Chapter Forty-Two

 

 

 

Doc leaned a hand against the wall, immediately removing it with an expression of disgust. He looked ahead of them, where the tunnel finally opened up into a huge, sprawling space.

 

"By the three Kennedys!" he exclaimed. "It's like a glimpse of the bottom circle of Dante's Inferno. Truly this is hell."

 

In his lifetime in Deathlands Ryan had never seen anything quite like it.

 

It was impossible to do any more than guess at what the complex of buildings might once have been. In front of them was a great underground cavern. Fires burned at its center, and all around were ranged dozens and dozens of sleeping figures. Many were chained together, and there was the constant chinking of metal as someone moved uneasily. At a slightly higher level Ryan saw a number of the scalie guards, all apparently asleep.

 

The roof seemed to be high and vaulted, but the lack of light made it difficult to make out. At a rough guess it was a full three hundred feet across. On the far side, toward the ville, there seemed to be the opening of still more tunnels and passages. The stained walls glistened with discolored streaks of ice.

 

Ryan beckoned J.B. to his side. "Must have patrols out on the land side. These are reliefs. Best move before they start changing shifts."

 

"Too late."

 

The one-eyed man led the hasty retreat back into the darkness of the tunnel, watching from the shadows as squat muties came shuffling in, boots ringing. They all wore the black berets with the lightning flash. Most carried self-made blasters or had small-caliber pistols tucked into broad belts.

 

They all seemed to know where they were going, and what they were doing. They woke their replacements with a minimal waste of time, then took their sleeping blankets. It was all done and over in less than ten minutes.

 

"Like to meet the scalie that runs all this," J.B. whispered. "One day."

 

One or two of the muties weren't going straight to sleep. A few gathered near the fire, helping themselves to fish stew from a large blackened iron caldron. There was the sound of rough laughter as one of them pointed toward a far corner and called out a harsh, guttural comment.

 

Eventually that group sat down, huddled around the fire, and started talking quietly.

 

"Can't wait any longer," Ryan said. "Won't be too long before those bodies by the river get found. Be hard getting away after that. Go around that way."

 

He pointed with the barrel of the G-12 to their right, where the shadows seemed deepest.

 

It was like picking a way through a breathing nightmare.

 

The wind outside the scalies' base blew along the nest of passages, brightening the fires, blowing smoke in wreathing clumps all across the great room. Bodies lay everywhere, moving restlessly, as though part of some vast living organism. In among the rags it was virtually impossible to determine the sex or age of the prisoners.

 

At that moment Ryan felt a wave of despair. There had to be well over a hundred in the muties' slave labor force. How to find a ten-year-old boy, assuming he was still there and still living?

 

Ryan wound a mazy path through the slumbering crowd, often having to step over sleepers. Once his foot caught in the ragged edge of a torn blanket, snagging it, so that it was tugged away from the figure it had been covering.

 

"What d'you ?" a voice mumbled.

 

Ryan froze.

 

A trick of the firelight showed him the face. It was a woman, vaguely Oriental with narrowed eyes.

 

She half smiled up at Ryan. With the smoke billowing around them it was a truly strange, dreamlike moment. All color was draining out and the great cavern was tinted only with a variety of shades of gray, some dark and some lighter.

 

The woman looked to be in her late teens or her early twenties. There was a thick chain around her right wrist that had worn a bloody gouge in her flesh, linking her to the sleeper next to her. She also had a fading bruise on her left cheek.

 

Ryan lifted a finger to his lips, managing a half smile to reassure her.

 

She blinked, as though she was easing out of a drugged world of half truths. Then she opened her mouth a little farther and screamed at the top of her voice, "Outies! Help, help, outies!"