Then without warning, the vents became silent, the chem reservoir completely drained. But designed to extinguish a warehouse full of burning munitions, the fire sprinklers still sputtered out the occasional burst of water. In growing relief, the companions watched as the mustard-gas cloud slowly thinned away, even diminishing in density and height, until only faint wisps floated over the puddled floor.

Dean started to remove his rag and Mildred stopped him. Patiently, the group waited for the sprinklers to cease operation, and there was no longer any sign of the lethal gas. Soaked to the skin, Ryan decided to be the first and hesitantly lowered his damp cloth to chance a sniff. The warehouse smelled like a stagnant pool, but without any trace of horseradish. Carefully, the Deathlands warrior did so again, then drew in a full deep breath.

"Clear," he announced, tossing aside the rag. "Good thing you had a flare."

"And that mustard gas is a soluble toxin," Mildred said, blinking rapidly. "How did you know?"

"Didn't," Krysty replied, pouring some more water from her canteen into a palm and smoothing down her stinging hair. "But there didn't seem to be anything else to try."

A drop of water fell from the overhead pipes, landed with a splat on the protective hood of a lantern and hissed away into steam. Dean moved the lantern to a peg on the wall.

"Damn smart move," J.B. said, shaking the moisture from his Uzi, the bolt and wire stock clacking softly. "Going to remember that trick."

"Try running first, lover," Mildred said, squeezing out her sodden sleeves. "If this had been VX or M-55 nerve gas, we would have been chilled before the first drop of water fell."

"VK chills even faster," Ryan growled, using stiff fingers to brush back his crop of dripping hair.

"How know that?" Jak asked.

Exchanging glances, Ryan and J.B. didn't reply.

There were many secrets in the Deathlands that they would never talk about. What they knew about nerve gas was one of the biggest.

"I'm going to open the door," Dean said, wrinkling his nose at the remembered stink, and headed for the exit.

Splashing through the shrinking puddles, the companions reached the loading dock and forced open the three doors. A warm breeze moved into the warehouse, carrying the rich fragrance of the jungle, flowers, fruit and the heady aroma of living green plants.

Leaving wet footprints on the apron, the companions walked outside and Ryan gave two short whistles. A single long whistle answered from around the corner, telling them Doc was fine, and Ryan whistled back, informing the old man they were also fine.

Drying off in the weak sunshine, the companions let the warehouse air out while they cleaned blasters. Nobody spoke for several minutes, thinking about how close they had come to death from the trap, and knowing that they were soon going to go right back inside and try again.

"Where there's one trap," J.B. said, wiping off the lenses of his glasses, "there'll be more."

"I don't doubt it," Ryan said. "We'll each take turns opening the units, and at the first sign of any more gas, we leave fast."

"Still need ammo," Dean reminded him succinctly, exchanging the wet clip in his Browning for a dry mag from his jacket. The water from the sprinklers had been tainted with rust and scum that could cause a jam. Best to take no chances.

"We'll get some," his father replied. "If not here, then at police headquarters. There should be a SWAT room, and a vault full of blasters. The cops used to keep the vault locked to make sure nobody could get their mitts on the weapons. But that just means they were sealed safely away from the corrosive sea air of the island. Could be everything we need."

"Only reason we're here was because of the droids," Krysty reminded him, fanning her shirt to make it dry faster.

Dean frowned. "The machines will be waiting for us there."

"Mebbe," Ryan agreed. "So we'll go in through the roof. They won't expect that."

"Who the hell would?" J.B. said, walking back into the warehouse. Stopping at the fifty-five-gallon drum, he gathered the foam cups and stuffed them into his munitions bag. Those would help a lot if they had to firebomb the droids.

Leading the way, Ryan returned to the row of storage units, the smooth floor only damp in spots by now. The puddles had flowed into the drains and gone somewhere else.

"Stay here. Me first," Jak said, reclaiming the dropped pry bar and walking past the open unit to the next door.

The teenager easily snapped the locking mechanism with the pry bar, then gave the door a shove and ran for the loading dock as the door slid aside. Silence ruled the warehouse, the vents remained quiet and no swirling clouds of yellow hissed into the corridor.

"Seems safe," Mildred ventured, sniffing carefully.

They proceeded warily to the second unit until the companions glanced inside and found it as empty as the first. There were a few candy-bar wrappers on the floor, and faded inventory sheets attached to a clipboard hung from a nail on the wall. Nothing else.

Resolute, Ryan took the pry bar and went to the next unit only to find the same thing. It was starting to look as if the place might be empty, but there was only one way to know.

"Why was there such a strong smell of horseradish?" Krysty asked, accepting the pry bar and starting on the end unit of the row. "Mustard gas made from horseradish?"

"Don't know for sure," Mildred said, gesturing vaguely. "Could be. I know that VX gas is made from meat tenderizer. Read that in a newspaper."

"They used to put nerve gas on food?" Dean asked in shock.

"Sort of," Mildred said hesitantly. The complexities of the predark world were a bitch to explain sometimes. "In a powder form it's harmless. Only deadly when it's stabilized as a gas."

With a loud crack, Krysty broke open the door and checked inside. "Empty," she reported.

She passed the pry bar to Dean, who went to the next unit, muttering something under his breath about insane whitecoats.

An hour later, the last door was ripped open and the companions stared at yet another empty storage unit, scraps of wood and packing material floating in tiny puddles from the earlier deluge.

"Nothing again," Dean said, marching into the room, brandishing the steel bat as if physically challenging the storage unit to produce supplies. There was a calendar on the wall showing the month of January 2000 and something, the final year blurry from the sprinklers. The days were checked off up to the twenty-first.

He turned away in disgust. They already knew the date of skydark. There was nothing to be learned here.

"Come on," his father said, turning to leave. "Still got the next level to check."

"And if that's cleaned out, too?"

"Then we try for police headquarters," Ryan replied. "We know the droids will be waiting for us, but there should be lots of blasters and grens in the SWAT vault. Those are often airtight."

Passing by the elevator, Krysty paused for a moment, straining to hear the popcorn sound again, but she couldn't hear anything unusual. Maybe the popping had something to do with the gas? Made sense.

Without electricity, the elevator couldn't move, so the companions went straight to the door for the stairs. Looking over the portal with a lantern, J.B. decided it was clear of traps and pulled it open. Inside, wide concrete steps edged with steel led down into the darkness.

SIG-Sauer in hand, Ryan took the point, with Krysty right behind holding the lantern high. That left the man's hands free, and cast both of them in the shadow of the bottom of the lantern. That would make them a difficult target for a sniper to zero in on. Ryan really didn't think there was anything alive in the pre-dark building but the mice and beetles feasting off the ancient moldy paper.

Cobwebs festooned the handrail, and Ryan's combat boots rang on the metal strips supporting the steps. Nothing he could do about that but stay icy. The steps took a turn at a landing, and he stepped over a couple of limp uniforms lying alongside several rusted beer cans. He snorted at the sight, and deliberately stepped on the soldier's uniforms. Just a pair of goldbricks caught forever shirking their work.

Two more landings later, the stairs ended on terrazzo floor, a duty roster posted by the only door. There were no signs of any boobies, so he tried the handle. The door was unlocked, but swung open only a few inches before hitting something solid on the other side. Ryan tried reaching through the slim crack, but his muscular arm was too large. He threw his weight against the door, and it merely yielded another inch.

"Let me try," Krysty offered.

Giving her space, Ryan moved out of the way, and the woman squeezed her arm through the crack. For a brief moment, Krysty thought something brushed against her bare flesh, then she found the obstruction and traced its outline with her fingertips.

"It's a forklift," she said, extricating her limb. "Must have run wild like the cars on the bypass when the nuke went off."

"Those things weigh a ton," J.B. snorted.

Turning, Ryan placed his back to the door, then put a boot onto the cinder block wall across the landing. Lifting his other boot into place, the man heaved against the blockage, and the door began to scrape along the floor, hinges squealing in protest.

Placing aside their weapons, Krysty and J.B. joined Ryan and the trio forced the stubborn door open another foot, the forklift shuddering from the sideways motion. Suddenly, the door swung open all the way and the machine toppled over in a strident crash, the noise echoing through the blackness. Expecting this, Ryan dropped a boot and stopped himself from falling, then stood and spun with his blaster out. Krysty and J.B. were already in that position, studying the room beyond in the light of the pressurized lanterns.

The bottom level of the warehouse was filled with open wooden crates bearing military identification codes. Excelsior stuffing was strewed about in piles a yard deep, the broken tops of the crates dashed into corners. Empty plastic pallets lay on the cold terrazzo floor, tangles of steel packing straps coiled into wild formations. Foam packing pellets covered the floor like snow, and everywhere lay sheets of gray cushioning foam bearing the cutout silhouette of weapons, handcannons, longblasters, rapidfires.

"Shitfire," J.B. muttered as they walked through the vast piles of litter. "Been looted."

Bending to pick up the top of a plastic box, Ryan couldn't read the military code set in raised lettering, but he knew the distinctive shape.

"LAW rocket," he growled, tossing the lid away. "Just what we needed."

"Looks like the soldiers took everything," Krysty said, trying to see what lay beyond the range of the lanterns. The mounds of trash and packing material seemed to extend forever. How big was this level of the armory?

"Not everything," Dean said, lifting an M-16/ M-203 combo assault rifle into view. Brushing away the foam packing peanuts, he inspected the weapon, working the bolt and opening the breech of the 40 mm gren launcher fitted underneath the M-16 machine gun.

"Just fine," the boy announced, tilting it against the wall. "Just needs ammo."

Grabbing a large wooden crate that was lying on its side, Ryan flipped it over and laid the M-16/ M-203 on wooden slats.

"We start here," the man directed, glancing around. "If they missed one blaster, there could be more buried in the rest of this crap. J.B., stand guard, the rest of us rummage through the trash."

"Better stay in a group," Krysty said, surveying the acres of garbage. "Or else we'll only end up going over the same ground."

"Like hunting land mines," Jak said, squatting on the floor, stabbing a knife into the plastic foam and bubble wrapping. "Only now want find."

Going to their hands and knees, the companions started shifting the ancient litter, running stiff fingers through the mounds of pellets and carefully pulling apart the sharp strands of steel packing strips. Mildred cried out, lifting another M-16/M-203 combo from the rubbish and placing it on top of the crate next to the first longblaster. Shifting a pallet, Jak pulled out a belt of 40 mm shells that had slid underneath. In a pile of foam pads, Dean found a repair kit, and mixed into a heap of used tape Krysty located two empty ammo clips, and then two more.

