hafler had hold of his legs while Sim had hold of his shoulders. The thin, rat-faced man cursed without pause, railing at the fate that had led him to be assigned to Sim, to have to cover someone else’s ass on the south sector, to find this motherfucker stupe at the bottom of a well and for him to actually have the audacity to be alive.

“That’s it, that’s enough,” Sim said, unceremoniously dropping the body onto the dirt and turning to face his companion. “I’ve had enough of you moaning all the fucking time, boy. You want this guy chilled, so we don’t have to drag him back? Okay, you chill him.” The big man took an old Colt .44 six-shot blaster from the back of his waistband. The blaster was vintage, but highly polished and well maintained. It was obviously more than just a weapon to Sim, it was an object of some pride. This was clear from the way he checked that it was fully loaded and handed it carefully to Hafler.

Hafler had his own blaster, but he knew what this piece of hardware meant to his companion and he took it almost nervously, a slight tremor in his hand.

“Don’t do that, boy, it might go off in the wrong direction,” Sim murmured in a calm voice.

“Nah…nah, I’m not using this,” Hafler said, shaking his head violently and handing back the blaster with something that approached urgency.

Sim took it, shrugged and pointed the barrel at the Armorer’s skull. “Whatever you say, boy. But you moan anymore and I’ll take him out right now. And you’ll have to explain to Xander why we didn’t bring him back for interrogation if he ever gets to find out.”

Hafler sucked in his breath. “Don’t be stupe. You know I wouldn’t want that…Okay, okay, I’ll keep it shut, right?” He managed a pathetic attempt at a smile.

Sim’s own grimace of a smile was broader: round one to him. “Good. Then just pick the fucker up and let’s get rolling.”

The two men picked up the Armorer as before and resumed their trek. Hafler couldn’t stop the muttering under his breath that came as second nature, but made sure it was low enough not to annoy Sim.

Gradually, the landscape changed a little. The scrub became a little denser as they hit the remains of an old, predark woodland. A few hardy specimens had survived and they provided what little cover there was for the small, reinforced sec post, dug down into a trench and reinforced to two feet above ground level.

“Hey, what you two assholes got there?” yelled the sec man in the trench, his head alone visible above the reinforcements.

“They got something?” a second voice queried, his head also appearing above the reinforcement. Whereas the first sec man had a lean face framed by long, greasy black hair, the second had a bullet head on which the hair was savagely cropped. He also had what looked like a cigar clamped in his jaws, billowing a foul smoke.

“How d’you know it was us, Deke?” Hafler whined.

“The man Upton here says assholes, can only mean you two,” Deke replied with a beatific grin.

“Fuck you,” Hafler grumbled, which only made Deke laugh harder.

Upton, who was as tall and rangy as the shape of his face suggested, scrambled out of the sec dugout to examine what the two men were carrying. He prodded the Armorer’s inert body with the end of the remade Sharps rifle he was carrying. “So where you find this one?” he asked mildly.

“Weirdest thing. We covered this well in south—”

“Silborg and Denning—lazy fucks,” Upton interjected, nodding wisely.

“Exactly,” Sim continued. “One of the wells was blocked and when we looked down it, what did we find but laughing boy, here. Fuck knows how he got there, but there he was, blocking the water flow.”

“Never seen him before and he don’t look like one of the scum,” Upton mused. “So not a mutie and not on convoy. A real little mystery.”

“Only until the bastard wakes up. Xander’ll get it out of him.”

“Yeah, but we’ll probably never get to know,” murmured Deke, who had clambered out of the dugout to join them and had his Lee-Enfield .303 slung casually over his shoulder. Out on this post, the men eschewed SMGs in favor of rifles with which they could pick off any threat at distance.

Sim shrugged. “Xander’s baron. Guess it’s his right to know and his right to tell us or not.”

“Mebbe…but I’m curious.”

“Curious chilled the cougar,” Hafler said solemnly. They all looked at him. “Something my mama used to say,” he added weakly.

“Really?” Deke asked innocently. “All she used to say to me was ‘more, more…harder, harder.’”

Three of the four men laughed hard. Hafler managed a weak smile. Because, unlike Upton and Sim, he knew that Deke was only being truthful.

