Ryan managed to stagger to his feet

“Leave him,” Crow said softly. “He has every right to be angry. But he’s no danger to us now.”

The words became strung out and distorted as the drug took effect. Ryan swayed on his feet, trying to reach for his SIG-Sauer, but every movement seemed to take an eternity, and his numbed hand failed to respond. He could see J.B. fumble with his Uzi, falling forward to the ground before the blaster was fully in his hands.

The world narrowed and darkened around Ryan. The one thought that cut through his befuddled mind was why hadn’t they been chilled then and there?

Other titles in the Deathlands saga:

Pilgrimage to Hell

Red Holocaust

Neutron Solstice

Crater Lake

Homeward Bound

Pony Soldiers

Dectra Chain

Ice and Fire

Red Equinox

Northstar Rising

Time Nomads

Latitude Zero

Seedling

Dark Carnival

Chill Factor

Moon Fate

Fury’s Pilgrims

Shockscape

Deep Empire

Cold Asylum

Twilight Children

Rider, Reaper

Road Wars

Trader Redux

Genesis Echo

Shadowfall

Ground Zero

Emerald Fire

Bloodlines

Crossways

Keepers of the Sun

Circle Thrice

Eclipse at Noon

Stoneface

Bitter Fruit

Skydark

Demons of Eden

The Mars Arena

Watersleep

Nightmare Passage

Freedom Lost

Way of the Wolf

Dark Emblem

Crucible of Time

Starfall

Encounter: Collector’s Edition

Gemini Rising

Gaia’s Demise

Dark Reckoning

Shadow World

Pandora’s Redoubt

Rat King

Zero City

Savage Armada

Judas Strike

Shadow Fortress

Sunchild

Breakthrough

Salvation Road

DEATH LANDS®

James Axler

The world is his, who has money to go over it.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803–1882

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope….

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 Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter One

The broken wheel weighed heavily on his chest, the sharpened and splintered spokes beginning to feel uncomfortable as they poked into his flesh. He pressed himself back into the ground, feeling the sharpness of the small rocks and pebbles in the red dust as they formed a hard, compressed mattress beneath him.

He breathed in short, shallow gasps, trying to extract the maximum amount of oxygen from the minimum movement of his chest muscles. He figured that the axle of the wheel would keep it aloft enough to prevent it penetrating the cloth, skin and flesh and breaking bone and mashing internal organs into a pulpy mess. The balance of the wrecked wagon was delicate, but he hoped that the bulk of its contents would stay on the far side, with just enough weight to lift the broken wheel and prevent it from tilting slowly and inexorably into his all too frail human frame. He would have tried to move, to wriggle out from beneath the spokes, if not for the fact that they already had him delicately pinned, moving almost with the breeze that blew dust and grit into his eyes, making him blink.

Everything was otherwise still. The delicate swirl of the wind and the almost whispered creak of the broken wagon as it shifted was all that could be heard.

He couldn’t remember exactly how the accident had occurred. A vague blur of action as the wagon hit the half-buried rock, the vast majority of its bulk being hidden beneath the loose earth, the terrified cries of the horses as the reins and harness pulled on their muscle and sinew, the wagon suddenly brought to a dead halt by the obstruction. The arrested force pulled the animals back and snapped the neck of one while the other tore free of the frayed leather and ran on, disappearing from view behind an outcrop, the sound of its terrified flight fading into the distance. His own flight, propelled by the force of the impact and pulled forward by the momentum of the reins he had been loosely clutching, had been too swift to recall.

He remembered the impact of his fall, the bone-crunching jarring of his spine on the earth recording indelibly that journey into his memory. The wagon had eventually rolled over the dislodged rock after balancing for a moment in midair, poised to fall with the full weight of twisted and splintered spokes onto his body. The weight inside the wagon, shifted to one side by the impact, had prevented the descent of the deadly wooden stakes, and thus a swift oblivion.

But perhaps this was worse.

He moved again, shuffling beneath the pointed ends of the spokes, which seemed to push back against him and pin him further, as if to emphasize their mastery over his aching, pain-racked frame. The heels of his boots tried to dig into the dust and push back, but found no purchase in the loose earth.

“Emily…my love, are you all right?”

His voice was little more than a whispered croak, the light clouds of dust that eddied around him drying out his mouth even more, making him choke. The coughing racked his body, the spokes responding by pushing harder, biting into his body, their sharpness now more than uncomfortable through his clothing, which, he realized with an obvious but still despondent resignation, offered scant protection.

There was no reply from inside the wagon. His wife had been in the back with their two children. Young Rachel would be all right, but the boy, Jolyon, was little more than a babe in arms, and Doc Tanner was worried that the child would be hurt.

But no more worried than he was about his beloved wife. Doc’s world revolved around Emily; that was why the university-educated academic was making his way across country to begin a new life, moving from the civilized and educated east to the still untamed wilds of the West.

For a moment, as he considered this, a flicker of puzzlement and worry crossed Doc’s brow, making him forget his current predicament, his mind switching to another gear.

But surely that didn’t make sense? Why was he alone with the wagon? Not alone in the sense that he had his young family with him, but alone in the fact that there seemed to have been no other wagons traveling with them. Yes, it would be true to assume that he could have become detached—lost, to be more blunt—from the rest of the train. It would be a reasonable assumption, if not for the simple truth that he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember any other wagons traveling with them at any point in the journey. In point of fact, Doc was as sure as he could be that he had no recollection of even beginning the journey.

“Emily? Please answer me, my sweet. Please talk to me. Rachel, are you there? Is Jolyon all right?”

The only answer was silence.

Tears prickled at the corner of Doc’s eyes. “Please…please let this end. Let this not happen again.”

“Why should you get off light, Doc? Least ways you’re still alive, right? Not so lucky…”

If it had been possible to do so beneath the shattered wheel without impaling himself on the splintered spokes, Doc would have physically jumped with shock and—yes—a tinge of fear at the sound of the voice.

Footsteps came to him across the ground, moving around from the blind side of the wagon, the high heels on the delicately sculpted white calf boots still managing to click, even on the relatively soft carpet of dust. Twisting his head, Doc could see the boots and the shapely denim-clad legs that moved up from the tops of the boots in a sinuous, smoothly moving line to a pair of snaked hips. Above, a slim torso was clad in a short fur jacket, the blank face surmounting it a mask of impassivity, the big, blinking eyes focused on his prone figure, the waves of blond hair flowing like honeyed gold over her shoulders.

“Lori?”

She nodded.

Doc squinted, the fear and uncertainty fluttering in his chest, a cavity that was also being filled with pain as the spokes moved and bit deeper.

“But you’re dead.”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded. “So’s your wife and your kids, Doc. We’re all dead. But you’re not. That’s why you’ve got to go on suffering.”

Despite the fear and agony, a wry smile crossed Doc’s face. He had often considered that those who had perished were the lucky ones. Lori Quint, found in a redoubt in Alaska and rescued from the dysfunctional family of a “father” that used her as a toy for his own gratification, only to perish along the way.

Suddenly, Doc was no longer afraid. He knew he wasn’t trapped under a wagon in the West. He wasn’t in his own time…In fact, he had no time to call his own. He had long since left Emily, Rachel and Jolyon behind. They had their lives, lived out to whatever span, without ever knowing what had happened to him. How could they? How could nineteenth-century gentlefolk ever comprehend the perverse science behind Operation Chronos, that part of the Totality Concept that had snatched Doc from his own time and propelled him into the 1990s, before his dissension and desire to return to his own time had forced his captors to send him into a future that, ironically, had preserved his life. For while he had leaped over the nuclear holocaust known in his new time as skydark, those very scientists whose Totality Concept had helped form it were to perish.

And in that dark new world of the Deathlands, Doc had met Lori and lost her.

But despite it all, despite the physical strain of being propelled through time, and immense mental torment that made him feel as though he had descended into insanity, emerged the other side and gained the ability to dip his toe in and out of those murky waters of madness, he had survived. He and his traveling companions.

And the journey wasn’t yet over.

“Do what you must,” Doc said simply.

Lori Quint nodded blankly and walked over to the wheel, poised over Doc’s chest.

“Sorry,” she said as she began to push the wheel down…gently at first, but then with more force, the effort showing on her face.

“It doesn’t matter…it just, ah—”

Doc’s ability to speak was taken from him by the rush of pain as the splintered wood bit deeper into his flesh, breaking the skin and tearing the flesh and sinew beneath, the resistance of his ribs making them almost audibly creak before the sharp snapping sounds of bone giving way to a greater force.

Doc looked up into Lori’s face as the periphery of his vision grew dim, the black edges spreading across the whole of his vision.

“It just has to carry on….” he whispered as all darkened, and the pain grew to encompass all.

“DOC LOOKS in a pretty bad way.”

Ryan Cawdor hunkered down beside the older man, whose white, straggling hair matted in sweat-soaked strands to his head. He was stretched out on the floor of the mat-trans chamber. His limbs jerked in spasm, and his open eyes flicked the whites up into his skull.

Doc was always Ryan’s main concern on arriving at a new destination. The mat-trans chambers were located in secret predark U.S. Army redoubts that were dotted across the ruins of America, in the lands now known as the Deathlands. None of the fellow travelers knew how to program the computer-triggered matter-transfer machines that were at the heart of each base; they knew only that closing the door triggered the mechanism and set the old comp tech working that was left in the depopulated bases. Each jump was a gamble. The vast land and weather upheavals that had followed the long night of skydark had changed the geography of the old Americas irrevocably, so there was always the risk that they would land in a mat-trans chamber that was crushed beneath tons of rock, or flooded so that they would instantly drown.

So far they had been lucky—either that, or the automatic default settings on the remaining working comps would only transfer at random to redoubts where the chambers were still able to receive. That wasn’t something that Ryan could assume.

But the redoubts offered them a way to move vast distances across the scorched earth. However, everything had its price. Although it gave them an advantage that few, if any, could share, it also carried its own cost. The jumps were a nightmare experience where every atom of their being was torn apart, flung across vast distances and then reassembled. It made them all feel as though they had been ripped slowly apart, each sinew stretched to snapping point, all organs squeezed tightly in an iron grip…and gave them a worse hangover and comedown than the strongest shine or jolt.

Some of the group adapted to the jump better than others, and it seemed to be reliant on something genetic rather than just fitness and strength. Although the fact that Ryan was always the first to stir after a jump could lead to that initial conclusion, for he was the most obviously physically fit specimen in the group. He stood more than six feet tall, with a mane of waving, dark curls that framed a square-jawed and handsome face, that was only somewhat marred by the patch that covered the empty left eye socket. The livid and puckered scar that ran down his cheek bore testimony to the manner in which the eye had been lost. The one-eyed man was a fighting machine, his whipcord musculature developed by years of action.

Hearing a murmur behind him as he crouched over Doc, Ryan turned to find his son, Dean, regaining consciousness and rising to his feet. Just as his father had checked the razor-sharp panga strapped to his thigh and the 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 pistol in its holster when he came to, settling the Steyr SSG-70 across his shoulder, so Dean automatically checked and holstered the 9 mm Browning Hi-Power that was his preferred blaster. Apart from the fact that he was still in possession of both eyes, Dean could have been a mirror image of his father. Now twelve years old, the boy was developing into a fighting machine that would one day be the equal of his father.

Ryan looked away from his son and back to the prone old man.