Time passed as the work slowly progressed. Many times the people grunted as slivers of wood stabbed their questing fingers, or the steel straps sliced across knuckles, but the hunt neither paused nor slowed. The piles of trash reached more than six feet high in some spots, and they went through every bit, watching for individual rounds. A single HE gren was found and added to the small pile on the crate, then a battered Claymore mine in questionable working condition. Next, came a windfall as an entire box of timing pencils for C-4 was discovered, but no plastique itself.

Reaching the far wall, the companions took a short break, then started digging their way back, now tossing the litter into their original path. This made the work a lot easier, and their speed increased. But nothing was found on this pass, or the next.

Grabbing a sturdy fiberglass crate, Ryan tried to lift it aside, but the container seemed stuck to the floor. Kicking a clear area around the crate, the man saw that the lid was still screwed in place, the sides intact and undamaged. Drawing the panga, he used the tip of the blade to remove the screws, then cut away the security tape sealing the lid in place.

"Find something?" Krysty asked, looking up from the floor, her hair peppered with foam bits.

"Tell you in a sec," Ryan replied, carefully pulling out handfuls of stuffing until finding a huge plastic case buried in the center. In spite of its size, the case wasn't very heavy, and Ryan lifted it from the nest of packing to place it gingerly on the floor.

"I know that box," J.B. said from across the room.

Ryan undid a latch. "So do I," he said, and swung open the case to expose a mint-condition M-1 A military flamethrower. The burner and louvered hose shone with protective gel, the twin tanks satin smooth under the camou paint job. Checking the main crate again, Ryan found canisters of condensed fuel and a charging unit for the pressure tank mixed in with the flamethrower. Excellent. This was old tech to the man. The Trader liked to use flamethrowers in battles. They were fearsome weapons that often made raiders leave, thus saving lives and ammo. Ryan and J.B. could repair the things in their sleep, and both men knew how to walk a burner and not get scorched by the splash.

"This will do," Ryan said and closed the case to search through the rest of the crate. There was nothing more inside, so he ferried the flamethrower over to J.B. and continued the garbage hunt. A few more of those and they would be back in business.

An hour later, the tired people reached the starting point and broke for a fast meal of granola bars and beef jerky while J.B. finished his inventory of the meager finds.

"From the grease trails and fuel stains on the floor, I'd say the National Guard stored their wags down here," Ryan said, biting off a chew of jerky. "Lots of Hummers, a few trucks and a couple of APC wags, Bradleys from the tire tracks. The soldiers loaded them with the blasters from storage and drove away."

"To where?" Dean asked.

His father shrugged. "Where did all of the troops from the redoubts go? Nobody knows."

"And they just tossed the trash down here as they unpacked the weapons," Krysty added, unwrapping a stick of gum and popping it into her mouth. "Must have been in a hell of a rush to leave the area."

"Which was lucky for us," Mildred observed. "We found quite a few working weapons accidentally disposed of in the trash."

"And some that are worth shit," J.B. said, joining the group and tilting back his hat. "Want the bad news first?"

"Nothing good?" Jak asked, wiping his mouth on a sleeve, then screwing the cap on his canteen.

"Some," J.B. admitted. "We have an M-60 with no ammo. A hundred rounds of 30 mm shells and no blaster they'll fit. Got ten blocks of 4.5 mm caseless ammo, which I wouldn't give as a gift to a stickie. There's two shotguns with bent barrels, four M-16 longblasters with dented receivers, six Stinger guided missiles without a launcher tube or radar box, not that the circuits would have worked anyway after the EMP of the nuke."

None of the companions smiled at the information.

"Now the good news," the Armorer said, turning to walk along the line of four crates covered with military hardware. "We got a flamethrower with ninety seconds of fuel. Six M-16/M-203 combo blasters, nine usable clips and a thousand rounds of ammo. Plus, twenty assorted shells for the 40 mm launchers. Ten grens, two of them smoke charges, one Claymore land mine with a broken timer, but I can jury-rig something for that, a hundred timing pencils, a 4-shot LAW rocket with one live round, and an Armbrust with five HE rounds, only one of which is usable. Plus a ton of assorted small-arms ammo, more than we could ever carry."

"Got the bikes," Dean reminded him, going closer.

"More than even they can carry."

The boy nodded. "Good." His Browning didn't really have much of a punch, and Dean was thinking hard about getting a second blaster, something with more power. However, the Weatherby weighed ten pounds. He wanted something lightweight, but with maximum chilling capability.

"Was hoping for more," Ryan said gruffly, standing. "But it should do. Everybody take an M-16/ M-203, I'll haul the flamethrower."

Each of the companions took their fill of ammo for their personal weapons, filled their pockets with grens and draped themselves with the new blasters.

Taking his share, J.B. then went to help the man with the straps and tapped the pressure gauges to test the needles.

"Should have thirty-two, three-second bursts," the man warned. "But it might only be half that since the pressure valve was sticking and we don't know if that's a true reading."

"Say fifteen. So at short range, forty-five seconds total," Ryan finished. "Good enough for the droids. Don't know about the spider. That last mutie fought for a long time after we set it on fire."

"No prob." Jak pulled shut the 40 mm gren launcher of the M-203, and slapped a clip into the receiver of the M-16. Then with a scowl, the teenager pulled the clip and primed it first by rapping it against the wall, then sliding it into the weapon.

"Triple-stupe design," he muttered.

Mildred grunted in agreement. "Give me an AK-47 any day," the physician said, yanking the top bolt on the blaster. "Or an Uzi. Something reliable."

"Blast, I can't carry all of this," Krysty said, and laid down the Webley. "We'll have to make two trips."

"Better save the .44 bullets for Doc," Ryan suggested, tugging the body harness of the flamethrower into place. "Mebbe we can finally get him to abandon that antique and keep the other Webley."

"Hope he's okay," Dean said, changing the subject. He knew only one person was needed to guard the bikes, and with the gates closed the parking lot should be secure. But the National Guard base was cut in two by the cliff, and anything could have climbed onto the mesa and caught the old man from behind.

"He fine," Jak stated confidently, stuffing a box of .357 ammo into the pocket of his jacket. "Hear shot if trouble."

Closing her eyes, Krysty tilted her head for a moment.

"Curious," she said, frowning. "There it is again."

"Doc?" J.B. asked, stuffing the Armbrust into his backpack.

Pensive, the redhead turned slowly. "No, it's that soft popcorn noise again."

"More gas?" Dean demanded, looking about for any signs of yellow smoke.

"I hear it, too," Ryan added with a frown, tucking the vented wand of the flamethrower through the chest straps and drawing his handcannon. "Seems to be coming from the elevator."

"We never checked that," Mildred said, pointing the double barrels of her M-16/M-203 in that direction. "If the soldiers sent the trash down here with the elevator, then anything could be in there."

"Making popcorn?" Jak asked, puzzled.

"Or mebbe something walking on bubble wrapping," Dean suggested.

"Droid?" Jak asked skeptically.

"Damn near anything," Ryan said. "Triple red."

Quickly, the companions assumed positions behind the mounds of rubbish.

With his Uzi in hand, J.B. walked to the elevator to listen for a moment, before placing a hand on the lever of the elevator door.

"Open it," Ryan directed, leveling the fluted muzzle of his weapon.

Grabbing the handle of the cargo elevator, J.B. pushed up the gate, the action making the bottom half drop from sight.

Inside the lift was a towering stack of wet wooden crates piled high on a plastic pallet identical to the one used for the Pegasus . The sides of the boxes were soaked with an oily residue that was dribbling onto the metal floor. As each drop struck, it detonated like a firecracker. The irregular sound was vaguely reminiscent of making popcorn.

"Dark night," J.B. gasped, going motionless at the sight. "Everybody freeze. Don't move. Don't move a goddamn muscle or we'll be blown to bits!"

"Dynamite," Ryan said between clenched teeth. "Nuke-shitting hell, that's got to be four or five tons!"

Lifting a leg, the Armorer awkwardly untied his left boot and slid his foot out, then did the same with the other.

"Remove your boots and walk to the stairs in your socks," he ordered in a whisper. "Make no sudden moves, and for fuck's sake don't drop anything. Take whatever you're holding. Nothing more."

"But the ammo" Mildred began.

"Leave it," Ryan said, tying his boot laces together and slinging them around his neck to keep his hands free. "That old dynamite is sweating pure nitro. We got to go, and fast."

"Come again?" Dean asked.

J.B. felt a trickle of sweat run down his face as he moved for the door to the stairwell. "Dynamite was just nitro in some sort of inert packingfuller's earth, sawdust, anything would do. But over time, the nitro can seep through the waxy covering of the sticks and ooze on the outside in droplets."

There came a crackle of tiny explosions from the ground of the elevator.

"And then it explodes whenever," the boy said hoarsely, suddenly understanding.

"Damn straight. Why the fuck it didn't detonate when I yanked open the door, I have no idea. But if it goes off now, there wouldn't be enough left of this armory to stuff into a spent brass round."

Gently placing her sock-clad feet on the terrazzo floor, Mildred stared at the stack of crates on the pallet. "Anything we can do?" she asked, licking dry lips.

"Leave," J.B. said, tiptoeing toward the exit. "And then run for our lives. That elevator is a bomb just itching to go off."

Easing out of their boots, the rest of the companions started slowly creeping toward the stairwell. Making a small detour around a crate, Dean reached out to snag the shoulder strap of the Armbrust rocket, then kept moving.

Turning off the preburner of his weapon, Ryan scowled at the action and promised he would have a stern talk with the boy about obeying orders in emergencies.

Crossing the few yards to the stairs seemed to take forever, every retarded motion excruciatingly slow. But finally they were inside the stairs, their socks patting on the hard steps as the men and women ascended at glacial speed. Finally reaching the ground floor, they risked moving faster and dashed across the damp floors, the yellowish moisture stinging their feet through the Army socks.

"Landing dock is closer," Mildred suggested.

"Fuck that. We'd have to jump to the ground," Ryan said harshly. "Use the stairs."

Easing out the back door, they quickly traversed the stairs and through the gate in the fence to finally reach the parking lot. Not wasting a moment with their boots, the companions dashed around the building in their stocking feet and raced straight for the bikes pell-mell.

Standing near the collection of motorcycles, Doc arched an eyebrow at the companions' unusual appearance.

"Salutations all!" he rumbled with a smile, then noticed the stern expressions on their faces. In remarkable speed, the old man was on his bike with the engine running, as the others arrived.

"Droids?" Doc asked, revving the engine.

"Sweaty dyno," J.B. said, climbing onto his bike. "Tons of it."

"Saints preserve us," the old man muttered, as Jak climbed on behind him.

Rolling to the gate, Ryan slashed the rope holding it closed with his knife and the iron grille swung away to crash into the brick wall. The companions flinched at the noise, but when nothing happened, they rolled the bikes onto the street and drove toward the on ramp of the bypass.