“Fuck it, can’t stand around here all day. We’ve got meat to deliver before it goes off,” Sim said, gesturing to Hafler to pick up the Armorer’s feet. Bidding their farewells, they left the two sec men to return to their post in the dugout and carried on toward their ville.

Another half mile brought them to the outer defenses of the ville. Their path across the scrub crossed a couple of dirt tracks and then finally met up with an old two-lane blacktop that was scarred, pitted and twisted by the quakes and ravages of the nuclear winter, but was still basically traversable. It was used regularly by the convoys of traders that came in and out of their ville, both as a stop-off to rest awhile and as a trading post. When they came to the blacktop, they turned right and headed toward the ville, clearly visible now.

It was a squat ville, with buildings no bigger than two stories high, all either the remnants of the predark suburban development or constructions that had been erected around the existing buildings, cobbled together from whatever materials could be found or traded. It gave the ville a lopsided, nightmarish look. A settlement filled with strange angles, abutments were used to shore up buildings that otherwise may have collapsed. Everything was either brown or gray. Color faded quickly in the heat and dust, and even black soon washed out. A pall of smoke hung over the whole area, coming up from the businesses and homes beneath. Even this far out, a buzz of noise could be heard. It was never quiet.

Encircling the ville, broken only on the blacktop by two heavily reinforced steel and concrete bunker houses that acted as sec posts, was a barrier of old barbed wire. Sharp fragments of steel and metal glittered here and there up to a height of eight feet. It had taken a long time to erect the fence. Sim still shivered at the memories of being on the construction crews. Some of the men had fallen onto the wire while putting it together, and were either sliced to ribbons by the metal and glass and bought the farm through blood loss, or died slowly and painfully from the poisons carried on the old barbed wire.

They approached the sec posts, grim and forbidding. You couldn’t see if they were occupied or by how many men, but anyone inside could see you coming from a distance of several miles.

Sim and Hafler were only about a half mile away and they were known to the sec crews. So, as with the earlier sec post, they were greeted by sec men who came out to meet them. All three sec men were dressed in dusty combat fatigues, carrying AK-47s. All walked in the same way, as though they were still wary, even though they knew the approaching duo. The only differences were their heights and builds.

“Who’s that?” asked one of them, shorter and rounder than the others. “I don’t recognize him.”

“You wouldn’t,” Sim began, the weariness evident in his voice as he told the story once again. They were waved through the sec post and they gratefully entered the boundaries of the ville, marked by a banner that hung limp in the still air, strung between the two sec posts. Its lettering was faded against the bleached-out cloth, but still readable.

Duma.

Sim and Hafler had seen it so many times they didn’t even acknowledge it as they passed under, continuing their trudge toward the heart of the ville.

The noise grew from a buzz to a clamor as they entered the area of population. The ville was built around a system of tracks and roads hacked into the dust bowl, radiating either side of the blacktop, which cut through the ville. From one end of Duma you could see clearly the sec posts guarding the road leading out on the other end. Dwellings and businesses were one and the same, with everyone trying to hustle something from where they lived and slept. Most had signs outside selling goods and commodities of all kinds, some were bars and some were gaudy houses. There was no division between the trade area and the living area, and children ran wild among the streets, trying to steal trinkets and dried fruits and meats from their displays. Adults chased them and beat them if they caught them.

Only two areas differed from the rest of the ville. A cleared space on either side of the blacktop, fenced in and guarded, offered parking for the wags of the trading convoys. The ville’s baron figured that the convoys would spend more jack in the ville if they could leave their wags protected by his force—for a small consideration, of course.

The other area lay to the right of the blacktop from the direction they had entered. The fenced-off area, with three old buildings inside, represented the baron’s personal dwelling and trading space. It was the only place where people weren’t allowed to walk freely. A trickle came in and out to conduct business of one kind or another, but they were regulated by the two sec men who stood, in dusty fatigues, at the only gate in the fence.

This was where Sim and Hafler headed, carrying their prize. J.B. was still unconscious, had remained so throughout the journey. Somewhere deep in his subconscious he knew that he was on the move, but his pain and injuries were so great that his body had shut down to recover from the trauma.

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