Jak’s hand was red and swollen

The slash was dark, puffy and angry looking. It had stopped bleeding, but now it oozed a clear fluid. Mildred sniffed, then wrinkled her nose.

“Sweet-sour stink. Either those little bastards have some kind of venom in them, or their feces are more virulent than I first thought.”

J.B. squatted over one of the corpses, probing it with the tip of his flensing knife. “Fangs seem solid, not like a rattler’s, if that helps. I don’t see any poison sac in its mouth or throat, either.”

“Thanks, John. Whatever the cause, I have to radically revise my prognosis.”

“What do you mean?” Krysty asked.

Mildred glanced up. “Judging by how fast it’s progressing, instead of a day or two, Jak might have six to eight hours—if he’s lucky.”

Downrigger Drift

Deathlands®

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Nothing could be worse than the fear that one has given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort which might have saved the world.

—Jane Addams

(1860–1935)

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 Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter One

Ryan Cawdor clawed his way up from black unconsciousness one slow second at a time. His single blue eye fluttered, then opened to take in the familiar-yet-different ceiling of yet another mat-trans unit, his arms and legs sprawled out around him. Wisps of the ever-present white mist that accompanied the matter transfer function swirled around his face, dissipating into nothingness as his wits returned.

As jumps went, this one hadn’t been as bad as many—at least, not for him. The dark nightmares that could accompany each body-wrenching trip had been faint for once. Ryan dimly recalled a journey through a forest, and a strange sensation that he couldn’t place for a moment, recognizing it as peace and quiet only after a bit of pondering. That feeling vanished as quickly as it had come when he raised his head, only to lower it again as a pounding wave of nausea crashed through his skull. It was the one usual reaction to a jump. This time it felt like someone had stuck a stiletto into his ear and given his brains a good stirring.

“Mebbe not that used to it.” His tongue was dry and thick in his mouth, and an attempt to hawk up saliva left him coughing hot, fetid air. “Fireblasted whitecoats.” He was never sure what was worse, relying on the unknown technology of the mat-trans to instantly transport him and his companions to an undetermined location in the blink of an eye, or wondering each time he entered one of the smooth-walled chambers if this was the time it would malfunction and scatter their molecules across the entire universe.

Slowly drawing in his arms, Ryan’s right hand spidered to his waist, where he felt the comforting grip of his holstered SIG-Sauer P-226 blaster under his fingers. Glancing left, he spotted the long outline of his Steyr SSG-70 sniper rifle on the floor next to him. Without rising, he reached for the weapon’s smooth walnut stock with his other hand, drawing it close.

The queasiness in his head abating, Ryan risked lifting his head again. The armaglass walls of the gateway chamber were a color he hadn’t seen before, and slumped around the chamber were his five traveling companions, all in various states of consciousness.

The first person his eyes fell on stared owlishly back at him through a pair of wire-framed glasses as he sat on the floor with his legs straight out in front of him. Wiry and short, with close-cropped hair and an intense gaze, J. B. Dix knew more about weapons, vehicles and munitions than anyone else living in Deathlands. Whether it was five different ways of taking out a mutie from a hundred yards away or setting a booby trap to ambush a convoy, the man known as the Armorer could handle either task with ease.

Adjusting the battered fedora that only left his head when he was asleep, the sallow man’s left eye dropped in what might have been a wink. “Gettin’ old.”

Ryan pushed himself up on his elbows, the rifle still in his hand. He wasn’t sure if the other man was referring to the situation or his general condition, but at the moment, he gave the only answer that made sense. “Yeah.”

The next person he saw was a woman, stretched out on the floor as if she might have been napping, her hair a luxuriant blaze of red that cascaded across her neck and shoulders. Apparently the jump had gone well for her, too, for instead of curling tightly around her neck, her semi-sentient tresses flowed loose, framing a face with high cheekbones, full lips, and eyes, currently closed, that were a brilliant emerald.

Ryan had had his share of lovers over the years, but none of them held a candle to Krysty Wroth. Beautiful, intelligent and lethal, she was his partner in every way imaginable.

He would chill for her.

He would die for her.

In the Deathlands, it was as simple as that.

Her long lashes opened, and she grinned at him, looking like a cat that had gotten the best of the cream. “Hello, lover. Nice sight to wake up to.”

“You’re not so bad yourself. How do you feel?”

“All right. This one wasn’t too bad, thank Gaia.”

“Yeah, ’bout time one of these damn things worked without trying to turn us inside out.”

A loud snort from next to her made both Krysty and Ryan glance over, each tensing to burst into action if necessary. But the man who’d made the noise simply smacked his lips, moaned softly and rolled over again, revealing a lined face surrounded by limp, gray-white hair. A small trickle of blood leaked from his patrician nose to drip on the floor as he snored, the bass sound rumbling off the walls.

Ryan rubbed his stubbled chin as he contemplated the enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a mystery that was Theophilus Algernon Tanner. A man born out of time, he was a unique specimen, as he had lived in the far-off past of the nineteenth century, way before skydark, when he had been time-trawled into the twentieth century, and then dumped into Deathlands without so much as a by-your-leave. The mental and physical strain of repeated jumps had left Doc’s mind more than unbalanced. On a good day, he could be a fount of information about history and times past. On a bad day, he rambled about things that made no sense to anyone, had imaginary conversations with people long dead, and acted a senile old fool.

J.B. had cautiously risen to his feet, stretching the kinks out of his back. “Doc awake?”

“Not yet. Give him a minute. Looks like it went hard for him.”

Blinking a few times, J.B. scanned the rest of the group with a glance. “Looks like Jak soiled himself.”

“Shut the fuck up, J.B.” The fifth member of their group pushed himself into a sitting position, his ruby-red eyes glittering from underneath a mane of frost-white hair hanging to his shoulders. He swept vomit from his chin with the back of a pale hand and spit on the floor. “Feel fine.”

J.B. smiled. “Equal parts piss and vinegar, as usual.”

Jak Lauren’s only response was a raised middle finger, drawing chuckles from both men. An albino from the deep swamps of what had once been the state of Louisiana a century earlier, the teenager had been with the group through many of their adventures across the Deathlands. At one point he’d settled down with a wife and child in the Southwest, but when they had been killed, he’d rejoined the group. Though shorter than J.B. and skinnier than Doc, Jak was one of the best hand-to-hand knife chillers Ryan had ever known.

Carefully wiping a drying crust of puke from his jacket, Jak checked to make sure his .357 Magnum Colt Python was secure on his belt, and also the placement of his several leaf-bladed throwing knives hidden about his person.

“Oh, my aching brain. Sweet Jesus, will these damned jumps ever get any better?” The last member of their group was also stirring, raising brown hands to her forehead and holding it as she curled into a tight, sitting ball.

Ryan and J.B. exchanged glances, and the Armorer walked over, kneeling by her side.

“You okay, Mildred?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s nothing I haven’t been through too many times before.” Mildred Wyeth raised her head, looking at the rest of them through squinted eyes. “Headache’s going away. Just give me a moment. Someday we gotta find a redoubt with a pharmacy that hasn’t been picked clean. What I wouldn’t give for an industrial-strength aspirin right now.”

“Settle for ammo—gettin’ lower than I like,” was J.B.’s matter-of-fact reply.

She looked at him with a rueful smile. “That is one of the differences between you and me, John. I just want to cure what ails me, and you’re intent on keeping yourself well-armed.”

“Both keep you from harm, don’t they?”

Mildred’s expression suddenly turned to a grimace of pain. “That they do, when you can find either.”

“Best way to do that is to start lookin’ now, isn’t it?” Ryan’s gaze flicked to the door that would lead them to the rest of the complex. The redoubts scattered throughout what was left of America and the rest of the world could hold great and terrible treasures. Often containing weapons, vehicles and equipment, some also contained darker things, like the time-trawling equipment that had brought Doc to the future—or the cryogenic equipment that had held Mildred in perfect hibernation until she had been awoken by Ryan and his crew. A skilled physician, she knew much about the cryo-chambers, having worked on their development before being put in one herself, and was also the best pistol shot in the group, even surpassing Ryan and J.B. She had even won a medal in the last ever Olympics, back when it was considered a hobby, not a way of life.

Ryan rolled to his feet in a single smooth motion and extended a hand to Krysty. “We better rouse Doc. It’s time we find out where we are.”

“Never fear, my dear Ryan, I am fully awakened, cognizant of my surroundings, and more or less in full command of my mental and physical faculties, such as they are.”

With the help of his lion’s-head ebony swordstick, Doc rose to his feet, knees popping with the effort, and dusted off his ancient frock coat before favoring them all with a broad smile. “Let us sally forth and investigate whatever new labyrinth we find ourselves inhabiting this day.”

“Awake sure. Mouth already runnin’.” Jak shook his head, then glanced at the walls. “Color different.”

The walls of the mat-trans chambers were a bewildering variety of colors that seemed to have no rhyme or reason to them, from black to silver and every shade in between.

“Triple red, people. Let’s see what we can see.” A broad variety of weapons appeared in everyone’s hands. J.B. readied his ever-present mini-Uzi, flicking off the safety with his thumb. He had taken up a position to one side, ready to catch anyone—or anything—outside in a lethal cross fire.

Although the self-sustaining redoubts had been built in secret and carefully hidden from the world more than a century earlier, the companions knew all too well that time had a way of revealing the concealed. The walls were sometimes breached. Until they knew for sure, the only way to go was slow, steady and ready to shoot anything that moved outside.

“Everyone set?” Ryan kept his blaster up and ready as he reached for the lever that would open the gateway door.

Chapter Two

The door hissed open, and Ryan immediately felt a breath of warm air waft over him. Blaster leading the way, he edged out past the left side of the mat-trans wall and into the anteroom, scanning for the slightest hint of movement. On reflex he checked the small rad counter clipped to the lapel of his jacket, but it edged up into the green.

“Seems clean—no leaks. Not much else either.”

The control room was empty, filled with blinking banks of comp consoles with plain chairs in front of them. The walls were dull gray, and as bare as stone.

J.B. was already moving to the right, the muzzle of his submachine gun tracking in a forty-five-degree arc in front of him, ready to spray chattering death in an instant. He reached the sliding door that would take them farther into the redoubt. “Green clear.” He wiped at his forehead. “Warm.”

Krysty and Jak came in next, still carrying their side-arms. Mildred and Doc brought up the rear, all looking for any sign of where they might have ended up this time.

Doc’s gaze wandered around the barren room. “Besides what hope the flight of future days may bring, what chance, what change worth waiting—”

“Shut it, Doc.”

“My apologies, dear friend, it was my hope that a bit of doggerel might enhance the otherwise drab quarters we currently find ourselves in.”

“That was John Milton, wasn’t it, Doc?” Mildred looked wistful for a moment. “Paradise Lost indeed.”

“Let the future take care of itself and let’s all concentrate mighty hard on the here and now.” Frowning, Ryan crossed the room to the door, blaster held down at his side.

“If anything happened here, it was long ago and far away,” J.B. opined. “Let’s get the hell out.”

“Hopefully the rest of the place is as well-preserved,” Krysty said, opening one of the small drawers next to a station, only to find it empty. “Been dreaming of a hot shower lately.”

Mildred nodded. “You and me both, sister.”

“Best not be running your bath water just yet, ladies. J.B., on me.” Ryan waited for his friend to reach the other side of the steel door before punching numbers on the keypad, and readied himself again as it cycled open.

“Phew!”

“Stink dead dog shit!” Jak commented.

“What sort of odorous miasma is assaulting us, friends?”

Ryan thought Doc’s question was the winner. The corridor beyond was filled with a stench that nearly made him gag—a heavy, clammy, stomach-churning reek so overpowering it was almost tangible, pouring into his nose and mouth to settle into his lungs as if it would never leave.