"A little distance more and we'll be safe," Ryan said over the purring motor.

"Sure hate to leave those blasters," Krysty griped, maneuvering around the maze of potholes. "But we had no choice."

"None," J.B. said, watching the ruins. Things darted about in the shadows, but none dared to emerge and challenge the norms on the street.

The entrance ramp proved to be clear of wrecked cars, and the motorcycles zoomed up the sloped concrete to the bypass without any trouble. Soon, the companions were streaking away at their best speed, the purrs of the engines rising to throaty growls.

"Gate open," Jak said. "Muties recce warehouse."

"Let them," Ryan snapped, leaning into a turn. "The blast'll only attract more muties and give us some breathing room."

Bright light flashed behind the companions, and a rumbling roar grew to staggering proportions, then faded away. Seconds later smoking debris rained from the sky. A burning tire hit the roadway directly in front of the companions and rolled along with the bikes for a few yards before veering away and disappearing over the side of the elevated bypass.

"Now let's go find that gateway," Krysty shouted, her Army-issue socks pressed tight to the checkered rider pegs. The woman tried not to think what would happen if her unprotected foot slipped and brushed against the rushing surface of the roadway. "And get the hell off this island!"

Black hair streaming in the wind, Ryan shot her a look. "Agreed," he muttered, sagging a little in his seat from the array of weaponry strapped across his body. "We'll stop in a couple of miles, and look for a place to stop and check over our weapons."

"And boots," Jak added, shifting his bare feet on the floorboard of the fancy Harley.

"What about the spider?" Dean asked, the tube of the Armbrust rocket sticking over his shoulder like a samurai sword.

Keeping a tight grip on the handlebars, Ryan pumped the throttle. "Since we know where the bug is, we'll take the off-ramp just before its web," he said. "Then get back on the bypass after we go underneath."

"Sounds good," the boy agreed.

"And if not," J.B. added grimly, "we got the blasters to chill a dozen of the big muties."

"If these junkyard weapons work," Mildred stated, leaning over the handlebars as if urging the machine on to greater speed.

 

Chapter Seventeen

 

 

 All of her eight legs dancing nimbly, she turned to inspect the new trap.

It was perfect. A few inches off the ground was a sturdy line of her best silk that stretched across the flat river of black stone. When the two-legs came back riding their not-alive animals over the line, they would fall down and get very hurt. Maybe even break the not-animals and make the two-legs drop their thunder sticks. That would make them completely helpless. The tiny killers had great speed, but no agility.

Then she would swing up from under the strip of land that did not touch the ground and pounce on them in surprise. The giant female had never done such a thing before, but her ancient instincts said the trick always worked. Soon it would have the two-legs wrapped tightly in cocoons, stored food for the children when they were born. Except for the little two-leg that threw the orange beast that damaged the web. That one she could plant her eggs into, and let the infants consume the two-leg alive when they were born.

Placing her legs with care, the giant spider walked over the edge of black stone river and swung underneath. Settling comfortably into place, she locked her legs into position and settled in for the hunting sleep where she would rest, but not dream. Always ready to instantly attack in any direction. It was the greatest talent of her raceinfinite patience mixed with ruthless cruelty.

Time passedhow much was impossible to say then a soft purring sounded from below her. The spider snapped open her segmented eyes and stared at the tiny two-legs racing away below her on their not-animals. They had detoured around the trap! Impossible! Intolerable!

Without pause, she squeezed out a thick strand of silky material from her spinnerets and released the hold of her legs on the sky-river. The strand held her weight as it should, and she descended toward the two-legs as fast as possible. A short distance from the ground, she released the spinnerets and fell the rest of the way, her tremendous weight easily balanced on her eight strong legs.

But the two-legs were already ahead of her, the not-animals moving at an unbelievable speed. She roared in anger, but the noise didn't make this food freeze in terror as it did the jungle cats and four-arms. Some of the two-legs looked backward at her and made banging sounds, tiny pinpricks of pain stabbing into her chest.

Staying level, she charged at the defiant food, her flashing limbs carrying her easily over the broken ground and oddly shaped stone eggshells. She roared again and snapped her mandibles, feeling her heart pound as the blood beat quicker through every vein. To chase and kill! This was the greatest pleasure!

But the not-animals were too fast, and she angrily slowed as they purred up the sloped stone to the sky-river of black stone disappearing from view. Raging fury formed in her mind, and she hissed long and loud at the escape. Twice! Nothing had ever gotten away twice before! A blinding rage to kill flooded her mind, and she raised quivering antennae high to begin stroking the air. Mixed into the thousands of smells around her nest, there was the strong reek of the not-animals lying in a stream along the ground.

Checking to make sure her egg sacks were strongly attached to her abdomen, she dashed forward at killing speed to follow the invisible river of odors, knowing that eventually it would lead her to the defiant food. Time didn't matter. She could sit in a trap forever, or chase a prey for even longer. Soon enough, she would drink their blood, saving the withered flesh for the precious eggs.

 

"THINK IT'LL COME after us?" Dean asked, glancing over a shoulder as they rolled along the bypass.

 

Keeping a tight grip on the handlebars, Ryan shrugged in reply. His engine was still running a little hot, but that shouldn't be a problem now that it had had a long rest.

"At least it can't camou like that big bastard in New Mexico," J.B. said with a frown.

"How's the fuel?" Ryan asked, tapping the gauge. He wasn't overly worried about discovering that this spider could perfectly copy anything it was near and disappear. The creature fought at White Sands was a different kind of mutie from this hairy brute.

Krysty looked down. "About half a tank," she replied.

"Same here," Mildred answered, swerving to avoid a pothole. Every bounce made her collection of bags and blasters slam into her. The physician knew she had to be covered with bruises by now.

"Less," Doc said. "But then we are carrying a double load."

After checking the rearview mirror, Ryan studied the city on either side of the elevated roadway. There were mostly homes and strip malls below, the monoliths of the downtown skyscrapers miles distant. Nothing clearly dangerous was in sight, and his sweaty feet were constantly slipping off the floorboards. Time for a break.

"Let's find someplace to stop and refuel," Ryan ordered, carefully maintaining a steady course on the bike. Any sudden move on his part made the fuel in the flamethrower tanks slosh about, the weight shift threatening to topple the bike.

"Rest stop up ahead!" Krysty said.

"That'll do. Follow me in," Ryan commanded, gently slowing the motorcycle.

Blank signs announced the turnoff lane, and the companions rolled along the macadam strip into the rest area. With weapons in hand, they stayed on the vibrating bikes and closely scrutinized the vicinity. Bisected by the access road, the rest area was a half circle of forested land, packed with an untamed bramble of wild trees and thorny bushes. The public washroom was a sagging ruin of bricks and exposed pipes, with birds nesting in the exposed stalls. However, there was plenty of open area around the cracked parking lot. Nothing could come close without their seeing it in plenty of time to react.

"Seems clear," Krysty said, turning off the bike and listening as the engine went still.

Turning off their motorcycles, the rest of the companions stood and gratefully stretched their backs. On a horse, the strain was in the thighs; on a bike, it was the lower back that got stiff.

Dropping their packs, longblasters and bags, the friends tossed away their filthy socks and pulled on fresh dry pairs taken from the department store, then pulled on their boots.

"Better," Jak grunted, stomping the ground. The teenager had been wary of making a sharp turn on the bike, afraid he would stick out a leg to brace himself and lose a foot. First lesson he ever received in riding a predark bike was that the road hated riders and wanted to chill them every chance it got. After a few mishaps, the youth soon learned that was sage advice.

Arranging the mixed collection of weaponry on the ground, the companions distributed the blasters and ammo evenly. J.B. stuffed his M-16/M-203 into the gun boot lashed to the frame of his motorcycle, keeping his regular weapons about him, the LAW rocket launcher sticking out of the saddlebags. Since it was almost out of rounds, Mildred put the Thompson into her bike's boot and draped the M-16 combo over the handlebars. The physician preferred the accuracy of her ZKR over the spray-and-pray firepower of rapidfires. Slinging the M-16/M-203 over a shoulder, Krysty then shifted her revolver to the middle of her belt for easy access. Doc did the same with his weapon, the LeMat bolstered at his hip, the Webley jutting from his belt.

"Behold, and tremble in fear," Doc rumbled, adjusting his numerous blasters, "at the modern Gilgamesh."

Switching positions, Jak took the driver's position on the Harley so that he could put his assault rifle into the gun boot, the slim Armbrust hung across the back of his jacket. He was unfamiliar with the stealth projectile launcher, but the instructions were printed on top and the operation was fairly simple.

"We got plenty of ammo, but save the 40 mm grens for the droids," J.B. instructed, filling a pocket with 12-gauge shells for the M-4000. The bent shotguns in the trash had been fully loaded, and he managed to salvage all of the cartridges.

"Better keep the Weatherby handy, son," Ryan suggested, tucking the Steyr into the gun boot. "We got enough firepower with the M-16s. Could use some decent penetration."

"Gotcha," Dean replied, packing the M-16 combo into the saddlebags strapped over the rear fender, along with their extra food and spare ammo. The plastic stock stuck almost straight up alongside the roll bar.

"Pressure is good," Ryan said, checking the dials and igniting the preburner in the vented muzzle.

"You sure that thing will work?" Mildred asked, making room in her med kit for the one spare clip for her M-16. The single 40 mm round was already in the M-203 launcher, primed and ready to fire.

"Time to find out," Ryan said, hefting the weapon and walking away from the others. "Stay clear in case she blows."

"Got you covered," J.B. said, raised a small C02 fire extinguisher from the Harley's repair kit.

Bracing for the expected recoil, Ryan triggered the spray. The weapon bucked in his grip, sending a fiery lance of burning chems thirty feet down the old pavement.

After a full count of three seconds, Ryan released the trigger and closely watched as the flame collapsed, then checked the dials. Pressure was good, no blockage in the jets, an even dispersal.

"Trigger sticks," he said, resting the hot barrel on a shoulder. "But other than that, works fine."

Placing away her own C02 extinguisher, Krysty walked to a railing, her cowboy boots crunching on the loose gravel.

"Food, ammo, fuel," she said, looking out over the expanse of the predark metropolis. An acrid breeze from the distant volcanoes ruffled her long crimson hair, the filaments recoiling from the traces of sulfur in the wind.

"Now we just have to find the gateway," she finished grimly.

"Gonna be tough," J.B. agreed, extending his Navy telescope and studying the tall buildings on the jagged horizon. The gateway could be hidden anywhere in the city. The basement of a store, a second-story bedroom, inside a bank vault. Anywhere.

"Needle in fucking haystack," Jak grunted, thumbing fresh rounds into his Colt Python. The Ruger was packed into the saddlebags, where it was going to stay. Having too many weapons, was almost as dangerous as having not enough. Almost.

