The last mutie raised its head and crooned at the sky

It was a new and different kind of hoot that none of the companions had ever heard before. Almost immediately, a distant hoot answered.

“Dark night, it’s calling for help!” J.B. gasped, dropping a spent clip and slapping in a spare. “What is going on here?”

Even as she frantically reloaded, Mildred considered the matter, and knew that she had no possible answer. Nobody knew for sure where the stickies came from in the first place, whether they were accidents of Nature caused by the nuclear holocaust, devolved humans, escaped genetic experiments, bioweps or what. But there was one singular, unarguable factor about the mutants. They lived, and anything alive always tried to improve itself, to make the next generation stronger.

Mildred shivered at the idea. Stickies with weapons. Oh, dear God in Heaven, protect our mortal souls….

Other titles in the Deathlands saga:

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

Amazon Gate

Destiny’s Truth

Skydark Spawn

Damnation Road Show

Devil Riders

Bloodfire

Hellbenders

Separation

Death Hunt

Shaking Earth

Black Harvest

Vengeance Trail

Ritual Chill

Atlantis Reprise

Labyrinth

Strontium Swamp

Shatter Zone

DEATH LANDS ®

James Axler

To my parents

For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.

—Ecclesiastes 9:11–12

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 blowing dust of the Manitoba desert tinted the air red, as if the world had been painted in fresh blood.

Patches walked carefully among the tall barbed cactus plants, a small knife in his weathered hand. The wep was a homie, just a piece of window glass repeatedly rubbed against stone until it was razor-sharp, with a piece of rat skin wrapped around the bottom to make a handle. The wrinklie remembered once seeing a baron with a steel knife. But then the ruler of that ville had also carried a working blaster, a wheelgun with live brass. The glass knife would be useless in a fight against a black-powder handcannon like that, but it served him well enough for the harvesting.

Stopping his slow progress near a tall cactus, Patches eased his hand into a cluster of the barbed needles and cut free a fat purple globe. As the juicy fruit fell, he neatly caught it with his other hand, and tucked it away into the patched canvas bag hanging at his side. The bag was almost half full and Patches smiled at the thought of how happy his wife would be knowing that they would eat this night.

The cactus plants replenished the harvested fruit very quickly, but always in new patterns, and he had never found another way of harvesting the fruit except by wandering through the deadly grove. There were many much larger fruits still nesting inside the cluster of needles, ripe and ready for the taking, but all of them were too big to retrieve without getting his arm punctured.

A fluttering from above caught his attention and the old man looked up to see a bird of some kind land on top of a tall cactus and start pecking at a fruit. Patches salivated at the thought of fresh meat, but he knew it was already too late.

Suddenly the little bird gave a horrid squawk and reared back with a quill sticking out of its wing. As it shook the wing, the needle fell out and the bird went happily back to the plump fruit.

“Three,” Patches whispered softly. “Two, one…”

Violently shuddering all over, the bird went limp and toppled off the cactus, bouncing from limb to limb of the plants. Then the aced bird was gone from sight, lost somewhere deep inside the overlapping needles covering the spreading arms of the tall cactus.

Goodbye, meat. With a sigh, Patches thumbed the desert sand from beneath his eye patch, then returned to the arduous work at hand.

The air of the desert grove was sweet, rich with a tangy infusion of citrus from the clusters of plump red fruits hanging from the flowering sides of each green cactus. A few of the plants lacked flowers, and those he simply avoided as a waste of time. No flowers meant no fruit. Although the venom in the needles of those cacti was much stronger, perfect to tip the arrows of his crossbow. A man didn’t have to be a very good shot with one of those on his arrow. Shoot a slaver in the leg and before he finished cursing, the flesh peddler would go stiff and topple over, a new passenger on the last train west.

It had been a long time since Patches last saw a slaver in his little valley, and that was just fine by him. Every day that he didn’t hear the crack of a leather whip or feel the cold of steel around his wrists was a good day. He wouldn’t even have put chains on a radblasted mutie, the shambling mockeries of men that wandered mindlessly from the desert. Strange they were, and triple deadly with sharpened teeth, claws and suckers on their fingers. Thankfully, no big muties came here. This tiny grove was his world, his private domain, unwanted by anybody, except himself and his wife.

The flowery grove stretched to the end of the valley, hundreds of yards long and equally wide. The warm ground beneath the cactus plants was covered with the decomposing bodies of small rodents, birds, reptiles and even some large insects with four wings. Once he found the skeleton of a norm, but the bones were so old even the clothing was gone, not even a zipper or button remaining. The corpse might have been lying there since predark days, who could say? But since there had been nothing to scav, Patches had moved onward and left the dead alone. Finding a bunch of bones was nothing new. Dark fire, there were ruins of predark villes carpeted with gleaming white bones, the predark skulls still staring skyward, sightless eyes forever looking at the nuke death raining down upon them.

Shaking off the grisly memories, Patches went back to work. Slow hours passed as the long day wore on. The old man became drenched with sweat, more from the effort of staying perfectly still than from the rising desert temperatures. Once, his ragged shirt snagged on a barbed needle and the breath caught in his throat, his heart pounding wildly. Turning ever so slowly, it took Patches a good hour to cut himself loose. Too tired to turn about again, he simply continued on in the new direction. There was food in this part of the grove, too. There was always fruit here. It was why they stayed.

Then again, he added ruefully, maybe Suzette had caught a lizard today. Meat for dinner! She hadn’t caught one since the last acid rain, over a dozen moons ago, but there was always hope.

Soon, another plump fruit was added to his bag and Patches snorted in mild annoyance at the memory of finding it. The leather bag seemed perfect for the job of harvesting. However, the faded lettering on the side read “Mail,” or so his wife said. And since he was the male she reasoned it should be his job to gather the fruit, even though she was much smaller and could slip through the lethal needles with much greater ease.

They had argued over the matter, of course, but Suzette was the granddaughter of a whitecoat, and much smarter than him. He went into the grove to gather fruit while she went into the sand dunes with their crossbow to hunt rats and lizards. The rats weren’t edible; the meat would put a man on the last train west.

“You playing or working in there, old man?” Suzette called from the direction of their hut.

Their home was a predark wag of some kind, the tires long gone and the engine a rusted lump block. But the body was a big box of metal that even the spring sandstorms couldn’t get through, and with the door shut tight, the howlers couldn’t seem to find them. If they kept very quiet.

“You back already?” Patches demanded suspiciously, craning his neck to try to get a glimpse of his wife. But the cactus completely blocked his view. “Hunting that bad?”

“That good!” she retorted happily. “Besides, it takes a long time to skin a lizard.”

A lizard? Hot damn, meat for dinner!

“Then don’t waste time talking to me. Get back to your cooking!” Patches laughed, returning to his own task. With luck, there might even be enough of the lizard to spare some for Trio.

His mind on dinner, the old man started to gather another plump globe when his ratskin moccasins slipped on the loose rock in the sand. Jerking back to try to stay upright, Patches went motionless at the cool touch of a needle pressing against his wrist. Nuking hell! If the tip broke the skin…

Moving with glacial speed, the wrinklie moved away from the needle until he was clear. Then he stood perfectly still for a few minutes, waiting for his heart to stop pounding. Idiot! Fools always die, that was rule number one. Stay alert, stay alive.

Taking a small fruit from the bag, Patches allowed himself a tiny bite as a reward. The juicy pulp was as sweet as canned peaches, but with none of the metallic aftertaste. Licking his cracked lips clean, Patches tucked the fruit away and began his slow creep toward the edge of the grove and his waiting wife. There was no fast exit from among the plants, so he might as well gather as much food as possible along the way.

Patiently, slowly, the one-eyed wrinklie worked his way through the grove of death, gathering the tiny harvest of life.

WITH THE RED DUST WIND blowing around him, the outlander stood on top of the rocky hill watching the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride along the horizon. Delphi almost smiled at the literary reference. Then he did smile at the idea that he was probably the only person in ten thousand miles who did know the allusion.

Except for Tanner, Delphi added, the smile quickly fading. Professor Theophilus Algernon Tanner. “Doc” to his friends. Experimental test subject No. 14 to his former captors.

High above the lone man, the polluted clouds in the fiery sky roiled and rumbled with endless thunder, the sheets of heat lighting cutting across the orange clouds like an executioner’s ax, bright and sudden, then gone, leaving nothing behind.

Formerly a lush woodlands, this section of the wasteland was now only a barren desert of hard rock and windblown sand. However, in the secluded valley below this hill there was a small forest of succulent cacti. Two old people were living in a rusted courier service truck that hard-crashed at one time, and seemed to have learned how to safely harvest the edible fruit growing on the deadly cactus.

Reaching into a pocket, Delphi pulled out a cigarette and tapped the end on the back of his hand. A moment later the tip glowed red and he drew the thick sweet smoke deep into his artificial lungs.

It was a good location, Delphi admitted. The rad pits were few and far between, plus there was even a small creek of clean water trickling from a rent in the side of a nearby mesa. In comparison to the rest of the shattered world, this was almost an Eden, a lost paradise. Such a pity that somebody else wanted it, too.

Allowing the pungent smoke to trickle out of his nostrils, Delphi tilted his head at the sound of singing coming from the old woman skinning a fat Gila monster. Singing. Now that was a very rare sound these days. Or rather, happy singing was uncommon. The cannies often cut their victims in special ways to make the people scream in what they called death songs. But Delphi didn’t approve of cannibals, and killed them on sight, despite the standing orders from his superiors at TITAN to never hurt a gene-pure norm. Orders were orders, yes, but there were limits to his tolerance. And to his grudging obedience.

Briefly he wondered if the people in charge of TITAN even knew that Department Coldfire existed. Wheels within wheels. A secret wrapped in a mystery, a conundrum lost in the fog, and everything cloaked in total denial. As far as Delphi knew, only about a dozen people in the world had ever known what his department was trying to accomplish—nine of them were operatives, and one was a test subject who had gotten away. Doc Tanner. But if all went well…

A movement on the horizon caught his attention and Delphi turned to focus his silvery eyes on the four horsemen galloping along the desert at full speed. Their bodies were bent low over their animals as they whipped the beasts on to greater speed.

So they understood wind resistance. Good. They aren’t as stupid as they look, Delphi thought.

The four men rode without saddles or bridles, using only blankets and ropes. Although they were heavily armed, no sunlight glinted off the weapons in their hands, the ax blades and one blaster were wrapped in cloth to prevent any reflection that might reveal their presence too soon.

That was also good, Delphi admitted, removing the cigarette to exhale slowly. They were smart, but cautious. And the four moved well, working together as a unit. Excellent.

Hopefully these four coldhearts would be the end of his search. The previous thirteen groups Delphi had tested all proved to be useless. They were always too eager, too bloodthirsty or too stupid. Delphi needed operatives who could be trusted. Soldiers to be where he could not be, and to do what he was not allowed to do. Although perhaps the more colorful term of mercenary was more accurate for their job description, though “mercie” was the current term. From mercenary to mercy, what a misnomer! The irony was delicious.

Suddenly a blaster shot rang out and Delphi saw the old woman fall to the ground, blood pouring from her shoulder. All four horsemen began to whoop a war cry as the rest fired their crossbows. The flight of arrows missed the woman as she stumbled into the truck, the shafts stabbing into the loose sand all around her.

Crossing his arms, Delphi frowned. Was she seeking refuge?