“Doc looks bad,” Dean remarked, joining his father.

Ryan nodded. “Mildred should be conscious soon. Mebbe she’ll be able to do something.”

Krysty Wroth was also beginning to stir from the stupor brought on by the mat-trans jump. She groaned as she raised her head, her long fur coat wrapped around her shapely and finely muscled body, tendrils of her Titian red, sentient hair, uncurling from around her head and flowing freely as she felt the danger recede. Krysty had the ability to sense danger, and her mutie senses were trusted by Ryan in tight spots.

The woman rose to her feet, her blue, silver-tipped Western boots clicking on the smooth floor of the chamber. Without pausing, she checked her .38-caliber Model 640 Smith & Wesson, holstering it as she strode the short distance to where Ryan and Dean were hunched over Doc.

By now, Dr. Mildred Wyeth was coming around, as was J. B. Dix. As usual, the pair made the jump side by side, their hands touching. Neither was the type to show his or her emotions, but each would put the other before him or herself.

Mildred’s dark skin was nearly ashen with the shock of the jump, her breathing labored but regular.

“Shit, I never even used to get hangovers that bad,” she muttered, her beaded plaits shaking around her downturned face as she tried to clear her head. “That’s the worst jump I can remember for a long, long time.”

“Uh-huh, I’ll second that,” J.B. whispered hoarsely from beside her. His lean, almost gaunt face was set in an expression of intense discomfort, broken only by the out-of-focus set of his eyes. His bony hand reached for the wire-rimmed spectacles he kept securely in his jacket pocket during jumps. Placing them on the bridge of his nose, he blinked as his still clouded eyes adjusted to consciousness. Where Mildred carried a generous covering of flesh on her frame, J.B. was wiry and thin, belying his strength and stamina. Known as the Armorer, J.B. had met Ryan when they traveled together as sec men for the Trader, the legendary figure who was foremost among the breed of traveling merchants who kept alive what little economy and trade could exist, sniffing out caches of predark supplies and using them for barter.

J.B. was an armorer by trade and natural inclination, his fascination and thirst for knowledge on all weapons matched only by his ability to get the best out of even the most neglected and damaged blaster. He rose to his feet, dusting himself down out of habit, even though there was no dust in the static-free atmosphere of the chamber. Bending, he picked his battered fedora from the floor and placed it on his head, not feeling properly dressed until he had done that. He then checked his Tekna knife, the M-4000 and Uzi that were his preferred blasters and trusted companions.

Beside him, Mildred had also risen to her feet and checked her own blaster, the .38-caliber Czech-made ZKR 551 target pistol. Although not the most powerful of the handblasters that had run through the hands of the companions during their time roaming the Deathlands, it suited Mildred perfectly, being the model she had used in her days as an Olympic-grade shooter.

For Mildred was, like Doc Tanner, a relic of the past who should not, by rights, have been alive in the Deathlands. She had spent Christmas of the year 2000 in hospital for routine surgery on a suspected ovarian cyst. While under anesthetic, Mildred had developed complications that saw her vital signs sinking fast with no apparent way to revive her. She was cryogenically frozen until this seemingly minor problem could be solved.

Ironically, it was the act of dying that kept her alive, for while she was frozen the superpowers executed the military and nuclear maneuvers preceded skydark and the resultant nuclear winter that created the landscape of the Deathlands.

When Ryan and his traveling companions stumbled across the facility where her frozen body was stored and managed to successfully revive her, she found herself in an incomprehensibly different world to the one she had left behind.

Unlike Doc—whose body and mind had been prematurely aged and ripped apart as a result of being flung through time—Mildred had kept a grasp on reality and adapted well to the harsh new world. Her medical skills were sometimes blunted by the lack of resources, but she had proved herself invaluable to the band of travelers by her ability to apply her knowledge in even the most exceptional circumstances.

Mildred’s first move after clearing her head from the aftereffects of the jump was to join Ryan and Krysty over Doc’s slumped body.

“You know that one day this is going to be once too often for the old fool,” she commented as she thumbed back Doc’s flickering eyelid to get a better look at his wildly rolling eye. She felt his sweat-plastered forehead. “Not too much of a temperature, though,” she said, almost to herself. Rummaging in the pockets of her jacket, she produced a battered stethoscope that had been salvaged from the ruined medical bay of a previous redoubt. She opened Doc’s shirt, roaming the end of the stethoscope across his chest until she picked up his heart rate. It was fluttering and irregular, but even as she listened it began to settle into a more regular rhythm.

“Hell, I think the old buzzard might even last this one out,” she said to the others, a smile flickering at the corners of her mouth.

“Mebbe he’ll even outlive Jak—well, at this rate it seems likely,” Dean commented wryly as he glanced over his shoulder to where Jak Lauren had risen to his knees before retching and puking a thin string of bile onto the chamber floor.

Jak looked tiny swathed in his multipatched camou jacket, and cut a pathetic figure as he coughed and spit out the last of the vomit, spasms jolting his body. But this impression was belied by the fact that the teenager—an albino from the swamps of the bayou whose pale face was covered in the scars of innumerable battles—was a born hunter and fighter, his slight frame almost entirely consisting of wiry muscle stretched over his skeleton.

Despite the vast reserves of strength that he held within his wiry frame, Jak was the member of the group who was hit hardest by the mat-trans jumps, always taking the longest to recover, his senses reeling and his body racked by pain.

“Right now be glad see Doc last longer.” Jak coughed in between gulping down breaths of air, his red eyes beginning to focus on the rest of the group. “Feel like already long chilled,” he added with a rare grin.

As Jak pulled himself to his feet, and Dean and Mildred helped a dazed and confused Doc to his feet, Ryan, J.B. and Krysty moved across to the chamber door. This particular chamber had teal-blue armaglass walls; most of the chambers they had encountered, whatever the color of the armaglass, had been opaque. And although that was a good thing because it meant that they couldn’t be observed from the outside, it also meant that exiting from each chamber and into the redoubt was fraught with the possibility of being open to an attack they couldn’t predict.

Ryan paused by the door and looked at Krysty. Her Titian mane was flowing free, not curling close to her head.

“Feels good to me, lover,” she said simply.

Ryan spared her a smile, his single eye sparkling. “Mebbe I’d gathered that,” he replied, indicating her free-flowing tresses.

“So take it yellow but still alert?” the Armorer interjected. It was a question, as Ryan was the undisputed leader—there had to be one in any group if they were to survive—but J.B. was as experienced as his old friend, and just needed the one-eyed warrior to confirm what he suspected he was thinking.

Ryan nodded. “Check the others. Are we ready?”

He looked over the rest of his people. Dean was now alert and ready for action, while Doc was recovering rapidly, attended by Mildred.

The younger Cawdor nodded assent at his readiness. Mildred muttered a swift yes before looking at Doc, who also nodded assent, leaning heavily on his lion’s-head sword stick but looking stronger with each passing second. Already he had the unwieldy but effective LeMat pistol sitting easily against the heel of his hand.

That just left Jak. The albino was resilient and strong, and he had already moved over to where Ryan, Krysty and J.B. were poised by the chamber door, his .357 Magnum Colt Python already in his hand.

“Ready,” he said shortly.

Ryan nodded and reached out for the handle on the interior of the door. It was a simple handle, seemingly too simple a lock mechanism for something that would seal a doorway against the outside world while matter transfer took place within.

Ryan’s muscles tensed perceptibly in the fraction of a second it took for the door to swing open, his easy stance replaced by a steeled spring that took him into the anteroom outside. J.B. swung into position behind him, his Uzi up and ready, covering his friend.

Ryan took in his surroundings with one swift circular glance, years of training in the art of survival meaning that every detail of the area was imprinted on his sole retina.

The comp control room was deserted, with the remaining comp consoles covered in a thin layer of dust despite the gentle hum of the air-conditioning, suggesting that the plant that cleaned the air was at least still partly working.

Ryan rolled, clutching the Steyr by stock and barrel, shielding it from harm with his body as he came up on his feet, hunkered behind one of the consoles that provided scant cover.

He looked around. The area outside the chamber was lifeless and empty, and it seemed apparent that there was little, if any, life in this part of the redoubt. It was an impression gained from the slight buildup of dust and dirt by the sec door leading to the corridor beyond.

“Safe down here,” Ryan called, rising and noting in passing that the light on top of the sec camera that stood in the top left corner of the arena was dead, “and we can’t be seen by anyone.”

Relaxed but with a residue of tension that never left them, the rest of the group exited the mat-trans chamber and dispersed into the comp control room. Dean and Krysty, who both had gained an interest in old tech, went over to the still blinking console that controlled the mat-trans chamber.

“Any idea where we landed?” Krysty murmured to Dean.

The youth shook his head. “We need some kind of direction indicator, mebbe a map with it. I guess it’s down to J.B. and the stars.”

The Armorer expressed his acknowledgment of Dean’s comment with a twitch of the lips that may have been a smile or a grimace. It was true that often the only way they knew what part of the Deathlands they had landed in was when the Armorer was able to get outside the redoubt to take a reading on his minisextant from the sky above. It was ironic that, with all the old tech around them, it was something so simple and ancient was the most reliable location finder.

It also amused the J.B. for the simple reason that, before they could get the reading, they would have to reach the surface. And that, as they all knew from past experience, wasn’t a foregone conclusion by any means.

“May I suggest, my dear Ryan, that if the redoubt is in all probability empty, then we try to make a rapid if secured progress and ascertain if there are any supplies to be salvaged?”

“Why don’t you just say let’s look to see if we can sleep and eat?” Mildred added.

Ryan suppressed a good-humored smile. The opportunity to relax enough to make jokes was rare, and if the atmosphere could be maintained by circumstances, then it would benefit them all to rest and eat before taking up their guard once more and taking a look at the outside. And there was only one way to do that.

“Okay, people,” the one-eyed man said, “let’s take a look outside. Once we get the door open, then it’s triple red. Let’s keep it tight until we know what we’re dealing with.”

In many ways it was unnecessary for Ryan to say this, as they had stayed alive for so long by following their instincts and taking such actions as a matter of course; but by saying it, Ryan helped focus himself and his companions on the task ahead.

Forming up as Ryan punched in the sec code to open the automatic door, Krysty was next in line behind the one-eyed man. Jak came next, with Doc sandwiched between the albino and Dean. Mildred fell into line ahead of J.B., the Armorer bringing up the rear. All seven were silent, their senses tuning into the stillness and quiet around as they psyched themselves up to spot the slightest change. All stood easily, yet the observant eye could see that each had shifted his or her balance in such a way that everyone was poised for the optimum reaction.

The door hissed slightly as the mechanism opened, leading onto the corridor beyond.

From their long experience, they knew that the vast majority of redoubts that housed mat-trans chambers were built on the same basic plan, which put them on one of the lower levels. Many redoubts were buried underground, running sometimes hundreds of feet deep. Sometimes, the entrances could be found built into the sides of mountains or hills, or cut into the sides of valleys, so that they were sheltered but still at ground level. The armory and general sec supplies and barrack facilities were on the higher levels, with a quicker access to the entrances, while the middle levels usually housed sleeping and recreational facilities, including the mess halls and kitchens.