"Indeed, my young friend, what we ardently need is a native guide," Doc stated, standing on the berm, pressing loose rounds into an empty clip for the M-16. When finished, he slipped the mag into the receiver and worked the bolt. "But where can we locate a Chingachgook for us to play Hawkeye?"

"Are you sure it was science and philosophy you taught," Mildred demanded in irritation, "and not classic literature?"

"Quite definite, madam," Doc replied. "But there is no more noble a pursuit for both heart and mind than spending time with a book."

"Fireblast, we have a guide!" Ryan said suddenly, returning to the group of bikes. "We're looking for a gateway, and there's sec droids in the city."

"They're the guards," J.B. realized aloud. "Shit-fire, that's got to be right. Why else would they be here?"

As she turned away from the cityscape, a smile crept onto Krysty's face. "You're going to use the droids," she said, "to find the gateway."

"Tell me a better plan," Ryan asked, turning off the preburner. The tiny blue propane flame winked out immediately.

Removing his glasses, J.B. polished off the bugs dotting the lenses. "Wish I could," he said, sliding the frames back on his face. "Sure as hell don't want to drive along every street and look in each building. That'd take months, years mebbe."

"A robotic stalking goat," Mildred muttered, tucking a lock of beaded hair behind an ear. "Could just work."

"Count on it." Briefly, Ryan cast a glance at the clouds overhead. The descending sun filled the fiery clouds with a profusion of colored lights, the sheet lightning slashing tortured rainbows across the polluted sky.

"Let's get moving," he said, climbing onto his Harley. "There's still a couple hours of daylight left. That can work in our favor."

"Going to the department store," Dean stated confidently, getting on the saddle behind his father.

"Pawnshop," Ryan corrected, pressing the ignition button. "That's where we know the droids were waiting to ambush us. But instead, we're going to hit them. Hard and fast."

"Just hope we don't chill all of them," J.B. said, starting his own bike. "That would ruin everything."

 

WITH THE FRONT window painted over, it was quiet and cool in the ancient store, and the three droids stood patiently behind the front counter, hidden in the growing shadows.

 

The glass panels had been removed from the display cases to make the collection of rifles and handguns more readily apparent. That was an established procedure to distract looters and prevent retaliatory strikes, before the droids could eliminate the invaders.

Something scurried along the baseboard, and a droid swiveled its belly-mounted weapon to shoot. There was no noise or muzzle-flash from the odd device, yet a wide section of the wooden baseboard was torn apart, splinters flying everywhere, and the tiny body of the mouse was reduced to bleeding hamburger.

The other droids noted the kill in mechanical precision and returned to their long vigil. The norms should have arrived many hours ago. There had definitely been activity at the front door early that morning, but the norm males had departed, claiming to return posthaste with vehicles to ferry away the weapons in the store. The minicomps operating the droids now could comprehend that was nontrue information, and such a trick wouldn't be allowed to occur again.

The 1 mm HK needlers of the droids would annihilate as many of the norms as possible upon the next confirmed sighting. Not again would they wait and attempt to kill the entire group in a single volley. For the sake of expediency, efficiency would have to be overlooked in favor of simple force. There was certainly enough fuzzy logic in their programming to handle such a change of tactics.

The loud crash of the front window was the only warning the trio of droids got before a thunderous explosion engulfed the front of the store, shards of glass flying everywhere. Even as the machines rocked to the buffeting of the concussion, two more blasts ripped the floor apart, making the ceiling collapse as a wave of chemical flame washed through the predark establishment.

Rushing through the billowing smoke, two of the dented droids reached the sidewalk and swept the area for viable targets, their needlers silently sending out probing waves of death. Cars jumped as the barrage of 1 mm needles punched through chassis and engine, every window along the entire street shattering under the arrival of the deadly depleted-uranium, hollow-point slivers.

But there was no reaction to the attack from any of the buildingsno screams of pain, sounds of running footsteps or even return fire from primitive flintlocks. Just the sounds of tinkling glass, and the growing crackle of the fire inside the destroyed building.

A few minutes later, the third droid stumbled from the burning pawnshop, its silvery hull badly dented and dragging a damaged limb behind.

Gathering close, the three machines conversed for a microsecond, the masers from their vid cams strobing as they exchanged binary information. Then the damaged droid limped around a corner, and the other two went back into the raging inferno of the pawnshop to wait in the thick smoke for the expected arrival of the norm looters.

 

Chapter Eighteen

 

 

 On the roof of a movie theater situated on the opposite corner from the pawnshop, J.B. lowered the mirror he had been using to watch the street below and nodded.

"It worked," the Armorer whispered, tucking the plastic square away for safekeeping.

Also lying prone on the rooftop, Krysty, Mildred and Jak quietly finished reloading their 40 mm gren launchers and started crawling for the fire escape attached to the rear of the building.

Reaching the ladder first, Krysty dropped her weapon over the side, then slid down the iron railing of the ladder, her gloved hands becoming hot from the friction before she reached the ground. As she stepped away from the fire escape, Ryan handed her back the combination blaster he had caught just as Jak arrived. Doc was next, and finally J.B. landed.

"One droid," the Armorer reported. "Bad leg, moving to the west."

"Go," Ryan ordered brusquely to his son.

Revving the purring engine, Dean drove off on the motorcycle. Rolling out of the alleyway, he took a sharp turn onto the side street, watching carefully for the damaged machine. Dean knew the droids had the ability to walk along the sides of the buildings, but hopefully this one couldn't do that with a damaged leg. If it could, this whole gamble could go sour, and they'd be back to square one trying to find the gateway.

Coasting to a stop at an intersection jammed with rusted cars and overturned buses, Dean throttled down the muffled engine and peeked around both corners. Only a block away, he spotted the machine limping down the middle of the left road, traveling between the line of dead vehicles. Retreating slightly to be less visible, Dean watched as it went past the next intersection, then took the following right turn.

Pursing his lips, the boy gave the call of a desert eagle, and the rest of the companions rolled into view with their bikes bristling with weaponry. Holding up two fingers, the boy gestured to the right, already moving after the slow machine.

Soon the others were in hot pursuit, zigzagging their bikes between the ancient cars, avoiding the potholes and open manholes. In passing, Ryan noted that the rims of the manholes weren't ringed with rust. So somebody had been checking the sewer systems very recently. Maybe those corpses on the vista outside the metropolis weren't the only pirates to get past the jungle apes.

Straight ahead, Dean darted into an alleyway, and Ryan followed close behind, trying to catch up with him. Increasing their own speed, the companions reached the father and son moments later just as they were going by a group of lizards tearing apart the bloody corpse of what appeared to be a large bat.

"From the sewer?" Krysty asked, swerving to the far side of the alley.

"Makes sense," Mildred answered, keeping her blaster pointed at the reptiles. "Bats love tunnels."

"And hate the sunlight."

"Leave darkness food," Jak said hesitantly, the soles of his combat boots tapping the ground to keep the slow-moving bike upright. "Or something scare out?"

"Those manhole openings are too small for a droid, or an ape," Ryan declared, pulling the vented wand from the straps across his chest and resting the muzzle on the chrome handlebars. "But just right for people."

Using his butane lighter, the Deathlands warrior ignited the propane preburner of the flamethrower and drove one-handed, the other supporting the wand and hose of the flamethrower.

As the motorcycles cut through the rear of a gas station, the alleyway ended on a major boulevard divided by trees on a grassy median. Checking both ways, neither Ryan nor Dean could see a sign of their prey. The road was clear for blocks in either direction, only a few scattered vehicles stalled in the street, none of them large enough to house even a single droid.

"Either it's hiding, waiting for us to leave," J.B. said, flexing his hands against a cramp, "or the base is somewhere close."

"Could be there," Dean suggested, pointing with the Browning.

Catercorner from the intersection was a large plaza, floored with colorful ceramic tiles and some weird metallic structure standing fifty feet high.

"Busted?" Jak asked, staring at the towering maze of coiled steel dotted with hundreds of tiny rectangles.

"That is the double-spiral of a DNA helix," Mildred explained. "The basic building block of life."

The teenager frowned. "Supposed look that?"

"Yes."

He snorted. "Damn."

"Blessed Mother Gaia," Krysty said softly, her hair flaring out in response. "Look at the middle building!"

"Well, I'll be nuked," J.B. muttered, removing his fedora, only to replace it again. "There it is in plain sight!"

Fronting the tiled plaza were three great buildings of chrome and glass set in an equilateral formation. Alongside the faded name of each mirrored monolith was their corporate logo, just an artistic squiggle designed to be attention catching. But the logo in the middle got the full attention of the companions.

"That's the symbol we found written in blood," Ryan said grimly, "in the gateway when we arrived here. This is where the chilled whitecoat was trying to tell us to go."

"Or avoid," Krysty said warily, revving her engine. The machine shuddered once, then smoothed out again. "We were never sure which it was."

"I'm betting on directions, not a warning," J.B. said, studying the rooftops along the intersection and plaza for snipers.

Nervously, Mildred clenched and unclenched her hands. "Somewhere inside there is a gateway," she said softly. "The way out."

"No sign of any droids," Ryan added gruffly. "But that doesn't mean they're not here. Waiting for us."

"Let them come," Dean stated, working the bolt on the Weatherby to chamber a massive .460 round.

With Ryan in the lead, the companions drove their bikes openly across the boulevard trying to draw fire, poised to feed the hungry engines fuel and race to safety. But nothing occurred as they bumped over the curb and parked the vehicles behind the glittering DNA statue. Sliding off the bike, Ryan drew his blaster and gave cover as Jak paused, then sprinted for the front door. Nearing the portal, he dived over some scraggly hedges and rolled behind a marble pillar. Pausing again to listen for any response to his presence, the teenager leveled his M-16/M-203 and checked the interior of the building through the low-power scope built into the assault rifle. Nothing seemed to be moving inside the plush lobby and foyer. Raising a fist, Jak spread his fingers once, and now he and Ryan gave cover as J.B. crawled to the front door on his belly, only to find the heavy glass door unlocked.

Shoving a spent brass cartridge under the lower hinge, the Armorer jammed the door open and Ryan raced inside, the preburner of his flamethrower illuminating the dim interior with an eerie blue light. Taking position behind a cigarette machine, Ryan surveyed the area, his nerves keyed to battle pitch. But nothing stirred among the ancient furniture. The carpeted lobby was dark beyond the wash of sunlight from the glass walls in front, the air oddly scented with dust.

The one-eyed man whistled sharply, and the rest of the companions charged into the office building, quickly spreading out to find cover. Doc was the last, and as he dashed into the lobby the door abruptly swung shut and locked with an audible click.