Then the woman reappeared with her own crossbow and fired. The arrow just missed the lead rider and struck the second horse just below a shoulder. It was only a glancing blow, nothing of importance. But the animal abruptly slowed and began to shake all over, foam dripping from its mouth. The convulsing horse stumbled, throwing its rider. The big man with a bald head hit the ground hard but came up rolling, completely undamaged. But minus his crossbow. With an expression of incredible fury, he reared up, brandishing a steel knife.

As the coldheart charged straight for the wrinklie, she struggled to reload the crossbow. But by now the others had arrived. Swinging their weps like clubs, they rode past the woman, knocking the crossbow from her hands and smashing her about the face.

Giving a startled cry, the woman dropped to the ground. The big man with the knife descended upon her and started to hack wildly. Blood sprayed at every stroke. Trapped beneath the coldheart, the struggling wrinklie began to shriek once more, then went completely still.

Circling the box canyon, the three riders joined their companion. Stepping away from his grisly work, the big man gave a cruel laugh, then lifted up the patched skirt of the aced wrinklie.

Horrified, Delphi furrowed his brow. Surely they weren’t going to rape the corpse!

Laughing, the man used the skirt to clean his gory knife, while the three riders trotted over to the fallen horse. The Appaloosa-colored mare lay motionless on the hot sand, its eyes wide in terror, foam flecking the black lips. There was no doubt that it was chilled. Turning away from the sight, the man with the knife spit on the aced wrinklie.

Just then, a spotted dog jumped out from the cab of the truck and raced toward him, moving incredibly fast on just three stubby legs. Crying out in surprise, the man dived out of the way. But the dog ignored him to stop alongside the corpse of its still master. The animal gave a little bark, as if waiting for a reply, then raised its massive head and snarled in bestial rage, baring sharp white teeth.

But the pause had been a mistake, and the riders feathered the dog with arrows. Mortally wounded, the bleeding animal limped toward the first man, yipping and barking. With his back to the grove of cactus plants, the man reached for his knife, but found the sheath empty. Lunging forward, the coldheart grabbed the dog by the throat and throttled it with his bare hands. The dying animal fought to the end, snapping its jaws and clawing for the hated enemy with its three stubby legs. But it couldn’t reach the man, and eventually the dog eased its attack to go limp. With a guttural curse, the man tossed the corpse away and went looking for his dropped knife.

From his hilltop refuge, Delphi watched as the three men dismounted from their horses to spread out and recover the used arrows. Armed once more, the tall man with the bald head stood guard while the others looted the interior of the truck. Apparently there wasn’t much of interest inside, but the four men shared the collection equally. One of them found a bag full of dried meat and started to take a bite when the smaller man with a ponytail shouted a warning and slapped it to the ground. As the others listened, he spoke harshly to them, and used a dirty handkerchief to retrieve the dropped jerky and put it back in the bag.

So that one knew about mutie rat meat, eh? Delphi chuckled and lighted a fresh cigarette. Better and better. Maybe these four would be acceptable after all.

Going over to the chilled horse, its former rider gently stroked the long neck, then walked over to the dog and began butchering it on the sand. One of the riders, a large man with a pronounced barrel chest, started a fire using the stack of tree limbs. As the dog was cut into joints, the barrel-chested man put the meat on a spit and began cooking.

Delphi watched with marked interest as one of them kept glancing at the grove of cactus plants, then finally loaded his crossbow and walked over to the edge of the prickly forest. From his high vantage point, Delphi could see the old man standing hidden inside the deadly grove, his thin shoulders shaking slightly from silent weeping. Ah, he had almost forgotten about the fruit harvester.

What will you do, old man? Hide and run away? Or try to avenge your fallen mate?

Tilting his head as if listening, the tall man raised the crossbow and fired. The wrinklie cried out and dropped to the ground. Resting the crossbow on a shoulder, the tall man turned his back on the grove and went to join the others.

“Now that was an excellent shot,” Delphi whispered. Maybe his search was at last done with these four killers. Then he frowned. No, damn it, the word was chill, or ace, in this place. Apparently nobody used the word kill anymore, and abstract terms such as murder were completely unknown.

Down in the box canyon, the coldhearts separated without discussion, each to his own task. The bald man reloaded the black-powder blaster and stood guard, while the tall man and the fellow with the ponytail dragged the aced woman by her skirt over to the dead horse. Then both of the norms started digging a hole large enough to hold the two bodies.

A dry breeze whipped the loose sand around his polished boots, as Delphi nodded in satisfaction. Excellent. They weren’t going to butcher the horse for meat because it had served them well—and they’d be sated by the dog—but they also understood that an exposed corpse would only spread the smell of death onto the wind and summon every mutie beast for miles. They were tough and smart. These four could kill strangers without hesitation, even helpless old men and women. Plus, they were loyal, but without being sentimental.

Raising his right hand, Delphi glanced at his palm and saw their names scroll along the nanotech monitor embedded into his pale flesh. John, Robert, Edward and Alan. The Rogan brothers.

Yes, these men would do fine.

Chapter Two

The tumultuous sky above the U.S. Virgin Islands was a solid bank of moving gray clouds. The roiling heavens split asunder as sheet lighting flashed on the horizon, leaving an ionized trail of purple across the ravaged clouds. Huge waves rose to white crests and crashed onto the rocky shoreline of the tropical island with triphammer force.

Dotting the white-sand beaches were the rusted hulks of predark warships, their massive metal forms lolling sideways, the armored hulls split open like dying animals to expose the complex interiors to the savage pounding rains. The corroded remains of cannons and missiles lay in plain sight and thousands of small blue crabs moved freely among the wreckage, consuming anything organic that was to be found: bones, boots and uniforms. Fluttering in the harsh rain, the faded remains of a flag hung from the end of the mast of a yacht. The cloth was bleached white, the crumbling keel covered with barnacles, the smashed hull charred badly in spots from numerous lightning strikes.

“This nuking storm is never going to end,” Ryan Cawdor stated, staring angrily at the savage ocean.

Impulsively, the one-eyed man reached up to adjust the worn leather patch covering the ruin of his left eye. His own brother had taken the organ in a knife fight, and given him a long ugly scar on the right cheek to go with it. But Harvey was under the dirt now, while Ryan was still sucking air, and that was all that truly mattered. The ancient marks of violence on his face were merely two small memories among countless others decorating his hard, muscular body.

Ryan’s hand rested comfortably on the checkered grip of his SIG-Sauer autoloader safely secreted in a hip holster. A large panga in a curved sheath balanced the deadly weapon on his other hip, and a bolt-action longblaster with a telescopic sight was slung across his wide, muscular shoulder.

“Yeah, hell of a storm,” J. B. Dix agreed, lowering the brim of his fedora as if for a bit more protection.

A good foot shorter than his friend, John Barrymore Dix was wearing a mixture of predark clothing: U.S. Army boots, fatigue pants, OD T-shirt and a leather Air Force bomber jacket. His weapons shone like new, lovingly polished and oiled every night by the master armorer. An Uzi machine pistol was draped across his chest, an S&W M-4000 shotgun slung across his back. However, the munitions bag that carried his stash of plas and grens was hanging flat at his side. The canvas satchel was sadly empty, aside from a few loose rounds of brass and a couple of predark civie road flares of questionable service.

Standing in the access tunnel of the underground re doubt, the two men were safe from the touch of the deadly acid rain outside, yet they carefully watched as the chem-rich water fell like a yellow curtain across the mouth of the passageway. The acid rain was mixing with normal rain, orange clouds mixing with black in the violent sky overhead. They hoped it was a good sign for the future, that the acid rains were starting to fade away. But that didn’t lull them into a false sense of security. In less than a minute, the deadly yellow rain could strip a shrieking man of flesh down to his raw bones, in spite of being weakened by the presence of the clean water shower. Of course the strength of the acid rain depended on many factors, one of which was a person’s location in the Deathlands.

“Seen worse.” Ryan grunted, rubbing his smoothly shaved chin. “But not by much, that’s for sure.”

With all that useless water outside, the salty ocean and the acid rain, it had seemed amazing to the companions that the machinery of the redoubt had been still able to deliver all the crystal-clear water the companions wanted the previous night. Everything Ryan was wearing, predark combat boots, denim pants and matching shirt, were in the unusual state of being thoroughly clean. Even his heavy fur-lined coat had gone through the wash, the accumulated blood, mud and food stains purged by the gently chugging laundry machines down on the fifth level. The companions were showered and shaved, warm and clean, a rare treat for anybody these days, and everyone except Krysty Wroth had had his or her hair trimmed.

“I hear ya,” J.B. said, blinking at the tempest through his wire-rimmed glasses. “Dark night, remember that big wash in Tennessee? That was nothing compared to this mother of a storm!”

“And those ruins are so damn close,” Ryan muttered darkly, tensing as if about to take a step outside. But then he relaxed and frowned.

“Mebbe if we had an APC we could chance a run,” J.B. added, crossing his arms. “But I’d sure hate to be the first to try!”

Sullenly, Ryan grunted in agreement. Yeah, a man would have to be pretty damn desperate to risk going into the hellish downpour. Even this deep in the tunnel, the reek of the chem storm was thickly unpleasant. Only the cool breeze coming from the open door of the redoubt behind allowed them to stand this close to the reeking miasma of the rain.

Just then, a huge wave crashed on the rocky shoreline and lightning flashed again, the strident discharge briefly illuminating the area. In the blue light, just for a split tick, Ryan and J.B. could see the ruins of a predark city filling the eastern side of the island. Tall skyscrapers of glass and chrome were still standing downtown, apparently undamaged by the nuke war or the ravages of time. Five, six, some of them even ten stories tall! And scattered about the buildings could be seen the steady unblinking glow of electric lights. Powered by resilient nuke batteries, the old beacons were still giving a warning for airplanes that had ceased to exist a hundred winters earlier. There weren’t many of the lights, only a precious handful. But the beacons shone bright as hope in the tropical storm.

Hunching his shoulders, Ryan frowned. But there was something there even more important than the electric lights. Surrounding the buildings on every side was a thick forest of green trees, the oddly shaped leaves shiny-slick from the combination of rain and ocean spray. Leaves, trees…it was almost fragging unbelievable, given the acid rain and all.

Standing in the access tunnel near the somber men was a beautiful redheaded woman leaning against the brick wall of the passageway, her left arm moving steadily as she brushed her teeth. The long hair hanging to her shoulders flexed and stirred against the direction of the breeze coming from the redoubt as if the crimson filaments were endowed with an independent life force of their own.

“Think we’re still in Deathlands?” Krysty Wroth asked, once again dipping the toothbrush into an open box of baking soda.

Her cowboy boots shone with polish. She’d traded in her jumpsuit for denim pants and a crisp white shirt, found sealed in a plastic box. Around her waist was a police gunbelt supporting a .38 revolver, a deadly compact blaster that had seen many battles. But very few of the ammunition loops of the gunbelt held any live brass, mostly they were filled with spent cartridges waiting to be reloaded.

“Nuking hell, we could be anyplace,” Ryan answered gruffly. “No way of telling through this drek.” He paused at a peal of thunder, then added, “But it doesn’t resemble any area I’ve been to before.”

Folding back his collar, J.B. touched the minisextant hanging on a chain around his neck. “And without a clear view of the sun, there’s no way for me to get a reading. We might be in Europe or Brazil for all I know.”

“That memo we found on the trash bin mentioned the Virgin Islands,” Ryan reminded him, glancing sideways.

J.B. shrugged. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean this is them. Mebbe the guy was planning on going there when the world ended.”

With a dissatisfied grunt, Krysty went back to scrubbing her molars. Thankfully, the pain wasn’t too bad today. She had the beginning of a major cavity, and was fighting off the day when it would be necessary for Mildred to use pliers and yank the rotten tooth out by the roots.