J.B.’s nose twitched once as he took in the sight ahead of them. “Black dust, what the hell is that?” Fluorescent lights had flickered on down the hallway when the door opened, revealing what had once been a plain, concretewalled, tiled corridor. Now, however, the floor and walls were caked with several inches of a green-black, viscous substance, piled in clumps in the corners, and stretching as far as the eye could see. Overhead, a triple row of olive-drab pipes ran down the tunnel before snaking off deeper into the complex walls.

“Krysty, do you sense anything?”

The flame-haired woman came up behind him, swallowing hard. She frowned as she tried to fathom what might have made this hallway a communal toilet. “Nothing really dangerous—some kind of rats crapping down here for a few years—mostly just disgusting.”

Ryan resisted the powerful urge to cover his nose as he edged into the filthy hallway. “Right in one.”

J.B. stepped into the corridor, his booted feet breaking through the top crust and squishing into the muck. “Got something here, Ryan. Cover me.”

Fighting the urge to vomit, Ryan watched for movement as the Armorer scraped crusted gunk off the wall. Meanwhile, Doc and Mildred looked on in horrified fascination.

“Upon my soul, I would swear that I have breathed in this very stench before. Indeed, it is almost familiar, which is not something I admit to lightly, my friends.”

Jak’s assessment was more succinct. “Stinks! Go back?”

“Let’s see what J.B.’s found first.” Ryan saw absolutely no signs of life in the tunnel, but if there wasn’t, what had made this incredible mess?

“Got a map of the floor here. We’re under a place once called Fort McCoy. Military base, looks like. Could be weapons, ammo topside.”

“And quarters, maybe even with running water.” Mildred’s voice lilted with faint hope.

“Mebbe something better than jerky,” Jak chimed in.

J.B. peered closely at the map. “According to this, the elevator’s at the far end. Other levels look promising.”

Ryan looked at the expectant faces around him. “Sure as hellfire anything’s better than this. All right, let’s try for the elevator. Wrap your nose and mouth if you can, and don’t fall, because I’m not giving you a hand up.” Gritting his teeth, he stepped into the ankle-deep waste.

Krysty sighed as her blue Western-tooled cowboy boots with the chiseled silver falcons on the sides disappeared into the dark muck. “Better be a shower, or at least a hose to wash down with.”

“One thing I am always assured of is that you people take me to the most elegant of places.” Doc stabbed his swordstick into the feces, but was stopped by Mildred.

The black woman offered Doc her arm. “Shall we?”

“It would be my pleasure to escort you across this sea of excrement, my dear.” Mildred kept a tight grip on Doc’s arm and caught Ryan’s approving nod with a slight one of her own. While he had moments of grace, Doc also wasn’t the spryest of men, and the extra support would keep him upright on the slippery floor.

Behind them, Jak prodded the odd couple. “Move. Nose ’bout fall off.”

Looking for all the world like two best friends out for an evening stroll, the two advanced into the putrid sludge, breaking through the crust and releasing pungent bursts of stink with every step.

J.B. had explored the wall next to the map and found the door’s number pad. “Think I’ll close the door. Don’t need shit dirtying up the place.”

Mildred sneezed and threw her arm up over her mouth and nose. “I don’t know if I can take much more of this.”

“Just keep moving and try not to think about it.” Ryan swallowed hard and did his best to follow his own advice. It was harder than it appeared, for each time his boot sank into the waste, it picked up a bit more gunk, until it felt like his feet were encased in twenty pounds of shit. They still had twenty yards to go, and Ryan was laboring for each step.

“Hold up. Gotta clean some of this off. Everyone else should do the same.”

“Ryan,” Krysty said quietly, “we’ve got company.”

Flicking off a handful of sticky crap off his fingers, Ryan wiped them off as best as he could on the wall, and looked around, not seeing anything. “Where from?”

“Around. Hard to say. Mebbe in the walls. Lots of movement, though.”

“Don’t like that. All right, people, let’s keep moving.” Ryan continued slogging forward, trudging through the sludge. The elevator doors beckoned, now only a few yards away.

“Ryan!” Mildred’s voice was controlled but tight. “Movement behind us!”

He whirled, seeing Jak already turned to the rear. “J.B., get up there and get those doors open. What have you got, Jak?”

“Dunno. Ugly fuckers, though.” The teen’s .357 Magnum blaster was out and tracking something, but there were too many people between for Ryan to see.

Putting his hand on Krysty’s shoulder, Ryan pressed her forward. “Make sure Doc and Mildred get to the doors.”

“Dozen, mebbe more,” Jak called out. “Shoot?”

“Careful Ryan,” Mildred said as he passed. “Gunfire in an enclosed space like this will damage our eardrums. We could go deaf from the sound waves.”

Ryan held up his SIG-Sauer blaster with its built-in silencer. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. “Got just the thing for that.” At the teen’s shoulder now, he got his first look at the creatures inhabiting this part of the complex.

Jak’s succinct description of the mutie animals—a hideous crossbreed of pig and rat—didn’t even begin to do them justice. About eighteen inches long, each had a low-slung body covered in wet, dung-slicked fur. Their front legs ended in sharp claws, but as they moved, Ryan saw their back legs were porcine, right down to a pair of pointed hooves. Their faces combined the ugliest features of both species, with large, black eyes over a flat, porcine nose and a mouth filled with sharp, gnawing teeth, capped by a double pair of up-thrusting tusks about two inches long. The noise they made as they appeared out of the muck was a cross between squeal and a snort, a high-pitched sound that grated on Ryan’s ears. The small pack seemed more curious than anything, although he didn’t like how close a few were getting.

Jak had a throwing blade raised in one hand, his Magnum blaster in the other. “Take out?”

“Let me.” Ryan braced his SIG-Sauer in his hand and squeezed off two shots, the silencer reducing the shots to a muffled cough. The 9 mm bullets tore into the nearest mutie and sent it writhing into the slime, its scream of agony cut off by the second round.

Although the two pig-rats nearest to the body immediately tore into the carcass of their former brethren, the rest of the muties did something unexpected.

As one, all eight or nine of them fell silent, sat up on their hind legs and stared at Ryan with unblinking black eyes. They were joined by a half-dozen more, all of whom watched the interlopers with the same inscrutable expression. Feeling a prickle of unease between his shoulder blades, Ryan tried to keep his eye on all of them at once, an impossible task, he soon learned.

“Ryan—” the albino began.

“Yeah, time to go.” Keeping his pistol trained on the growing mob, Ryan took a careful step backward, then another. “Take one out, blade only.”

Jak’s hand flicked and it was as if one of the larger muties suddenly sprouted a steel horn from its side, the blade carving deep into its vitals. Again, a pair of its fellows set upon the wounded monster, but the rest, now at least two dozen strong, all kept their eyes on the two humans. As if receiving some kind of silent signal, they all tensed at the exact same time.

The pig-rat at the head of the pack threw its head back and squealed, a bone-chilling sound that reverberated through the corridor. A moment after, the rest of the colony followed suit, the resulting noise so loud Ryan could barely think.

He and Jak had the exact same thought at the exact same second: “Run!”

Turning, they tore through the muck in great leaps, only a step or two ahead of the flowing mutie tide swarming after them. Jak ran so fast he appeared to be skimming the top of the crust, his feet touching so lightly he didn’t break through. Ryan, on the other hand, didn’t have that luxury, and had to power his way through the shit with each step. He knew one slip meant certain death, as the horde would be upon him before he could rise. The furious chitter-squealing of the pig-rats thundered in his ears, drowning out the shouts of encouragement from the rest of the group, who had reached the safe haven of the elevator. Seeing Krysty’s face taut with fear as she held her hand out to him spurred Ryan to even greater speed.

Jak had pulled ahead and slipped through the doors with ease. Ryan was a couple of yards behind, and right after to him were the muties, so close he thought he could feel their grotesque fangs snapping at his heels. Four yards to go…three…two…

With a final great bound, Ryan soared through the air and into the small room. “Close the bastard door!”

J.B. was already slapping at the button, and the doors began to slide shut. But before they could seal completely, the vanguard of the swarm was upon them.

Chapter Three

“Holy shit!”

“Watch the blasters! Ricochets will chill one of us!”

“Kill the fucks!”

The small room exploded into furious action as the six friends saw what was coming at them.

Ryan hit the back wall with his forearms up and whirled to find a half dozen of the creatures streaking through the gap before the door closed. Doc was already on the offensive, his gleaming rapier drawn from its cane scabbard as he moved to protect Mildred, who had no melee weapon. He immediately drew first blood, skewering one of the beasts as it lunged at him, its fanged mouth gaping and ready to rend his flesh. The long blade pierced its throat and sank deep into its vitals. Even as the mutie died, its paws and legs scrabbled for purchase, still trying to reach the old man.

“Riposte and finis, you hideous fiend,” Doc calmly said as the pig-rat stopped struggling. Pushing aside the carcass with the toe of his boot, he moved to help the others.

Another of the beasts was also down and dying, one of Jak’s knives protruding from its eye. Krysty had met the charge when Ryan had sailed by, lashing out with a booted foot and punting one of the swine back into the corridor, where it was lost in a brown-furred sea of gnashing fangs.

J.B. had drawn his flensing knife, held point-down, ready to slash or stab, weaving a deadly pattern of steel in the air as he faced off with one. Instead of rushing in, it crouched low to the ground, needle-sharp tusks glistened in the white light as it sidled around, looking for the opportunity to strike.

The Armorer bided his time, feinted left, and when the mutie fell for it, lashed out with his foot, slamming the toe into the beast’s ribs, and sending it crashing into the wall with a dull thud. Even as the repulsive creature regained its feet, J.B. planted his blade in the top of its skull, the point razoring through to pierce its jaw, bursting through skin and muscle. The pig-rat squealed once, horribly, as it died.

Whether it was because of his bone-white hair or his already having chilled two of the muties, Jak had attracted a pair of the creatures, squaring off against them with a blade in each hand. They both leaped for him at once, one low, one high, teeth bared to carve into the albino’s flesh.

Jak met their attack head-on, blades blurring as he defended himself. The high one he took out with a slash across the throat, dark red blood spattering as the flying corpse crashed into the wall. The low one he also stabbed, right through the stomach. Writhing on the blade, the beast lashed out with its fang-filled maw, ripping a bloody furrow in Jak’s hand.

“Son of a—!” Whipping the convulsing body off his blade, Jak stomped its skull, crushing it into the floor. “Bastard bit me!”

Ryan didn’t have time to help him, however, as the last pig-rat left was coming straight at him, its maw wide open, shrieking with bloodthirsty rage as it lunged.

Heeding Mildred’s warning, Ryan had already dropped his SIG-Sauer and drawn his panga, bringing it out and around in a ferocious sweeping blow. The mutie met cold steel and was knocked sideways by the force of the blow, its head, the black eyes already dulling, separating from its body, which lurched forward before collapsing to the floor.

Blade ready, Ryan looked around for more, but saw only lifeless rodent bodies, filling the elevator with their loathsome stink. “Everyone all right?”

“Jak got tagged.” Mildred was bent over the youth’s hand. “It’s fairly shallow, but those things live and breed in shit 24/7, and we don’t have anything to wash the wound. We’ll need to find antibiotics in the next day or so, to make sure he doesn’t have blood poisoning.”

“Here, use this.” J.B. passed her a canteen, which Mildred immediately dumped over Jak’s injury, before binding it with a strip torn from his faded T-shirt. She pulled it tight, then blew out a breath.

“It’ll do for now. How about we all get topside. I don’t know about y’all, but I think I’ve spent enough time underground for the time being.”