Instantly, the companions shifted positions and started wildly firing their weapons, the rounds from the Uzi and M-16 tearing up the carpeting and walls.

Just then, the ceiling tiles swung apart on disguised hinges and a pair of robotic blasters dropped into view, the tiny barrels hissing death. Only a blur in the air, the crisscrossing lines of 1 mm rounds stitched across the lobby, chewing a path of destruction along the carpeting, tearing apart tables and chairs until hitting the front windows. The slim needles slapped into the resilient Plexiglas, becoming solidly embedded in the clear plastic.

Standing from behind a newspaper dispenser, Ryan hosed a 3-second spray from the flamethrower at the closest needier, the lance of fire brightly illuminating the interior. Dripping flames, the weapon gave only a short burst then shorted out, the burning housing crackling with bright electric sparks as the barrel slumped toward the floor. Ryan turned to get the second needier, and saw it was already trashed, torn to pieces under the combined fury of the chattering Uzi and M-16 rapidfires.

Warily lighting their pressurized lanterns, the companions placed the lamps in different locations before starting to move forward. Immediately, three droids rose from behind the reception kiosk and flashed their lasers, the scintillating beams slashing across the lobby to explode the precious lanterns and plunge the area into darkness. But that lasted only a split second as the puddled oil from the smashed reservoirs touched the glowing metal wicks and ignited into pools of fire. Stubbornly, the droids lasered the spreading oil, and seemed confused at the lack of response from the flames.

Counting to ten under his breath, Jak rolled behind a cigarette machine, yanked the Armbrust off his back, prepared the one round, then stood and fired.

The triple lasers stabbed into the predark dispenser, melting deep holes into the machinery as the Armbrust made a crack like a .22 pistol, and a blizzard of plastic flakes mixed with nitrogen snow vomited from the aft end. There was no flash from the muzzle, no contrail or fiery exhaust to mark the path of the AP projectile as it left the tube. The round crossed the lobby at subsonic speed and broke apart in midair, a hellstorm of steel flechettes arriving to tear the kiosk and the droids apart.

Vid cams utterly annihilated, hull riddled, the blind droids tottered about on their buckling legs, hydraulic fluid pumping from the legs like greasy blood. The lasers flashed again, but only hit the front windows, searing brownish spots in the dense material. Using the ten-second recharge lag, the companions stood and cut loose a concentrated volley from their assorted rapidfires. The incoming barrage savagely pounded the droids until they toppled over to loudly crash onto the tattered kiosk.

Small fires dotted the lobby, the charring carpet giving off thick clouds of smoke. Returning to the bikes outside, Mildred and Jak got the extinguishers, while Krysty and Doc beat out the flames with their coats. If the building went up, there was no way they could find the gateway.

Going to the rubble of the kiosk, Ryan prodded the droids with the SIG-Sauer to made sure they were aced, then pumped a few rounds into their exposed circuitry just to make sure. The armored sheeting of the hull warped apart, CPU and circuit boards shattering easily under the 9 mm rounds.

In short order, the fires were under control. Assuming the position of guard, Ryan stayed at the kiosk with the flamethrower ready as the rest of the companions did a quick recce of the first floor. They came back in only a couple of minutes.

"Nothing," J.B. reported, walking from the shadows rear of the lobby. "Just an elevator bank and a big cafeteria. A lot of people worked here."

"Like to know what it was they did," Ryan growled, going to the office directory hanging from the ceiling above the kiosk. Unfortunately, the bullets from the rapidfires had slammed the board pretty hard, punching dozens of holes through the material and knocking off most of the letters. Only a cryptic scrambling of names and departments remained. Totally useless.

"Okay, we do this the hard way," Ryan said, trimming the preburner and lowering the pressure on a feeder valve. "We go floor by floor. Stay tight, and ace anything that moves."

"No prob," Jak agreed, tossing aside the Armbrust and swinging around his M-203 to work the arming bolt.

"Droid!" Dean shouted, and hit the floor, throwing a gren toward the bathroom.

Slipping out of a men's room, a droid strode into view as the sphere bounced along the floor and detonated. The blast lifted the sec machine off the ground, slamming it against the marble wall. Broken to pieces, the droid fell back to the carpet, sparking steadily from a dozen short circuits.

Pulling both handcannons, Doc leveled the Webley and triggered a single thundering round, the .44 slug blowing open the armored hull protecting the mini-comp. Then he fired the LeMat, the massive miniball punching through the CPU and smashing it into a million pieces. The sparks ceased abruptly.

"We've got to move fast," Ryan stated, lowering the vented muzzle of his flamethrower. "These things are gonna be on our ass every step of the way."

"Which direction, basement or penthouse?" Krysty asked, removing a spent clip and slapping a fresh mag against the stock of her weapon before ramming it into the receiver.

"Penthouse," Ryan answered promptly. "If nothing else, we'll have a good view of the city from up there. That might be helpful."

"Agreed."

Heading for the stairwell, the companions braced for another ambush, but the stairs proved to be clear to the next level.

"The programmers probably have the machines set to protect the elevators first," Mildred guessed as they swept through the array of office cubicles filling the second floor. "Places like this always have emergency generators for the mainframes in case the city power grid went down."

There was nothing on the second floor except for some rats, and the third floor was merely vacant conference rooms, as large and empty as the graves of giants. The fourth floor was strictly maintenance. However, the fifth had carpeting once again, the wooden doors elaborately carved, and old paintings in gilded frames adorned the plaster walls. A glass-topped mahogany reception desk was set in a small alcove with several plush wing-back chairs set nearby.

"Protoculte Bio-Medical Corporation," Ryan said with a frown, reading the name in brass, or maybe gold, letters on the front of the reception desk. "Anybody know what that means?"

"Most certainly, it is a polyglot of classic and antiquarian Latin," Doc said, placing the strap of the M-16 combo around his neck to distribute the weight more comfortably. "It roughly translates as 'wondrous new science."

"Don't like the sound of that," Mildred muttered, lifting a business card from a cut-crystal stand embossed with the company logo.

Scowling, she threw it away. "Might have guessedthis is a damn genetics firm. The kind of idiots who play with DNA to make juicier apples whose blossoms poisoned bees, and bigger cows that freeze to death in summer."

"And biological weapons for the government," Doc suggested.

"Exactly."

Krysty and J.B. paused in the alcove to check the desk, while the rest of the companions continued onward. Branching hallways cut the level into a maze of offices and rooms. Walking slowly along the main hallway, Ryan passed a guard station with a pile of loose clothing and bones behind a waist-high Plexiglas barrier. Bending, he rummaged through the clothing, but found nothing.

"Was hoping for an ID badge," he remarked, wiping off his palms on his fatigue pants. "Might have made the droids leave us alone, but no luck."

Suddenly, a loud thud sounded from behind, and the companions spun about to see a gorilla clawing at the window. Furiously, the mutie beat on the Plexiglas window with three fists, but the bulletproof material wasn't affected in the least by the savage pummeling. Baring its fangs, the creature pulled back and threw itself at the norms only yards away. The window bent a little, then popped from the frame, throwing the beast to the floor.

Swiveling his bulky weapon, Ryan gave the gorilla a short burst from the M-1 A, the burning spray engulfing the creature completely. Its fur ablaze, the ape shrieked insanely and charged the companions, clawed hands of fire reaching for the hated tormentors.

Retreating a step, Ryan doused the gorilla again, filling its screaming mouth with the burning spray. Temporarily beyond pain, the gorilla bellowed a roar and beat its chest, a living nightmare still struggling forward through the fiery flow.

Working the bolt on his longblaster, Dean pumped a couple of rounds from the Weatherby into the creature, geysers of blood exploding from its back. Out of grens, Jak stitched it with a wreath of tumblers from the chattering M-16, the slugs peppering its hide. The beast staggered backward and tumbled out the broken window. A flaming meteor, the howling animal plummeted to the hard street five stories below and hit with a resounding wet smack.

Tiny patches of flame dotted the hallway carpeting from the spray of the flamethrower, and the companions moved away from the destroyed corridor, a stiff breeze outside the gaping window sucking out the putrid fumes rising from the melting carpet.

"How find us here?" Jak demanded, removing the half-spent clip and slapping in a full mag. Spent brass littered the carpet, flecks of gold lost amid the complex art deco pattern of the delicate weave.

"No way it could," Ryan said, waving the wand to disperse some of the unburned fumes from the injector. "It must have been here for the same reasons as the droids, standing guard."

"Apes outside the city, droids in the streets, a cafeteria that could feed a hundred soldiers." Mildred glanced around the hallways. "What in hell were scientists doing here that required that much protection?"

Dean started to answer, when Doc interrupted.

"Excuse me, but where are J.B. and Krysty?" the old man demanded, glancing about.

Shocked, the companions quickly looked around, but the two were nowhere in sight, the long hallway behind them clear all the way to the elevator bank and dark stairwell.

 

Chapter Nineteen

 

 

 Snarling in rage, Krysty triggered another burst from her M-16 into the Plexiglas wall, the slugs slapping into the soft material and staying there.

The moment J.B. broke open a locked drawer in the desk, the transparent barrier silently descended from the ceiling to seal them off in a heartbeat. They shouted for the others, and fired rounds into the walls and ceiling, but the companions walked away, obviously not hearing a thing.

"Same as the windows downstairs," she cursed, working the bolt to clear a jam. "Must be some kind of a burglar trap."

"Millie says folks were allowed to chill thieves in the predark world," J.B. muttered from under the desk. "Stupidest thing I ever heard ofah! Found it! There's a hidden button down here."

"Mebbe it opens this," Krysty said, tapping the barrier with the rapidfire. "Press it, quick."

"Have already," the man replied. "Anything happen?"

"Nothing."

An annoyed grunt. "Shit! I'll try different combinations. One long, one short, two in a row. Let me know as soon as it moves."

"Gotcha."

Suddenly, Ryan and the rest of the companions ran into view. Stopping before the sealed-off alcove, they stared at the Plexiglas shield. Ryan asked a question, but Krysty touched her ears and shook her head. Understanding that vocal communication was impossible, the one-eyed man frowned and stepped closer, looking at the slugs embedded in the plastic material. Reaching in a pocket, he withdrew a gren and gestured her to move away.

"The others are back," Krysty said, moving behind the desk. "Ryan is going to try a gren."

"Good," J.B. replied, getting out from underneath the desk. "I wanted to use the Claymore, but trapped in here the concussion would have pulped us both flat."

In the hallway, the companions started making a pile of furniture to help contain the blast of the gren, when Krysty noticed one of the elevators down the hallway open its doors. Standing inside the lift was a droid, its belly needier swiveling in search of prey. Nobody in the hall seemed to notice the arrival of the elevator and continued working to free their trapped friends.

