Chapter Four

 

 

 

It was a wide staircase with broad treads and a sturdy handrail. Ryan joined Krysty at its bottom, followed by the other three. "See the top?" he said, aiming to restore peace.

 

"No." Her voice sounded a little strained and muffled. She coughed. "Dust in my throat. Sorry, lover." Krysty touched him lightly on the arm, so they both knew what she meant.

 

"Goes high," J.B. observed, straining his head back.

 

"Must've been an elevator," Mildred suggested, looking around them. "We haven't passed any other entrance or exit, and all that techno-shit must have been brought down some other way. They'd never have manhandled it down those stairs, would they?"

 

"Fair point and fairly put, Dr. Wyeth, if I may say so."

 

"You may, Dr. Tanner, you may."

 

"There." Ryan pointed. "The sort of design that makes an elevator look like part of the wall."

 

The doors were painted slate-gray, textured so that they resembled the concrete walls on either side. Ryan was surprised to see that it was only a single elevator.

 

It contributed more fuel to his idea that this wasn't a normal redoubt at all. Apart from anything else, it felt smaller.

 

The neat black button was set into a mat-gray panel, with a tiny silver arrow pointing up.

 

"Probably sec-listed personnel only," J.B. said.

 

"Let's see." Mildred reached out and pushed the button.

 

Nothing.

 

Mildred pressed the button again. From somewhere above they all heard the sound of gears engaging, a grinding hiss, then a steady, whirring noise.

 

"By the" Doc began, his jaw dropping in amazement.

 

Ryan's blaster had leaped into his hand, responding to a subconscious reflex. J.B. had also drawn his pistol.

 

"Taking a long time to come down to us," Krysty complained, head on one side, listening to the sound of the elevator's steady progress.

 

There was the distinctive pinging noise of its arrival, a sound that meant nothing to Ryan, Krysty or J.B., very little to Doc and everything to Mildred.

 

"Sweet Jesus on the Cross!" she exclaimed softly. "The thousand memories that thin little bell brings back to me."

 

The doors slid open about an inch, then stopped moving.

 

"Press the button again," Krysty suggested.

 

Ryan did, but nothing more happened. He gave the doors an angry kick, the steel toe caps denting the gray finish. The metal quivered, then the doors jerkily began to open again.

 

The elevator was nearly twenty feet across, far larger than ones that Ryan had seen in ruined buildings across Deathlands. Its walls were plain gray, with a small rectangular mirror set in one. There was a simple control panel near the open doors. Inside was a rusting bicycle wheel and a battered black hat.

 

"Nothing else," Mildred said in a surprised voice.

 

Ryan stepped into the elevator, keeping a cautious eye on the heavy doors. He bent and examined the wheel and the hat. "Just garbage," he concluded.

 

He chucked them out. The hat flopped like a dying bat into the corner by the stairs. The wheel clattered and jangled, spokes breaking, until it rolled against the corridor wall.

 

"Now what, lover?"

 

He brushed dirt off his fingers. "I don't see much choice about the direction. Up. Only choice is how we do it. Feet up the stairs of ride the elevator. Anyone got any feelings about that?"

 

"I never liked elevators," Doc told him. "Always had the feeling the cables would snap."

 

Mildred nodded. "I agree. And after a hundred years without any oiling or servicing, I feel even worse about risking the big drop."

 

J.B. coughed. "Even if it falls, you don't get hurt. Wait until a fraction of a second before it hits bottom and you jump up in the air. Never fails."

 

Ryan looked at his colleague in amazement. "How do you know that?"

 

"Read it on a shithouse wall in a frontier gaudy down near Nogales. Why? You mean you think it's not true, Ryan?"

 

"Double-stupe bastard! Look, do you want to walk or ride?"

 

"Walk."

 

Krysty nodded. "Yeah. I'd rather walk."

 

 

 

THEY CLIMBED STOLIDLY up the wide stairs, the faint blur of the basement shrinking away beneath them until it vanished. They passed two intermediate levels, landings that had doors at either end. The heavy sec doors had no visible way of opening them.

 

"Not enough plas-ex to shift them," J.B. said sadly. "Have to keep climbing."

 

The air remained dull and flat, with a stale taste that lingered in the throat on every breath. The lighting was much worse, making it almost impossible to see more than twenty feet in any direction.

 

"How far do you think we've climbed, Doc?" Mildred asked.