“Ace on the line with that, Mildred.” After cleaning his blade on his pants leg and sheathing it, Ryan strode to the elevator’s controls, kicking a mutie carcass out of the way as he went. He leaned over to examine the buttons, noting a small slot with two lights above it.

“J.B., you have any problems getting in?”

The Armorer shook his head. “Doors opened slick as sh— Well, slick enough, anyway.”

Ryan jabbed a button with his thumb, but nothing happened except the two lights above the slot came on, blinking red. He hit the other buttons in order, but there was no movement, only the same blink of twin red lights.

J.B. joined him at the panel. “Broken?”

“Don’t think so, looks like sec is still running. Think we need a key card or something to get it moving.”

“Shit.” The Armorer looked around, at the rest of the walls, ceiling and floor. “No access hatch. Hope no one ever got trapped in here.”

“You mean like us?” Mildred asked.

“Jury-rig a work-around?” Ryan asked, staring at the smooth steel panel.

J.B. tapped the metal with the hilt of his knife. “Don’t have the tools to get through this. There’s no screws or seams. Could go through the buttons, but short this panel out, and we’re stuck. Got a bit of plastique left, but the concussion’ll likely scramble our brains besides destroying its guts.” One corner of his mouth quirked up in what might have been the ghost of a grin. “I think we aren’t going anywhere for the moment, unless you aim to take another walk outside.”

“You—” Ryan started to reply when Krysty held up her hand.

“Shh! Hear that?”

Everyone fell silent, straining to pick up what the flame-haired woman was hearing. Then the sound came through the thick doors—the frenzied squeals of the pig-rats outside, accompanied by the thud of dozens of bodies hitting the elevator doors, the pack slamming into the barrier in their frenzy to get at the group.

“Dark night!” J.B. said, taking off his glasses and polishing them on his shirtsleeve. “They sound bastard hungry.”

“They sound goddamn insane, is what they sound like,” Mildred replied. “Well, what’s the story, morning glory?”

Ryan frowned at the woman for a moment until he realized she wasn’t insulting him. The term had to be more of her strange twentieth century slang. He shrugged. “Not sure just yet. We don’t seem to be able to go up, and you know what’s outside, so the mat-trans is out for the time being, as well.”

“So, we’re just going to hole up here a while and wait them out?” Mildred asked.

Ryan picked the cleanest corner of the floor he saw and sat down. “Yup. They should give up in an hour or two. Mutie bastards’ll be off looking for their next meal soon enough.”

“Mildred, my dear?” Doc’s sonorous voice cut across the discussion. “I think you might want to have a look at Jak. Our snow-headed companion appears a bit under the weather, even to my less-than-trained eye.”

All five heads swiveled toward the albino youth, who was huddled in another corner of the elevator, his shoulders shaking. “Don’t worry me. Fine.” He fixed them all with his chilling, red-eyed stare for a moment before his eyes rolled back in his head as he slid down the wall, crumpling in an untidy heap on the floor.

Ryan pushed himself to his feet. “Thought you said he’d be all right for now, Mildred?”

“He should be, damn it.” Frowning, the doctor trotted to Jak and felt his forehead, then grabbed his wrist.

The boy stirred weakly under her ministrations. “Lemme ’lone. All right. Just cold. So cold…”

“He’s got a fever and is burning up. His pulse is also racing.” Mildred took the bandage off his wound. “Jesus H. Christ!”

Jak’s hand was red and swollen, and the slash was dark, puffy and angry looking. It had stopped bleeding, but now oozed a clear fluid. Mildred sniffed, then pulled back, wrinkling her nose. “Sweet-sour stink. Either those little bastards have some kind of venom in them, or their feces is more virulent than I thought.”

J.B. squatted by one of the grisly corpses, probing it carefully with the tip of his flensing knife. “Fangs seem solid, not like a rattler’s, if that helps. Don’t see any kind of obvious poison sac in the mouth or throat either.”

“Thanks, John. Whatever the cause, I have to radically revise my prognosis for him.”

“What do you mean?” Krysty asked.

Mildred glanced up, her brow knotted. “Judging by how fast it’s progressing, instead of a day or two, Jak might have six to eight hours—if he’s lucky.”

Chapter Four

“Hey, Doc, lend me your coat, please?”

“My pleasure, dear lady.” Shrugging out of his frock coat, Doc presented it to Mildred with a slight bow. “It does not look good for young Jak, does it?”

“No, it sure as hell doesn’t,” Ryan answered. He turned back to the panel, which still silently mocked him with its obstinate refusal to work. “Our clock just started ticking a whole lot faster. Either we figure out a way back to the mat-trans, or we get this hunk-of-junk steel box moving.”

“Got four choices.” J.B. pointed at the double doors, then at the elevator floor as he leaned against the wall, his dusty brown fedora tilted up. “Over, under, around or through.”

Even under the circumstances, Ryan couldn’t help smiling at the phrase, one of the Trader’s favorite aphorisms. “Yeah. Let’s try up first. C’mon, I’ll boost you.”

Ryan squatted, and J.B. nimbly climbed on his shoulders. When the tall man straightened, the Armorer reached the elevator roof with ease. For the next several minutes, he looked for any kind of hidden hatch, lever or emergency controls but came up empty. As he was finishing his sweep, he jerked his hands away from the ceiling. “What the—?”

“You got something?”

“Felt something. Wait a sec….” J.B. gently placed his hands back on the plastic grilled ceiling tiles. “Black dust!”

Mildred looked up from tending Jak. “What’s going on, John?”

Ryan glanced up to see J.B. staring down at them with wide eyes. “I can hear them jumping on the roof. There’s gotta be more of those rad-blasted pig-rats.” He slid off Ryan’s shoulders to the floor. “Stirred up one hell of a rat’s nest.”

They all listened, and once again, heard the squeals and thumps of rodent bodies hitting the ceiling, followed by the click-click of their hooves as the muties clattered around on the roof of the elevator.

Ryan shook his head. “What the fuck—fireblasted muties takin’ this personal?”

“Either that, or we smell better than whatever they been eating recently.” J.B. shrugged, as phlegmatic as ever.

“Rats chew on just about anything,” Mildred said with a shudder. “Think they’ll gnaw through the cable?”

“If they do, all the more reason to get the hell out of here. Let’s take a look at the floor.”

Two minutes later, the thin industrial carpeting had been torn up, revealing more of the same smooth metal. Drawing his knife, J.B. pressed the point into the steel as hard as he dared without risking the blade, but didn’t even make an impression. “No-go that way.”

“Right. That leaves the hallway.” Ryan turned to face the doors.

“Lover.” Krysty placed a hand on his arm. “You can’t be serious. You wouldn’t make it ten steps.”

Glancing at her, Ryan took her hand in his own callused one, squeezing for a moment before letting it fall. “Got no plans to take the last train to the coast just yet.”

J.B. joined him, the sallow man scratching his forehead. “What are you thinking?”

Ryan flashed him a tight grin. “Over. The way I remember it, those three pipes ran the entire length of the corridor.”

“Leap up, grab them and scoot. Crazy enough that it might work. How do we open the doors and get out without being overrun?”

“That’s the tricky part. Doc?”

“At your service, good sir.”

“Got any rounds left for that scattergun barrel of yours?”

“I believe I can find a few at the bottom of my capacious pockets.”

Ryan nodded at J.B., who had already picked up on his plan and had unslung the M-4000 shotgun and was checking the load.

“Ryan, you aren’t serious about this?” Mildred asked, rising from beside Jak.

The dark-haired man turned to face her. “Look into my eye and tell me I’m joking.”

She frowned. “The blasts in this enclosed space could permanently deafen us all.”

“Better alive and deaf than hearing and eaten alive. If you want to help, figure out a way to protect our hearing as best you can.” Ryan shrugged off his rifle, leaning it against the corner of the elevator, and made sure there were no loose pieces of cloth on his garments that might provide a convenient rope for the mutie horde outside. “Make sure everything’s secured, J.B.”

“I’m on it.”

Mildred shook her head, then looked around. “You two are both nuts.”

Ryan saw red for a second. “Fireblast, Mildred! If you aren’t helping, you’re hindering! Now get useful, or get the hell out of the way!”

Mildred’s face tightened, but Ryan didn’t give an inch, pinning her under his icy glare. Finally she turned away. “We need cloth, cotton wadding, anything to shield our eardrums.”

“How about that carpet we tore up?” Krysty borrowed J.B.’s knife and began cutting it into long strips.

Mildred felt it, then nodded. “Got just enough padding to do the trick. Make them narrower if you can. The more we can cram into our ears, the better.”

J.B. glanced over at their work. “At least it’ll muffle the noise of those little bastards slamming into the door.”

“I’ll get Jak ready.” Krysty moved to the motionless albino teen, plugging his ears and covering his head with Doc’s coat.

Doc had finally fished out a round for the shotgun barrel of his LeMat, and now stood with the pistol ready in both hands. J.B. had his shotgun ready, his gaze on Ryan. “Who’s going?”

Ryan smiled. “You and me, of course. I need your devious mind in case the cards are locked up or hidden somewhere.”

J.B. sighed. “Hip-deep in the shit, as usual.”

“Where else?”

Doc pressed his ear against the door. “Is there any chance that waiting a bit might make the cretins leave us in peace and seek more suitable prey?”

“They might, but if Jak’s getting worse—”

“Which he is,” Mildred broke in from the corner. Ryan glanced over to see the kid convulse and vomit a thin stream of pale bile onto the floor.

“We’ve got to move now. I think this is our best bet. Hellfire, it’s the only one we got. All right, let’s go over the plan.”

Ryan scooped up the unconscious Jak and moved him to the other side of the elevator, sweeping mutie corpses out of the way with his boot. “Krysty, you’re on the door. We give the signal, you hit the button. As soon as J.B. and I are out, close it triple-quick.”

“You just don’t let it hit your ass on the way out.” She smiled, but it vanished from her face as quickly as it had appeared. Her vibrant crimson hair was tucked up tight at her nape, revealing how she felt about this whole idea.

“Doc and J.B., you’re the firepower. Soon as the door opens wide enough, you both let fly with everything you got. Doc, hold your blaster at this angle.” Ryan adjusted the man’s hands to get maximum spread of the shotgun pellets.

The old man nodded, his limp, white mane flying around his shoulders. “Never fear, Ryan, I shall endeavor to send as many of the feral scum to hell as possible.”

J.B. didn’t say a word, only removed his beloved fedora and handed it to Mildred who, not having anywhere better to set it, perched it on her own head, where it sat incongruously over her beaded plaits.

“That’s the spirit, Doc, but just fire the one round, don’t switch to the cylinder. Mildred, you hang back and grab J.B.’s M-4000 when he’s empty. You know how to reload it, right?”

Wordlessly, she accepted the round magazine from J.B. and nodded, handing him a wad of carpet strips in exchange. “I got it.”

“Way I figure it, in less than five seconds, you two shoot, then we scoot. You seal that door tight after us.”

Krysty’s full lips were pressed tight with concern. “Assuming you find the card, how do you expect to get back inside?”

“We’ll just knock on the door, and you’ll do the same thing again.” Ryan looked at all of them. “Ready?”

Everyone nodded. Doc took a tighter grip on his LeMat, carpet strips sprouting out of his ears. J.B. braced the M-4000 shotgun against his hip, ready to spray the corridor. Krysty was poised at the door controls, her face pale. Mildred stood in the middle of the elevator, ready to grab J.B.’s weapon. Ryan folded up a strip and inserted into his left ear, then did the same with his right, feeling the noise inside the elevator fade away into a dull buzz.

Ryan paused for a moment, removing the carpet from his ear. “Hey, hear that? They’ve stopped.”