"Ryan, droid!" Krysty screamed, firing her M-16 in the direction of the approaching machine as a warning.

The impact of the 7.62 mm rounds into the barrier had to have made some small noise because Ryan looked up in time to see the droid crawling from the elevator. Without hesitation, the man triggered the flamethrower, the burning lance washing over the machine in a hellstorm of liquid destruction. Blinded by the flames, the droid cut loose with its needier, the slivers tearing apart the pile of furniture as wood chips and stuffing exploded into the air like confetti.

Dropping to a knee, Dean assumed a firing stance and triggered the Weatherby, a foot-long tongue of flame erupting from the longblaster. The droid jerked from the brutal impact of the heavy slug into its armored hull, the needier going wild, hosing the deadly slivers into the ceiling, chewing the tiles into dust.

Webley and LeMat booming, Doc hammered the machine with miniballs and bullets from his twin .44 handcannons. Then, past the flaming droid, the other elevators opened and two more droids strode out. Any view of the companions blocked by the flames and furniture, the machines turned their lasers on J.B. and Krysty. The Plexiglas wall became spotted with brown patches from the hits, and soon they couldn't see what was happening on the other side. But as Ryan sent out another spray, the reinforcement droids swiveled about and marched over the burning wreckage of their fallen brother, lasers stabbing through the swirling smoke.

"Bastard button summoned the sec droids," J.B. spit, forcing his hands away from the Uzi. His friends were fighting for their lives only a foot away, and there was nothing he could do to help them with the barrier solidly in place.

"There has to be another way out!" Krysty shouted, looking at the walls and ceiling. She sent a burst from the M-16 into the ceiling, blowing away the tiles to expose a sheet of prestressed concrete. The alcove was as solid as a bunker.

"Got an idea," J.B. said, grabbing hold of the desk. Groaning with the effort, he flipped over the massive piece of furniture and it crashed to the carpet, throwing business cards, phone and computer helter-skelterbut also exposing a column of bundled wire extending from inside a hollow leg and going into the floor.

Quickly, the Armorer slashed the wires and scraped the ends clean to start twisting all of the bare copper together. A minute passed in tense silence while the man worked feverishly, the soundless battle in the hallway only visible as flashes of light in the dense smoke and fumes.

A bright spark snapped as J.B. twisted in the last wire, and a large section of the alcove wall behind them broke apart to expose a shiny steel door. The wheel lock turned by itself, and with a hiss of hydraulics, the armored portal swung aside to reveal another room deeper in the office building. Without pause, Krysty charged through the doorway, desperately trying to find another way to reach her friends.

Stainless-steel walls and floor announced the next room as a surgical laboratory of some kind, the ceiling a complex array of pipes, cables and wiring. A glowing panel of white plastic illuminated several X-ray negatives clipped to the frame showing the details of human anatomy. Several locked cabinets stood alongside a line of operating tables, a curved bank of comp controls facing the tables from the far end of the lab.

Spotting a second door, Krysty headed that way but slowed for a tic as she realized the X-ray negatives were of pregnant women, their unborn babies resembling tiny brains equipped with ropy tentacles. The woman barely had time to react to the sights when flashing lights danced across the control boards. Suddenly, her M-16/M-203 was seized by a mechanical arm from the ceiling, the robotic claw yanking away the weapon with enough force to break fingers if she hadn't released the rapidfire.

"Warning," a soft voice chimed from a hidden speaker. "Security breach, level one. Weapons in the surgery. Repeat, weapons in the surgery. Automatic recovery of test subjects in progress."

Instantly, the ceiling became alive with mechanical arms, clacking and snipping, a rain of rust heralding the limbs as they extended for the startled woman.

Standing in the open doorway, J.B. randomly sprayed the entire ceiling with his Uzi, the 9 mm rounds ricocheting off the servomotors and guide rails to ricochet down onto the operating table and the control consoles. Burning sparks flew everywhere, the overhead lights flickered and the robotic arms began to wildly thrash about, smashing open the cabinets and spilling out scalpels, forceps and other healing instruments indistinguishable from primitive implements of torture.

Drawing her Samp;W .38 revolver, Krysty fought a rush of panic as she dodged an arm tipped with rapidly spinning blades. In cold precision, a robotic limb clamped around her upper arm and lifted the woman off the floor. At point-blank range, Krysty fired her .38 into the assembly of gears, to no effect. The pre-dark surgical droid was made of the finest alloys, much tougher than the soft lead slugs of her revolver.

The limb began rolling along the ceiling, and Krysty wildly fought to break free. With her feet off the ground, she couldn't even summon her special strength because she would still be helpless in the iron grip of the computerized machine.

"Patient reacquired," a speaker crackled. "Prepare bed six."

At the end of the line, an operating table's curved restraints snapped open, and water began trickling along the blood trough to flush away the excess flesh.

The lab was going to harvest her! Now icy panic hit Krysty, and she fired the last two rounds trying to disable the table. The slugs zinged off the bare steel, leaving gray streaks from the lead but nothing more.

Frantically shooting his way across the lab, J.B. tried to reach the redhead, but the gyrating arms made that impossible. A clamp lurched for his throat and the man ducked, the pincers crushing his fedora instead.

"Subject two is male," the speaker announced. "No ID. Terminate at once."

Trying to reload the Uzi, the Armorer was forced to dive for cover under an operating table as metal rods tipped with spinning drills and spinning bone saws thrust from converging directions. His disappearance seemed to confuse the equipment for a moment. Slapping a fresh clip into the Uzi, J.B. then swung around the M-4000 and blasted the ceiling with steel flechettes. Hydraulic fluid began spurting from a cut hose somewhere, and two of the arms dropped to the floor.

Charging through the gap in the rods and snaking cables, the Armorer reached the control console and emptied the scattergun into the keyboard and dials. Half the board went dark, but the ceiling-mounted machinery still continued to function. Dark night, the bastard things had to have reserve capacitors! Those would weaken and fail eventually. But not soon enough. Krysty was already suspended over the operating table, kicking and jerking to avoid the clamps.

Putting another long burst into the active section of the control board, the man reached inside and began pulling out handfuls of wiring. But a reflection in a dark monitor made him drop low as a metal claw slammed into the console exactly where he had just been. J.B. felt the passage of the metal through his hair and, staying on the floor, he began firing the Uzi at anything coming his way.

Grabbing an animated cable trying to encircle her waist, Krysty hauled herself higher into the ceiling and managed to rest an arm on the guide rails. This eased the pain of the tugging clamp attached to her other arm and gave her enough time to fumble in her pocket for a gren. J.B. was far enough away to make the explosive charge safe to use. Unfortunately, a telescoping rod slammed into her hand and the gren fell to the floor, rolling put of sight beneath the tables.

Swearing, Krysty desperately pulled out her knife and rammed the blade deep into the spinning gears of the clamp holding her prisoner. Instantaneously, the robotic limb stopped moving, the resulting jerk throwing her free. Krysty landed sprawling between two of the steel tables and dived for cover beneath another table closer to the open doorway. As fingering ceramic rods and ferruled cables quested for her location, the woman pulled out a fistful of rounds, dropping most of them as she quickly reloaded the revolver. Her dropped gren was nowhere in sight, so Krysty darted from table to table, firing at anything that moved. She had to reach J.B. Covering each other's back, they could make a stand and shoot their way out of there. Fighting alone, each of them stood little chance of survival.

Something moved on her right, and Krysty stopped herself from firing at J.B. at the very last second. He shoved the loaded shotgun at her, and in unison they blasted the hellish nest of flexing machinery nonstop.

Something exploded outside the lab, and the cables slowed their relentless attack. Seizing the moment, J.B. slapped the damaged Claymore mine on the console and stabbed in a timing pencil where the timer used to be. As he reached to snap off the pencil, all the robotic arms festooning the ceiling reached for the couple, slapping aside weapons and pinning them helpless. Barely able to breathe in the crushing iron bonds, J.B. and Krysty struggled madly but were still dragged toward the waiting tables.

Somewhere the speaker crackled with static. "Unauthorized personnel secured," the monotone voice reported to its dead masters as a spinning circular saw came straight for Krysty to harvest the unborn mutie. "Commence primary procedure."

A deafening staccato filled the lab as numerous rapidfires peppered the ceiling with hot lead. Then Ryan hosed the control board with chem flames, filling the air with the reek of condensed fuel and propane. As the liquid fire seeped into the controls, sparks flew from the switches and dials, monitors shattered and the Claymore detonated.

Louder than a shotgun blast, the directional explosion blew a tremendous hole in the console, and the rest of the board went dark. Abruptly slowing their motions, the rods and cables soon ceased to move, the serrated edge of the rusty saw indenting the shirt over the woman's taut stomach.

Rushing to her, Ryan grabbed the machine limb in his fist and ripped it from the ceiling, then cast away the filthy surgical tool.

"You okay?" he demanded anxiously, looking for any wounds.

"Just bruised," Krysty replied, picking up her revolver from the floor. Pieces of wiring and IC chips were scattered everywhere, hydraulic fluid dripping from above to form red puddles on the steel floor, then trickle into drains.

"That explosion was you folks trying to get in," J.B. said, unraveling a length of cable from around his waist.

"Blew a hole in the floor above," Mildred said, passing him the dropped Uzi. "But getting to the next level took longer than expected."

Expertly, the Armorer checked the rapidfire for damage before draping it over a shoulder. "More droids?"

"Not anymore," Doc boasted, grinning with his oddly perfect teeth. "We came, we saw, we conquered."

"Thank you, Jealous Caesar," Mildred snorted.

Stooping under a table, Dean retrieved the M-167/ M-203 and took it to Krysty. "Here you go," the boy said. "But I don't think it's going to work anymore. That barrel is pinched shut."

"So I see," the redhead muttered, and removed the half-spent clip from the rapidfire before laying the weapon aside. The M-203 was intact, but without grens the launcher was just deadweight.

"Take ammo," Jak suggested, holding out a hand.

Krysty tossed him the mag, and the teenager tucked it into a jacket pocket. Scavenging through the debris, the companions spent a few minutes recovering the rest of the fallen weapons and sorting out the ammo.

"What is this place, anyway?" Dean asked, walking around the destroyed laboratory, the Weatherby cradled in his left arm, his right hand resting on the checkered grip of his Browning.

"Nursery," J.B. muttered, straightening the brim of his crushed hat before returning it to the accustomed position. "Check those X rays. The babies look just like the mutants inside a Firebird. I saw one when the bus crashed and a rocket broke apart."

Crossing the room, Mildred removed one of the film negatives from the darkened panel and held it to the flickering ceiling light. "Merciful God," the physician whispered, her expression turning ugly. "If this was inside a normal female, then these aren't muties, but genetically altered human children."

"Breed on purpose?" Jak demanded, resting a boot on a broken section of the control board.