How odd, death I can face, Krysty thought privately as she scrubbed diligently away. But not pain. Have I experienced so much that I am getting weak? Mother Gaia, help me, if that ever happens!

Suddenly the sound of boots rang on the concrete behind them, and the three companions turned to see a stocky black woman walk out of the redoubt.

“Aw, hell, still raining,” Mildred Wyeth said angrily, contorting her face into a dark scowl. “Damn it, we’re never going to get a sample of those trees!”

The short physician was dressed in Army fatigue pants, an officer’s white shirt and a loose denim jacket. Clipped to the front of her canvas web belt was a Czech ZKR target pistol, and draped over her shoulder was a canvas bag with the faded letters M*A*S*H on the side. The predark field surgery kit had never left her possession since she’d recently found it. The medicine was long gone, but the few surgical instruments it contained were beyond price.

“Nobody’s going anywhere, Millie,” J.B. said kindly, curling an arm around the woman’s waist. “Sorry.”

Mildred moved a little closer to the Armorer, savoring the warmth coming off the man. “Who would have thought it ever possible,” she muttered, squinting into the storm. “Plants, living green plants immune to the acid rain!”

“Some new mutation, probably,” Krysty said, tucking the toothbrush and box of baking soda into a pocket of her bearskin coat. “Not every mutie wants to eat people.”

“Just most of them.” J.B. snorted in droll humor.

“Mebbe these plants feed off the rain,” Ryan said unexpectedly, his brow furrowed. “We know for a fact that the predark whitecoats were working on making things that could survive skydark.”

The companions grew silent at that comment. They had encountered the experiments of the crazy whitecoats before, the bioweps, genetically altered creatures that could withstand certain hostile conditions, some even surviving the deadly rads in the blast craters.

“If only I could get a sample…” Mildred muttered, easing away from her lover.

For a moment there flashed in her mind the legend of Johnny Appleseed from the eighteenth century, how he traveled across North America scattering apple seeds and creating entire forests of fruit trees, changing grasslands into beautiful forests. She could do that with just a few cuttings from the strange plants out there. Mildred would just have to plant a few sprigs everywhere the companions went. Oh, she would never see the final results, but someday, in a hundred years, the continent could be green again. Deserts turned into forests. It would work! The Deathlands could be defeated! If only…

Lost in her reverie, Mildred started forward when a gust of wind from outside washed along the access tunnel and she flinched at the sharp stink of the rain. If only we had an APC, she thought. But would even an armored personnel carrier, or a U.S. Army tank be safe in this downpour? Probably not.

“They are as unreachable as the stars, madam,” Doc Tanner rumbled, his voice sounding deeper than the thunder.

The four companions turned to see their other friends amble through the open doorway of the redoubt. With nobody standing in the way anymore, the multiton door slid closed, the titanic slab of metal easing into the adamantine wall as silent as a knife in a dream.

Tall and lean, Doc Tanner was dressed as if from another century with a swallowtail jacket and frilly shirt. But the impression of gentility was beguiled by the strictly utilitarian .455 LeMat handcannon on his gunbelt, the grip of the massive black-powder weapon worn from constant use. Tucked under one arm, Doc carried an ebony walking stick with a silver lion’s head for a handle. Hidden inside was a rapier of the finest Toledo steel.

“NASA has sent probes to the stars, you old coot,” Mildred snapped irritably.

“Indeed, madam, so you say,” Doc continued unabated. “But they brought nothing useful back that we know about, and so shall it be again this time, I am afraid. We can look, but not touch.”

“Just like in vid,” Jak Lauren stated, brushing back his snowy-white hair. The albino teenager was wearing camou-color clothing. His jacket was a deadly weapon, as bits of razor-sharp metal had been sewn into the fabric here and there. If anyone grabbed him by the collar, the person would lose fingers. A number of leaf-bladed throwing knives were hidden about his person, and a massive .357 Magnum Colt Python was holstered at his side.

“What vid was that?” Ryan asked over a shoulder.

Jak shrugged. “Dean and I saw in another redoubt. Victory for Victoria, mebbe. Skinny man standing in snow look through window at fat baron in a gaudy house stuffing self with food.” The teenager frowned. “Not follow story after that. Boring, but only vid that still played on comp.”

“Victor/Victoria,” Mildred corrected him with a wan smile. “Yes, I wouldn’t think that a musical comedy would be to your liking.”

Jak arched an eyebrow. “Why say? Like music vids. Always lots of food, pretty girls.”

“And that, my young friend, is as good a description of paradise as any in these draconian days.” Doc sighed. Slipping the walking stick out from under his arm, Doc strode to the very end of the tunnel, stopping only a few feet away from the damp spot on the floor where the rain had been blown inside.

“Most people, I believe, shall never see, a poem as lovely as… What was that line?” Doc whispered softly, then spun fast. “Ryan, we simply must have those trees! Surely something can be done. That city cannot be more than a league away. Maybe less.”

A league? “We wouldn’t last ten feet in that,” Ryan stated gruffly, hitching up his gunbelt. As the lightning flashed once more, the big man turned his back on the storm. “Come on, we’ve wasted enough time. Let’s go.”

“But…”

“Cut the gab,” Ryan snapped impatiently. “We agreed to wait a day for the storm to end. Well, it’s still here and the day is gone. Time to go. You zero that?”

“Yes, my friend, I understand,” Doc rumbled in acquiescence. “It has, indeed, been a full day, and fair is fair.”

Going to the entrance of the redoubt, Ryan tapped a code into the armored keypad set into the doorjamb. There was a brief pause, then the huge black portal ponderously slid closed. Ryan gave one last look toward the nameless city and its surrounding forest. Trees that could withstand the acid rains. With a grimace, the one-eyed man turned and entered the redoubt. The rest of the companions stayed close behind.

As the group walked along the entranceway of the redoubt, they heard the massive nukeproof door slide shut with a subdued boom of compressed air.

Running stiff fingers through his black hair, Ryan tried not to let his anger show. Shitfire, this base had been a triple zero. No food, no ammo, no exit. Oh, sure, all of the basic stuff in the base worked, everybody had washed their clothing and soaked in hot baths until they felt clean again. Hell, J.B. had even found a pair of decent socks, and Doc had located a tiny plastic vial of silicon lube. The stuff was made for comp printers, but worked just fine on the sword hidden inside his walking stick. But that had been the lot. The rest of the redoubt had been stripped clean, bare to the walls. And worse, their food supplies were getting dangerously low again. The companions had six days’ worth of MRE packs left. After that, they’d be eating stewed boot if they couldn’t find anything in this redoubt. There really was no other choice. The companions would have to jump again, whether they wanted to or not.

Exiting the passageway, the somber group crossed the vast parking garage and retrieved their backpacks. All around them, the painted lines on the concrete floor of the garage were empty and waiting. This was where the staff of the redoubt would have parked over a hundred wags: civie cars, motorcycles, Hummers, APCs, trucks and even the occasional tank. But the garage looked brand-new, as if it had been built and then abandoned. There wasn’t a single tool on the pegboard racks behind the workbenches, only the tape outlines of where each tool should be placed after it had been used. The drawers were empty, the supply closet vacant, and there wasn’t a single stain in the grease pit. Even the fuel storage tanks were bone-dry, the seals on the new pumps intact and unbroken.

As the companions crowded into the spotlessly clean elevator, J.B. hit the middle button and the cage swiftly descended to the center level of the redoubt. When the doors parted with a sigh, the companions trundled along the corridor and dutifully checked the straps on their backpacks and the loads in their weapons. The corridor was lined with doors on each side, and when the companions had arrived the previous day, every one of them had been closed and locked. One at a time, each door had been carefully opened, only to reveal a deserted room or office, without so much as a piece of furniture or a candy wrapper on the carpeted floor. It had taken most of a day for them to go through the entire base before finally admitting that the place was as empty as a mutie’s pockets. This wasn’t the first redoubt they had found in this condition, but it seemed to be happening more and more often. Was somebody looting the underground forts besides themselves? It was a sobering thought, and one that left the companions apprehensive and uneasy. The redoubts had been their lifeline more times than could be counted.

Reaching the door for the control room, Ryan pushed it aside and strode past the banks of humming comps. This was the heart of the redoubt, or more correctly, the brain. These were the machines that controlled the mighty fission reactors deep down in the subbasement for the life support systems, air-recycling, water sanitation, the freezers, the front door and the all-important mat-trans units. Without the comps, the base instantly became an airless tomb.

After passing through the anteroom, Ryan drew his 9 mm SIG-Sauer blaster before further pushing open a door to a room surrounded by armaglass. As the vanadium portal swung aside, he gave the chamber a quick scan with his weapon at the ready. The companions weren’t the only people who knew about the secret mat-trans units, and more than once they had found evidence of others just leaving the gateways.

However, the entry chamber was uninhabited. With his blaster leading the way, Ryan warily stepped through the doorway into the next room. The hexagonal chamber was a deep red in color, sprinkled with flakes of a hundred colors. The gateway chamber in each redoubt was a different color, supposedly for the purpose of identification. But if there was a chart to show what the colors meant, they had never found such a thing. The wall of this chamber vaguely resembled the terrazzo flooring used in most government buildings and major shopping malls, only with a much greater depth of color.

“It’s clear,” Ryan announced, holstering his blaster.

The others filed into the chamber, past Ryan. As he closed the door behind them, something rolled out of the shadows at the far end of the control room. With its two metallic antennas quivering, the boxy device rushed to the main computer and urgently extended a probe to quickly connect with the master control panel.

HALFWAY ACROSS THE WORLD, Delphi suddenly felt a vibration inside his left wrist, and flipped his hand over to see a message scrolling along the palm monitor. Excellent! The prey had been found at last!

Quickly typing instructions on his bare wrist, Delphi waited impatiently as the droid accessed circuits undisturbed for a century. Come on, come on…

Now, a roster of available redoubts was displayed. Frowning at the list, Delphi chose one at random. It was a base he had never been to before because it was on the Forbidden list. But this was a day for breaking the rules, and once the process had started he saw little reason to be cautious now.

“Get ready, traitor,” Delphi muttered, his heart quickening to the thrill of the hunt. “Here I come….”

RYAN CHECKED to make sure that everybody was safely inside the unit and seated on the floor.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah, ready as we’ll ever be,” J.B. mumbled, removing his glasses and tucking them safely away in a pocket. The jumps always hit the companions hard, often sending them to the floor puking out their guts from the shock and pain of the instantaneous transference. Doubling over, J.B.’s glasses had once bent when they flew off his face and someone had stepped on them. It had taken him days to repair the frames, and he subsequently swore that sort of triple-stupe mistake would never happen again. His backup glasses were functional, but unflattering.

“Once more into the breach, dear friends,” Doc said in that singsong quality that meant he was quoting something.

Mildred merely snorted at the Shakespearean reference, and Ryan slammed the door shut. As he hurried to sit next to Krysty, a fine mist swirled upward from the disks on the floor to engulf the companions, mists from the ceiling descended upon them. They braced themselves for the expected snap of tiny sparks to crackle over their exposed skin. But instead, there was only a soothing warmth that spread through their bodies as the thickening mist began to swirl faster with every heartbeat.

What in nuking hell? Ryan thought in confusion. Something didn’t feel right. After so many jumps, there was a certain “sameness” that the companions had come to expect. So anything out of the norm was suspicious. Was the mat-trans broken? Were they being sent somewhere, or worse, were they going nowhere? Mebbe the computer was having a malfunc. Nuking hell, he had to stop this jump!