Everyone cautiously removed one of their earplugs to listen. It was now ominously silent.

J.B. frowned. “What you think that means? They get tired and left?”

Doc cleared his throat. “More likely, John Barrymore, they are regrouping to plan another method of attack. I recall a fascinating study on the common rat that proved the rodents possessed the ability of meta-cognition, previously found only in humans and some primates—”

“Skip the lecture, Doc. What the hell are you talking about?”

With a sigh, the old man stared pointedly at Ryan. “My point, my impatient companion, is that rats are one of the few animals who think about thinking—on an instinctual, primal level they are able to analyze their own thought processes. Beating themselves against the door was not working, so they are now trying to find another way into the elevator. The more salient point is that these mutated animals are probably more intelligent than you are giving them credit for. A dangerous assumption indeed.”

“Mebbe so, but we’re about to give them the surprise of their lives. Let’s see what your supermuties do when we charge straight into them,” the one-eyed man replied.

Ryan inserted his wedge of carpet earplug again. “Let’s do it.”

Chapter Five

On Ryan’s nod, Krysty stabbed the door button. There was a pause, and Ryan thought the whole plan might go to hell before it even began if the doors didn’t open.

He felt a tremor shiver through the floor and made sure J.B. and Doc were both ready. He was more worried about Doc. J.B. could be wakened from a sound sleep and be alert and ready to chill in less than three seconds. Sometimes Doc was the exact opposite, snoring through events that would rouse an entire ville. But now he looked more than ready, his eyes alight as he waited to unleash blood and thunder.

Ryan’s breath hissed through clenched teeth as he waited for the doors to open. His hands itched for a weapon, and he was acutely aware of the oddity of not leading this assault by example. But neither his hand-blaster nor longblaster was suited for the job, and he needed to get into the corridor and on the pipes triple-quick so J.B. could follow before being mobbed by the surviving muties.

After what seemed like an hour, but was probably just a few seconds, the double doors separated with a squeal, pulling apart to reveal the boiling, furious mutant mass outside. Ryan was counting on a moment’s surprise as the pig-rats took in this new development, and he was well rewarded. As one, the churning crowd all looked up at the suddenly disappearing barrier in front of them.

But as the muties took in this new development, Ryan’s breath caught in his throat as he stared out at what they were up against.

The hallway was completely buried in squirming, wriggling pig-rats, crawling on and over one another in their single-minded desire to get to the end of the hallway and the live food trapped there. They were at least five or six deep in the hallway, a living carpet of gray-brown fur, dotted every few inches by a pair of large, black eyes and thousands upon thousands of needle-sharp teeth.

For a millisecond, everything came to a halt. The mutie rodent host stared up at them, and Ryan and company stared back.

The moment was broken by the soft chime of the elevator announcing to all that the doors had opened.

“Now!” he shouted.

Primed and ready, Doc unleashed his shotgun round first. The concussion slammed through Ryan’s head like a wall of bricks had fallen on him. The cluster of lead balls smashed into the first group of rats, already crouching to leap at them. The pellets ripping away limbs, tearing through faces, pulverizing bodies, disintegrating the point guard in a welter of blood, bone and brains.

A heartbeat later, J.B. opened up with the M-4000. With each shell containing dozens of razor-sharp steel fléchettes, he laid down a curtain of metal moving at a thousand feet per second, obliterating anything in its way.

The next wave, already running toward the door, was pulped where they stood, their remains bursting apart to splatter comrades behind them. Encountering little resistance, the fléchette wave continued into the next line, each tiny dart carving into another furry body, and another behind that.

For a moment, Ryan thought he knew what the sound of the bombs going off during skydark sounded like. The Smith & Wesson’s awesome roar reverberated through his head like the pounding hooves of Death’s hellhorses. His plugged ears trembled in agony, and his skull felt like it had been stove in by a sledgehammer.

But the gambit worked. For a few precious seconds, the pig-rats’ onslaught was broken as they retreated before the impenetrable steel veil of death sweeping through them.

J.B.’s shotgun clicked on an empty chamber, the overpowering roar echoing off the walls to beat through Ryan’s head one last time before fading away. He glanced around to see similar expressions of shock and awe on the rest of his companions’ faces.

“Let’s go!” Ryan said, his voice sounding muffled and far away, even to him. Stepping into the corridor, he saw the multitude already massing for another run. Turning to face the group, he leaped up and clamped both hands around the pipe on the left, using the wall to climb up until he could wrap his legs around it as well, and shimmying forward as fast as he could. He felt the strain on the pipes as J.B. followed suit, then the crack of a blaster from the elevator.

“Shut it!” he yelled back, but immediately stopped as the effort unbalanced him, nearly causing him to lose his grip on the cold metal.

“They got the doors closed,” J.B. grunted behind him. “Move, move, move!”

Clinging to the pipe, Ryan began inching down the corridor, aware of the fanged, clawed death that awaited below if he slipped. Left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot. Inch-by-inch, foot-by-foot, he made his way along. Once he brushed the middle pipe, only to draw back in surprise.

“J.B., the middle pipe’s bastard hot. Watch it.”

“Got it.”

Below, the pig-rats went absolutely crazy. The squealing and gnashing of their teeth was deafening now, and Ryan sensed movement below him, closer than he would have liked.

“Hold up.” Twisting his head, Ryan looked down just in time to see one of the muties launch itself at his face, its claws outstretched to rip the skin from his cheeks, dripping fangs bared and ready to feast on his eyes, nose, and tongue.

“Shit!” Unable to move, Ryan pressed himself against the pipe, staring as the beast grew larger in his vision. But about a foot away from him, it reached the apex of its jump and fell away into the writhing mass below. “Fireblast!”

“What happened?”

“Mutie nearly chewed my face!”

“Get you?”

Even though he’d seen it fall before striking, Ryan took a second to check. “No!”

“Then get moving!”

“Just a sec!” Making sure his left grip was secure, Ryan drew his SIG-Sauer, thumbed off the safety, pointed down and fired three times. The pained squeals of the wounded pig-rats ended quickly as they were torn apart by their ravenous, uncaring brethren.

“Little free with the ammo, aren’t you?”

“If what Doc said was true about how these bastards think, I want them to know if they try for me, they pay the final price.” Holstering his blaster, Ryan crept forward mechanically, his leaden arms and legs clamped on to the pipe, his fingers growing more numb with each yard gained.

After what seemed like an eternity, Ryan saw the pipes bend at a right angle and vanish into the wall a couple of yards away. Carefully hanging his head down, he saw the doors to the mat-trans anteroom just beyond them. Turning his head sideways and looking out of the corner of his eye, he watched the pig-rats tumble and swirl over and around one another, with the occasional one making a futile leap at him, only to fall back into the teeming mass.

It was at that moment Ryan realized the fault in his plan. “Son of a bitch!”

“Yeah?” There was an odd tone in J.B. voice that Ryan couldn’t place, but he had more pressing things to worry about at the moment.

“How in hell are we getting’ through the bastard door without bringing half the muties in with us?”

“I thought it might come up, so I made us a little door knocker,” J.B. replied. “Wedge yourself between the pipe and the wall, eye closed, mouth open.”

Ryan knew what was coming, and scrambled to brace himself into the narrow space between the cold gray wall and the colder green pipe. Forcing his body into the crevice, he secured himself firmly enough so that he could also cover his left ear, which would suffer the most from what was about to go down.

“Ready?” J.B. called.

“Ready.”

“Fire in the hole!”

Ryan squeezed his eye shut and opened his mouth to equalize the coming shock wave. A few seconds passed before another thunderclap erupted in the corridor, and he felt an invisible force press against him for a moment, right before his entire left side was splattered with sticky wetness.

“Go!”

Without looking, Ryan dropped his legs from the pipe, trusting J.B.’s skill to have cleared a path. Even before his feet had touched the ground, his SIG-Sauer filled his fist, ready to chill anything that might still come at him.

The immediate space in front of the doors looked like a small bomb had gone off, which was exactly what had happened. J.B.’s small wad of plastique explosive had cleared an area about two yards wide of pig-rats, shit and everything else, blowing it out in a neat, smoking circle. The rest of the horde milled about in confusion, some stunned by the blast, some confused by the noise, all unwilling to approach for the moment.

Whirling, Ryan tapped in the keypad code, praying that the barrier wouldn’t choose that most inopportune time to malfunction. The portal silently opened, and he rushed inside, J.B. hot on his heels. Stabbing the reverse code into the keypad, he endured the agonizing wait as the doors cycled closed again. Leaning against the wall, Ryan closed his eye and let out a long, shuddering breath. Too close.

A low, sibilant sound brought him out of his respite. Ryan opened his eye to see J.B.’s lips twitch in the slight chuckle that passed for his laughter. “What the fuck’s so funny?”

“Nothing, ’cept your left side looks like you marinated in rat guts and dried shit.”

Ryan glanced down to see exactly what J.B. had described coating his left boot, pants leg, shirtsleeve, and even his face. Wiping the disgusting mess away, he looked up at the Armorer, who was oddly untouched. “How the hell’d you stay so clean?”

“Got higher on the pipe. Also helped that I wasn’t point man.” J.B. wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Dark night, but you’re smellin’ worse by the second.”

Ryan stared at him for a moment, then the corner of his mouth quirked up in a slight grin. “You had that booby ready before we left, didn’t you?”

J.B. ran a hand through his hair. “I was prepared to take as many of those fuckers on the last train with me if I had to.” He strolled deeper into the room. “Let’s look around.”

For the next ten minutes, the two men methodically searched the room, leaving no wall, comp station, or desk console untouched. Neither one discussed the possibility of what would happen if they couldn’t find an access card to unlock the elevator.

“Fireblast,” Ryan grunted after bending down to check the underside of the last desk. “Too much to ask for them to place the cards in a neat little box in the wall with a sign on it?”

“We could rig up a harness to get Jak over here, use the mat-trans again.”

“Too hard to move him that way. Besides, do you really think Doc could hang upside down and hand-overhand it all the way down here like we did?” Ryan didn’t even mention Krysty, and as he stared back at J.B., he knew he didn’t have to mention Mildred either. “Nope, all of us are gettin’ out, one way or another. We’ve just got to figure out which way to go.”

J.B. sat in one of the dusty chairs and propped his feet up on the desk. “I’m open to suggestions.”

Ryan whirled, his ears straining. “What did you say?”

J.B. shrugged. “I said—”

Ryan held up his hand. “No, it wasn’t that, not exactly. I heard something else when you sat down, a noise, beep of some kind.”

The smaller man swung his legs off the desk, then his eyes widened as he saw the top of the flat console. “Look at this.”

Ryan walked over and was as surprised as his friend. The formerly blank, black surface had lit up under the pressure of the J.B.’s feet, and now showed long, horizontal rectangle, a nine-digit numeric touchpad, each button containing a row of three letters and a number. A single directive was next to it, followed by a small, blinking line: Enter Passcode:

Chapter Six

Instinctively, Ryan edged back a bit, J.B. right beside him. Although he didn’t fear anything living on this hell-blasted planet—after all, if it breathed, he could chill it—the soulless machines created by the predark whitecoats were something else entirely. Often just one breath away from a malfunction, they had to be handled with extreme care just to keep them running.

Ryan had seen plenty of comps shut down in showers of bright sparks or go what passed for crazy when touched. In the back of his mind, he feared one of these days the incomprehensible machines controlling the mat-trans would malfunction and tear them apart molecule by molecule. If that ever happened, he hoped he’d already be unconscious before it started.

Shaking away the thought, he returned to the here and now, staring at the glowing countertop.

J.B. rubbed his chin as he studied the machine. “Never saw anything like this before. What do you think?”