All levels were accessed by the corridors, each of which was equipped with a series of sec doors that could seal off sections when required. The levels themselves were accessed by a series of large elevators, some of which were designed for large numbers of personnel, and some of which could take equipment and smaller vehicles. A series of stairwells served as an emergency backup for possible power or circuit failure on the elevators. These stairwells were accessed by sec doors, and were of bare concrete and sparsely lit. The elevators had sec risks for the companions, but from bitter experience they were all aware that the stairwells were traps from which there was less chance of escape.

So they would always choose the elevators if possible. Thus it was that Ryan led his people toward the elevator. All his senses and instincts were telling him that the redoubt was deserted. There was no sign of life anywhere on this level, and indeed it seemed that the level had seen no activity since skydark. And experience told him that, if the redoubt was in any way occupied, sheer curiosity and the search for jack and loot to trade would have led the occupants down to this level.

The companions were relaxed but still alert as they reached the end of the corridor and the dulled metal doors that closed over the elevator shaft.

Ryan studied the electronic panel. “Looks like it’s still working,” he muttered. “Let’s see….”

The one-eyed man tapped the call button, and the friends stood in complete silence, listening intently for the gentle purr of the mechanism as it approached.

“Sounds like the shaft’s unaffected,” J.B. mused.

The elevator reached their level, a muted shuddering announcing its halt. As the doors opened smoothly onto the empty car, Jak said, “Mebbe luck change…for once.”

Chapter Two

With a muted hiss, the doors of the elevator opened onto the next level. Ryan and J.B. were poised with blasters ready, their companions ready to move to defensive positions and return fire. Their condition-red stance was met with an almost mocking silence. The corridor ahead of them was as deserted as the one they had just left.

Both Ryan and the Armorer relaxed, the one-eyed warrior turning to the others as he did so.

“Looks like this one has never been breached,” he said. “Guess we should take a look around and see if they left anything behind before they evacuated.”

“If we’re lucky,” Mildred added, “there should be food and medical supplies.”

“Hot pipe, more self-heats,” Dean commented. The tinned units of food that had been standard military issue were usually somewhat tasteless, but they did have the advantage of staying edible for a long time, were easy to transport and had the extra advantage their name suggested of being able to be heated in the pack at any time due to the self-heat mechanism they contained.

Which didn’t stop them being a last-ditch emergency.

“Never mind, young Dean,” Doc commented as he strode out into the corridor, stretching limbs cramped and weary from the jump. “Perhaps we can find some other comestibles in the kitchen areas that can be used for a more, ah, passable repast before we avail ourselves of the showers—always assuming that the water supply is still constant and the heating works in this relic of the past.”

“You’re something of a relic yourself, you old buzzard, so watch what you’re dismissing,” Mildred cut in. “Besides, why do you always talk so much?”

“Just because we live in times of darkness and despair, my dear Doctor, there is no need for us to stop exercising our intellect and imagination—as I’m sure you are too well aware, if you can desist from the desire to extract humor from me at every opportunity…” His tone was harsh, but there was a twinkle in his still clear eyes.

“Let’s stop arguing with each other and just get to business,” Ryan suggested.

“Yeah. Could use sleep,” Jak commented.

The Armorer nodded. “And I’d like to check out the armory as soon as possible. If they left this place more or less intact…” He let his words trail off, but the implication was obvious. If the facilities on this level were as complete as its desertion would suggest, then there was a chance that the armory would also have been left in a fully stocked condition. Not only would this give them all a chance to replenish ammo stocks and perhaps pick new weapons, but it would also satisfy his desire to examine another fully-stocked predark arms dump.

“But first things first,” Krysty remarked, pulling off her fur coat, which was proving stifling in the temperature-regulated atmosphere. “Shower, food, sleep.”

“Go to it,” Ryan replied, indicating that she should take the lead now that they were as sure as was possible of the redoubt’s safety.

While Krysty headed for the showers, Mildred made her way to the medical bay. As the only member of the group with pre-dark medical training, she was always keen to loot as many drugs, dressings and medical supplies as possible from a still stocked redoubt, filling the capacious pockets of her jacket with as much as it was possible for her to carry. Many of the drugs had been vacuum sealed with the intention of lasting for a long duration underground, and if she was able to find undamaged stocks of drugs, then it was a bonus that could prove invaluable in the outside world.

Leaving Krysty to some privacy in the showers, Jak, Dean and Doc made their way to the kitchens to see what they could find. Jak detoured to check out the dorms, his mind fixed on some much needed rest, and a deep sleep untroubled by the need to stay on the alert.

J.B. hung back to speak to Ryan.

“This looks good. Food, showers, beds and no intruders.”

“Yeah. A bit too fireblasted good.”

“You thinking what I am?” the Armorer queried.

Ryan nodded. “You find a redoubt this good, chances are that’s because no one can get in.”

“So what do you reckon it’ll be? The upper levels are trashed in some way and impassable—”

“Or the outside is too hostile to support any life.”

“Or has blocked us in,” the Armorer finished.

Ryan twitched a half smile. “There’s always another jump if we can’t get out. Mebbe enough here to let us stay and rest up a few days before.”

The Armorer assented. “We’re okay for now. You go see Krysty. I’ll see if Millie needs any help.”

“That’s only because you don’t want to venture near the kitchens if Dean and Doc are in action,” Ryan said wryly.

J.B. didn’t answer, only remarking after a pause, “I’ll resist the urge to go straight to the armory,” before heading off to the medical bay.

Ryan watched his longtime friend disappear around the bend in the corridor before shaking his head and allowing himself a smile.

“NEED A HAND?”

Mildred stopped rummaging through the cupboard. “You could get the rest of these things open and see if there’s anything worth saving,” she replied.

J.B. moved across the large bay, past the row of couches that were designed for those who needed to be laid out while being treated, and joined Mildred at the far side of the room. He opened the cupboard door. “Looks like you hit the jackpot,” he noted, casting an eye over the medical supplies within.

Mildred agreed and enlisted his help to empty the cupboards onto the couches, so that she could more easily survey the cupboard’s contents. It took them several trips to empty the array of cupboards.

J.B. stood back and let Mildred take the lead. He knew a little about medical supplies from his time with Trader. The old man had insisted that all his people know the rudiments of first aid, and there had also been a thriving trade in the few medical supplies and drugs that could be salvaged and used for barter and trade. But Mildred was the expert.

Her plaits swinging around her face, masking her expression as she muttered to herself, Mildred sifted through the vacuum packs of drugs and dressings. Some would be of little use on the outside, and those that were for minor ailments, such as the inoculations against the flu virus, were dismissed. People had to be hardier, and there was too little space for those drugs that couldn’t be termed lifesaving. Besides, many of the smaller bugs and viruses from predark times had mutated into something that could no longer be combated by the old drug.

The medicated dressings were always useful, and Mildred had to decide which to take on the matter of size: were they easy to stash in her jacket? Would they be too small to be of any practical use? Taking all the larger ones was no answer, as once the seal was broken they were rendered useless and no longer sterile, so it would all too easy to waste so much.

J.B. waited patiently while Mildred made her choices and placed them carefully in the pockets and bags sewn into the coat, turning it from just a protective garment into a walking repository.

When she had finished, Mildred looked up at the silent Armorer. “Guess this’ll be you tomorrow when you’re in the armory, right?”

J.B. nodded. “Different thing, same purpose,” he said simply.

RYAN DECIDED to shower before eating. Like J.B., he couldn’t face the thought of Dean and Doc in the kitchens before relaxing with a hot shower—assuming that the water-heating system was still operative.

The one-eyed warrior made his way to the shower rooms, noting the sound of running water as he drew near. It was unlikely that Krysty would be showering under a cold stream, so he felt assured that the heating system was fine.

Entering the communal area where Krysty’s clothes lay discarded, Ryan picked a towel from the pile that was stacked in an open cupboard space. He shook it vigorously, and a fine rain of dust was released into the air. It was an indication of the gradual failure of the air-conditioning, but was nowhere near enough for any of them to worry about.

“Come on in, lover, the water’s fine,” Krysty called from in the shower.

“How did you know it’s me?” Ryan replied, as he left the towel on the bench that ran around the walls and began to strip off his clothing, putting his blasters down first and unstrapping the panga from its sheath along his thigh.

“Who else would it be?” Krysty replied with a laugh in her voice.

“That’s a fair point,” Ryan answered as he stepped into the showers. A long stall with several showerheads supplying the hot water, some of them were partially stoppered with scale and so spluttered intermittently, while the majority sent streams of almost scalding water onto the one-eyed warrior’s leathery skin. He shuddered involuntarily as the pinpoint needles of hot water hit his aching muscles, releasing the tension within them. Steam swathed their bodies as he moved closer to Krysty.

“Feels good to get the sweat and dirt off, doesn’t it?” she said, her mass of Titian hair plastered to her scalp by the running water, her strongly muscled but still shapely frame glistening with the wet.

“Feels better to get the tightness out of my muscles and feel them relax,” Ryan replied, turning his face into the jet stream of one showerhead and feeling it run down his face, his good eye closed against it, the water pounding a tattoo on his eyelid. “We need this now and again. Need this respite, this chance to relax and rest up.”

“Need it for a lot of things,” Krysty whispered, moving closer to him.

Ryan opened his eye and found himself looking directly into Krysty’s green eyes, opening directly into her inner being.

Ryan Cawdor was a man of action, a practical man not given to flights of fancy, but he knew that Krysty’s mutie genes gave her abilities that were beyond everyday comprehension. One of the things Ryan had read in the fragments of old texts that he was sometimes lucky enough to find was something about eyes being “windows to the soul.” It was a notion mostly too fanciful for the bleak realities of the Deathlands.

But looking at Krysty, Ryan could believe that it was sometimes so, and that she could somehow see into him—whether he wanted her to or not.

And right then he wanted her to.

JAK HAD CHECKED the dorms and found an array of beds and also a supply of fresh clothing, untouched since before the nukecaust. Satisfied that they could all rest comfortably and refresh some items of clothing, he made his way back to the kitchens, his guts grumbling, reminding him that it was too long since he had last eaten.

The four corners of the kitchens—large enough and well enough supplied to feed a full complement of personnel for an indefinite period in the event of a nukecaust—had been scoured. There was a plentiful supply of self-heats and bottled water, which would be plundered by all the companions in order to carry emergency supplies with them on a trek into the unknown. There were also other foodstuffs which, if not perishable, had a shelf life that would see them stale. Unwilling to use any of the self-heats, which were barely palatable, Doc and Dean had tried to concoct something edible from what was available to them. Neither was a particularly good cook, but between them they hoped to pull together a meal that would be both nourishing and, at least in some degree, palatable.

Despite the fact that the meal was a bizarre stew of vacuum-packed rice, frozen vegetables of indeterminate origin and a meat substitute made presentable by a liberal use of spices and seasoning, it was good enough to keep the rest of the party happy. Even Jak, who had a propensity to complain about any food that came his way, was able to enjoy the meal.

With the medical supplies sorted by Mildred, and the self-heats and water sorted by Dean and Doc, it just left the armory to be dealt with.

“I’d like to get a look right now,” J.B. said, stretching, “but I figure it’d be better if I showered and slept first.”

Mildred looked at the Armorer in amazement. “John, I never thought I’d hear you say that. Maybe I should look at you in a professional capacity.”

“That what you call it?” Jak commented.

At that they parted company. Jak, Dean and Doc took showers and slept. Mildred and J.B. cleaned up before locating their own private room. Ryan and Krysty had already located theirs, and took the rare opportunity to make love before sleep engulfed them.