Frantically trying to stand to reach the door, Ryan felt the floor drop away and he knew that he had been just a split second too slow. The jump had begun.

As gently as falling through a cloud, the terrified companions descended into the artificial forever of the matter transfer, and vanished from sight.

Chapter Three

But even as it started, their fall came to a relaxing halt and the companions were able to watch as the electronic mists faded away to leave them unharmed and unruffled in a new mat-trans unit.

“Son a bitch,” Ryan muttered, drawing his blaster without conscious thought.

“We not dead,” Jak mumbled, sounding slightly shocked. With a gesture, a throwing knife slipped out of his sleeve and dropped into his waiting hand.

“No,” a hoarse voice whispered.

Turning, the companions saw Doc cringing against the wall, braced as if for a blow. His hands twisted the silver-lion’s head on the walking stick, exposing a few inches of the stainless-steel sword hidden inside the hollow sheath.

“You okay?” Mildred asked, reaching out a hand.

“Not again,” Doc rambled, eyes darting about madly. “No hardship means a controlled jump. That means they…they have found me. Operation Chronos has found me again!”

“Are you sure—” Ryan began slowly.

Suddenly a new light came into Doc’s wild eyes and his face went pale as he closed the stick with a solid click. “No, by the Three Kennedys, they haven’t found me, the bastards have found us!” he gasped. “But they can’t have you. I wouldn’t let them get their hands on you, too!”

Whipping out his ebony stick, Doc lunged toward Krysty. Even though the sword stick was sheathed, the redhead twisted aside. But it hadn’t been necessary. The bottom of the stick missed her by inches, as intended, and stabbed the Last Destination button on the control panel.

Recoiling at the sight, everybody braced for the torture of instantaneous travel, but nothing happened. The mat-trans unit didn’t respond to the signal from the emergency LD button.

“Nuke me,” J.B. said hoarsely, putting on his glasses. “Well, that never happened before! We should have gone right back to last redoubt. The LD button has never failed to work before!”

“I don’t think it failed now,” Krysty said, her hair flexing unhappily about her tense features. “I think we’re not being allowed to leave.”

“You mean, that maybe Doc is right,” Mildred returned, “and that this might have been a controlled jump?”

“Could be, yes.”

“Mutie shit,” Jak muttered. “Just malfunc.”

Ryan slid the Steyr SSG-70 longblaster off his shoulder and worked the bolt.

There were only four 5-round clips remaining for the Steyr, but the neckered-down brass packed a hell of a lot more punch than the fat 9 mm Parabellum rounds in the SIG-Sauer. Anything could be behind that door, from a squad of armed whitecoats to a sec droid hunter. Once, very long ago, Ryan had chilled a cougar with his bare hands, and the Deathlands warrior would rather do that again than face a sec hunter droid even if he was armed with a predark bazooka. The damn machines were almost impossible to stop once they started coming after a target.

“If you’re feeling nervous,” Ryan added, “then start us on a jump.” The man was listening hard to the redoubt, getting the feel of the place, the gentle hum of the air vents, the muffled noises of the water pipes and high-pitched whine of the fluorescent lights overhead. Everything seemed normal, not a thing was different or strange, and that was scaring the nuking hell out of the warrior.

Keeping his handcannon level, Jak reached for the keypad and tapped the LD button to no result.

“Okay,” the teen stated angrily. “We trapped.”

“No, please, we must jump again,” Doc begged, dropping the ebony stick. Pushing the others aside, he hit the controls in a fast sequence. “We cannot let them find you…you have no idea what they can do…will do to you…we have to leave right now!”

Mildred reached out a hand, but the time traveler dodged out of the way.

Closing a fist, Doc started pounding on the keypad. “Work, damn you, why will you not work!”

The startled companions exchanged worried expressions at the outburst, but before they could do anything Doc slipped to the floor and started to weep uncontrollably, his face buried in his hands.

The sight of such weakness shocked Ryan for a moment, then he suddenly understood, and felt like a fool. It had to have been all of those jumps that had scrambled Doc’s brain and made him so forgetful. Pieced together from various conversations, Ryan knew that the agents of Operation Chronos had trawled dozens of people from the past and brought them into the twentieth century. But Doc was the only person to ever survive the process sane. The predark whitecoats had nearly turned the poor Vermont scholar inside and out trying to solve that vital mystery.

Then one day, Doc was deemed too much trouble to deal with and was sent into the future, to arrive in Deathlands. The agents of Operation Chronos immediately regretted the decision and took off after him in hot pursuit. But there was no way to track the old man in the vast wasteland that was the Deathlands. The agents of Chronos had long ago given up the chase as impossible, but Doc kept running. Finally he wandered, dazed and confused, into some serious nuking trouble with a lunatic baron before accidentally encountering the companions.

“Sweet Jesus, look what they’ve done to him,” Mildred said softly. Kneeling by the sobbing man, she tenderly stroked his hair. “Doc might annoy the hell out of me at times, but he’s no coward. The old coot has proved that a thousand times. The horrors he must have endured at the hands of those whitecoats….”

Doc had once claimed that Operation Chronos was a subdivision of Overproject Whisper, the group that built the redoubts and invented the mat-trans units. Was that, in fact, true? Were there perhaps other unknown groups prowling through the redoubts of the world? There was very little about the bases that they knew for certain. Except that everybody they met was usually an enemy.

Kneeling, Jak handed Doc the dropped sword stick, and the trembling scholar hugged it tightly to his heaving chest.

“Sorry,” Doc whispered in a hoarse voice, tears on his cheeks. “I seem to have…lost control there for just a moment. I will be fine in a trice. Really, I will….”

“Theophilus,” Ryan said, stumbling over the name.

Sluggishly, Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner looked up in shock at Ryan’s scarred face. It was the very first time he could recall the man using his Christian name.

“If those nuke-sucking whitecoats are coming, then we’ll face the entire fragging lot of them together, old friend,” Ryan stated, offering a scarred hand.

A long minute passed as Doc breathed deeply, the color slowly returning to his features. Then the silver-haired gentleman reached out and clasped Ryan’s hand in a powerful grip. It always caught the one-eyed man by surprise that Doc looked sixty, but really was only in his late thirties and as strong as a horse. His mind had been damaged but not his body, and not his fighting spirit.

“Together,” Ryan said, helping the man to stand.

The two stood for a moment, hands tightly clasped.

“Together, my friend,” Doc vowed, his voice as strong as ever. As he released the hold, he softly added, “And please allow me to apologize for my earlier…lapse. You see, I—”

“Frag it,” Ryan said bluntly, glancing over his shoulder at the closed door. “It don’t mean drek.”

“Doesn’t,” Krysty corrected him. “And anybody who says they’ve never been scared is a liar. Gaia knows we’ve all been there.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Jak chimed in, slapping Doc on the shoulder.

“Nuke them till they glow, then shoot them in the dark,” Mildred added impulsively.

The rest of the companions chuckled at that, but Doc threw back his head to roar in laughter. “Indeed, madam! Well said. Cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of war, eh?”

“Oh, stuff it, you old coot.”

“Well, as long as we’re not going anywhere,” Ryan said grimly, striding across the chamber’s cold floor, “then we better get ready for company. Get hard, people. If the whitecoats do come for us, it’s going to be bloody.”

“I hear ya,” J.B. stated, leveling his Uzi machine pistol and walking across the chamber to join his old friend. The fleeting moment of camaraderie was past. Back to the grim business of staying alive.

This new mat-trans unit was the same as every other, a hexagonal room made of seamless armaglass, with small hidden vents near the ceiling, one door with concealed hinges, and an operating lever to open it. The only difference was the color. Nothing else.

As the rest of the companions prepared to leave the mat-trans unit, J.B. eased the M-4000 shotgun off his shoulder and passed the weapon to Mildred. Tucking away her ZKR revolver, the physician expertly racked the scattergun to chamber a 12-gauge cartridge.

“I wonder why they haven’t hit us already?” Krysty said, checking the load in her wheelgun. Five rounds, two of them predark, three reloads. All of the soft-lead ammo had been split into dumdums to maximize their destructive power. The slugs would go in like a finger but come out like a fist. But only on flesh. Against a machine, or a biowep, they were about as useless as spitting.

“Why? Not need,” Jak growled, swinging out the cylinder on his weapon and removing some of the brass cartridges. “Where go? Trapped like rats in shitter.” The Colt Magnum blaster had the unique attribute of being able to hold both .357 rounds and .38 rounds, which doubled the kind of brass he could use. Jak really couldn’t understand why everybody didn’t use this type of blaster. Just made good sense.

“Any grens?” Doc asked, checking the load in his LeMat. The black-powder weapon had nine chambers in the main cylinder, but only six were loaded at the moment. In the bulging pouches of his gunbelt, Doc had plenty of black powder, and .455 miniballs, but it had been a long time since he had found any fulminating mercury “nipples” needed to ignite the Civil War blaster. Without those caps, the deadly LeMat was reduced to nothing more than an oddly shaped club.

“No grens, plas or pipebombs,” J.B. replied, setting the firing switch on the Uzi to full-auto. “If we happen to run into a sec hunter droid, just aim at the eyes and stay out of the reach of its blades.”

“Good luck with trying that tactic,” Doc commented.

Removing the last .38 bullet, Jak tucked them carefully into a jacket pocket, then thumbed in the more powerful .357 rounds. If they were facing whitecoats, he wanted a sure chill with every stroke of the trigger.

“Here,” Mildred said, pulling a plastic bottle out of her med kit. She splashed some of the homie shine on a strip of cloth normally used for a bandage, then tied it around her mouth.

“In case they try to use sleeping gas,” she said, wetting another strip and passing it along. “I don’t know how much it’ll help, but this should buy us a little time.”

Everybody took a mask and tried not to make a face as the sharp smell of the homebrewed alcohol filled their nostrils.

Keeping a close watch on the door, Ryan checked his weapons one last time. He had three full clips for the SIG-Sauer, plus four for the Steyr longblaster. After that, it would be hand-to-hand with the panga. In preparation, Ryan loosened the knife in the leather sheath on his belt.

“Okay, I’m on point,” Ryan stated. “Jak and Krysty, cover me. Mildred and Doc, hold off as backup. J.B., you bring up the rear.” The one-eyed man had almost issued instructions to Dean, too, but his son had left the group a few months ago. His absence left like a ragged wound deep inside Ryan, but pain was part of life, and he accepted it as such. Only the dead felt nothing.

As the other companions moved into positions, Ryan pressed an ear against the door, listening for the sounds of any movement beyond. The silence was thick and heavy. Gingerly, he ran his hands along the jamb, searching for boobies. J.B. then stepped forward and ran a small pocket compass along the surface of the metal. The magnetic needle didn’t quiver once to indicate a hidden magnetic switch or mass proximity fuse.

Mildred tried to snort at the sight of J.B. studiously moving the tiny plastic compass along the door frame. The compass was a recent acquisition, found inside a cereal box in the ruins of a predark convenience store. It was a toy, nothing more, laughably inaccurate compared to a Boy Scout compass or a military-issue model. However, most of the predark compasses the companions found had been demagnetized by the EMP blasts of the nukes that burned down civilization. Incredibly, the toy still worked, and that alone made it invaluable.

“Looks clean,” J.B. said hesitantly, tucking away the precious compass and stepping back. “At least, no traps that I can find.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Mildred noticed that Doc’s hands were shaking a little as he set the selector pin on the LeMat.

“Sure that you can shoot straight?” she asked bluntly.