"So it would seem."

"Why?"

"Most likely to replace comps," Ryan said, frowning. "The BMP blast of a nuke fries electronics unless they are heavily shielded. Shielding no missile can carry and fly. But these whatever you call them would still be able to guide a missile to the enemy."

"Pervs," Jak declared, as if that settled the matter.

"Yeah, even stickies protect their own young," Dean added. "The whitecoats here must have been triple fruit-brained."

"Merely ruthless and greedy for a fat government contract," Doc rumbled hatefully. "I have dealt with the ilk of such dastardly men before in a similar abattoir."

Walking across the lab, Ryan stood before the second door. "Anybody check this?" he asked, gesturing at the bare steel portal with the flamethrower.

"Never had the chance," J.B. said, ambling closer. "We got jumped the minute we entered the lab."

Taking a stance, Ryan aimed the flamethrower. "Do it now," he directed.

Getting out his tools, J.B. got busy, but the metal door wasn't locked and was free of traps. Proceeding inward, they found the next room was a small office with tall windows overlooking the downtown shopping center and theater district. On a bentwood hat rack hung a white lab coat, with the artistic symbol of the Protoculte Corporation on the right breast pocket. A sofa stood near a compact bar, the array of bottles thick with dust on the shelves in the corner. Some sort of a multicolor chart covered the remaining wall situated alongside a Spartan desk of three chrome legs supporting a thick sheet of tinted glass. There were no drawers or files for documents, just a slim briefcase-size comp with a beige mouse on a plain pad. The power cord and phone line were wrapped in a silvery tube that went across the glass and down a chrome leg to reach an outlet. A black leather chair stood behind the desk; some bronze coins lay on the dark cloth seat.

"Still warm," Mildred said, turning the machine around and checking the ports. The CD drawer was empty, but a red diskette was sticking out of a slot, the writing on the label faded with age.

"Pity," the woman said, returning the disk. "When we blew the power to the lab, we killed the computer. This might have told us where the gateway is."

"No fix?" Jak asked, inspecting one of the bronze coins. It was a token of some sort. Odd.

"Not without a power source."

"How about this?" Dean asked, walking in with the nuke battery from a droid in his hands.

"That should have enough voltage," Mildred said. With help from J.B., she wired the battery to the surge protector, and when she hit the switch, the screen began to glow and the device loudly beeped.

"We're in," Mildred said, watching numbers and weird lines of coded text scroll by as the old comp sluggishly booted.

"How can this thing work?" Dean demanded curiously.

"Building must be shielded against an BMP blast," his father said as the laptop gave a flourish of trumpets and a picture of a busty girl in a very skimpy bikini appeared on the screen. "Same way the redoubts are."

"Called a Farraday Cage," J.B. explained. "Sort of an electric fence against mag fields."

Jak blinked. "That work?"

"Better believe it. But a Farraday uses a shitload of power. Megavolts to protect even a small house."

"Think the location of the gateway might be in a file?" Krysty asked pointedly, watching over their shoulders.

"No," Ryan replied sourly, turning the device around for them to see better. There were no icons on the wallpaper of the pretty blond girl at the beach. "The files have been erased."

Sliding into the chair, Mildred took the laptop. "Erased or deleted," she said, bringing up the waste-basket and checking the contents.

"Success," she announced, restoring the files. "Nothing marked redoubt, gateway or anything like that yet. Ah, a word processor program. Let's see if any text files are still listed."

Using the mouse, the physician shifted the cursor and double-clicked on the icon of a book only to have a pop-up screen appear demanding a password. Typing clumsily, the physician tried several of the most common passwords getting no results.

"Fuck this," Ryan said, standing erect. "There's a million passwords he could have used. This is a waste of time."

"Just a minute," Mildred said, lifting the mouse pad to check underneath. There were several alphanumeric sequences on a yellow sticky note, and she tried the longest. As the woman hit Enter, the password screen went away and the word processing program began to expand.

"We're in," Mildred reported, typing steadily.

Rubbing his cheek with the edge of a hand, Ryan grunted in reply. "The idiot wrote down the password?"

"Lots of folks used to do that," she admitted sheepishly, having done the same thing herself at the hospital. "Corporate security always keeps changing the passwords, and so folks write them down somewhere convenient to not forget."

Reviewing the text files, there was still nothing marked redoubt or gateway, so she shifted to the disk and brought up a large file marked "important."

"Okay, the man who worked in this office had the National Guard haul the supplies from the armory to this building," Mildred said, compressing the broken sentences and random words. "Then had his technicians carry it to the redoubt."

"Where is it?" Ryan demanded.

Mildred shook her head. "He doesn't say yet. This is very badly typed with no spelling whatsoever. I wonder if he was dying, it's so muddled. Ah, here's something. He also shipped all of the live 'pilots,' he calls them, to Mature Island. It has nothing of military importance, so his children should be safe there. Goddamn son of a bitch actually calls the poor muties his children!"

"The whitecoat is aced," Krysty said gently. "His crimes have been paid for."

"Not enough for me," Mildred argued.

"Why gateway redoubt here?" Jak asked frowning. "Broken?"

"Cave in," the physician reported hesitantly, as if unsure of the event. "Apparently six technicians died trying to dig through the rubble before the scientists decided to leave and assemble the gateway as far away from this island as possible."

"Strange to go when they were so close," Dean said, standing at the doorway to keep watch on the laboratory.

"Hurry it up, Millie," J.B. warned, holding the power cord attached to the battery. "These wires are red-hot, and are gonna burn out any sec."

"Doesn't matter," Mildred said, turning off the comp without any preamble. "That was the lot. The rest of the disk was blank."

"If they had the supplies relayed here by the military," Ryan said, thoughtfully rubbing his chin, "then a bunch of whitecoats moved it to the redoubtit has to be very close. A couple of blocks at the very most."

"And underground," Krysty added. "I'd say the basement here is the logical place to start looking."

"Just a second," J.B. said and left the room. He returned in a few moments with a handful of metallic disks.

"Subway tokens," the man said, spreading the items on the desk. "The secretary's desk was full of them."

"And here, too," Doc said, lifting a similar disk from the black chair.

Going to the window, Ryan yanked away the curtains and looked at the city. An ivy-covered helicopter was parked on a rooftop, cars filled the streets, stores and restaurants abounded and only a block away was a subway station.

"Less than a hundred feet away," Ryan stated resolutely. "Let's go."

As they departed, Krysty noticed a nasty smell in the air of the lab, but paid it no attention. The companions were already in the lobby and heading for the exit when the smashed equipment in the medical lab burst into flames, the electrical fire following the overheating wires into the walls like fuses on a bomb.

 

Chapter Twenty

 

 

 "Do it," Colonel Mitchum commanded, and placed the folded piece of leather into his mouth. He was sitting on a park bench, his pants cut off above the knee, and the wound in his leg was now only a shiny smear of cauterized flesh. The sec chief was breathing hard, trying not to think about what was coming.

Nodding assent, the sec man lifted the orange-hot poker from the crackling campfire and touched it briefly to the bullet wound in the man's shoulder. Flesh sizzled at the contact, and Mitchum went stiff, his eyes distending as he throated a scream muffled by the thick leather filling his mouth. His big hands grasped the predark bench, tendons swelling in his arms and neck as he rode out the wave of pain.

As the branding iron was removed, a mix of shine and water was splashed on the glassy scar, and Mitchum only grunted at the minor stinging it created. Sweat was trickling off the sec chief as he pulled the leather from his mouth and gulped in fresh air.

"That did it, sir," a corporal stated, tossing away the red-hot metal rod. "No more bleeding. That wound is healed."

Grabbing the jug of shine and water, Mitchum drank a healthy draft and poured the rest over his face and body, then wildly shook his head like a dog in the rain to remove the excess. Anything could be endured, if it brought Ryan under his blasters.

The climb up the side of the mesa had been pure torture to the sec chief with his bad arm and leg. But the bodies of the shot Hunters left by the outlanders had left a clear trail to the top. The first sec man crawled to the top with a rope around his waist. Once he was secure, the man dragged up the rope with a tow cable attached to the end. The cable from the winch at the front of the Hummer had been just barely long enough to wrap around an outcropping, but then the stripped wag winched itself to the top of the mesa. After that it was easy, and the rest of the wags soon followed.

From the cliff, Mitchum had been able to see the beach fronting the valley. Out in the ocean, a score of PT boats darted about, launching Firebirds and torps at the fifty enemy windjammers. Huge clouds of black smoke from the thundering pirate cannons blew across the water, blocking the view of the raging battle. Then for a moment, the air was cleared and the legions of wounded men splashing in the red water could be seen. Many seemed to be attacking the ocean with their blasters and knives, and Mitchum could only guess that the sharks had arrived, attracted by the battle. More than one man gushed blood from his mouth as he was crushed by something below the surface. Often, a friend or shipmate would then fire a blaster into the dying man to stop the hideous screaming. At any moment now, he had expected a Deeper to arrive, and then all of the fools would die unless they joined forces to repel the sea mutie. No way that was going to happen.

Thankfully, some of the peteys had unloaded Hummers before the pirates arrived, or else Mitchum would have been stranded. He'd been down to his last wag and less than a pound of black powder when the relief ships arrived with fresh wags, weapons, Firebirds and, hopefully, a way home. The ville of the pirates was beaten, but the street fighting went on. Damn pirates never knew when to quit. He might have admired the trait in a sec man, but in a pirate it was damn annoying.

"Sir!" a sailor cried, charging around a corner. "Look there! A skyscraper is on fire!"

Standing awkwardly, Mitchum squinted toward the downtown area. True enough. From the middle of a glass skyscraper, black smoke was pouring from the broken windows of the fifth floor. Flashes of light appeared within the flames as something exploded. A lance of flame extended from a window, seeming to push out something metallic with lots of legs that promptly dropped from sight.

"Found you," Mitchum growled, brandishing a fist smeared with his own blood. "Time to get aced, traitor."

Turning, he limped toward the Hummers, checking the revolver in his new shoulder holster. The branding iron had cauterized the wounds closed, but the pain still slowed him like chains on a slave.

"Everybody in the wags!" he shouted, stiffly getting behind the wheel of the lead Hummer. "The outlanders die today!"

Grimly, the sec men and sailors grabbed their blasters and climbed into the armored machines, preparing for battle.

 

LEAVING THE Protoculte building, the companions stayed alert as they headed across the plaza for their bikes. Halfway there, Ryan cursed and swung up the flamethrower, but withheld fire.

"Droid!" he shouted as the machine appeared from behind the towering DNA sculpture. But Ryan eased his hand off the trigger. He couldn't use the M-1 A; that'd only burn their transport.