IT WAS MORNING when they all awoke. Although the redoubts were artificially lit and could change from day to night at the flick of a switch, the companions had their wrist chrons to help them keep track of time in the outside world. They knew it was midmorning by the time they had risen and breakfasted on the remains of the edible food left from the night before. After finishing, they made their way to the armory.

“Need plas-ex more than anything else except spare ammo for the blasters,” J.B. commented as he punched in the sec code for the door, which opened with a purr. “But if we find any blasters that are more powerful and mebbe in better condition than ours, we should load up on what we can carry.”

As the door opened and the extent of the armory became clear, the normally taciturn Armorer pursed his lips and blew out a low whistle.

“Bet this hasn’t seen the light of day for a century,” he said with a touch of genuine awe in his voice as he almost crept into the room, surveying the boxes of oiled rifles, the machine blasters still cased in their constituent parts, the handblasters that hung on the walls alongside the rows of grens and the boxes of plas-ex that were stored in one corner.

Ryan stepped into the room behind him. “I know you could spend days looking over this, but I reckon that mebbe we should get up top as soon as possible, see if we can get out and find out where the fire-blasted hell we’ve landed up this time.”

J.B., snapped out of his reverie by his friend’s words, nodded. “Yep, reckon so. Let’s get loaded up here…”

While the companions searched the armory for spare ammo to fit their respective blasters, J.B. restocked the body belts and pouches in which he carried enough grens and plas-ex to start and finish a small war, which sometimes he’d had to do.

Ryan allowed him some time to pore over the weapons after the others had finished restocking their own supplies of ammo. Although there was a plentiful supply and variety of blasters, there was nothing that hadn’t been seen before, and they each individually elected to stick with the weapons they knew and trusted.

The one-eyed warrior gave J.B. extra time not just because he knew the Armorer was like a kid in a prenuke candy store with a fully stocked armory, but also because it gave J.B. time to asses the full range of the armory and pick out the weaponry with the maximum possible efficiency and use.

Eventually, he finished his task and turned to Ryan Cawdor.

“Okay, let’s see where we are,” he said simply.

Chapter Three

The sec door leading onto the outside creaked and groaned as it began to open.

“Think it’ll make it?” Dean asked his father.

Ryan shrugged. “Should do. The corridors haven’t been twisted enough to warp the frame. Mebbe some plas-ex if it gets stuck?” The last was directed, as a question, at J.B.

The Armorer paused, squinting at the slowly rising door and at the surrounding tunnel. Ryan was right to a certain extent. After leaving the armory and making their way up to the top level, they had stopped and looked at each level. It seemed that there had been some earth movement within the redoubt, but not enough to cause any collapse in the tunneling, nor to cause any breaches or rifts within the redoubt. But right up at the top level, it seemed as though something had pushed against the entrance, causing the door to warp slightly, and making its ascent difficult. It wasn’t from the inside.

“Plas-ex could be tricky,” J.B. said at length. “There’s nothing inside, so mebbe the problem is on the outside. And if we’ve got a real heavy rockfall, then the blast could get directed inward.”

Ryan listened to J.B., trusting his judgment on the use of any weapons, and nodded as the Armorer concluded. “Okay, we’ll see how far it rises first.”

There was a tense silence among the companions, relieved only by the glimpse of daylight that pierced needlelike through the widening gap, casting a swath of light across the mouth of the tunnel that was blinding in comparison to the muted electric light inside the redoubt.

“No rockfall,” Jak murmured, “so why door stick?”

“That is a thorny question, my dear Jak,” Doc replied. “A multitude of possibilities await, and yet how can we be prepared for any unless we prepare for all?”

“Hot pipe, Doc, you talk some real shit sometimes,” Dean muttered, standing beside the older man.

Doc smiled ironically. “A trifle crudely put, young Dean, but you do have a point.”

“Well, I’d say we’re about to find out just exactly what that problem may be—out of all the myriad of possibilities, of course,” Krysty interjected with a touch of sarcasm.

“One thing for sure, it was no rockfall,” Mildred added, taking in the panorama before them.

The door of the redoubt was now fully retracted. Before them was nothing more than an azure-blue sky, with little sign of any chem clouds within the area framed by the portal. A couple of large, dark birds circled at a height that would appear to have been several hundred feet, indulging in a complex series of maneuvers that presaged a savage battle.

The sun was a burning orange globe surrounded by a haze that betrayed the fact that, although there were no chem clouds in sight, the atmosphere was still tainted by the remnants of the nukecaust. The swirling, skeetering figures of the large birds flew across the globe, lost momentarily in the light, far too bright to stare into. In less than the blink of an eye they were out the other side, and the ritual dance had ended.

The bird at the front turned, whirling suddenly in the air in a tight movement that swung him around to face the oncoming assailant. But his attempt to catch the following bird was doomed. The second bird ducked beneath the first bird as it turned, moving underneath, then jabbing swiftly and sharply, its beak tearing at the momentarily exposed belly of the leading bird.

The squawk of surprise and pain, harsh and guttural with an undertone of fear, carried across the still morning air, reaching them as the first bird began to fall, the slightest darkness in the sky betraying a rain of blood as something vital was torn.

The fight was that swift, that sudden, that savage. As the first bird fell, the second bird wheeled in the sky with an almost deceptive leisure, heading for its falling opponent. It swooped beneath the plummeting bird, jabbing at it so savagely that it changed the course of its fall. It followed it down, slowing the momentum of the fall by pushing it from side to side, sometimes jabbing so savagely and with such force that it propelled the now chilled bird upward for the slightest moment. The corpse, which had given one last harsh cry, was now disintegrating as it fell, ripped apart by the attack of its rival.

“Welcome back to the real world,” Mildred murmured.

Ryan walked to the lip of the tunnel and peered over the edge. The tunnels and corridors on the top level of a redoubt always sloped upward, but suddenly he realized that the angle of ascent had been slightly more than usual. Looking out over the land, he could see that it was a bare desert, with very little scrub cover, and the reddish-brown earth dry and loose. It was also some fifty feet below them, with a rock face that fell away from the mouth of the tunnel.

J.B. joined him, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose as he looked down.

“So it was a rockfall, but not how either of us reckoned,” he observed.

The one-eyed warrior assented. “Looks like this redoubt was another one set into a mountainside, and when some of that mountain moved—” he gestured to emphasize his point “—the redoubt moved up, and the road in moved down.”

“Still, it’s not much of a climb. Even Doc should be able to make it.”

“Please do not mock me, John Barrymore,” Doc said, eyebrow raised as he peered over the Armorer’s shoulder. “It would seem to be a simple descent.”

“Probably, Doc, but we don’t know how safe it is yet. If the rocks have settled loosely, then…” Ryan gestured how the rocks would part.

“Then we are buzzard fodder,” Doc finished. “A fair point.”

“Exactly.” Ryan turned to the others. “We’ll take it one at a time. I’ll go first, then Krysty, Jak, Mildred, Dean, and Doc. J.B. last.”

“Sounds fine to me,” Mildred stated, staring down at the steep slope of loose rocks. “Sooner I get down the better.”

“Then let’s get to it,” Ryan stated.

The one-eyed warrior stepped off the lip of the redoubt entrance and onto the rocks, pressing hard with the ball of his foot to test the security of each rock before resting his weight.

He turned and faced the rocks, using his hands to steady himself. The slope was deceptive. Although the descent seemed steep, the slope of the rocks was less sheer, the outcrops providing plenty in the way of foot and handholds. The problems arose from the fact that the rock face was composed of many individual rocks rather than one slab. And until the descent had been made, there was no way of knowing how secure were the actual rocks.

Ryan took the descent slowly, searching for handholds and testing each rock. His feet stamped rocks, knocking some away from the face, landing firmly on others and using them to define a path. He was watched intently from above by the others, all of them making a note of the path for when they would come to use it. This was made easier by the falling rocks that had been rejected as footholds, which almost outlined Ryan’s route.

It was slow but not difficult, and Ryan’s progress was relatively easy. Despite that, he had to stop several times to wipe the sweat from his brow before it ran into his good eye, the occasional drop stinging his eyeball and making him blink furiously. He felt a sheen of sweat on his body, soaking into his clothes, and wondered how hot it would get at the height of the day.

THE DESERT SEEMED to stretch indefinitely in every direction, and although they had good water supplies Ryan would feel happier when J.B. had taken some readings and worked out roughly where they were. They knew the characteristics of the Deathlands better than most trading parties, having traversed great distances with the help of the mat-trans units.

If it was going to be this hot, then they would need to preserve water and work out the direction in which a ville or some kind of vegetation would be likely.

All of this crossed Ryan’s mind while the greater part of his attention was focused on his feet and hands. Any attack from around them—natural or otherwise—didn’t bother him as he knew J.B. would be on triple red while he was so exposed. Neither did he notice how far he had reached, so it was a pleasant surprise when one foot, groping for a rock, hit dirt.

Ryan stood at the bottom of the rock face, looking up at the path he had created. Krysty had already begun her descent, following his trail. She was swifter, having only to follow the path rather than create it. She set foot on the bottom and turned to the one-eyed warrior.

“So far, so good, lover,” she said simply. Ryan nodded, watching Jak begin his descent. The rest of the companions followed in rapid succession. J.B. immediately took readings with his minisextant.

“So?” the one-eyed warrior asked.

“Some old stamping ground,” J.B. said, squinting at the sun. “Not quite what they used to call New Mexico, but near enough. Kind of near to where they had that old fort—the Almo?”

“The Alamo,” Mildred corrected. “Then we’re in what used to be Texas.”

“Yeah, which I guess means it’s gonna get hotter,” J.B. rejoined.

“So we need to find some shelter, and soon,” Ryan stated. “But where? That’s the big question.”

Chapter Four

Ryan had felt that they were in a no-win situation as they set out away from the remains of the hillside where the entrance to the redoubt had been situated. It was likely that their explorations would turn up nothing of interest, yet their boundless curiosity compelled the companions to investigate the area around the redoubts they jumped to.

Ryan consulted the Armorer about their position.

“We face the hill, it’s east. Away from it’s west. The rest is easy enough to guess.”

So, with a rough bearing and nothing in view of the horizon, the one-eyed warrior had to decide which way to lead his people.

“Jak, you know the old New Mexico better than all of us, and I guess that’s the nearest point we’ve traveled before. Much chance of us hitting hospitable land within a few days?”

The albino shrugged. “Depend where are now.”

“And we really don’t want to be out in this any longer than need be,” Krysty added, voicing all their thoughts as she gazed up toward the burning sun. Already, just standing in the glare, they were beginning to sweat valuable salt and water.

“My dear Ryan, I know that this is a far different land from the one in which I was raised,” Doc began, “but I feel that perhaps yourself and the inestimable John Barrymore perhaps underestimate your own knowledge of the land. After all, you did spend a fair proportion of your youth traversing its length and breadth with Trader, did you not?”

J.B. shook his head. “Trader went where the jack was, which meant villes, right? These areas…”

“But surely,” Doc persisted, “you must have traveled across such areas in order to reach the areas of population?”

Ryan shook his head, sucking his breath through his teeth. “I appreciate what you’re saying, Doc, but J.B.’s right. Trader used to say that every stretch of land that was empty was another tank of gas wasted. He used other traders’ mistakes, things he picked up in bars, to find ways to scout around areas like this and pick up jack and trade along the way.”