“Shoot? Absolutely,” Doc replied, assuming a firing position with the Civil War revolver. “As for straight, that is another matter entirely.”

“You know, they may not have attacked us yet,” Krysty said unexpectedly, “because they don’t know we’re here.”

Thoughtfully sucking at a hollow tooth, Ryan considered that notion. “Fair enough. Let’s try for a nightcreep first,” he suggested, inspecting the SIG-Sauer’s acoustical silencer. “We go soft and silent. No blasters until absolutely necessary. Jak, get ready.”

The albino teenager holstered his Colt Python and flexed both hands. Leaf-bladed throwing knives slid from inside his camou sleeves. He flipped the blades once in the air, catching them by the handles, then nodded. “Ready.”

“Triple red,” Ryan ordered, advancing to the door and pulling the lever. As the door swung aside, he slipped into the anteroom, then the control room with his blaster leading the way.

Nobody was in sight.

Whistling softly, Ryan waited as Jak and Krysty moved into the control room. Then the three companions quickly spread out so that they wouldn’t offer a group target for any snipers. Moving in unison across the control room, the three listened hard, but couldn’t hear a thing except for the soft mechanical hum of the giant, wall-spanning comps, and their own harsh breathing.

Reaching the opposite door, Ryan whistled and the other companions entered the control room, their blasters searching for any possible dangers. Staying close to the rear, Doc seemed uneasy, the scholar constantly switching his black-powder blaster from hand to hand to dry his palms on a pant leg.

“Nothing here—” Ryan started to say, then abruptly spun around and fired from the hip. Across the room something exploded in the shadows under the main console, spraying out bits of plastic and wiring.

Advancing slowly, Ryan scowled at the smoking device, wondering what the hell it could be. Then his eye went wide as the pieces lying on the floor began to ripple through an array of colors to finally match the pattern of the floor. But the effect only lasted a few moments before the smashed electronic circuitry of the broken device gave an audible click and the plastic faded into a neutral beige.

“Shit,” Jak muttered, tucking away a knife. “Seen lizard do, but…machine?”

“That is a probe droid,” Doc said, the wall vents gently sucking away the acrid smoke rising from the debris. “A robotic hunter for Operation Chronos.”

“Like dog?” Jak asked.

“Exactly. It is just one of their many…toys,” Doc finished with a sour expression. Standing straight, the scholar looked around with a scowl. “But if I recall correctly, a probe droid is for true emergencies only. By gad, where are we, their headquarters?”

“Does the place look familiar?” Krysty asked, frowning, her long hair coiling tightly in response to her tense nerves.

“They all do, dear lady,” Doc said angrily, thumbing back the hammer on his handcannon, only to gently ease it down again. “I always assumed that was done deliberately as another of their endless defenses. If an enemy force jumped in, they would still have to waste precious time making sure they were at the right location before attacking.”

“The way we do,” J.B. said unhappily.

“Exactly.”

“Shit.”

“Any chance two of them?” Jak asked urgently, watching the shadows in the corner for any suspicious movements.

Askance, Doc raised an eyebrow. “Two? Good Lord, no. You’re looking at about several million dollars’ worth of advanced robotics lying in pieces on the floor. They never even sent one of these after me before. I learned of them only by accident when I was crawling through an air vent in one of their insufferable prisons.”

“That during an escape attempt?” J.B. asked, reaching into a pocket and pulling out half a cigar. He tucked the stogie into his mouth and chewed it into place.

“During one of my many attempted escapes,” Doc corrected, his face going neutral. “They caught me that time, and…punished me severely. Then the scientists decided I was too much trouble, and, well, you know the rest.”

“A hunting probe,” Ryan growled, rubbing his chin. “If the whitecoats didn’t send one after Doc, then we can damn well guess what it was looking for this time.”

“Us. The whole nuking group,” Krysty said grimly, her hair flexing in agitation. “I thought there had been something watching us in the redoubts for a while.”

“Well, they found us at last,” J.B. agreed, tilting back his fedora.

“No, they haven’t,” Mildred corrected, kneeling alongside the broken machine. Fumbling among the wreckage, she lifted a flexible cable into view. “See this? It’s a USB cable, and I don’t see any radio inside the probe.”

Moving the end of the cable closer to the master control board, she point at a USB port set about a foot off the floor. “That’s where this goes,” Mildred stated, holding the cable near the input jack, then she moved it slightly farther away again, just to be safe. “So maybe this droid knows we’re here, but it never got the chance to tell anybody.”

“Mebbe,” Ryan said darkly, his face unreadable. “On the other hand, if they were here, they’d be using the sec vid cams in the walls and not some fancy robot.”

“So the whitecoats must be in another redoubt.”

“Yeah.”

“Makes sense,” Krysty agreed, looking at the hallway door. “But there’s only one way to be sure.”

Crossing the control room, Ryan went to the exit and yanked open the door. The outside hallway was empty, all of the doors along both sides of the passageway closed as usual. The floor was spotlessly clean, the air from the vents warm and clean, smelling ever so slightly of disinfectant chemicals. Personally, Ryan would have been more comforted by a few scorch marks from explosions and some decaying corpses. A redoubt full of dead he could comprehend. Why the predark mil had removed all of the supplies and left the bases stripped bare had never made any nuking sense.

“Stay triple red, people,” Ryan commanded, proceeding along the hallway. “Chill anything that moves against us.”

Chapter Four

The desert night air was cool and sweet, scented with the flowers from the nearby cactus grove. The roiling polluted clouds overhead had broken, allowing the crescent moon to shine a silvery light across the landscape, turning the box canyon a stark black and white. The only source of flickering color came from a small cookfire. Squatting around the crackling flames, the four Rogan brothers licked their fingers and wiped greasy mouths on grimy sleeves.

Hawking and spitting on the ground, Alan Rogan cut loose a satisfied belch. “Now that was a good dog.” He chuckled, scratching his belly. “Don’t you think so, bro?”

The elder Rogan scowled at his brother. “Shaddup,” John snapped, tossing a gnawed leg bone onto the fire. The impact stirred up a cloud of red embers that lifted into the air and danced about to float away on the breeze.

Alan frowned. “Hey, I was only—”

“Go water the horses,” John ordered, licking his fingers clean. “This shithole didn’t have anywhere near the number of people we were told. We ride at dawn.”

“Hopefully to a ville with some sluts,” Robert groaned in a horrible, barely human voice. The large bald norm then broke a bone in two and sucked out the dark marrow. A dirty silk scarf was wrapped around his throat, almost hiding a long puckered scar that completely encircled his neck, the classic telltale mark of a hangman’s noose.

Dropping the pieces of bone into the flames, Robert rubbed a greasy hand across his bald head and smiled ruefully. “Been a long time since I showed some gaudy slut the ceiling,” he croaked. “Too goddamn nuking long.”

“We still have the shovel,” Alan said, jerking a thumb at the darkness outside the nimbus of the firelight. “I’m sure if ya really wanted to you could still find the wrinklie. Mebbe the ants haven’t eaten much of her good stuff yet.”

John snorted a laugh at that, but Robert lowered his head as if about to charge like a rampaging bull. “I’d do you before a rotter,” he growled in mock warning.

Without any expression, Alan gestured and knives slipped from his sleeves into each hand. “Any time you wanna try, big brother,” he replied softly, turning the blades slightly so that the feathered edge of the steel reflected the reddish light of the campfire.

Moving back slightly, Robert raised his hands as if in surrender, and Alan now saw that one fist was holding a pipebomb, the fuse smoldering and spitting sparks.

“Come to Poppa,” the bald man snarled, gesturing closer.

“Cut out the fragging drek and get to work,” John ordered, dismissing them both with a wave of his scarred hand. “Alan, the horses. Robert, go spell Ed.”

Grinning broadly, Robert licked two dirty fingers and pinched out the fuse, then pulled the string from the pipebomb and tucked it away into his voluminous jacket. The bomb itself went into a pouch on his belt. “Sure thing. No prob, bro,” he croaked, and stood to walk away into the night.

“Why is he always on my ass like that?” Alan complained, tucking the blades away again. “I was only joking around.”

“He’s bald as a rock, and you got a ponytail down to your balls. Figure it out yourself,” John said, sneering contemptuously. “Now water the fragging horses, or do ya wanna try that knife trick on me?”

Angry, Alan started to shoot back a taunt, but then saw his elder brother’s face and thought better. John was in charge of the gang because he was the smartest, there was no denying that. But also because the other brothers were terrified of him, and there was no denying that, either.

Forcing a smile onto his face, Alan strolled away into the night, kicking at the sand to raise little dust clouds as he moved toward the remaining horses.

As Alan vanished into the gloom, Edward appeared and sat on the ground. Taking a haunch of roasted meat from a rock near the crackling flames, the barrel-chested man started tearing off pieces like a wild mutie. In spite of the cool evening, he had his shirt mostly unbuttoned, and a grisly necklace of shriveled “trophies” hacked off his enemies was clearly visible.

Lighting a handrolled cig, John sucked in the sweet dark smoke of the zoomer, nodding in satisfaction that he finally got the mixture of tobacco, marijuana and wolfweed just right. A little too much of the tobacco and you didn’t get zoned. Too much of the mary and it tasted like drek. Some people chatted about shine as if it had tits and an ass, but weed was the cure for what ailed a man.

“Any more?” Edward demanded as a question, trying to crack the bone apart for the marrow. But the bone splintered in his enormous hands and he cast the greasy mess into the flames. The glowing charcoal sputtered and started to give off thick smoke.

“Nope, we each got a quarter,” John said, letting the zoomer dangle from his lips. “Share and fair alike, as always, bro.”

“I’m bigger,” Edward complained, thumping a fist onto his hairy chest. “I should get more.”

“Would, should, could. Don’t mean shit to me.”

“Ain’t fair,” Edward rumbled dangerously.

Blowing out a smoke ring, John debated getting rough, when there was an unexpected flash of light. For a split tick, he thought he was having a vision from the drugs in the cig. But then the light came again, softer, whiter, and rapidly expanded to fill the entire box canyon as if it was high noon.

“Son of a bitch!” Edward cursed, reaching behind his back and pulling out a short hatchet. “What the hell is this?”

Dropping the zoomer, John rolled backward off the rock he had been sitting on and grabbed the blaster from his bedroll. Clicking back both of the hammers on the double-barrel longblaster, the elder Rogan looked frantically about. The weird light completely filled the box canyon, all the way up to the rocky ridge above. But it seemed to stop there, as if it were a pool filled with shiny water.

Now how the nuking hell can that be possible? You can’t carry a bucket of light! he pondered.

Glancing down, John felt his gut tighten at the sight of no shadows on the ground, not even behind the rocks set around the crackling fire. Experimentally, he tilted a boot, and there was no shadow underneath. That was impossible. Mother-nuking flat-out impossible. Light had to come from somewhere. Air didn’t fragging glow! He paused at that. Actually, yes, it did, but only at the bottom of blast craters thick with rads.

Looking for his brothers, John saw Robert standing over by the truck with the loaded crossbow in his hands, the bald man’s eyes darting about madly. Alan was walking toward the horses…

John blinked and looked again. No. Alan was backing away from the horses, and there was an outlander strolling toward them!

The fellow was slim and pale, and his hair was slicked down flat to his head, the soft face as smooth as a young girl’s. The outlander was wearing some sort of white outfit, kind of like a robe that draped from his shoulders down to the silvery moccasins. Oddly everything he wore was spotlessly clean, damn near looked brand-new. Now, that was weird enough, but even more bizarre was the fact that the outlander didn’t have any weapons. There wasn’t a sign of a blaster, blade or a bomb. Yet he was smiling broadly as if he had just won a big hand of poker in a friendly ville.