Part of Ryan wanted to have nothing to do with the strange console, but he also understood it might be the way to fix that elevator—if they could make it work. “Guess we should enter something.”

“No shit. What’d you have in mind?”

That question was worth all the jack in the world, or at least the way out of this nightmare tunnel, which would be just as good. What would the passcode be? What word or numeric string would be the magic key to unlock this thing’s secrets?

Tentatively Ryan reached toward the console, his fingers hovering above it. “If each button represents a letter…”

His index finger stabbed the button with the letter c.

A small, black dot appeared in the rectangle.

Ryan slowly tapped out the rest of his guess, one button at a time: e-r-b-e-r-u-s.

Nothing happened. Ryan noticed the lowermost right button on the pad, marked enter, was flashing.

“Mebbe this’ll do it.”

He pressed the flashing button.

The entire screen flashed bright red, startling both of them. New letters appeared on the screen: Invalid Passcode Please Try Again

“At least it’s polite.” J.B. noted.

“Yeah, but not enough to let us in easy. You got any ideas?”

“How about the entire program name, you know, Project Cerberus.”

“Yeah, that might work.” More confidently, Ryan pressed the buttons to spell out the word, then pressed the enter button again.

The screen flashed red again, and the warning appeared again, with more writing: Invalid Passcode Please Try Again Warning: Third Failed Attempt Will Result In Activation Of Security Procedures/Automatic Lockdown Mode.

J.B.’s face darkened. “I don’t like that.”

“It probably doesn’t mean anything. It might just try to summon long-dead guards.”

“Or it might gas us and the others in the elevator. Or seal all the doors and pump all the air out till we black out and die.”

The Armorer’s bleak scenarios stopped Ryan’s finger as it was about to touch the surface again. He took a step back and racked his brain, trying to do the impossible—think like a whitecoat.

The majority of the men and women claiming to be scientists that Ryan had encountered during his travels often had a few things in common. They were highly intelligent and inbred, often living sequestered from the rest of the population in hidden laboratory redoubts. They were usually very dedicated to their work, whatever it might be, often bordering on passion—or mania.

And they were often crazier than shithouse rats.

“The code would be most likely be something simple, easy to enter, easy to remember. Something you could punch in almost without thinking—”

His breath caught in his throat. “Could it be that bastard easy?” he whispered. No sooner did he think it than his fingers stabbed the buttons—3-5-2

The general access code to open the doors of the redoubts.

“Here goes nothing….”

Tensing, Ryan pressed the enter button.

Chapter Seven

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the screen flashed a brilliant, deep blue and a new menu appeared.

Access Granted

Welcome To Fort McCoy Redoubt Main Menu

 1) Operations

 2) Programs

 3) Security

 4) Maintenance

 5) Matter Transfer/Enter Passcode To Access

“Looks like number five is out.” J.B. noted.

“Yeah.” Ryan ground his teeth in frustration. In every base they’d jumped to, he had always been on the lookout for more information on the mat-trans units. How they worked, and more importantly, how a person could control where they jumped.

He’d come close a few times. Once, in an abandoned space station high above the planet, he’d had to leave a file full of documents behind just as the station comp began its self-destruct sequence. Another time, in the desert of what had been New Mex, he’d run into Major Drake Burroughs, from predark, who knew how to direct the jumps, sending a squad after Ryan and his companions when they escaped captivity. Someday, Ryan wanted to go back there and find out exactly what Burroughs knew. But that was another day…

Right now he still needed to figure out what to do about the elevator. They’d been lucky enough getting into the general system—trying to guess the passcode to access the mat-trans info would be like firing a bullet into the air blindfolded and still expecting to hit your target.

Wiping his forehead, which was now damp with sweat, Ryan ran his finger down the choices. “Security’s probably passcoded as well—they never trust anyone. Mebbe maintenance?”

“Good as any.”

Ryan hit number four, leading to yet another menu:

Maintenance Menu

 1) General

 2) Area

 3) Room

 4) Matter Transfer/Enter Passcode To Access

 5) Other

Ryan sighed. “Feels like we’re wading two steps forward in shit, only to slip one step back.”

“Already done that today. Keep going. I think you’re almost there. Try number five. Mebbe we can tell it to unlock the sec code on the elevator.”

Ryan pressed the button. This made the console change again. Now a keyboard appeared, along with the usual horizontal rectangle, and a command: Enter Maintenance Task

Ryan looked at J.B. again, who shrugged. “Don’t look at me. You’re the one talking to it.”

“Some help you are.” Holding his breath, Ryan stabbed keys: Repair Matter Transfer Elevator.

The screen flashed, and more text appeared: System Diagnostic Running Matter Transfer Elevator Operating Normally. Last Inspection Of Matter Transfer Elevator Performed On 9/10/2000. Elevator Inspection Overdue. Do You Wish To Send Elevator To Maintenance Level For Visual Inspection?

Ryan grinned. “That sounds about as good as anything we can expect. Maintenance level’s got to be near the surface.”

“Makes as much sense as anything else we’ve seen so far.”

Ryan entered yes. A line of text appeared, with an entry rectangle underneath: Please Set Time For Elevator Inspection.

Ryan’s smile dropped off his face. “Nuke shit. How do we do this?”

“Hey, check the lower right-hand corner—some sort of timer.”

Ryan glanced down, and sure enough, there were numbers there: 13:37:10. As he watched, the last pair counted up to sixty, then the next pair to the left added one, and the rightmost pair started counting up from one again.

“Looks like that’s the clock. Ten minutes should be enough to get out of here and back to the elevator, right?”

“I’d say so.”

Ryan entered the time: 13:48:00, and hit Enter.

All of the earlier text disappeared, replaced by four lines: Countdown To Matter Transfer Elevator Inspection: 00:09:59 Please Ensure That All Personnel Are Clear Of Elevator Before It Departs.

Ryan slapped J.B.’s shoulder. “Time to go.”

The other man held up a finger-sized lump of plastique. “Ready. Hope we find some more of this soon. It’s my last detonator.”

“We’ll know soon enough.” Ryan trotted back to the access door.

“It’s a four-second fuse, so when the doors open wide enough, I toss it, wait for the boom and we go.”

“Three…two…one—” Ryan stabbed the keypad.

The door cycled open again, and as soon as the crack was wide enough, J.B. pitched the explosive into the corridor, calling “fire in the hole!”

Both men spun away, covering their ears and opening their mouths again. Seconds later, the C-4 detonated, sending a spray of pig-rat parts into the formerly spotless mat-trans control room.

Ryan peeked out to see yet another, deeper puddle of mutie pieces, blood and feces in front of the door. The pig-rats milled and scurried beyond, unwilling to approach at first, but fast losing their fear as they began scurrying closer.

“Go!” Ryan stepped out and leaped for the pipe again, his fingers already aching as they gripped it. Swinging his feet up, he pushed along it to make room for J.B., who keyed the door closed before jumping up just as a pair of muties sprang at his legs.

“Dark night!” J.B. lashed out wildly, catching one of the creatures in the face with his boot, and sending it crashing into the wall, where it fell back into the rodent army. The other one, however, latched on to his pant leg with its sharp claws and sank its tusks into his leg.

“Nuking hell!” Hanging on with one hand, J.B. drew his flensing knife with the other and stabbed the beast in the neck, blood spurting over his fingers and wrist. Sawing with the blade, he severed its head from its body, which fell away, leaving the jaws still locked on his thigh. Hammering at it with the butt of his dagger, grunting with each blow, J.B. broke the mutie’s jaw after several blows. Inserting his blade between the pig-rat’s open lips, he pried it off and flipped it away.

Meanwhile, Ryan hadn’t been a passive observer during the pitched battle. As soon as he heard J.B. curse, he’d looked over, seen the problem and acted. Drawing his SIG-Sauer, he’d raised the blaster over his head and fired several rounds into the swirling, squealing vermin below, ensuring that their attention was on their wounded and dying brethren. The hammer of his blaster had just clicked on an empty chamber when J.B. had finished removing the gruesome head of his attacker.

“You okay?”

“Yeah—for now.” J.B.’s face was flushed with the exertion of killing the mutie while hanging on the pipe, but he nodded. “Move out.”

“Give me a sec.” As fast as he dared, Ryan slung his forearm over the pipe to hold himself up, ejected the empty mag from his blaster, tucking it into his pocket, and replaced it with a full one—his last. Holstering his weapon, he reached up to secure his hold on the pipe with his free hand. “Ready.”

An ominous groan echoed through the tunnel, and the pipe Ryan and J.B. clung to dropped an inch, then another before shuddering to a halt.

Chapter Eight

“Pipe’s breaking! We’ve got to move!” Ryan began, hand-over-handing it as quickly as he could, sensitive to each shudder and jar as he clambered along the metal tube. He thought about telling J.B. to put some more space between them, but dismissed the idea. Every second they spent here was more stress on the pipe, and if it gave way, there was only one place to end up—straight down into the hundreds of slavering maws of the muties below.

So Ryan kept moving, trying to crawl as lightly as possible, if such a thing could be done while hanging from a pipe with his two-hundred-odd pounds pulling on it every time he braced a hand or foot. With every yard he gained, the pipe swayed and creaked ominously, and Ryan half expected that each time he reached up to grab the slick metal, it would be his last. The horde below was erupting into a frenzy, the pandemonium overwhelming, even to their carpet-stuffed ears. As he pushed forward, Ryan swore he felt something brush his back more than once.

“Ryan…hold up…need to rest…” J.B.’s voice, already weak, drifted to him above the shrieking of the muties.

“No, J.B., keep moving! We’re almost there. If you stop, you drop!”

“Gettin’ tired…”

“Keep moving.” Dipping his head, he saw the elevator doors about ten yards away. “We’re almost there!”

“All right…”

Although his fingers felt like numb pieces of wood, Ryan kept bulling forward. Stretch, grab, pull, stretch, grab, pull. Once more, and he was at the door. Drawing his blaster, Ryan hammered on the door with the butt.

“Clear the entrance, we’re back! Open the doors!”

The muties were screaming so loud now that Ryan couldn’t hear if anyone replied from inside. He was about to beat on the doors again when the pipe dropped another six inches with a shriek of rending metal.

“J.B.! Get on top!” Reaching around, Ryan threw a leg over and pulled himself up on top, just as he felt something scrabble through his hair, followed by the click of teeth snapping near his ear. “Fireblast!” The moment he was secure, Ryan brushed a hand through his hair, making sure nothing was about to tear into his scalp.

“Ryan…can’t make it…up…”

The weak shout made Ryan whirl to see J.B.’s hands slipping. Throwing himself forward, he stretched out full-length, his hands reaching out to grab the other man’s wrists. The pipe screamed at the impact of his body, but still held, even under their combined weight. He grabbed J.B.’s arms a moment before he would have fallen to the floor.

“You aren’t leaving this place without me, you hear?” Ryan gritted between clenched teeth. His hands and arms, already sore and unfeeling from the trip to the mat-trans control room and back, radiated pure agony as he held J.B. in place. “On three, I’m going to lift you, and you’re going to grab this pipe with both hands and hold on with everything you got, you understand?”

“All right… Don’t have to yell…”

Ryan braced himself for was he was about to do. “One…two…three!” He heaved up with every ounce of strength he possessed, muscles cracking under the strain. One inch, two, three…

Straining until he thought his arms were going to tear out of their sockets, Ryan pulled J.B.’s arms up until he could get them wrapped back around the pipe, then he grabbed the scruff of the other man’s battered jacket and, with the last of his strength, hauled the man up so he was half on, half off the pipe.

A feral chitter from J.B.’s knees made Ryan slowly raise his head. There, with its front claws dug deep into the other man’s left leg, squatted a pig-rat easily two feet long, drool oozing from its two-inch tusks.