Dean’s brow furrowed. “Yeah, but if he knew to avoid the areas, he had to know where they were, so he must have had some kind of map.”

J.B. smiled. It looked foreign on his usually implacable countenance. “Trader kept most things in his head. Made him more valuable to anyone alive than dead. The biggest jack of all is knowing, he said to me once. I didn’t understand then, but now…”

“All of which gets us nowhere,” Mildred said. “Look, Dean’s got a point. Did you ever trade in these areas?”

Ryan and J.B. thought long and hard. Finally, the one-eyed warrior spoke. “Yeah, I see what you mean. J.B., can you give me a rough idea of how many miles to where Jak’s old place is?”

The Armorer shrugged and took out his minisextant. Using the position of the sun, time of day and his knowledge of prior readings in other places, J.B. calculated that the ranch Jak had briefly called home, before his wife and daughter were brutally slain and he rejoined the group, was some six days away in a southwesterly direction.

Ryan greeted the knowledge with a grunt. He squinted his single piercing blue eye to the horizon in a southeastern direction.

“I remember Trader taking us somewhere over there. I also remember, from what he said, that this is a fireblasted big desert we’ve landed in…but I figure we should hit a group of villes about three days away. There are some old blacktops that still run through parts of here, as well. If we hit one of those, we might hit an old gas station for shelter at night.”

“It’s our best option,” J.B. commented.

Mildred fixed him with a stare. “John, it’s our only option,” she said steadily.

“’Fraid so,” Ryan said. “Either that or risk another jump.”

Jak shook his head. “Not want do that soon. Rather fry.”

But there was no way he could have anticipated the intense heat of the day.

It was the perpetual dilemma of traveling across scorched earth. Did they try to keep up a rapid pace, hoping that their water would see them through as they lost more water from exertion, or did they keep to a slower pace, and hope that they could fend off sunstroke at the height of the day?

And then there were the nights…Desert nights could kill. They chilled to the bone and caused hypothermia to set in and take effect long before the morning sun could warm frozen flesh. In many ways, the nights were more dangerous, more insidious. During the days, temporary shelters could be constructed, any scrub used to give some kind of shade during rest periods. At first the cool of evening would be welcome, lulling the unsuspecting into a false sense of security before the bitter cold took hold. The scrub was even more vital at these times, as a source of firewood.

But there was little scrub and little chance to shelter. The chem-scoured and rad-blasted skies above them afforded no respite from the burning ultraviolet of the sun, and the deep freeze of the moon. Time began to lose meaning as there were no landmarks along the way, no visual relief from the unrelenting monotony of the desert, spreading all around in brownish, red dust that soaked up the rays of the sun and beat them back out. The heat burned the soles of their feet even through their heavy boots, radiating through the heavy clothes they used to cover the ground when they rested in whatever shade they could find or manufacture from their surroundings.

J.B. had taken regular readings to try to keep them on track. It would have been too easy to end up wandering in circles in a place where there were few landmarks. They kept heading in the direction they had chosen, but by the time they reached the remains of the road even Ryan began to wonder if somehow they had wandered off track and would end up frying in the desert dirt.

Doc was the worst hit. His time-trawl-ravaged body needed water at regular intervals, intervals that began to grow shorter with even greater regularity. He began to lean heavily on the lion’s-head swords-tick that also doubled as a cane, and Dean hung back to aid him.

“Don’t worry, Doc, it’ll soon be better,” he said at one point.

Doc’s answer chilled him. He fixed him with a blank-eyed stare and said, “Jolyon, you’ve come back to me at last. How is my dear Emily? And Rachel? Is my hell finally over?”

Dean didn’t know what to say, but his eye met Mildred’s, and he could see that the woman was concerned about the way that Doc was deteriorating.

In ordinary circumstances, the water supplies they had taken from the redoubt would have lasted them more than a week. But here, the sun was hotter, the lack of cloud cover and the way in which the baking earth absorbed then released the heat made the journey almost intolerable. Even when they stopped and tried to raise some kind of rudimentary shelter, it was almost impossible to escape the heat. All the companions were sweating out more water and salt than they could afford to lose, and when the cold night drew in they huddled around the small fires they could build and filled up on the self-heats. As most of these were soup or stew-based foods, they supplied some more water for the dehydrated bodies, as well as supplementing the salt tablets that Mildred had plundered from the medical stores.

So the road, when it came, was met with a sense of elation—although all were too hot and exhausted to express this in any other way than a massed sigh of relief, shot through with the uneasy knowledge that even though they had reached the road Ryan had gambled upon, there was still the dilemma of choosing which way to follow the cracked blacktop.

The shimmering surface of the road, the aged macadam almost melting in the intense heat, was visible from a few hundred yards away, and the companions exchanged glances as they, as one, noted the landmark for which they had been searching. They were too exhausted to speak until they had tramped the last few yards to the edge of the road, where they drew to a halt.

“Why don’t I feel excited that we’re actually here?” Krysty said in a hoarse, cracked voice. Her sweat-plastered red hair clung to her head, the long ends clinging like tendrils to her neck and shoulders. Her fine skin was covered with a layer of dust, and her lips—as cracked as her voice—betrayed her attempts to conserve the rapidly shrinking water supply.

“Because this is still only the beginning,” Ryan replied in a voice that had been reduced by thirst to a dry whisper. “First we work out which way to go, and then we hope we hit some kind of old wag stop, or mebbe a ville if we’re lucky.”

“I think we’ve got a better chance of a wag stop,” Mildred commented. “Who the hell could keep a ville going out here?” she added, turning her head slowly, sun-blasted muscles aching, to survey the long blank stretch of the road in each direction.

“Mebbe just over the horizon.” Dean shrugged, following Mildred’s stare.

J.B. said nothing. He took out his minisextant and took a reading to confirm their position, then extrapolated it to an overall direction for the road.

“I’d say that we head due west from here, following the road,” he said in a voice made drier than his usual tones by the heat and attempts to save his water. “I’d reckon that going east just leads us back.”

Ryan assented. “If I remember right, then there were some villes headed that way. We should rest up a few minutes, mebbe take some water and a salt tablet, then head that way,” he said softly, lifting his arm to indicate a westerly direction. Even lifting his arm made the muscles ache, the buildup of lactic acid unable to dissipate with his dehydrated state. His skin was burning, but covering up made him sweat too much, losing more fluid and salt. Like all of them, he was trying to balance perspiration with the dangers of sunburn and sunstroke.

But it was Jak who was having the greatest problem. As an albino, he had no pigment in his skin to combat the harsh rays of the sun, and his face was almost scarlet, the scars that crisscrossed his countenance standing out lividly. His arms were red and raw, and the amount of sun he was absorbing was making him susceptible to sunstroke, and he was swaying dangerously as they stood still.

Mildred had some sunblock originally designed for desert maneuvers by the predark military that she had taken from the redoubt, and she offered one of the tubes to Jak.

“Not doing good,” he said in a distant voice as he took the tube from her.

“It’s all there is,” Mildred replied. She watched as he applied some of the cream to his raw skin. They had all used the block, but she had saved extra for Jak, only too aware of the problems he was left open to by his albino condition.

Ryan noted the concern in her voice. “How much of that do we have left?” he asked.

Mildred shrugged. “Not enough. Maybe two, three days’ worth. It’s like the water and the self-heats. This damn sun is making us use more than we could have estimated.”

Ryan nodded but said nothing. It was a cause for some concern that all their supplies, taken from a rich source, were being used far too fast. He squinted his good eye and took a long, hard look down the road in the direction in which they would travel. The horizon shimmered, but even in the haze there was little sign of even a hallucination that could be construed as shelter.

“Okay. Let’s just see….”

THEY SPENT the rest of the day making slow, agonizing progress along the old blacktop. The surface was too broken and scarred to use. The uneven tarmac could cause a sprained ankle or worse, and the sticky, almost melting surface would slow progress and take too much energy as it dragged and pulled at their aching leg muscles.

The sun, with an almost interminable slowness, gradually sank. Night fell, and the sudden drop in temperature caused them to shiver uncontrollably, making it hard when they stopped to light a fire from the sparse brush, using a flare to ignite the blaze and add a burst of heat. The self-heats were difficult to handle with their spasms, and precious water was spilled.

“We have to try to sleep,” Mildred said when they had finished eating. “Try to get as much rest as possible.”

“If I sleep, then I fear that I may never wake,” Doc said in a sudden burst of lucidity. “If this is life, and nothing more than a waking dream,” he added as an afterthought.

“Nightmare, more like,” Dean said, his voice betraying a slide into sleep.

“Have to get through this,” Ryan said as they huddled together to keep warm and preserve valuable body heat. “There could be a ville just over the horizon.”

“Or a wag stop,” J.B. added. “Anything…”

THE RISING SUN WOKE them next morning, the lack of atmospheric cover causing the ultraviolet rays to immediately scald them.

“Another day, another adventure,” Mildred muttered sarcastically as she stirred beneath her jacket. “I just hope that we find something today….” She let the sentence drift, not wanting to add that they didn’t have the water and salt—even as carefully rationed as they dared—to last much beyond.

They began the slow march to the west, trudging heavily along the side of the road. The sun beat down steadily and with an ever growing intensity, and after a few hours it was all any of them could do to keep their heads up. Ryan took the point, J.B. the rear, and they straggled out into a line with Dean propping up Doc in the middle, while Krysty and Jak followed close to the one-eyed warrior, with Mildred staying at the rear with the Armorer.

They couldn’t bear to look up in the glare of the sun, and their aching neck muscles couldn’t support them in their attempt to stare ahead, so it was the sound that came to them first, floating across the empty air and breaking the intense concentration that enabled them to keep one foot going in front of the other.

It was Jak, with his heightened senses that made him such a keen hunter, who heard it first. Despite his fatigue, he snapped his head upright, red eyes burning brighter than the bloated orb above them.

“People.”

Ryan stopped, the line closing behind him as they banded together, coming to a halt. Jak’s statement, and Ryan’s sudden halt, instantly broke them from their own personal reveries. They all listened intently, staring as they did so into the shimmering haze that became more indistinct as it approached the horizon.

There was no mistaking the sound. Voices—at least four men, maybe more. And the sounds of hammering and some kind of work activity.

Under the intense light, it was harder to make out the view, but there seemed to be some kind of building moving in and out of the edges of the haze, standing at the side of the old blacktop. It was too indistinct to see, but it seemed to be obvious that this was where the sounds emanated.

“A wag stop, and people,” Ryan husked, his voice almost destroyed by the dry heat.

“I don’t believe it, even though I see it,” Mildred said, even the husky and croaking tone of her voice failing to hide her elation.

“Let’s get to it,” Dean said, “before we can’t make it.”

J.B. was, as ever, the voice of caution. “Don’t know that they’re friendly, though,” he pointed out.

Ryan nodded. “Good point. Triple red, but try not to let it show. We’ll be a shock for them, coming out of nowhere…No need to spook them more by looking ready for a firefight.” He coughed as he finished the speech, his voice almost wasted by the amount of words he had to use.