 

"Entirely too far, ma'am. I fear we shall shortly be bumping our heads upon the lower levels of the sphere of heaven itself. Or, to put it another way, at least two hundred feet."

 

Ryan had been in the lead, and he heard the conversation. "Closer to three hundred. But there's good news, then Doc."

 

"What?"

 

"Won't be going any higher."

 

"We've reached the dark at the top of the stairs, have we?"

 

"Sort of."

 

They all stopped behind Ryan. There had been some kind of earth slide that had pushed the shaft of the stairs to one side. Rock, cut as clean as sliced butter, filled the gap above them, and the stairs disappeared into it as though they'd never been.

 

"That's it, folks," Mildred said.

 

Krysty sighed. "I suppose exercise is good for us."

 

"Not for my poor old knees," Doc retorted. "They've been exploding like cherry bombs for the past fifty feet or so."

 

Mildred patted his arm. "Us old ones'll lead the way. It just goes to prove that my father's younger brother, Josh, knew what he was talking about."

 

"What do you mean?" Doc asked testily.

 

"He used to say to me, 'Millie, what goes up must come down.' And now I see what he meant."

 

 

 

"WHY DON'T WE JUST GO BACK and try another jump?" Mildred suggested.

 

"We haven't explored this place properly yet, and there's something odd about it. It's not like other redoubts." Ryan looked around them. "Almost like it was built just for the gateway."

 

"I say we take the elevator," Doc suddenly said forcefully. "Having been treated like one of the men of the grand old Duke of York, I want to be up when I'm up. I've had enough of being down when I'm down. Is that clear?"

 

"As purest water, Doc," Krysty said. "Though you kind of lost us a bit there."

 

The Armorer peered into the elevator. "I still don't much like this, Ryan."

 

"Think it's a trap?"

 

J.B. shook his head slowly, a thoughtful look on his face. "Not like a deliberate trap, no. But I don't figure it can be that safe after all this time. Look how it came stumbling down and then the doors jammed. Seems real iffy to me."

 

"You wait here?"

 

"Dark night!" The slight figure turned away, biting his lip. "I don't like this a spent round, Ryan. Something's wrong. Passage is wrong. Lights, doors, stairs this elevator."

 

"So you think we should get out?"

 

"Yeah."

 

Ryan knew there was another question. "Do you want to get out, J.B.?"

 

"No," he replied reluctantly. "Let's go up and see where the cross hairs meet."

 

"Sure."

 

 

 

IT TOOK ANOTHER KICK from Ryan's combat boot to get the steel doors to slide shut. Even with all five of the friends inside, there was still masses of room.

 

Mildred stood by the control panel, finger poised. "Not much of a decision needed," she said. "It's either up or down. I'll try up first."

 

The inset button, surrounded by a ring of frail golden light, clicked. The metal cage began to vibrate, slowly, then faster. They could feel, rather than hear, distant humming. Seconds ticked by, and still the elevator remained stubbornly in the basement of the building.

 

"How do you spell claustrophobia , anyone?" Mildred asked.

 

There was a shuddering and, at last, they began to move slowly upward.

 

"Haberdashery and hosiery on the second floor, with toys and facilities for the rumpus room on the third," Doc recited tonelessly.

 

There were beads of perspiration on Krysty's forehead, and her sharp green eyes had narrowed like a feral cat. Her hands were locked in front of her, tangling like strong, coiling snakes.

 

Ryan moved to stand by her, and she looked up at him, managing a shaky smile.

 

"Not good," he said, not bothering to make it into a question.

 

"Not good, lover. Too much like being buried alive. Not good."

 

"Least we're moving."

 

"For now"

 

They moved steadily up in relative silence. Every now and again the side of the elevator would scrape and bump on the walls of the shaft. Ryan figured that the earth shift that had blocked off the stairway might also have damaged the running of the elevator.

 

Each time it happened there was a jarring rumble, and the whole thing rattled.

 

"How much farther?" J.B. asked, as though he were talking to himself.

 

The elevator hesitated at that moment, waiting poised, as though it were about to uncurl itself with a surge of energy.

 

"Come on," Mildred whispered.

 

There was an upward lurch, faster than before, taking them at least fifty feet in a couple of heartbeats.

 

And another stop, this time a grinding halt that had a dreadful feeling of permanence to it. Ryan pressed the "up" button several times, but nothing happened. "Looks like the end of the line."

 

Then, from above, they all heard the deep, sonorous twanging sound of part of a steel cable snapping.