“Ryan, what—”

“Don’t…move…” Ryan stared at the mutie only three feet away from him, pinning it with his hardest stare. The beast gave as good as it received, its large, black eyes gazing back into his, as if it knew it would have to fight to keep this meal.

Not taking his eye off the abomination, Ryan’s hand slowly crept toward the handle of his panga. The pig-rat tensed in anticipation, hindquarters lowering to J.B.’s stained, bloody pants as it prepared to spring.

Their eyes locked one last time, and Ryan moved the millisecond he saw the pig-rat jump.

As the brute pushed off, Ryan drew the heavy blade and brought it around in a short, vicious arc. The flat of the machete smacked into the rodent’s head right before it would have sank its teeth into Ryan’s face. The blow sent the creature hurtling away, falling with a startled shriek into the ravenous crowd below.

“Thanks…fucker clawed me bad…”

Ryan nodded, unable to speak, and more so because he had no idea what to say. It didn’t seem like Krysty or the others had heard him inside, and the pipe was about to break loose at any moment, sending them down to a very short, one-way trip to be a feast for the rad-blasted muties below.

He shifted his weight to lessen the strain, but his movement only caused the pipe to groan again and drop a few more inches. With his free hand, he drew his blaster and cocked the hammer.

“This is it. I’ll break the pipe free, hope to crush a shitload of them underneath. When it drops, make for the door. We might be able to get inside before they bring us down. I’ll be shooting the whole way, so you just run. Don’t stop for anything, and that includes me.”

J.B. raised his head, and Ryan was startled to see his friend’s face flushed a bright, mottled red. “Be…right…behind you…”

“All right, here we go.” Ryan turned to face the elevator, about to throw his entire weight upon the pipe to send it crashing to the floor, when the metal doors below began to slide open.

Krysty was framed in the doorway, looking every inch like a flame-haired, avenging angel, only instead of a sword, she was holding something much better.

The S&W M-4000 shotgun was braced against her hip, ready to spew a hailstorm of metal death.

“Fire in the hole!” Ryan shouted, throwing himself back on the pipe, jamming his right ear into his shoulder and clapping his left hand over his left, just before the world split apart in explosions of thunder and flame.

His head aching and rattled from the weapon going off right under him, Ryan was dimly aware of strong hands pulling him from the pipe and helping him into the elevator. Other hands gripped him and helped him to a corner of the small room, where he sank to his knees. “J.B.—”

Krysty’s face appeared in front of him through a pall of smoke, speaking slowly and distinctly. “We got him out—”

That was as far as she got before Ryan crushed her to him and kissed her long and hard for as long as he had air in his lungs. Her strong arms curled around his back was the best sensation he’d felt in a long time.

When they parted, he wasn’t the only one breathless. “Nice to see you too, lover,” she panted.

“Bastard good to be seen. The doors…”

“Are locked as tight as a drum, my good man.” With a courtly flourish, Doc spun his ancient LeMat on his finger, nearly dropping it before steadying it with his other hand and dropping it back into his holster. “I daresay your paramour was like a woman possessed. She swore she heard you outside the door, even when the rest of us could not through the ruckus of that hellspawn outside. At the last, she said she was going to open them, and would perforate with lead anyone who tried to impede her. Obviously she was right on the money and gave those impudent beasts the what for. While she went out and brought the two of you back, I stood guard with my trusty sidearm, and when she got J.B., I gave them something to think about with my second barrel while we closed the doors again.”

“So, we’re moving?”

“Most assuredly, my dear Ryan. However, I’m not sure you are going to like the particular direction we seem to be heading.”

Doc’s words made Ryan realize just what was off about the movement of the elevator. It didn’t have the stomach-lurching feel of ascension at all. Pushing off the wall to his feet, he stalked to the panel with the buttons, his face darkening as he saw which one was lit.

“Fireblast, Doc, why the hell’d you press the bottom one? We want to go up, not down!”

“Easy, Ryan.” Krysty grabbed his arm, distracting him. “About fifteen minutes after you left, a recording came on telling us to clear the elevator as it was due to go to the maintenance level in ten minutes. We started counting down, and when it got to thirty seconds—well, I wasn’t leaving without you.”

“But as to where exactly we’re going, we don’t have a clue, other than the maintenance level,” Mildred said from where she was bent over J.B., field-dressing his wounds as best she could. “Jesus, Ryan, where the hell did you two go—swimmin’ through a sewer?”

“Yeah. We used a little plastique to clear the mat-trans comp room. J.B. got bit and clawed by a pair of them. How’s he doing?”

“Not good. The exertion worked the infection into his bloodstream more quickly than Jak, so they’re running neck and neck regarding who’s worse off at the moment. We’ve got to get medicine into them, fast.”

She didn’t mention the unspoken truth: if there was any medicine to be had it was in the upper levels. Assuming they made it that far in the first place.

The elevator ground to a halt, and the disembodied voice spoke again, startling Ryan, who was hearing it for the first time.

“Maintenance level. This elevator will be inoperative until the proper visual inspection has been performed, and a supervisor has approved it. Thank you.”

“Never met such polite machines,” he muttered, slinging the Steyr longblaster over his shoulder, his SIG-Sauer filling his right hand. “End of the line, people. Krysty, you got Jak. Mildred, help J.B. Keep your blasters out if you can manage it. I don’t know what the hell we’re going to find down here. Doc, you’re on my left. Let’s get the fuck out of this metal coffin.”

Doc took his position at Ryan’s left shoulder, levering back the trigger of his LeMat with a click. “Truer words were never spoken, my friend.”

Ryan raised his SIG-Sauer and nodded at the old man. “Do it.”

Chapter Nine

The elevator doors opened into impenetrable, pitch-blackness. The bright fluorescent light emanating from the elevator was quickly swallowed by the stygian dark outside.

“Guess the lights aren’t on down here.” Mildred said. She had J.B.’s left arm draped around her shoulders, holding it in place with her left, and her blaster in her right hand, ready to shoot. Krysty had done the same with the skinny, shivering Jak, careful to avoid the shards of razor sewn into his jacket.

“No, and it certainly doesn’t smell any more pleasant than the festering pit we just left, does it?” Doc said, covering his mouth and nose.

Indeed, it didn’t smell any better outside. In fact, the reek was much worse. It was warmer here than in the mat-trans corridor, and more humid, and the pervasive odors of rot and mold surrounded them. Although he didn’t say it, Ryan was pretty sure of one of the components making up the miasma around them—rotting meat.

“Need a light.” Bending to grab one of the carpet strips, he rubbed it in the filthy fur of a dead rat body, smearing it with feces and hair, then wrapped it around the blade of his panga. “Mildred, J.B.’s got a flint on him, find it.”

“I’m not dead yet…” Ryan half turned to see the Armorer holding out the small stone, a scowl creasing his eyebrows.

“Hell, never said you were, just figured you were takin’ a little nap after our running around up there. Since you’re awake, you can make yourself useful and carry the rest of that carpet. We’re gonna need more fuel when this runs out.”

J.B. accepted two handfuls of the thin strips, stuffing them in his pockets.

Kneeling, Ryan struck the flint against the steel of his knife, sending a shower of sparks into the makeshift torch, which flared into sullen light. He caught Krysty’s worried stare and nodded, wordlessly telling her it would be all right, when in fact he had no idea whether any of them would survive the next few minutes. With Jak and J.B. incapacitated, their numbers were down by a third. That meant two of the best warriors in the group were out of action, and Ryan estimated their ability was more or less cut by half, particularly with two others carrying them along. Doc and Mildred were more than capable, he’d grant them that, but they simply weren’t in the other two men’s league. Krysty was another story, easily equal to any of the other men when it came to chilling, as she had demonstrated time after time. Her lethal performance in the hallway had proved that point yet again.

Rising, he raised the torch overhead to cast the maximum available light out in front of them. “All right, let’s move out. Stay close and sing out if you see anything. You ready, Doc?”

The old man stared at the limp corpse of one of the rats with unfocused eyes. “Would that I had a piece of string to swing it on, that is a fine pastime for a young boy to while an afternoon away, is it not?”

“Ah, Doc…” Ryan toed the stiffening body with his boot. “You saying you used to swing these on a string?”

“Oh, yes, it was great fun for the boys to scare the girls with—that or a dead cat, you see.”

“And they say the twenty-second century is uncivilized. Sometimes I think you boys don’t have anything on the nineteenth.” Mildred muttered.

At the moment, Ryan agreed with her. “Doc? Doc, snap out of it. We might be walking into trouble down here, and we need you in the here and now, understand?”

The white-haired man’s eyes blinked once, twice, then he stared up at Ryan with his more-or-less usual gaze. “Beg pardon, dear sir, I was gamboling down the misty paths of memory lane for a moment.” Doc hoisted the LeMat in front of his face. “It shall not happen again, I assure you.”

“All right, let’s go.” Ryan’s torch was already burning low, and the first order of business was to find a better light source, and quick.

His blaster extended into the room, Ryan took a step out, then another. The stench hit him like a physical blow, almost overpowering in its intensity. Beside him, Doc exited the elevator, and immediately turned to be quietly sick in the corner.

The floor was alternately slick and dry, making footing treacherous. Bringing the torch down, Ryan saw more mutie shit covering the floor as in the hallway, just not as deep here. The lumps were larger, however, some the size of a child’s fist, which sparked a faint alarm in Ryan’s mind. “Go slow, everyone. We don’t need any twisted or broken ankles here.”

“Yeah, we got enough problems already,” Mildred replied.

“Well, here is some news of import that may cheer us.” Doc darted off into the darkness, only to return a moment later wheeling something in front of him on squealing, crusted wheels. “I found a chair.”

“Great, Doc, great.” Ryan grimaced as he stared at the ancient piece of furniture, which looked as if it would fall apart if he breathed on it, much less sat down. It was also covered with feces, which Doc busily brushed off. “What in the hell are we supposed to do with it?”

The old man’s expression turned sly, as if only he knew the answer to a great riddle. With effort, he wrenched off one of the metal arms in a squeal of rusted metal and held it up. “Wrapped in your clever mixture of mutant shit and U.S. government-approved carpet—supplied by the lowest bidder, of course—I believe this would make a more than adequate torch, would it not?”

“He’s got you there, Ryan,” Krysty said.

“Guess he does.” Shaking the guttering remains of his first torch off the panga, Ryan cleaned and sheathed it before breaking off the other chair arm. In two minutes he had fashioned a pair of torches, one of which he passed to Doc. “You found them, you get to carry one.”

“Its lustrous gleam blazes like the bejeweled flame that lit the brazier whenst mankind came together to celebrate the first Olympiad in Athens, shining out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark—or is that a stream of bat’s piss? In either event, I will guard it with my very life.”

“I’d settle for finding a light of some kind, electric or otherwise—” Ryan began to reply before Krysty’s urgent whisper cut him off.

“We’re not alone.”

Everyone froze, and Ryan lifted his torch higher to try to spot what might be coming at them from the dark. “How many?”

“A lot, all around us—and they’re bigger than the ones in the hallway.”

Now Ryan heard the skittering of many feet; the peculiar rustle-clack of the pig-rats as they approached. A shadowed form remained just out of the yellow circle of torchlight, and Ryan’s breath hitched in his throat for a second—it was as large as a medium dog. He brought up his blaster, but with a flash of a naked, pink tail as big around as his thumb, it vanished into the gloom.

“What’s the plan?” Krysty asked.

“Give me J.B.’s Uzi.” Holstering his SIG-Sauer, Ryan accepted the submachine gun, unfolded the stock and snugged it into his shoulder to brace when he fired. “All right, we follow the wall until we come to another exit. They can’t surround us then. Keep your blasters out and shoot anything inside the light. Above all, keep moving. There must be another way out of here. Let’s move.”