He indicated that they move rather than speak, and as the companions moved forward they all checked their blasters and brought them to hand. The instincts that had kept them alive for so long enabled them to smoothly bring their favored blasters to hand and chamber shells in case they should need to fire on the human beings ahead—the first they had seen for days, the ones who could save them if they had water and food, and the ones who could give them shelter…if they were friendly. And there was no guarantee of that in the Deathlands. No, not at all.

The last thousand yards would be the hardest.

IT WAS A SMALL cinder-built blockhouse, the adjunct to an old truck stop that had long since perished. The raised floor and foundations were all that remained, and it was on these remains that the men had their camp while they worked on the blockhouse. The roof had been removed and an upper story added. It was made of old sheets of corrugated iron, insulated against the sun by loose sheets of an aluminum foil, which deflected the blazing sun from the iron, which would otherwise trap and magnify the intensity of its heat. The roof had been replaced on top of this, its sloping tiles giving the appearance that with one chem storm they could slide off at a bizarre angle.

It was to this problem that the work party was now addressing itself. To one side of the blockhouse lay an abandoned site that marked an extension to the existing building, while the eight-strong work party was either on the roof itself, or was swarming up and down the three ladders that stood at the sides of the building unattached to the new extension.

There were four more men: three were sec men, heavily built and wearing broad-brimmed hats to protect them from the worst ravages of the heat. They stood at points that covered the area surrounding the building. All held blasters, muzzles pointing down. Two had Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless rifles, while the third was carrying an Uzi. All weapons were in fairly good condition.

The fourth man stood out among the others. Standing at somewhere around six-four or six-five, he was sparsely clad, with a loose cotton shirt open to the waist, loose cotton pants that ended around his shins and leather thonged sandals. He was slim, with the loose clothing hiding most of his body, but the open shirt revealed a tightly muscled chest and stomach. He had long, raven-black hair that fell in a single thick plait almost to his waist, the plait shot through with threads of silver-gray that betrayed the encroaching middle age of its owner. On his head was perched a black stovepipe hat with a few oily feathers from a desert buzzard attached to the crown. The brim shaded his eyes, throwing them into shadow, and making the aquiline sweep of his nose and the thin, impassive set of his lips the only clues to his mood. He had walnut-brown skin, tanned and textured like supple leather, and his coloring betrayed his ancient Native American roots.

Yet despite all this, the most striking thing about him was that he carried no blaster. Even the eight-man team swarming over the roof had handblasters holstered and attached to their clothing. But this man, standing as still and silent as a ghost in the burning desert air, carried only a long-bladed knife of his own making, with a finely honed blade and an intricately carved handle that appeared to be of bone.

The sec man covering the area to the east turned and hollered across the space between himself and the silent giant.

“Yo! Crow, y’all ain’t gonna believe this, but there’s a whole bunch of people walkin’ out of the desert.”

The giant said nothing, but the shout led to hilarity from the men working on the roof.

“Shee-it, you been chasing them desert mushrooms again, Petey?” yelled a thickset, heavily scarred man with sandy hair thinning on his scalp, not pausing in his task of rapidly resetting the thick asphalt tiles as he spoke.

“Shut up, Hal,” the sec man countered. “Just take a look-see.”

The sandy-haired man stopped momentarily and looked up. Squinting into the desert haze, he could make out the straggling line of the companions as they approached slowly.

“Well, I take it all back, Petey,” he said. “Where in hell did they all come from?” He looked down to where the impassive giant stood. “Hey, Crow, y’all hear that? And they got blasters out,” he added.

There was a pause—not long enough to denote that the giant was ignoring the exchange, but long enough to impose his sense of authority. Something that was emphasized by the manner of his reply.

“I heard. They’ll all be exhausted. Must’ve walked for days, no matter which way they come. And they don’t know if we’re friendly folk. They’ll be too exhausted to be a threat.”

His voice was quiet and low, almost a rumbling whisper that carried across the hot desert air despite the almost inaudible volume.

It was a voice that commanded respect.

“What you wantin’ me to do about them?” Petey asked.

The giant spoke again without turning. “Let them come. Keep your blaster ready but down, like theirs.”

“How the hell you know that?” Petey asked, looking back at the approaching line to double-check.

There was the ghost of a shrug from the giant, but his voice was still impassive. “’Cause we’re as suspicious of them as they are of us. Stands to reason. We don’t spook them, they’ll be fine.”

“’Kay, you’re the boss,” Petey said, turning back to them.

“Sure am—and you boys on the roof remember,” the giant continued, indicating by tone alone that he had noted the way in which the work crew had stopped in order to watch the approaching line.

The hardness in his tone made them start work with alacrity.

“THEY GOING TO BE a problem?” J.B. whispered, his voice barely audible.

“Looks like they’re wary rather than hostile,” Ryan called over his shoulder.

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Krysty added. “I don’t think any of us are up to a firefight right now.”

“I’ll second that,” Mildred commented.

Ryan continued on, his people following, until he was a few hundred yards from the waiting sec man. Noting that the large and muscular sec man had his blaster held across his chest but with the barrel pointing down, Ryan took one hand from his Steyr and waved slowly and carefully. He called out in a hoarse and cracked voice that barely carried across the space between them.

“Hey! We’ve been in the desert for three days. We don’t want a firefight, just a little water and direction to the nearest ville….” His voice petered out into a cough, the sheer number of words too much for his damaged and dry throat.

“Okay,” the sec man replied, his voice strong and clear across the distance. “Y’all just put those blasters down and leave them before you come any farther, and we’ll be just fine.”

Ryan stopped his people and held ground at the distance. Coughing heavily and hawking a dry phlegm ball that made it hard to speak, he croaked, “’Fraid we can’t do that, friend. I appreciate you don’t want strangers coming on you with blasters out, but we can’t just leave ourselves defenseless.”

The sec man didn’t reply at first. The one-eyed man’s refusal, albeit in a nonthreatening manner, left him nonplussed. Ryan took note of the work party’s leadership order by the way in which the sec man looked toward the tall, dark figure who had been standing all the while with his back to them.

The giant turned slowly and took in the companions with a long, slow gaze. Despite the distance, and despite the fact that the giant’s eyes were ostensibly hidden by the shade cast from the brim of his hat, Ryan felt his eye and those of the giant meet. He felt that he was being assessed and hadn’t been found wanting.

The giant spoke to both the sec man and the companions, and the quiet voice carried across the still desert air.

“It’s okay, Petey. You people can keep your blasters, just holster them and don’t move too fast. The sec boys here can be a mite jumpy.”

Ryan paused for a second, then assented. “Okay, we’ll do that,” he said simply, swinging the Steyr across his shoulder. Behind him, the rest of the companions holstered their blasters. Ryan waited until they had all complied, then turned back. “Okay to come on now?” he asked.

The giant nodded. It was the slightest of movements, but against the stillness of his stance was an almost shocking movement. “I appreciate your caution,” he added cryptically.

As they began to move the last hundred yards to the cinder-block house, the workers on and around the roof stopped to watch. Sensing that they wouldn’t work properly until their curiosity was satisfied, Crow called a halt to their work and the beginning of a rest break.

The men had all descended and were in the shade of a camp built to one side of the newly begun extension, the tentlike structure forming a shelter from the blazing sun. They were drinking water from large drums that had been insulated to keep them cool.

Crow strode away from the men and toward the oncoming group. His stride was lengthy, his gait loping with an easy animal grace. Ryan noted that the man carried no blaster, but was sure from the look of him that he would be no easy competition.

The giant Native American held out his hand to Ryan.

“They call me Crow, and I’m the foreman here. You screw with me and I’ll chill you before you know what’s happened. But you treat me and my boys with respect, and we’ll help you if we can.”

Ryan took the proffered hand, noting the strong but easy grip. In his weakened condition, Crow could easily have ground his knuckles to dust, but he didn’t take the advantage. Ryan immediately felt sure that he could trust the man not to chill them out of hand. But he also knew that the Native American would take any precaution necessary to defend his position.

“Name’s Ryan,” the one-eyed warrior returned in a painful whisper, then naming all his party.

Crow introduced his party by name. Apart from Petey, the other sec men were Coburn and Bronson. Turning to where the work party were gathered, he pointed out the others as Hal, Ed, Mikey, Molloy, Tilson, Rysh, Hay and Emerson. To the tired and dehydrated Ryan, the members of the work party were hard to distinguish from one another. They were all muscular, scarred and tanned. They all looked like men who had built muscle from hard work and could more than hold their own in hand-to-hand combat. He also noted that they all had blasters on their hips.

In their current condition, his people would stand no chance if they really were in any danger…and despite the fact that he trusted Crow not to chill them, there was something that niggled at him.

“So how come you people end up out here in the middle of nowhere, looking like buzzard food?” the bronzed giant asked.

“Damn wag we traded for jack and food back in New Mexico,” J.B. said before Ryan had a chance to answer. “Tank was rigged so that they could fool us on the gas, and the engine bearings were shot to shit ’cause the oil was full of crap. Had to leave the bastard thing or die with it.”

Ryan smiled inwardly at the sudden outburst from the taciturn Armorer. It was a good cover story, as all of them knew the importance of keeping the mattrans system as secret as possible. His own cover story would have been similar, but he was surprised at the sudden acting talent shown by his old friend.

Crow settled a level gaze on J.B., trying to assess his story.

“Seems to me that mebbe you’re not that stupe,” he said finally, “cause y’all seem too battle-wise to be taken in that easily. On the other hand, I guess we all get screwed over sometimes. So where were you headed?”

“Anywhere,” Ryan answered. “We don’t belong to any particular ville, and I guess we’re just looking for somewhere. We were headed in this direction when we got stranded, so I figured that we’d just keep going. There was nothing for several days back, so we just kept going forward. Bastard of a place to get stranded.”

Crow nodded slowly. “Uh-huh. Just unlikely to see anyone coming out of that desert alive. There are old stories from way back beyond skydark about that place among my people. Travelers don’t come back.”

“Mebbe we just got lucky,” Ryan said evenly.

Crow nodded again. “Mebbe. And mebbe the best thing you can do right now is get some salt and water into your bodies, mebbe some rest.”

Ryan assented. “If you don’t take offence, we’ll take our rest in shifts. You can never be too careful, right?” And he fixed the giant with his piercing blue eye.

Crow returned the stare evenly. “I can see that. Join the others and eat. Take water. We have a supply delivered from Salvation every two days.”

“Salvation?”

“The ville we come from.” With which he led them toward the sheltered area where the workers were drinking and eating from a pot of some indistinct stew that bubbled over a small heater. “Please, partake with us,” he said, indicating the food and water, and also deflecting any further inquiries about Salvation.

The companions took dishes from a small table, and also plastic cups that were beaten but well scrubbed, despite the dust that seemed to drift into the shelter from the air outside. They took food from the pot and water from the insulated tank.

“Water running low,” Jak remarked to Crow as he scooped a cupful. “You sure this okay?”

“Delivery’s due,” the Native American answered simply.

Jak nodded and joined the others as they sat and ate between mouthfuls of water that tasted sweeter and more intoxicating than any brew that they may ever encounter.

“I fear first watch may be beyond me,” Doc said weakly. “In point of fact, I have a notion that I may not even reach the end of my meal.”

“It’s okay, Doc, I’ll cover you,” Dean said.

“I don’t think any of us are up to it,” Ryan husked, his throat raw despite the soothing coolness of the water. “But anyway, I’ll take first.”

“I’ll go second,” J.B. put in.