“Feeb,” Alan whispered, raising both knives.

“Loon,” Edward retorted, leveling his wep.

“Hello, Rogans,” the outlander said with a friendly wave. “My name is Delphi, and we should talk.”

“Frag that,” Robert snorted, frowning at the use of their family name. “Take him!”

Grunting in acknowledgment, Edward instantly fired, the arrow from the crossbow flying straight for the outlander. But a few feet away from the man, it smashed apart in midair, as if hitting a brick wall. The broken pieces tumbled to the sand.

What the nuke? With a snarl, John raised his blaster and cut loose with both barrels, just as Alan jerked his hands forward. But the spray of birdshot and the knives impacted the same invisible barrier around the outlander and ricocheted away.

“Done yet?” Delphi demanded, impatience flashing in his silvery eyes.

This damn mutie is laughing at us, John realized in cold shock. Laughing at the Rogan brothers! As if we were children playing games!

Just then a large rock slammed onto the shield, or whatever it was, around the outlander, and shattered into pieces. Breathing heavily from the exertion, Edward stared at the stranger more in puzzlement than fear.

“Let me know when you’re done,” Delphi said, sounding annoyed. “We have business to discuss.”

Muttering a curse, Robert threw the pipebomb. It landed behind the pale outlander and detonated, the blast throwing out a death cloud of sand, pebbles and iron shrapnel. The entire grove of cactus shook, dropping a hundred pieces of fruit, and just for a single moment there was clearly defined shape around the outlander, some sort of glass ball or transparent sphere. Then the force of the blast faded away, the rolling noise echoing into the open desert.

Not glass, John realized, squeezing his weapon in frustration. But some kind of shield. There was an invisible wall as hard as iron around the newcomer. Was this some form of mutie mind power or predark tech? His bet would be for tech. But there was no way to be sure.

“Enough,” Delphi said, making a gesture. A blue light engulfed Edward and the big man dropped to the ground as if poleaxed.

Rushing over to the sprawled form of his brother, Robert saw that the huge chest was still rising and falling. His brother was only knocked out, but Robert had no doubt that the outlander could have aced Edward if he wanted. Shitfire, the outlander could chill them all at his whim.

“What…who are you?” Alan asked in a strained whisper. His hands flexed as if reaching for more of his hidden knives, but no blades came into sight.

Tilting his head slightly, Delphi gave a half smile as if enjoying a secret joke. “I have already told you my name,” he said in an even tone. “And as of this moment, you now work for me.”

“Yeah?” Robert growled, notching another arrow into the crossbow. “What if we don’t wanna?”

Turning slightly, Delphi stared hard at the big man. “You have no choice,” he replied, making a gesture at the horses.

Lashed to the bumper of the predark truck with knotted lengths of old rope, the three animals shook violently all over, then slumped to the ground with red blood gushing from their slack mouths. The brothers stared in horror at the chilled horses and slowly turned back to Delphi. The outlander was still smiling, the expression tolerant, almost amused. It sent a shiver down their spines.

“Don’t fret about your beasts. You shall receive exemplary compensation for this assignment,” Delphi continued smoothly, tucking his slim hands up the loose sleeves of his robe. “Transport, reconnaissance, heavy ordnance…”

Having no idea what half of those words meant, John said nothing, his fingers aching to reload the longblaster, but knowing it would be seen as a sign of fear. Forcing his hands to obey, the elder Rogan rested the weapon casually on a shoulder. In any negotiation, especially when the other fellow held all the blasters, a man had to stay cool and calm. If all you had was words, then try not to use any. That always threw off the other fellow and helped even the balance a little.

Chuckling softly, Delphi seemed to be extraordinarily pleased by the lack of action for some reason, as if a pet had done a particularly clever trick and deserved a treat.

“Okay, you got our attention,” John stated, taking a step forward. “What’s the job, Whitey?”

“Something has been lost,” Delphi said, anger crossing his pale face for the first time.

“And ya want us to find it.” Alan snorted in disdain. “Easy enough. What is it that you’re looking for?”

“Salvation,” Delphi growled as a strange humming filled the air and white mists suddenly appeared to engulf the four coldhearts. “Salvation!”

Clawing for their weps, the Rogan brothers felt themselves drop into the ground, as the desert disappeared, replaced by an infinite panorama of burning stars.

TWO HOURS LATER the companions were halfway through their inspection of the redoubt.

Starting at the bottom, the companions did a fast recce on the humming nuclear reactors behind the thick walls of unbreakable glass, although Mildred sometimes called it Plexiglas. Then came the life support rooms, where the hundreds of pumps and filters kept the base clean, warm and uncontaminated from the radblasted hellzone outside the redoubt.

Everything was functioning normally and seemed to be in perfect working order. But all of that changed once the companions reached the storage and barracks areas. On that level, the redoubt was as bare as the last one they had visited. Every room, every closet, was completely empty. Even the beds in the barracks were devoid of mattresses and pillows. There wasn’t a pencil in a desk drawer or a roll of wipe on the toilet.

“If the last redoubt never got its supplies delivered or was stripped clean,” Ryan muttered, walking along a corridor, “then this one was still being built.”

“You can load that into a damn blaster,” J.B. agreed, his fingerless gloves tight on the Uzi machine gun. Some of the sections seemed unformed and still rough along the edges. It was just little things, doors out of plumb, keypads off kilter, details that nobody would ever notice, unless they had been in a hundred other redoubts.

Pausing at the next closed door, the companions took combat positions. With Jak keeping cover, Krysty pushed open an unlocked door. The walls were unpainted, and in the next room the floor was only bare concrete, without even linoleum tiles in place.

“Never seen so much nothing,” Jak drawled angrily, the heavy Colt staying tight in his grip.

“I agree with your double negative,” Doc rumbled pensively, easing down the hammer on his massive LeMat pistol. “This is most curious indeed.”

After checking out the entire level, the companions went to the elevator and pressed a button for the cage. When it arrived, they checked for traps, then piled inside. Using the tip of his SIG-Sauer pistol, Ryan started to press the button for the garage at the top of the redoubt, but then paused and hit the button for the next level upward instead.

“Impatient, lover?” Krysty asked, tilting her head.

With a tiny vibration, the elevator started smoothly upward.

“Worried,” Ryan answered honestly. “Sure. If the blast doors are remotely locked by whitecoats, then we’re prisoners.”

“Trapped without food,” Mildred said, frowning as she leaned against the bare metal wall. “Damn, I hadn’t thought of that possibility.”

“Starvation is a mighty slow way to be chilled,” J.B. noted, removing the unlit cigar, only to put it back in place once more.

“Eat blaster first,” Jak stated coldly, tilting his head slightly forward so that his snowy hair fell across his face, hiding the features.

“Then again, maybe Operation Chronos only wants us trapped long enough to get weak, and then they capture us alive,” Ryan guessed, voicing his dark thoughts. Why fight an enemy at full strength when you can wait a few days and clamp on the slave chains without resistance?

“Alive,” Jak growled. “Like for experiments?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Nuke that,” Jak muttered, tightening the grip on his blaster.

Just then, the elevator gave a musical chime and the doors parted. As the companions stepped into the corridor, they became instantly alert. In spite of the warm breeze from the wall vents, there was a dry chill in the air. This was something they had encountered only once before, a long time ago.

“Just like that redoubt in Zero City,” Ryan said as a warning, bringing up the barrel of the Steyr longblaster. The two blasters were rock-steady in his hands.

“Just as long as it isn’t another Alaska,” Krysty added grimly, her hair tightening in response. The old madman in charge of that redoubt had a lot of funny ideas about breeding, and the companions had been triple glad to leave that place far behind. A recent visit had spooked them all.

Easing along the corridor, the companions saw only bare, blank walls until taking a corner. A huge steel door stood at the far end of the next passageway, the metal-and-ceramic surface touched with patches of snowy frost along the edges. There was no doubt that this was the source of the cold.

“A deeper,” Jak stated, stopping in his tracks.

Ever so slowly, Ryan gave a nod. Yeah, definitely looked like a Deep Storage Locker. He remembered the first time the Trader had told him and J.B. about such things. Just another legend, they’d thought at the time, only this one happened to be true. A deeper, a Deep Storage Locker, was a special vault filled with dead air—inert gases, Mildred called them—and then made colder than winter ice. The combo was supposed to keep everything from aging, suspended animation was the whitecoat term. The ammo would be live, the canned food fresh, the blasters in perfect condition, the medicine still potent. The companions had found only one of these before in all of their travels, and that deeper had been guarded by a sec hunter droid.

“How much C-4 do we have, John Barrymore?” Doc asked, using his left hand to pull back the massive hammer of the LeMat. It locked into place with a solid click, the single-action revolver now ready for immediate firing.

“Plas? Not a scrap left,” J.B. said around the cigar. “I’m down to road flares and bad language.”

“Mebbe we should check the blast doors first, lover,” Krysty said hesitantly. “Just in case we have to run.”

There was logic to that, Ryan had to admit. But there was also no denying the fact that somebody had rigged their last jump, and he’d sure as hell feel a lot better about that with some spare brass jingling in his pocket.

“We keep going,” the one-eyed man growled, hefting his longblaster. “But spread out more. We’ll need space if there’s a sec hunter droid inside the locker.”

“What we’d need is a freaking bazooka,” Mildred muttered under her breath, shifting her grip on the scattergun.

Proceeding warily along the corridor, the companions took their time and checked every room along the passageway in turn, making sure there wouldn’t be any surprises left behind them if the locker proved to be guarded.

Once past the last door, the companions gathered in front of the icy portal and studied it carefully. There was a painted curve on the floor to show the swing of the armored slab, and a keypad on the wall offered easy access.

Holstering the SIG-Sauer, Ryan started forward, but the moment he crossed the painted line, a siren started to bleat, and a red light began to flash above the icy locker.

“Warning!” a mechanical voice blared from the ceiling, rattling the tiles. “Warning! Intruder alert! Intruder alert! All security personnel to Section 9! Repeat! All security personnel to Section 9!”

Swinging the Steyr upward, Ryan blew the speaker apart with a single shot and blessed silence returned to the hallway.

“Stupe machines,” J.B. commented, using the barrel of the Uzi to push back his fedora. “Can’t tell the difference between—”

The Armorer never got to finish the statement as there came a soft hiss and the corridor behind them was suddenly closed off by a grid of steel bars that dropped from the ceiling to violently slam onto the floor. If anybody had been standing under the gate, he or she would have been mashed into bloody pulp.

“Good thing…” Ryan started, then felt cold adrenaline flood his body as a second sigh sounded. On impulse he dived forward. While in the air, something smacked into his left boot, sending the man tumbling. He hit the wall hard, gritting his teeth against the pain shooting through his ankle. Nuking hell!

Looking backward, Ryan scowled at the sight of a second gate sealing off the corridor, the other companions now trapped between the array of steel bars. Caged like rats.

Her hair flexing wildly, Krysty started to speak, but then jerked her head toward the ceiling as panels swung open and a Vulcan minigun dropped into view. The deadly rapidfire was covered with armored cables and enclosed in cascading ammo feeds.

“Drop your weapons!” a voice boomed through the speaker mounted on the Vulcan, the volume almost deafeningly loud. “Drop your weapons, or die!”

Wasting no time, Ryan ignored the pain in his ankle and stood up to grab with both hands the electrical wiring attached to the bottom of the minigun. He pulled with all of his strength, and the smaller wires easily snapped free. But the larger cables were sheathed in flexible metal and only bent under his weight.