Keeping his back to the wall, and the torch in front of him, Ryan led the way, searching for the corner that would take them deeper into the cavernous room. The patter of many paws and hooves grew louder now, as if they were being shadowed by a veritable mob of the hideous beasts.

Ryan stopped short when he saw what he was about to walk into. The muties had been crapping down here for so long they had created piles of feces as high as Ryan’s head. He couldn’t even see the wall beyond in the dimming light. “Far as we go this way, people. Follow me.”

A flash of greasy, gray fur appeared in the torchlight, and Ryan squeezed the trigger of the Uzi, sending a single bullet into the pig-rat’s skull, the noise of the shot drowning out the scurrying of the stalking rodents for a few moments. It skidded to a stop at his feet, a mottled pink and back tongue lolling out as it spasmed and died. Even lying on its side, the creature’s body rose almost to Ryan’s knee.

“Good lord!” Mildred said. “They grow them big down here.”

“Keep moving. That shot scared them off, but they’ll be back, and probably a lot more next time.” Ryan set the pace, but was distracted by Doc, who stepped ahead of him to peer at a pile of shit, torch held high.

“Doc, we’ve got to keep moving.”

“Is it? It is! Give me a minute or two, my dear Ryan, and I will have the answer to your prayers in hand shortly.” Dropping his torch on the ground, Doc plunged his hands into a pile of shit, flinging fist-sized lumps aside with an expression of demented glee on his face.

“Ryan!” Mildred’s urgent hiss swiveled his head around to see a pair of the large pig-rats creeping in behind them. Stepping in front of the women, Ryan aimed and fired two careful shots that took the muties down, but they were quickly replaced by more. Ryan waved the torch, which seemed to keep them at bay, but the brutes only retreated far enough to be outside the immediate reach of the blazing brand. Lifting the torch overhead again, Ryan saw they were encircled by a double ring of the beasts, with dozens of claws scraping the floor as they approached. Finding the fire selector on the Uzi with his thumb, Ryan flicked it to full-auto and prepared to send a burst into the front line.

“Whatever you’re doing, Doc, you better do it fast!” The pig-rats were only a couple yards away now, grunting, snuffling and drooling in their desire to tear into fresh meat. Tightening his grip on the submachine gun, Ryan squeezed off a burst. The 9 mm rounds punched through a trio of muties, sending them squealing away to be set upon by their comrades.

The crack of Krysty’s and Mildred’s blasters also joined the fray, but Ryan saw it was hopeless—there were just too many of the vermin. He triggered short bursts until the Uzi clicked empty, then handed it to Mildred and drew his SIG-Sauer intent on making the nearest mutie’s attempt to steal a bite a fatal decision.

He had just drawn a bead on the closest one, which was hungrily eyeing his leg, when a two-foot-long tongue of flame shot past him and into the mutie’s face, searing it to a crisp as he watched in stunned amazement.

Chapter Ten

The pack of pig-rats halted its advance upon seeing the face of their comrade immolated right next to them. The burn victim screamed in agony and staggered away, its eyes heated to milky-white blindness. One of the others snapped at its foreleg, and when it turned to face that threat, another snuck in from behind and went for its underbelly. In seconds, the wounded one was down and dead, feasted upon by a half dozen of its fellows.

Ryan turned from the grisly sight—now nicely illuminated—back to Doc, who now held a curious apparatus. It looked to be a pipe about two feet long, bent at a sixty-degree angle, with a two-foot-long tongue of blue-orange flame erupting from a small nozzle. The other end was attached to a pair of large, steel cylinders by stiff rubber tubes. Above the odor of feces, Ryan now detected the faint scent of what smelled like burned garlic.

Doc’s face had lit up like a boy’s on Christmas morning. “MAPP gas welding torch—liquefied petroleum gas mixed with methylacetylene-propadiene. If I can get a hand with the fuel tank—” he waved at the pair of tall cylinders with a pair of gauges at the top “—we should be able to stroll out of here like walking out of church on a sunny Sunday afternoon.”

“Then let’s go. Neither Jak nor J.B. are getting any better while we stand around gawking!” Mildred said.

“Doc, look out!” Ryan aimed his blaster past the old man, who spun at the same time and adjusted a knob on the handle of the device, sending a five-foot burst of flame at the encroaching group of rats trying to ambush him. The searing fire drove them back, and Doc advanced into the group, wielding the pipe like a demented conductor, swinging it back and forth, singeing hair and mutie skin as he cleared a path through the pack surrounding them.

“Ryan, help me move the containers!” he snapped. “Everyone else stay close!”

Ryan kept his SIG-Sauer ready as he grabbed the handle sticking up above the pair of tanks. Upon a closer look, he saw that they were fastened to an upright, mobile cart, the rubber wheels jammed solid with fecal matter. Tipping the handle toward him, Ryan tried forcing them to move, but neither one budged an inch.

“Hold up, Doc!” Ryan tugged on the handle, breaking the cart loose from where it had stood for the past hundred years, and dragging it out before Doc could damage the hoses connecting the flaming wand to its fuel source. “Okay, stay close to the wall! Everyone, follow us!”

The muties snarled and shrieked their displeasure, but none were bold enough to risk the fire to attack the norm keeping them at bay. Guided by the wall on his left, Doc steadily drove through the crowd. Ryan was torn between keeping up with the old man and watching their back, but Krysty and Mildred seemed to be doing fine in that regard, the two women teaming up to protect their own flanks and guard each other. Pig-rats snapped and whined, but the occasional well-placed shot kept any rear force from becoming too organized or large.

Slowly, they forged deeper into the room, which Ryan was beginning to think had no end, but seemed to go on forever, with the group surrounded by darkness and muties, only held at bay by Doc’s improvised flamer. Always, the pig-rats probed their defenses, looking for a weak spot to swarm in for the kill. And time after time, wave after wave, Doc, Ryan and the others fended them off with fire and lead.

After what might have been the sixth or seventh assault, Doc, his narrow chest heaving like a bellows, pointed with the blazing torch. “Ryan, I see something ahead. It looks like a wall. It might be the way out!”

“Go! Go!”

Doc increased the spray on his torch, sending a stream of fire arcing out, scattering scorched muties out of his path. Ryan and the others increased their pace as well, pulses quickening as they realized they might be close to leaving this hellhole.

Then, as quickly as he had spoken, Doc stumbled to a stop, the torch drooping in his hand. “Holy mother of God…”

Ryan skidded to a halt beside him, the cart almost banging his shins before lurching to a stop. “Doc, what the hell, why you stopping now?”

In answer, the other man simply raised his arm and pointed.

At first, Ryan couldn’t make out what was ahead, but then they advanced into the light and his blaster rose instinctively, even though he knew it probably didn’t have a chance in hell of putting this new enemy down.

From around the wall lumbered huge, furry shapes, their front claws scraping through the muck, and their rear hooves clattering on the floor. Each of these muties, six in all, stood as tall as Ryan on their four legs. One of them yawned, exposing teeth as long as his hand, capped by a double pair of tusks the length of his forearm. Ryan knew that if they wanted, each one of these abominations could lunge forward and bite his head off, or disembowel him with one swipe of their three-inch claws.

Mildred, her eyes wide, was bringing up her blaster to target one of the huge beasts, but J.B. got his hand up first and managed to clamp his fingers around hers.

“No! No shooting, you hear?” he whispered.

“But we can take them out right now, before they kill us,” she hissed back.

“If they’d wanted us dead, we’d be on the floor, guts around our ankles,” Ryan said, his low voice carrying to everyone in the group. “No one makes a move until I do, got it?”

Mildred nodded. Ryan didn’t have to check the rest; he knew what the answer would be.

He did, however, steal a glance at Doc, who was staring as if entranced—but not at the six horse-sized mutants. “Is it not amazing, my dear Ryan? That life, in all of its blind and infinite wisdom, somehow finds a way to continue, to forge forward, despite all of our pathetic attempts to shape or control or destroy it?”

“Hey, Doc, right now that life you’re so all-fired moony over is about to swallow us whole, so why don’t we try to get by them as quick as possible? If I can get the shotgun, it might even—”

Doc shook his head, his gray-white hair flapping around his shoulders. “No, Ryan. Look closely at what lies ahead of us, and tell me if you think we have any chance of escaping this room alive.”

The old man’s words were spoken with perfect, chilling clarity, and the look on his face was anything but insane, if Ryan was any judge. He looked back at the huge pig-rats, none of which had made a move toward them yet.

None of them…Ryan glanced around to see that the rest of the pig-rats had also retreated to a safe distance, many of them sitting on their haunches and regarding the party, as if they were an audience, watching some sort of macabre play.

He peered closer at what he first thought was a wall, only to realize the torch light was playing tricks on his eyes. It had to have been, for the barrier curved away at the top, and was covered in thick, matted gray fur, liberally caked with shit. And even stranger, it pulsed in and out rhythmically, almost as if…

“Fireblast…” Ryan breathed as he realized exactly what was lying in front of them. At that exact same moment, the wall of flesh and fur undulated and rippled. From the top he saw a massive paw, longer than he was tall, tipped with curved, short-swordlike talons at the end, descend toward the floor. He stared in mingled revulsion and awe as the leviathan—for there was no better word for it—continued to turn over.

The queen of the mutie pig-rat horde was an appalling vision straight out of a nightmare, brought to breathing, quivering life. Easily twenty feet tall lying down, she had to be at least three times as long from her twitching nose to her huge, naked pink tail, a bloated rodent mountain at the center of her filthy empire. Completing her turn, which Ryan figured she didn’t do very often, brought a double row of her engorged teats into view. As he looked on in horrified fascination, a dozen mewling, blind, four-foot-long infants swarmed over her, seeking out the swollen glands, which oozed a thick, greenish-white liquid from their tips. The next generation eagerly suckled at her chest, climbing over each other in their eagerness to get at the life-giving fluid.

The face of the mother was just as large as the rest of her, with huge, black eyes swimming in a puffy face swollen with layers of fat. Her teeth were the hugest Ryan had ever seen, jutting from a mouth so cavernous that if she yawned, he figured he might be able to walk inside if he stooped a bit. She regarding them with a penetrating stare, however, appearing anything but a mindless rodent. Her gaze seemed particularly drawn to the flaming torch, hanging almost forgotten in Doc’s hand, and she twisted her head away, although her eyes never left the flickering flame.

That seemed important to Ryan, but damned if he knew exactly how at the moment. A straight-up fight was impossible—it would only result in their immediate deaths, even if he managed to get the shotgun off J.B. and firing. The torch itself was good on the smaller animals, but the huge rats would simply devour them before they could be burned to death. He didn’t doubt that a bite from those massive jaws could easily sever a limb.

“Ryan!” The urgent whisper made him glance back at Krysty, whose normally calm face was furrowed in concentration. “Be careful. Do not underestimate her. She knows…things. She—thinks like us….”

Krysty’s words scared Ryan even more, but at the same time, the glimmer of a plan was forming in the back of his consciousness. He just needed another moment to put it together….

One of the guards swung its head over to his leader, as if seeking permission for whatever he was about to do. The queen’s eyes flicked toward him, then back to the group, and the huge pig-rat started forward, saliva dripping from his jaws, his killing intent more than clear.

Chapter Eleven

The silent exchange gave Ryan an idea.

“Wait!” His command shattered the stillness, even checking the guard mutie, who stopped and cocked its head, regarding him in what Ryan could have sworn was puzzlement.

“Doc, you said these things were smart, right?”

“Verily, they exhibit intelligent behavior beyond any rodents I’ve ever seen. The queen structure is most fascinating, almost like a collective hive. It would also explain the simultaneous reaction of the first group we encountered.”