“Play it by ear from there,” Mildred added, addressing Ryan. “I don’t know if you could really plan a watch right now, as some of us may be more heat affected than others.”

Ryan agreed, casting a glance at Jak, who was beginning to fade into semiconsciousness even as he tried to eat and drink.

“Reckon as you’re right,” he said. But even as he spoke, he became aware of a leaden feel in his limbs that hadn’t been there before—a numbness that was beginning to spread. His speech had been slurred, which it hadn’t been before, despite his fatigue.

He looked at Krysty, but the Titian-haired beauty was already beginning to fall into the same state as Jak. Changing the direction of his gaze, which in itself seemed to drag, as though he were moving in heavy, deep water, he could see that Doc had slumped into unconsciousness.

“Dark night,” he heard J.B. curse. Slowly, like dragging himself through molten lead—an impression heightened by the burning fatigue in his limbs—he looked to the Armorer.

J.B. had noticed Jak slide into unconsciousness and Dean begin to shake his head slowly, as though trying to clear it. The boy tried to rise to his feet, but slumped forward as his legs failed him.

“Tranks…in the…in the water…or the food…” Mildred stammered, her plaits shaking in futile motion as she tried to clear her head.

“Fireblast, Crow,” Ryan cursed. “Why did you lie?”

The giant Native American shrugged. “Got the boys to slip something into what was left of the water. Couldn’t take any chances. You’d do the same,” he added.

Ryan knew the foreman was right, and he was more angry at himself than at the giant. He should have known this would happen. The only excuse he could give to himself was that his acute sense of danger, and his survival instincts, had been dulled by the dehydration and the effects of the sun.

But that would be no consolation if they were chilled.

Ryan managed to stagger to his feet. From the corner of his rapidly blurring vision he could see the workmen going for the blasters they had holstered, but they were stayed by the subtlest of hand gestures from their foreman.

“Leave him,” Crow said softly. “He has every right to be pissed. But he’s no danger to us now.”

The words became strung out and distorted as the drug took effect. Ryan swayed on his feet, trying to reach for his SIG-Sauer. Every movement seemed to take an eternity, and his numbed hand failed to respond, even though his arm did move, albeit at an incredibly slow rate. He could see J.B. fumble with his Uzi, falling forward to the ground before the blaster was fully in his hands.

The world narrowed and darkened around Ryan. The one thing that cut through his befuddled mind was why they hadn’t just been chilled there and then? What did Crow intend for them?

As the blackness descended, even that question became an irrelevancy that drifted into the void.

Chapter Five

The pounding in his head made J.B. open his eyes. He knew that the light pouring in would hurt like the darkest night, but he figured that if he could see who the rad-blasted hell was pounding his skull he could at least fight back against them.

The outside world was a blur as he squinted and gradually opened his eyes, but at least he was soon reassured of the fact that he wasn’t under attack. There were two shapes in front of him that stood out from the light around—one was stocky and light, the other tall, thin and dark. Neither was in an attacking position, as both were several feet away from him.

The Armorer furrowed his brow in concentration as he tried to recall what had happened. Everything was clear up until the time that they had been fed and watered by the workers they had stumbled upon. After that, there was only drowsiness, the insanity of the nightmares that troubled him and the thumping at the forefront of his skull.

J.B. groaned, and not only from the pain. It suddenly occurred to him that all of them had fallen for the oldest trick going. While low and in need of water and salt, unable to really focus or concentrate, they had been disarmed by the apparent friendliness of the workers and hadn’t questioned the willingness of the party to share valuable water.

But why weren’t they chilled?

His speculations were halted by Crow’s low yet penetrating voice.

“Is that a groan because you’re hurting, or because you were duped?”

The Armorer groped instinctively in his breast pocket for his spectacles and registered surprise that they had been carefully placed—obviously with some thought—where he usually kept them when they weren’t being worn.

As he pushed them up the bridge of his nose, he noticed that Crow was smiling, almost to himself.

“Better now you can see? You’re the first to come around, so I guess you didn’t drink as much as the others. And I wouldn’t try that yet, either,” the foreman added as J.B. tried to raise himself to his feet, finding that he hadn’t recovered enough equilibrium to do more than make the covered shelter spin dizzyingly around his head. J.B. slunk to the floor again.

“I guess I should mention now that we stripped you of all your weapons when you were unconscious,” Crow continued, “just in case you get a little angry when you try and check for them. Left you all the medical supplies, though. I’d love to know where you got them, but I guess you’ll tell us if you want. You’re certainly a mysterious group, and if you thought I bought that story about the wag, then you didn’t reckon much to me—”

“Why not? I’d believe it,” J.B. interjected, tacitly acknowledging his lie.

Crow laughed, a deep, rumbling sound. “Sure, you would. So would some of these boys. But they—and you—weren’t bought up on the legends of this area before skydark.”

J.B. gestured his acknowledgment, then asked, “So why aren’t we chilled? That’d be the obvious thing.”

“If that was the idea, then I tell you, my friend, that you wouldn’t have got within a hundred yards of this site. I would’ve let the sec boys cut you down afore you had the chance to raise your blasters. And let’s face it, you were in no shape.”

“Okay,” J.B. said, rubbing his aching forehead and looking at the ground intently as he tried to focus his spinning vision. “So what do you want from us?”

Crow shrugged. “Don’t want anything from you, really. I meant what I said. I don’t want to have to chill you, and I guess if I’m honest I didn’t like having to trick you. But you’ve got to understand that I know jackshit about you, and I couldn’t let you walk around with all that hardware. And let’s face it, there was no way on this or any other world that you were ever going to give them up without a struggle. By the by, my friend, I take it from the amount of ammo, plas-ex, grens and blaster power that we took from you that you’re the dude who keeps this outfit in working order when it comes to the hardware?”

J.B. nodded. “You could say that.”

“Then you’re a talented man, my friend, and I’d sure as shit hate to be on the opposite side to you in a war. I take it that the one-eyed dude is your leader?”

“Kind of. We don’t call him that, and he doesn’t call him that, but it amounts to the same thing.”

“Then I guess you’re a formidable outfit, and I’d sure as hell hate you to take against us just because I was kind of cautious. I’d be grateful if you’d explain that to him when he comes around.”

“Why don’t you do that?”

“’Cause I’ve got work to do. That’s why we’re here. I’ll be back later, but in the meantime my friend Petey here will be just outside, and the kind of jack he’s on to do a good job, then he may be just a little trigger-happy if you do something rash. We’ve got a lot to do, and not a lot of time, so the bonuses are good and we can’t afford interference.”

“Just what is it that you are doing here?” the Armorer asked as Crow turned to leave.

The foreman didn’t pause, just said, “I ain’t going to waste breath. I’ll be back here when the day’s work is done, and when you’re all in a fit state to listen. Use the food and water,” he added, gesturing to the barrel and table in the corner of the shelter. “That ain’t drugged, take my word…there’s no need for it, now.”

J.B. watched him go, followed by Petey, who stopped just beyond the last sheet of material covering the shelter. The Armorer then turned his gaze to his still unconscious companions.

It was going to be a long day.

RYAN WAS THE FIRST of the others to come to, and the one-eyed warrior experienced much the same symptoms as the Armorer.

“Fireblast, what the rad-blasted hell hit me?” he complained, raising his head and opening his eye to be greeted by his old friend standing over him.

“A heavy-duty trank,” the Armorer replied without humor, “and a hell of a shock if you look for any weapons.” He went on to explain the situation as quickly and concisely as possible, before Ryan had the chance to check for his blasters or his trusty panga and the red mist of fury descended.

“Guess we’ll just have to trust what he says,” Ryan mused when J.B. had finished telling his tale. “I knew there was something about him that set me on edge, even though most of my instincts said to go with him.”

“Figure you were right in the long run,” the Armorer said. “I can see his point.”

“Yeah, and just mebbe I would have done the same thing,” Ryan added.

The two friends and longtime traveling companions decided that there was nothing to do but sit back and wait to see what happened when the day’s work was done and Crow returned to them. In the meantime, they had to wait for the rest of their party to awaken.

The amount of time it took for the others to come around depended on their individual physical condition and how much of the water they had drunk. They were all extremely fit, even Doc. Despite the ravages of his enforced time travels, which had made his late-thirties frame seem several decades older, Doc was still extremely fit. There was no way he would have survived if not. His mind was another matter, and how it would react to this shock, when he had already been delirious from the desert trek, was something that they had to ponder. Also, he had been the most dehydrated, and Mildred had made sure that he had drunk a larger amount of the water than any of the other companions.

Jak was next to awake, and he reacted to the drug and the enforced sleep in much the same way as he did to a mat-trans jump, by vomiting heavily. But he recovered his strength, and was aided by Mildred, who came around next and was able to feed him a solution from one of the packs taken from the medical bay at the redoubt which quelled his stomach spasms.

Krysty surfaced and showed her strength by gracefully uncoiling from her sleeping position and rising in a fluid movement, standing upright and still while her balance and equilibrium settled.

Dean took some time, as he had drunk copiously, and Doc wasn’t far behind. But while Dean was fine, Doc was another matter. Mildred crouched over the prone old man as he began to regain consciousness, muttering and twitching as though in the throes of a fit. His eyes stared blankly from his head, and he failed to respond to any stimulus.

“Is there anything that we can do?” Ryan asked Mildred.

She looked up and shook her head, the grim set of her face showing her concern. “Not that I can think of. Trouble is, I just don’t know what’s going on up here,” she said, tapping her head to indicate Doc’s mind. “Whatever else, it’s just more shit for him to deal with.”

Mildred and Krysty made Doc as comfortable as possible, and while the others paced the confines of the shelter, careful not to attract the attention of the sec man outside but feeling confined like caged animals, Doc responded to the cold compresses applied to his fevered brow and the sedative injection Mildred gave him. It was one of the few sealed needles that Mildred had salvaged from the medical bay, and as she was usually loath to use such items, she wasn’t surprised at the quizzical look Krysty gave her when she broke the seal on the packet.

“I know, I know. I’m not that keen, either,” she said in answer to the unspoken question, “but I don’t know what else to do. The trank has unbalanced him even more than the desert, and this is so mild that it should just keep him under long enough to get more rest. There’s not a lot else that could work,” she added, shrugging.

And sometimes desperate measures could be the most effective, for after a couple more hours of deeper rest, Doc suddenly opened his eyes and said in a clear, firm voice, “I feel as if I have been asleep for a thousand years, and have awakened to the strangest feeling that I have said that, or something akin to it, quite recently.” He raised himself on one elbow. “Now, would it be possible for someone to tell me what on earth is going on, and how we got to be here, for I have to confess that I have not the slightest idea of where, or indeed how.”

The relief Ryan felt at Doc’s recovery was shown by the smile that flickered at the corners of his mouth as he replied, “We can fill you in part of the way, Doc, but for some of it we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Until when?”

Ryan looked out of the shelter and at the darkening sky as twilight closed in on the old wag stop.

“Not long, Doc. Not long at all.”

THE WORKERS CONTINUED to labor until the light was almost gone and the temperature had dropped from the blistering heat of the day to the bone-numbing cold of night. Petey had come into the shelter, cradling his H&K, and lit a number of oil lamps that were suspended from the poles that also held up the protective sheeting.

“How long do you usually work?” Ryan asked the sec man.