“Alert! Alert!” the speaker loudly announced as the robotic weapon swiveled, trying to target its attacker. The barrels began to spin and the Vulcan cut loose, the armor-piercing rounds chewing a path of destruction along the floor. The tiles disintegrated, spraying out rubbery pieces in every direction and exposing the hard concrete floor underneath. But hanging suspended directly underneath the Vulcan, Ryan stayed just outside its range.

Ricochets flew everywhere, several of the slugs zinging off the steel bars of the security cage holding the companions prisoner. In response, J.B., Krysty and the others shoved their blasters through the cage and hammered lead at the shielded control cables of the deadly rapidfire. The incoming barrage tore the flexible casing apart, and Ryan dropped to the floor with two fistfuls of sparking wires. Instantly the deadly Vulcan stopped firing and the spinning barrels slowed until they went completely still, the metal ticking as it radiated away the tremendous heat of the brief barrage.

“Anybody hurt?” Ryan demanded, tossing away the circuitry. As the wires hit the floor, miniature computer chips broke off from the ends. He had never seen tech like that before. Curious.

“No blood in sight,” Mildred reported, glancing quickly about as she slung the shotgun over a shoulder. “Damn, that was lucky!”

“Lucky my ass,” Krysty retorted, grabbing the steel bars and trying to shake them. The metal grating didn’t budge. “We’re locked in tight, and you’re trapped between this and the door.”

Walking the perimeter of the cage, J.B. studied every section. Steel bars closed off both sides of the corridor, and more had slid into existence along the walls when he hadn’t noticed, probably when the Vulcan was blasting.

“There’s no way out of this that I can see,” J.B. said in disgust. “There’s no lock to pick or keypad to short out.”

“Pity young Dean is no longer with us,” Doc said slowly, biting a lip. “He could have easily slipped out between these bars.”

“What good would that do?” J.B. demanded. “We need to liberate everybody, not just one of us.”

Jak dropped his backpack and started to remove his boots, then the rest of his clothing. In a few moments the teenager was stark naked and forcibly throwing himself at the smooth bars. Sheer momentum got Jak halfway through before he became stuck. Wiggling, the teenager gained another inch, but then stopped, unable to advance or to retreat.

“Exhale deeply,” Mildred directed. “Contract your chest.”

Grimacing unhappily, Jak did as requested as J.B. put two hands on the teenager’s shoulders and started to push. Both of them began to curse from the exertion. Then, with a lurch, Jak came free and tumbled down the corridor.

“Well done, lad!” Doc stated with a sharp nod. “The legendary Count of Monte Cristo could not have done better!”

“Now what?” Jak demanded, rubbing his scraped chest. The albino’s skin was already starting to show a few bruises.

“Head for the garage and find a crowbar,” J.B. suggested as Krysty passed the teenager his clothes, the Colt and the gunbelt.

“I don’t think a crowbar will lift these,” Ryan said with a dark frown. “And there’s no way you could drive a Hummer down here to try to ram the bars, even if there is one on the garage level.”

“Got no choice,” Jak said as he dressed. “Best light candles.” Turning, the teen started at an easy lope down the corridor toward the waiting elevator.

“Use gloves if you got any!” Ryan shouted through cupped hands.

Pausing at the corner, Jak waved in understanding, then dashed out of view. A moment later there was a soft chime from the closing elevator doors.

“Candles?” Mildred asked in confusion, then her eyes went wide. “Oh hell, he’s going to try to cut the power to the whole redoubt!”

“Think that will also open the Deep Storage unit?” Krysty asked tersely, reloading her revolver.

Frowning deeply, Ryan turned to stare at the giant portal. “Sure as frag hope not,” he muttered, sliding off the Steyr and checking the rotary clip inside the longblaster. “But we better get hard, just in case.”

Long minutes passed as the companions prepared for a close-quarter firefight. If the locker door automatically opened and a sec hunter droid came rolling out, Ryan was the only person in real danger. The droids weren’t armed with distance weps—that they knew about, at any rate. Protected by the thick steel bars, everybody would be safe from the deadly war machine, except Ryan. Trapped between the cage and the locker, the one-eyed man would only have a few yards in which to try to outmaneuver the kill bot. His only defense would be the combined firepower of the trapped companions.

“All for one, and one for all,” Doc muttered in a singsong manner.

“Do we look like the Three Musketeers?” Mildred snorted rudely.

“There were four of them, actually,” Doc corrected with a smile.

“Oh, I know that. Keifer Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Charlie Sheen and the other guy.”

Doc blinked. “What in the name of God are you babbling about, madam?”

Suddenly the ceiling lights flickered and went out.

“Here we go,” Ryan growled softly as the air vents slowly stopped blowing and a deafening silence filled the subterranean mil base.

Chapter Five

A flicker of light stabbed into the darkness as Ryan applied the flame of his butane lighter to a wax candle stub. As the wick caught, he set the candle near the wall and the reflected illumination cast flickering shadows across the people in the cage.

Reaching into her med kit, Mildred pulled out a survivalist flashlight and worked the small pump on the handle to charge the old batteries, then she flicked the switch and the device gave off a weak yellow glow. She had gotten the flashlight from a baron quite a while back as a reward for saving his son’s life. The battery was rechargeable, but there were no spare lightbulbs and the last bulb was starting to die. However, the flashlight still gave off ten times the power of a wax candle.

As Krysty and Doc also retrieved butane lighters and got more candles going, J.B. fumbled in his munitions bag and pulled out a predark road flare. Twisting off the cap, the Armorer scraped the magnesium nubbin underneath and the stick sputtered, almost seeming to go out for a moment. But then the chemical flame returned bright and strong, the flare giving off a tremendously bright reddish flame, along with a great amount of dense sulfurous smoke.

“Good thing the fire detectors aren’t working,” Mildred joked, shying away from the sputtering flare. “Jeez, that thing stinks!”

“Still works, though.” Reaching through the bars, J.B. tossed the flare outside the cage and the thick smoke rose upward to pool on the ceiling, the dark fumes flowing along the white tiles like a living thing.

“Okay, let’s see if we can hoist this,” Ryan said, grabbing two of the bars in his big hands. The man twisted his fists on the smooth steel to try to get a good grip. “Ready?”

Just then there came a loud gurgle, as if some horrible beast had been awakened. The companions froze, then gave a nervous laugh when they realized it was merely the water pipes draining inside the walls.

“All together now,” Ryan ordered, bracing his boots on the floor. The man tensed his legs and back. “One…two…three!”

The companions heaved with all of their combined strength and the gate slammed into the ceiling it lifted so easily and without resistance.

“Son of a bitch,” J.B. said, releasing his grip. “The grating must use a mag lock! With the power gone, it’s dead easy to open.”

Stepping into the cage, Ryan let the gate slide back down, then crossed over and experimentally lifted the other side with a single finger.

“Come on,” Ryan said. “We need to find something strong enough to use as a prop under these. With the juice turned off, we can’t use the keypad to get through the door of the locker. Besides—”

There was a metallic crash from somewhere and bright lights came on overhead, flooding the corridor with rods of sharp illumination that marked the exit door to the stairwell and a couple of empty wall niches that probably should have held fire extinguishers.

“Yeah, backup power,” Krysty said, casting a glance at the closed door. “Sometimes I forget that the redoubts clean and repair themselves. The main power will come back on anytime.”

Leaving the candles on the floor, the companions headed for the stairs. Along the way, J.B. pulled out his butane lighter and lit the end of his cigar. He knew that Mildred really disliked the habit, but there was a rare time when a man needed a good smoke. Ah!

Their blasters at the ready, the group started up the stairs with Mildred giving J.B. a stern disapproving look that the Armorer did his best to totally ignore.

Reaching the top level, Ryan checked for any traps, but found the entrance clear. Pushing open the partly closed metal door with the barrel of his handcannon, Ryan stepped into the garage and looked around, his scarred face slowly smiling.

The emergency lights were working here, too, casting a zigzag pattern of illumination. He could see that the entire floor was filled with mil wags, all of them parked in a wild jumble over the neat lines on the concrete flooring. Several of the vehicles seemed to have collided near the exit tunnel, their hoods crumpled and headlights smashed. But the rest of the wags were intact, including several Hummers and a LAV-25 armored transport. He didn’t stop to wonder why such a barren redoubt had so many vehicles in its garage.

Moving past the maze of vehicles, Ryan went to the wire enclosure of the storage room, shot off the padlock and yanked open the mesh door. Inside were dozens of spare tires and burnished steel rims in assorted sizes, along with stripped engine blocks, cases of headlights, sealed pallets of nuke batteries, and everything else needed to keep the fleet of mil wags in proper working condition. Along with about a dozen heavy-duty jack stands.

“Everybody take a pair,” Ryan directed, grabbing a couple of the heavy stands. “These things will hold about half a ton. Those gates can’t be putting out too much more pressure than that, or else the floor would crack. A dozen of these should do the job.”

“Sure hope so,” J.B. muttered judiciously, slinging the Uzi across his back to take a pair of the bulky triangular stands. The things were damn heavy, but even with his backpack he could handle the weight.

Holstering their weapons, Doc and Krysty each took two stands. Awkwardly, Mildred managed to lift one, cradling it to her chest and obviously struggling to keep from dropping it.

“Set it down, Mildred,” Ryan directed, starting for the elevator. “One of us has to stay armed.”

Grunting from the strain, the predark physician thankfully set down the jack stand, and straightened her back. “No problem there,” Mildred wheezed, pulling out her ZKR revolver and thumbing back the hammer.

Back in her own time period, before she got frozen in a cryogenic chamber and woke up almost one hundred years later, Mildred had rated in the marksman class with the target pistol. That took a lot of skill, not brute force. Besides, physicians didn’t need big muscles.

Returning to the cage on the lower level, the companions easily lifted up the powerless gates, lined up the jacks on the floor and set the gates into place.

“I shall go inform Jak,” Doc offered, pulling out the LeMat before heading for the stairs.

The other companions waited impatiently. But pretty soon, the fluorescent lights strobed in the ceiling and then came back on at full force. In gradual stages, the emergency lights died away and the two gates along the walls crashed back down into position. However, the row of jack stands across the corridor only groaned as two main gates tried to forcibly descend once more. There came a soft whining noise from the ceiling and the jack stands groaned, but nothing else happened.

“Bet that intruder alarm would be howling like crazy now,” J.B. said, taking out the stogie and blowing a smoke ring at the smashed ruin of the speaker.

“You can load that into a blaster,” Ryan agreed, warily studying the cage and stands. For just a second, they seemed to quiver, but then it was gone. Probably just a trick of the fluorescent tubes. Damn things pulsed in the weirdest way sometimes.

“Those appear to be holding,” Mildred said slowly, worrying a lip. “What do you think?”

Pivoting, Krysty kicked the steel bars as hard as she could with the heel of her cowboy boot. The metal rang from the impact, but nothing more.

“Yeah, that’ll hold,” J.B. said, puffing in satisfaction.

Inhaling deeply, Ryan grunted at the news, then lay down and crawled along the floor between two of the jack stands, across the cage and out the other side. Standing, he waited for the others to pass through. A few minutes later Doc and Jak arrived, and slipped through to join the rest of the companions.

“Good work,” Ryan said.

“No prob,” Jak muttered.

Going over to the broken Vulcan minigun, J.B. checked the enclosed feed and yanked out a cotter pin. Something disengaged and the Armorer removed the rectangular tube of louvered steel. Removing a cartridge from inside, he inspected the brass, then used a knife to cut off the lead bullet and poured the powdery contents of the round into his palm.