“Good, then they should understand what I’m doing. Give me the torch.” Ryan grabbed the weapon from the old man. “Stand back. If this works, we’re going to have to move fast. If not, everyone take as many of the fuckers down as you can before they get you.”

Moving slowly, Ryan held the welding torch up so all of his rapt audience saw it. He twisted the knob, releasing a spurt of blue-orange flame into the air, which got everyone’s attention. Two of the giant pig-rats hissed angrily at the sight, but a short bark from the queen silenced them.

Next, Ryan brought the pair of tanks forward so they were in plain view to everybody. Slowly pulling his blaster out, he carefully ejected the magazine, keeping them both in his hand as did so. Using his thumb, he flicked a bullet onto the ground, angling it with his toe so that it pointed at the nearest pile of shit.

“Everyone stand back.” Making sure the colony of muties was still watching, Ryan leaned over, keeping his eye on them as he did so, and carefully applied the flame to the casing, making sure the bullet still faced away from the group. Seconds passed, then a minute, then, with an explosive pop the cordite in the shell ignited, sending a burst of flame up as the lead corkscrewed into the dung heap.

Stepping back to the pair of fuel canisters, Ryan began bringing the blazing torch closer to them. The queen’s eyes went from the blackened casing to the four-foot-tall containers, and she suddenly screeched in alarm. The guards tensed to spring, but another howl from her froze them where they stood, poised to leap on the group.

Having reloaded his blaster while the muties were distracted by the bullet, Ryan’s weapon was back up in a flash, pointing at the queen’s head, which felt like threatening a mutie grizzly with a flyswatter. But the torch, coming ever nearer to the valves that regulated the flow of oxygen and fuel, was Ryan’s ace in the hole.

Now he just had to make sure the bluff he was running didn’t turn into a dead man’s hand.

Doc, as if noticing what Ryan was doing for the first time, said mildly, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, my dear man. The explosion would kill us all.”

“That’s what I’m counting on, Doc, and that she realizes it, too.”

Doc’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “My dear Ryan, you are one of the most low-down, conniving, sneakiest men I have ever had the privilege to meet.”

“Just trying to make sure we all don’t get our faces—or any other parts—chewed off. And don’t start slapping my back in congratulations just yet. If you haven’t noticed, we still aren’t out of here.” Ryan grabbed the handle of the tank cart. “All right, we’re going. Don’t make any moves unless they do first—then chill anyone who does.”

Holstering his blaster, Ryan started hauling the cart toward the rear end of the queen, keeping the torch near the fuel tanks and his head as far from her giant behind as possible. The huge pig-rat nearest to him growled low in its throat, its long, pink tail, as thick as Ryan’s thigh, whipping back and forth. For a moment, Ryan thought he’d have to draw and take the big bastard down, but a gigantic, hairy leg swept over and clouted the guard in the head, making him stagger away.

Ryan glanced up at the queen, who regarded him with cold, malice-filled eyes as she nodded slightly. Stepping around the stunned guard, he motioned the rest of the group forward with his head. Up close he saw the pups still gulping down the noxious fluid, which smelled even worse than it looked.

The queen shifted again, rolling back over with an effort. Ryan couldn’t blame her. In her place, he wouldn’t have trusted himself either. The procession was oddly silent, only the irritated squeaks of the young as they scrambled around again for the milk, the thick, sibilant breathing of the rats as they watched the humans leave and the hiss of the lit torch breaking the silence. Ryan felt more than heard the pack of medium pig-rats pacing them, flowing around the queen’s head to follow the group.

A sudden shot caught Ryan off guard, and he stumbled, catching himself before dropping either the torch or the tank. Before the echo died away, he heard something slither down a pile, and looked to his left to see a medium pig rat with a bloody hole where its right eye had been roll to a stop from the nearest pile of dung.

The guards had tensed again, ready to leap, but a shrill hiss from their queen stopped them.

Ryan looked back to see Mildred with her blaster still extended, pointing at the top of the nearest pile. “Saw it tensed to leap and took the shot.”

Ryan nodded, then turned back to the queen, his expression hard. “Doc, put your blaster up here, pointed right at the valves.”

“Ryan, I—”

“Do it right now.”

Doc hastened to comply, setting the heavy barrel of the LeMat so its muzzle was aimed squarely at the two valves on top.

“Cock the hammer.”

“Really, Ryan—”

“Cock it! I won’t say it another time.”

His thumb trembling only slightly, Doc hauled back the hammer until it caught on the sear. Ryan’s stony gaze pinned the queen, who had raised her large forepaws in the classic ‘I surrender’ pose, which would have been funny if his life and those of his companions weren’t on the line at that particular second.

“Glad to see you get my point.” Drawing back his foot, Ryan kicked the carcass of the dead pig-rat over to her. “Any more of this shit happens, and we all go up.” For emphasis, he brought the torch right up to the tanks, close enough for the flame to kiss the curved metal surface. Even the guards shifted uneasily at that, and the queen waved her front paws in unfeigned terror, chittering as she attempted to placate him.

“Ryan, I think I see the true wall a few yards distant,” Doc said.

“Well, then, let’s get the hell over to it.” Hauling the tank cart into motion again, Ryan forged ahead, straining his eye to see the end of the room. After a few more yards, he held the torch just high enough to see the real wall perhaps another five yards away, the flat, gray plane rising to the ceiling out of the piles of crap.

“Son of a bitch—where’s the bastard elevator?”

Doc pointed to their left along the wall. “We have to follow it to the other door and pray it isn’t also covered in feces.”

Ryan had taken a single step when a new noise caught his attention—the slight sputter of the torch. He looked at it in time to see the flame waver a bit before regaining its bright, steady flare.

“Hey, Doc?”

The old man was intently scanning the tops of the dung heaps. “Yes, Ryan?”

“The torch just sputtered on me.”

“Oh dear.” Doc glanced back just in time to see it happen again. “I suggest all of us redouble our efforts to find the elevator door before that tank runs out of fuel.”

“Everyone else, search the wall. I’m going to make sure our friends here don’t get any more bright ideas.” Ryan lugged the tanks and cart a few more yards, then set it up on its end, keeping the torch close to the tanks and, drawing his SIG-Sauer with his now free hand, turned to face his attentive audience.

The pig-rats had followed their every move, the medium-sized ones closest now, dozens of them arrayed in a gray-brown carpet that stretched out into the darkness. Interspersed among them were the half dozen giant muties, each one looking as if it wanted to bound over and rip Ryan’s head off. And behind them was the bloated queen, still suckling her young as she stared at the group of humans with unblinking eyes.

Ryan kept the torch near the tanks, but the flame sputtered again, flickering once, then again before regaining its constant glow. One of the guard pig-rats edged forward, and Ryan swung his blaster to point at its head, which remained perfectly still when it saw the muzzle line up on its face.

“How we coming back there?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Doc, over here! I found it!” Mildred, with her sharp eyes, had spotted the floor markers of the elevator above the piles of crap. “Oh God! There’s shit all over the front.”

“Don’t just stand there like a stupe, clear it!” Ryan was trying to keep his eye on three of the huge pig-rats, who all seemed to be moving in perfect concert at him; one from the left, one from the right, and the largest one coming straight up the center. Ryan triggered a shot in front of the massive one’s foot, maiming a small pig-rat near it, but the horse-sized beast simply crushed the wounded one into the ground with its next step, leaving the remains to be fought over by his smaller comrades. Ryan raised his blaster, sighting down the barrel at the middle one, but held his fire, sensing that if he took this one out, the others would be feasting on his guts in the next two seconds, blazing torch or no blazing torch.

Setting down their burdens, Krysty and Mildred joined Doc in attacking the large pile of mutie shit blocking the elevator doors. With muttered curses, they shoveled double handfuls of it out of the way, flinging it aside until a pathway began to take shape.

“Don’t keep cleanin’—as soon as one of you can hit the door button, do it!”

As he said that, the torch sputtered again, spitting out several brief bursts of flame before the fuel flow continued. As one, the entire mass of muties surged forward, then stopped as the flame reasserted itself. Ryan threw a glare at the queen, but she seemed content to watch from her position behind the front lines, observing her soldiers advance on the group’s seemingly hopeless position.

“Get over, Mildred. Doc and I’ll keep working on this.” Krysty kicked at the pile with her booted foot, dislodging large chunks of feces and sweeping them out of the way. At the same time, Mildred tensed and leaped up over the two-foot-high pile to the door. She slipped upon landing, but caught herself and slapped the door button. “Nothing’s happening. Wait, I got a green light! It’s coming down!”

“About fucking time something went right in here.” Ryan shook the torch to keep it going, but maintaining the flame was getting harder and harder. Get Jak and J.B. to the doors!”

Sensing a presence beside him, Ryan turned just enough to see Krysty at his side, the M-4000 leveled on her hip. “What are you doing?”

“Sure as hell not leaving you behind to face them alone.” Bracing the shotgun, she fired a single round at the nearest small rat, pulping its head and dropping it where it stood. The shotgun’s echoing boom made the entire mutie army pause, the larger ones peering at the remains of their companion before lifting their heads to stare at the flame-haired woman and the lethal black cannon she wielded.

“You certainly know how to get their attention.”

“Learned from the best.” Krysty swept the M-4000’s round muzzle back and forth, and Ryan was gratified to see the beasts shy away from it, even the larger ones.

The next thing he heard was one of the sweeter sounds in his lifetime—the soft yet distinct chime of the elevator announcing its arrival.

“Ryan, Krysty, we’ve got Jak and J.B. inside,” Mildred called to them. “Let’s go!”

“Okay, you head in, I’ll be right behind you.” Ryan waited until Krysty was over the hill of crap before taking a cautious step backward, then another, until he felt his foot sink into the pile of dried mutie shit.

“One more thing.” With all his strength, Ryan shoved the fuel tanks out into the mass of pig-rats, sending dozens of the smaller ones scattering as the heavy steel cylinders toppled over, hitting the floor with a muffled clank.

“Ryan, what are you doing! Come on!”

The huge muties sniffed the tanks delicately, avoiding the still burning torch, now guttering among the layers of filth on the floor. One lifted a massive leg and released a thick stream of urine onto the nearest cylinder.

“Just leaving them something to remember me by.” Raising his blaster, Ryan sighted on the top gauge and squeezed the trigger once, blowing it clean off. Whirling, he turned and leaped into the elevator, accompanied by a loud hissing—the sound of pressurized fuel escaping.

“Close the doors!” Krysty stabbed the button, and Ryan rolled J.B.’s unconscious body to one side. The medium rats were already rushing the shrinking opening, but there was Doc in their way, LeMat raised.

“See you in hell, mes amis.” Triggering his scattergun barrel made Ryan’s ears pound one last time, but also stopped the first wave of muties.

Just then the tanks exploded, lit by the last dying gasp of the torch. As he dragged Doc down and turned away, Ryan saw an expanding fireball consume the two large muties, along with at least a dozen of the small ones. The flames bloomed outward, coming straight at them…

And then the elevator doors slid shut, cutting them off from the inferno outside. Ryan sat with a thump, letting out a sigh and slumping against the wall, quietly exulting in the elevator’s perceptible rising. Catching Krysty’s eye, he mustered a tired smile.

“Bet you could really use that shower right about now.”

She sniffed. “Look who’s talking. You aren’t exactly a Deathlands daisy yourself.”

Ryan looked down at his clothes, covered in dirt, dung and blood. “Phew. I haven’t stunk this bad in weeks—and that’s saying something. Which button did you push?”

“The one marked one, of course.”

“At least we’re going up. That’s the best damned thing I’ve seen in a long time.” Mildred spoke without looking up, still bent over to check on the two still forms.

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