Petey shrugged, keeping a wary eye on the group but showing no great hostility. “Depends on the light, but it’s more or less around this time. We get about fourteen hours of work a day.”

Dean whistled. “That’s pretty intensive.”

“Eh?” The sec man paused, staring at the boy.

“I mean it’s a lot of time and doesn’t give you much chance to rest,” Dean explained.

Petey shrugged again. “Sooner we get done, sooner we get paid, and the more jack we get. Baron Silas is generous if you play straight and work hard. Mean-eyed fucker if you don’t.”

“Baron Silas who?” J.B. asked disingenuously.

“You don’t catch me out that easily,” the sec man said with a wry grin. “Crow’ll let you know all you need when he comes in. And that won’t be too long, so you just be patient,” he added, leaving them alone.

The sec man’s assumption was correct. It was less than half an hour before Crow led the workforce into the shelter.

“Glad to see you’re all awake and well. I’d guess that the enforced rest may even have done some good after your long journey,” he directed at them before turning to his own men.

“Bronson, you, Rysh and Hal are on sec duty tonight.”

The three men took food and water from the supplies for the sec men who remained on guard duty, taking them their meal before settling to their own. While they did this, the remaining workers took their own meal, discussing with one another the day’s work and their individual performances. The companions, listening to them, all noted that the main topic of conversation was getting the work finished and collecting the large bonus for a quick finish; the men were graphic about the manner in which they would spend the bonus in a gaudy house, casting glances at Krysty and Mildred as they did so.

The two women were the last people to be worried and shocked by such talk, which was obviously the intention, and Ryan noted that Crow was watching their reaction. The foreman did nothing to halt such talk, although he was silent and impassive as he took his meal. The one-eyed warrior guessed that the foreman said nothing as he wanted to test both the resiliency of the women, and the ability of their male companions to keep their peace. A swift glance at his team showed Ryan that they wouldn’t be found wanting.

The tone of the conversation continued when Hal, Rysh and Bronson returned from their task and also began to eat. It continued until Crow had finished his repast, at which point he decided that enough was enough.

“I hope,” he said, his quiet and deep voice cutting through the talk and silencing the others despite its lack of volume, and directing his comments at the companions, “that you have also partaken of our food and water?”

Ryan assented. “We appreciate you sharing your supplies with us. And I can appreciate why you did what you did. I figure that mebbe I can trust you people not to chill us—otherwise you would have done it already. What I’m wondering now is what you want from us, and who you are and where you come from. Oh yeah, and why you’re working out here in the middle of nowhere on an old wag stop.”

Crow allowed a rare touch of emotion—a barely contained humor—to creep into his tone. “Sure there’s nothing else?”

“Not yet,” the one-eyed warrior countered.

“Okay, let’s take it from the top,” Crow began. “We all come from a ville called Salvation, which lies about three days from here along the remains of the old road. Salvation is run by Baron Silas Hunter, who’s the man who pays our jack.”

“Good jack, by the sound of it,” J.B. interjected.

“Certainly is, especially if we finish on schedule or ahead.”

“Finish what?”

“This way station. There are a number of old wag stops along this route that date back to beyond skydark, and our job—and the job of other teams like ours—is to get the way stations ready for when the well is open again. ’Cause Salvation is built around the remains of an old oil well, and the refinery that went along with it. Baron Silas’s folks have always been around these parts, and they’ve spent a long, long time trying to get the well and refinery going.”

“And he has?” Ryan asked. When Crow affirmed this, Ryan whistled. “Fresh oil, refined—that’s big jack. How did he manage to get the thing going?”

“Baron Silas has a deal going with the barons of all the villes in this region. They’ve bankrolled him in return for a share in the fuel he produces. That’s real power. And they need stops along the road to pick up and rest up on their way to and from the well. So here we are. Most of us working here are from Salvation. That’s not so on other stops. Guess you could say part of the payment is in manpower.”

All Ryan’s people exchanged looks. Like anyone in the Deathlands, they knew how important fuel for wags would be. There were few vehicles left, and those that had survived were always short of fuel. To have such a source would give whoever possessed it, or formed an alliance, immense power.

“So where do we come into it?” Ryan asked finally.

“You don’t as such,” Crow replied. “You just happened to walk in. You can either walk away and take your chances, or you can join us and work. If we get this finished all the quicker because of you, then I guess we can spare a little jack. Plus you get your weapons back and mebbe the chance to see Salvation.”

“Mebbe?”

Crow shrugged. “Where you go after we finish is up to you. What do you say?”

Ryan considered the options. The desert offered nothing but chilling. They couldn’t get their weapons back from the workers by force, as they were unarmed and outnumbered, and just mebbe there would be something of use to them in Salvation. Baron Silas Hunter sounded as though he could be interesting.

“Tell you what,” the one-eyed warrior said eventually, “you take us to Salvation when we finish this job and give us back our weapons, and we’ll gladly work our way. Hard work is no problem, but that desert is a bastard.”

Crow nodded. “I figured you’d see it that way.”

Chapter Six

The work party rose with the sun, and at first light the next morning they began to stir under the covers that protected them from both the sun and the chilling night. Crow was one of the first to awake, as though snapped awake by the first glimmerings of the day.

The giant rose to his feet and looked at the sprawled figures around, huddled under blankets or coats. He noted that Krysty and Ryan were sleeping close together, and likewise J.B. and Mildred. He then glanced over his still slumbering workers and remembered the comments of the night before. Although it didn’t show on his impassive visage, he figured that he would have to watch closely for any trouble, as it was almost certain to arise.

The foreman began to stir his workforce awake, and after he was sure they were rising for the day’s work, he turned to the companions.

“I see you’re already awake,” he said generally, as they were all rising.

“My dear sir, although you are as silent as a spirit walking, the combined noise of any amount of people within such an enclosed space would make further slumber an impossibility.”

“Don’t mind Doc,” Dean added, “he never likes to use one word where a hundred could be.”

The Native American allowed himself the flicker of a smile. “Betrays a good brain,” he said. “I just hope he can work as well as he can talk.”

“Despite my apparent age, I shall not be found wanting,” Doc uttered.

The foreman nodded. “Okay, eat, take some water and join the others outside. You have twenty minutes,” he added.

Playing it the way it felt, the companions allowed the workmen to wash themselves down and freshen up before taking their morning meal. It meant hanging around and taking the stares directed at the women, but in their current position it was best to play possum.

“Hey, you think those gaudies gonna get their skin on show when they work?” Hal asked Emerson.

Emerson, whose dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, and whose beard was flecked with gray, studied Mildred and Krysty through hooded eyes.

“Hell, I hope so,” he drawled. “Them bein’ two colors’ll make it look real nice.”

He directed his next comment to the men in Ryan’s party. “Hey, I bet you boys have some fun, there.”

Jak’s red eyes pierced through the heavily set workman. “More fun in chilling scum,” he said quietly.

The albino teenager was nearly a full foot smaller than the workman, was unarmed and was slight in build compared to the burly Emerson. But still, there was something cold and diamond hard about the youth that made the workman look away without saying anything further.

An uneasy silence hung over the room after the workforce had finished and walked out into the sunlight, leaving the companions alone.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” Ryan said slowly. “Not easy at all.”

WITH THE ROOF NOW securely in place, and the newly finished two-story blockhouse in place, the remaining task was to build the extension onto the existing structure. The new wag stop would then have storage space for fuel, food and water, as well as accommodation for a regular attendant and a few travelers.

The foundation for the extension had been completed, and the task in front of the workforce and the companions was to construct the one-story building and insulate the interior walls of the storage space, in order that any fire in the interior could be contained, and an exterior fire wouldn’t be able to penetrate the walls and ignite the fuel stores.

Wags from Salvation had carried out the building materials needed—a salvaged amalgam of brick, cinder block, sheets of metal and some sand and cement that could be mixed with some of the precious water in order to meld the whole together. The insulating materials were salvaged from old buildings, and were carefully wrapped to prevent the asbestos in the mix from spreading dust into the air.

Crow directed the companions to their tasks. Ryan and J.B. were to help lay the cinder-block outer walls, while Dean, Jak and Doc were to assist in the building of the interior walls and the installation of the insulation. Mildred and Krysty were spared the heavier work, and were to mix the concrete. When J.B. asked how Baron Silas Hunter had amassed an amount of something that was simply no longer made, Crow informed him that one of the villes that were investing in the baron’s scheme had an old cement works within its boundaries, and the supplies for all the wag stops on the route had been plundered from those bags that hadn’t been split or had leaked over the past century, and had so gone hard.

“It was tight, but I reckon as how we’ve got enough,” the foreman said thoughtfully.

“You’re an expert?” J.B. asked.

“I make sure I know what’s going on if I’m to do my job properly,” Crow replied. “I went to the works to assess what there was, and checked up in some old predark building manuals that Baron Silas had acquired.

“He’s a thorough man,” Crow added simply, but heavy with a hidden threat.

The Native American’s putting Mildred and Krysty onto the concrete mixing wasn’t a gesture toward their sex, but rather a shrewd move, which Ryan appreciated, to forestall the need for them to shed too many clothes through exertion in the heat. If they stayed fully clothed and away from the main body of the workers, then there would be less chance of conflict between Ryan’s people and Crow’s workforce.

But it wasn’t to be that easy.

“SAY, BOY, have you learned what it’s like to be a man yet?” Rysh asked Dean as they laid the internal brick wall separating the fuel store from the food and water store.

Dean stopped with a brick poised over a line of mortar.

“Just what exactly do you mean?” he asked cautiously. “I’ve chilled my fair share and traveled a long way.”

Rysh shrugged. “Chilling’s just a way of life, boy. I mean, have you ever had any pussy?”

Dean blushed despite himself, and felt the eyes of both Rysh and Emerson on him. The heavyset, dark workman pushed the point home.

“Hellfire, Rysh, just look at the boy, blushing hot as a forest fire. He’s been there with them.”

“And I’ll bet they’re good—they’d have to be with those five boys to keep happy,” Rysh added, winking.

“Dunno about the old guy.” Emerson chuckled. “He don’t look like he could keep it up enough.”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Dean said, keeping his voice as even as possible, “but it’s not going to work. There’s no way that you’ll get anything out of Krysty and Mildred, and we sure as hell aren’t going to fight you over it.”

“You saying you a virgin, then, boy?” Emerson goaded.

“That’s my business,” Dean replied shortly. “But it’s not like that with Mildred and Krysty.”

Rysh looked closely at Dean’s hand, at how the brick was trembling in the boy’s grip. He decided to push it further. “I reckon as how those gaudies could pull a train for us when we finish the wag stop. What do you think, Emerson?”

The comment fulfilled its purpose. Dean swung around, the brick still in his grasp and following through in a roundhouse punch that would have caved in Rysh’s skull at the temple—if the workman hadn’t been prepared for the action, and had already moved away from the arc of the blow.

As one man sidestepped, so the other moved in. Emerson ducked underneath and aimed a giant fist at Dean’s solar plexus, which had been left exposed by his stance. On anyone else, the movement would have been quick enough to catch the victim in the guts. But Dean Cawdor was quicker than that, and twisted his body in midflight, avoiding the blow and somehow managing to keep his balance.

Doc saw this from the far side of the building’s interior, where he and Jak were erecting the metal sheeting walls that would delineate the sleeping quarters. He was facing the scene, while Jak had his back turned—although both had heard the beginnings of the altercation.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.