“We can use this,” J.B. stated, fingering the granules. “Even if the deeper has been looted, at least we’ll have some reloads. Two, mebbe three hundred rounds.”

“Good,” Jak said, standing. Then the teen pulled out his Colt Python. “Let’s open door.”

As the companions approached the frosty portal, a wave of cold swept over the group, but this time it only generated a sense of excitement. Pulling out some tools, J.B. did a pass over the door jamb and declared it clear of boobies and sensors.

Without a word, Ryan went to the keypad and tapped in the usual sequence that opened blast doors that led to the outside world in all redoubts. The indicator on top of the keypad flashed red, yellow, then green. A series of heavy thuds banged around the rim of the door as the internal locks disengaged. Next came a powerful sigh of working hydraulics, and the truncated door noisily disengaged to ponderously swing aside. With a mighty exhalation, a bitterly cold mist flowed out to block the sight of the companions for a few anxious moments. Ryan and the others tensed impatiently as the warmth of the corridor slowly dissipated the chilling fog.

The interior of the locker was pitch-black.

Pulling out his last road flare, J.B. started to scratch it alive when lights rippled across the ceiling of the locker. Row after row of bright tube lights came on until the inside of the deeper was fully illuminated. The glare was almost painful.

“Bingo,” Mildred whispered softly as dozens of packing crates came into view. Dozens, hell, there were hundreds!

The locker was stuffed full of stored equipment, the plastic shelving along the walls packed solid with military cases designed for long-term storage, and air tight ammo drums, fifty-five-gallon barrels that held a lifetime of brass for most villes. Wooden crates wrapped in thick plastic sheeting were stacked to the ceiling in huge pyramids, and banks of cabinets formed orderly rows along the spotlessly clean floor.

Staying in combat formation, the companions eased into the locker, their weapons searching for targets. Just because a sec hunter droid didn’t come rolling out instantly, didn’t mean a hundred of the machines weren’t waiting for them somewhere.

“Blasters, food, grens,” J.B. stated, reading the serial numbers off the sides of the assorted containers. “This place has a hundred times more supplies than the Alaskan redoubt!”

“Thank Gaia! And no madman in charge trying to ace us,” Krysty added in a pleased tone of voice. A smile touched her full lips.

“Okay, everybody stay in pairs,” Ryan directed, shouldering the longblaster. “Just because something didn’t try to stop us at the door, doesn’t mean we’re safe. Hunt for grens first. After that, go for ammo. Then food, you all know the list.”

Placing two fingers into his mouth, Jak gave a sharp whistle. “Got ’em!” he announced, pulling out a knife and slicing through the tough plastic sheeting around a stacked tray of mil grens. The clear polymer resisted, but the teen finally hacked through and started to yank the resilient sheeting aside.

Gently lifting off the top tray, Jak beamed in delight at the neat rows of colored spheres resting in gray foam cushioning. The color of the stripes said these were high-explosive grens, steel shrapnel. Excellent! Those were the best kind to find because the grens could be used for everything from chilling muties to fresh-water fishing. Mildred had once told Jak about a type of mil gren that had used plastic shrapnel that could not be seen on an X-ray machine. Weapons designed to maim, not chill. The concept was beyond foul, somehow it felt almost cowardly.

“Dark night, now we’re talking,” J.B. said happily, removing his cigar and grinding it out on the floor before approaching the massed explosives.

Grinning eagerly, Jak started passing out the grens. Everybody tucked several into their backpacks and then a few more into their coat pockets. When the rest of the companions were done, J.B. went to the next tray down and added a dozen more spheres to his munitions bag. The weight of the grens felt reassuring after being absent for so many months. The Armorer always felt vulnerable when he was out of explos. There were few problems in the Deathlands that couldn’t be solved with the adroit application of high explosives.

“Ammo next,” Ryan stated, brushing back a strand of his long black hair.

“I’m going to hunt for medical supplies,” Mildred countered, taking off at a run among the stacks of crates.

“Stay in pairs!” Ryan barked.

Shrugging his bag into place, J.B. said, “I got her six.” Checking his blaster, the Armorer followed after the stocky woman already racing into the maze of green metal cabinets.

Cutting open the seal on a sturdy trunk, Krysty hesitantly lifted the heavy lid. Inside were shiny metallic envelopes.

“MRE packs!” the woman shouted, raising a Mylar envelope. “Hundreds of them! Enough for an army!”

“Excelsior!” Doc cried, lifting a burnished aluminum box.

Laying the container on a worktable, the scholar began pulling out sealed plastic jars of grainy black powder, and clear plastic jars of fine-grain gray gunpowder, the slick material appearing almost oily as it moved. There were several boxes of lead rods for melting into bullets, and even a small assortment of premade balls. None of them were the right caliber for the LeMat, but Doc had enough for a couple of reloads already. He wisely took some extra lead, and all of the copper percussion nipples that he could find.

“Why not get real blaster?” Jak said, looking over the man’s shoulder. He pointed to an open cabinet filled with cardboard boxes. “Boxes of .44 wheelguns over there. Plenty of brass, too.”

“Let the artist choose his own brush,” Doc rumbled, his hands busy purging the spent chambers of the LeMat as a preliminary to reloading. “This has served me well, and I seek no other mistress.”

This was an old argument between the two, and the teen shrugged as always at the impossibility of con vincing the scholar otherwise. Going to a row of cabinets, Jak began opening each door and checking inside for anything good. There were a lot of mil uniforms, combat boots, gas masks, night goggles and a few items that he couldn’t readily identify.

Have to ask Mildred about those later, Jak decided, closing the door to continue his recce of the locker.

“Besides, being able to fire nine rounds without stopping, this has startled more coldhearts than I wish to remember,” the time traveler muttered to himself. For a split second Doc recalled the day when he’d faced that wolfweed dealer in the dusty streets of the burning New Mex ville. Doc had known the other fellow was out of range and so he’d fired the LeMat six times, then only fanned the hammer a couple of times to make the Civil War blaster click loudly. Grinning in triumph, the dealer had charged straight at Doc and raised his ax for a fast chill. When the dealer got within ten feet, point-blank range, Doc had raised the LeMat and fired three more times, ending the coldheart’s regime of terror forever.

“Nine is fine,” Doc chuckled, closing the fully loaded cylinder with a solid, satisfying click.

Prying a board free from a packing crate, Krysty whistled softly at the sight of the brand-new HK G-11 caseless rifles nestled inside. The plastic boxes alongside obviously contained spare ammo blocks. There was a score of them, perhaps more. The woman started to reach for one of the angular rapidfires, then frowned and closed the lid. Dean Cawdor had really liked this weapon, in spite of its faults. Actually, the caseless rapidfire only had a single flaw. It worked too efficiently. All by himself, Dean had once stopped a pack of muties with the dire weapon, only to discover that the rapidfire was empty. The boy had used the entire ammo block of a hundred rounds in only a few heartbeats. The priceless weapon had been abandoned in the street, useless without a replacement block.

“Find something?” Jak asked, draping a bandolier of ammo clips across his leather jacket. The teen was holding a MP-5 submachine gun, repeatedly pulling the bolt to work out the stiffness of the predark spring. The gun had been properly packed in anticorrosive gelatin, but that was easy to wash off with the accompanying solvent.

Wordlessly, Krysty shook her head and continued to search. She truly missed Dean. Such a pity that he was gone forever.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Ryan whispered with a smile, lifting a peculiar-looking gren into view. A whole case of implo grens!

This was the find of a lifetime. Not even Mildred had any idea how the things worked. The tech involved was far beyond her understanding of twentieth-century science. The burnished gray sphere looked like a standard mil gren, but instead of a C-4 explosion, or thermite blast, it somehow generated a massive gravity field for a split second that destroyed anything caught within the collapsing zone. An implo gren could stop a tank, and would smash a sec hunter droid like the angry fist of God.

Judiciously deciding between weight and mobility, Ryan finally took four of the implo grens and added a fifth to his jacket pocket. For the first time since they had arrived, the Deathlands warrior allowed himself to relax slightly. Whatever came their way now could be aced. Norm, mech or mutie, nothing could stand against an implo gren. That was good enough. He wanted more—who wouldn’t?—but the first hard lesson learned in the Deathlands was that having too many weps was just as bad as not having any. It made you slow, and a single moment wasted trying to decide what to fight with could easily be the deciding factor between living another day and ending up in the hot belly of some slavering mutie beast.

Slowly, the long hours passed as the companions expertly combed the Deep Storage Locker for all its precious treasures. Carrying bundles of equipment, they started forming neat stacks in a clear area near the open door and began to organize the materials into piles. Calling a halt for food, Ryan passed out some MRE packs, and the hungry companions devoured the predark meals of beef stroganoff with sour cream and noodles, with the usual nut cake for dessert. It was just food, nothing more. But there was also coffee, wonderful coffee for dessert. Greatly refreshed, the companions returned to the work of choosing supplies and weapons. New backpacks were found to replace their old patched ones. Mil bedrolls were exchanged for the civie versions dug out of a collapsed department store in a distant land.

Neat piles of ordnance were formed, and decisions made. Some of the simpler blasters were set aside as possible trade goods, in case there was a ville nearby. But for once, the companions didn’t need anything from the outside world. There was food and clothing galore, plus enough weps and brass to fight the most powerful baron in the land if necessary. Ryan took a new pair of combat boots. A case of U.S. Army socks and underwear was greeted with cries of delight, and everybody helped themselves. Placing aside her med kit, Mildred sat on a box of landmines to exchange her socks right on the spot. The stiff cloth was cast aside, and the new soft socks were gratefully pulled on, her toes wiggling almost sensuously in the clean cloth.

After a couple more hours, the companions broke for dinner, MREs again; chicken stew with dumplings. It was better than the beef stroganoff, and the packs were licked clean.

Fed and fully armed for the first time in a long time, the companions left the Deep Storage Locker, closing the door in their wake. It had been a long day, but there was still a lot to do before sleep could even be considered.

Chapter Six

As the terrible throbbing in his head slowly eased away, Edward awoke groggy on a grassy field, with the bright sun high overhead. Forcing himself to move, the man groaned from the herculean effort. His head hurt, his gut was roiling, and every bone felt as if it had been removed, then shoved back in again.

“Well, it’s about nuking time you came around,” John snapped irritably, walking closer. The elder Rogan was holding a tin cup full of something that gave off wisps of steam and smelled incredibly like coffee. “We were starting think you’d gone on the last train west, ya lazy bastard.”

It took Edward a few times to get his throat working. Blind norad, he felt as if he’d been run over by a baron’s war wag!

“Where—” Edward broke into a rough cough and tried again. “Where the frag are we? And is that coffee?”

“The Zone,” Alan said as he joined his brother and passed him a canteen. “And yes, it is, bro. But this will do you more good.”

Eagerly taking the canteen, Edward really didn’t care what the contents of the container was, as long as it was wet. He all but ripped off the cap and poured the cool water down his parched throat.

The other Rogans said nothing, waiting for their brother to get fully awake. There was a lot to discuss.

Finally lowering the canteen, Edward sighed then gave a loud belch. “Okay, where are we?” the man repeated, scowling at his younger sibling. “The Zone, ya said? But that’s halfway around the radblasted world!”

“Not quite,” Robert croaked in his mangled voice, the sound vaguely similar to a chuckle. “But close enough.”

Weighing his thoughts, Edward took another long drink from the canteen. “How fragging long have I been out?” he demanded curiously.

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