Its long legs stepping high, the droid strode through the parked bikes as its laser pulsed. Firing the SIG-Sauer, Ryan felt a rush of heat past his face on the blind side as the rest of the companions separated and attacked. The M-16 rapidfires chattering steadily, the noise punctuated by the telltale booms of the Weatherby and Colt and Webley, the friends kept on the move, never giving the machine a stationary target.

Incoming lead peppered the machine, and the laser started to pulse once more when the crystal lens was shattered by a 7.62 mm tumbler. As the energy weapon winked out, the companions charged to finish the job at close range. Bullets tearing it apart, the damaged machine tried to run, to dodge, then climbed into the complex rigging of the DNA sculpture for protection. But once the droid was clear of the bikes, Ryan hosed the artwork with a chem storm of flames.

Dripping fire, circuits sparking, the droids still tried to escape, but as its onboard systems overheated and shut off, the machine fell from the sculpture and landed on the parked bikes. The crash sounded louder than doomsday, pieces of fender and windshields flying into the air.

"Good thing the machines are old and slow," Krysty said, reloading her revolver as she looked around the plaza. "We wouldn't stand a mutie's chance in a rad pit against a fully functional droid."

"Mebbe." Shuffling among the wreckage, J.B. lifted a fuel-drenched seat from the jumble of steel and rubber only to toss it away. "Son of a bitch did this deliberately," he growled.

Exchanging clips, Mildred agreed. "It's probably in its programming to destroy the transport of the enemy as a last action."

"Two still okay," Jak said, righting a Harley. He pressed the ignition and the engine purred to life.

"This one is okay, too," Mildred added, starting her bike. The rpm were low, and the engine had a slight ping now, but it still operated.

"Okay, scav what you can, pile it on the two," Ryan directed, black smoke from the burning sculpture rising high into the stormy sky. "The rest of us walk from here."

"Only a couple of blocks," Krysty said. "But we better stay sharp."

"Razor," Jak agreed, climbing onto the motorcycle.

After gathering what intact supplies they could and retrieving their backpacks, the companions started down the ancient boulevard, watching the alleyways and rooftops.

Suddenly, Krysty turned and fired, a small lizard sitting on a garbage can blew apart, the bloody gobbets smacking against a stone wall. A block later, Dean triggered the Weatherby, the corner window on a second floor shattering on both sides from the arrival of the big grain .460-caliber round. From somewhere inside the building came the chest-thumping roar of a gorilla.

"Hot pipe, missed him," the boy stated, fumbling in his pockets for more ammo.

But the search became more intense, and soon the boy realized he had lost count and was out of rounds for the longblaster. Scowling, he draped the weapon over a shoulder and pulled out his Browning Hi-Power, racking the slide to chamber a cartridge.

Cradling the softly hissing flamethrower, Ryan made no comment as they approached the subway station, his every sense strained to the limit. Obviously a converted train station, the white brick building stood two stories tall, with an impressive face for the tourists. A row of slit windows skirted along the overhang of the red tile roof.

"That would make a good fort," J.B. observed, adjusting his glasses. Then the man stopped dead in his tracks to start firing the Uzi in controlled bursts.

"Twelve o'clock high!" he shouted over the stuttering roar of the deadly rapidfire.

Heads swiveled, and there was the mutie spider crawling over the building. The beast paused on the top of the roof to spread its mandibles wide and hiss loudly.

"Run for the door!" Ryan ordered as he triggered a long arching spray into the sky, aiming a lot higher than the oncoming mutie.

As the companions raced for the entrance to the station, the stream of burning fuel shot across the plaza and descended in a fiery rain upon the creature, its stubbly hair instantly igniting. Keening in pain, the creature danced madly about, snapping at the fire on its back.

Charging after the others, Ryan rejoined his friends at the entrance to the station, J.B. already busy at the lock. Jak and Mildred had parked the bikes nose to nose and were stripping off the saddlebags; Dean and Krysty were taking everything they could with them, while Doc stood guard.

Putting his spine to the wall, Ryan started sweeping the flamethrower back and forth, establishing a growing half circle of flames on the plaza before them. Before he was done, the spider arrived and tried to cross the field of flames, but the heat forced it temporarily back. The mutie keened again and tried another section only to be repulsed once more.

"Open the bastard door!" Ryan commanded, sending another lance of flame at the beast. The gauges were nearly empty, the pressure flickering at registering zero. One or two more sprays and the M-1 A would be empty. He'd have to make each burst count.

"Can't. Locked from the inside," J.B. answered, pressing on the door. It opened a crack, exposing the thick steel chains wrapped around the handles on the other side.

"Blow it!" Mildred commanded, emptying a clip into the giant insect. As the rapidfire cycled dry, she dropped the heavy blaster and drew her ZKR. That had been her last clip for the M-16.

"Prep the LAW," Krysty shouted, carefully placing the shots of her Smith amp; Wesson for maximum damage.

"No room," Ryan said, sending another spray across the ground to maintain the fire wall. "We're too close! The back-blast would blow us apart."

Stepping close to the fire, Doc braced for a recoil and fired the M-203. The short weapon thumped, sending a 40 mm shell straight into the shoulder of the beast, the blast splattering out gobbets of flesh, and a limb fell off. Staring at the ghastly wound pumping blood, the mutie screamed, backing away from the norms. Ryan sent off the final arc of flame, coating its head for as long as he could until the spray sputtered and cut off.

Hitting the buckle on his chest, Ryan shrugged and the spent weapon dropped to the ground. Then he grabbed the harness and heaved it into the flames.

"Cover!" he yelled, going to the ground.

A heartbeat later the pressurized tank blew, sending out a death shroud of shrapnel. Hot steel zinged off the ground, slammed into the closed door, knocked over both bikes and ripped a long gash across the bulbous back of the spider, blood gushing in an emerald torrent.

Unexpectedly, there came the sound of heavy-caliber rapidfires, squirts of blood spitting from the side of the howling mutie. Squinting against the dying flames, Ryan could see Hummers full of sec men rolling down a wide flight of stairs on the plaza, the .50 cals throwing death at the creature. Then a line of rounds stitched the front of the train station, shattering the pretty white bricks.

"Mitchum." Jak cursed, then slapped the used clip into the M-16. The nuke-shitting blasters would have lasted them for months in the Deathlands. Was there anything on these stinking islands that wasn't trying to chill them?

"Let us welcome him properly," Doc announced, opening the breech of his M-203. "Any more 40 mm shells?"

"Only had six," Ryan replied, pulling the pin on a gren and throwing it at the oncoming wags.

The HE sphere hit the ground and bounced twice, going over the lead military wag and exploding on the hood of the second. The windshield vanished and the crew inside the Hummer screamed, clutching their ripped faces. Without a driver, the wag veered away from the other vehicles. Cutting across the plaza, it slammed into a fountain and spilled out the corpses, its hood buckling and the horn coming on to blare an endless monotone warning.

Standing, J.B. swung around the shotgun and gave the door two strident rounds of flfichettes. The wood blew apart, and the portal swung open on creaking hinges.

"The bikes," Dean began. Ryan shoved the boy forward. "Leave them!" Rushing inside the building, the companions spread out behind the rows of pillars supporting a mezzanine. Shafts of sunlight streamed in through the slit windows along the top, filling the interior with crisscrossing beams of light. Rows of wooden benches badly consumed by beetles filled the open area, phone booths and ticket counters lining the side wall. At the far end was an iron grating, similar to the ones on the downtown stores, completely sealing off the stairs and turnstiles beyond.

"There's the entrance," Krysty said, pocketing the spent shells and quickly reloading.

"Save your grens," Ryan suggested, bolstering the handcannon and bringing out the Steyr. "We may have to blast through."

Watching through the doorway, they could see the horribly wounded spider attack the Hummers, slamming the nearest one onto its side.

Supplies and men tumbled onto the ground, the spider triumphantly raising a screaming norm in its mandibles and slowly closing the pincers, the hoary chitin slicing the victim in two. The body fell away, and the spider charged at the next military wag, tendrils of intestines dangling from its segmented mouth. Its thick legs stomped two more men flat, and Sergeant Campbell was lifted cursing from a Hummer. The spider shook him the way a dog did a rat to snap its neck. But the sec man lived and fired a flintlock pistol directly into the eye of the creature before it cut him in two. His legs fell away, but his wide leather belt got caught on the mandibles and his torso flopped loosely about until the beast shook it free.

The concrete of the plaza was becoming dark with spilled blood, and most of it was human.

 

Chapter Twenty-One

 

 

 "Fire!" Mitchum ordered, and a Firebird was launched from the pod of his wag.

Spiraling in fast, the rocket slammed deep inside the creature and came out the other side before exploding. The soft bulk of the spider didn't offer enough resistance to set off the warhead. Mortally wounded, the insect grabbed a Hummer in its mandibles but was unable to lift the heavy wag.

Flintlocks discharged steadily, and the battle zone was becoming smoky with the fumes of spent black powder, but the sec men raked the beast with their rapidfires, then put two more Firebirds into the gore-streaked mutie.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Ryan and J.B. returned to the broken door of the train station and surveyed the outside battle. The spider was clearly dying, and soon Mitchum would concentrate his attention on the station.

"Spider is losing," J.B. stated.

Ryan checked the SIG-Sauer. "Gonna be after us next."

"We could hide in the tunnels," J.B. went on, firing a few rounds at the busy sec men. One clutched his throat and fell over, crimson blood gushing between his fingers.

"Mitchum would only run us down with the Hummers," Ryan said, squeezing off shots with his silenced weapon. Two more sec men fell. Then a flurry of machine-gun fire ripped up the doorway, and the men retreated behind the brick wall.

"Our best bet is to stop them here," Ryan continued, "then go hunt for the redoubt."

Several miniballs hummed through the open doorway.

Sticking out the Uzi, J.B. triggered a short burst. "Yeah, I'm sick of running away, too," he growled.

Holstering the blaster, Ryan held out an empty hand. "Give me that launcher," he said brusquely.

Shifting his bag and packs, J.B. passed over the boxy 4-shot weapon. "Only got one," he reminded him.

"That'll do." Ryan pulled out the arming pin for the remaining rocket and moved away from the doorway to take a position behind some benches a few yards distant.

Then the man assumed a firing stance, but with the wrong end of the launcher pointed toward the broken doors.

"What's he doing?" Dean demanded from behind a pillar.

"Chilling two birds," Krysty replied, cocking back the hammer on her blaster. "Get ready, here they come."

With the roar of a diesel engine, a Hummer crashed through the double doors, the armored fenders slamming the remains of the doors aside and removing most of the jamb. Ignoring the vehicle, Ryan triggered the launcher. Instantly, the LAW rocket shot away from the front on a column of fire to streak across the station and strike the iron grating. Designed to kill tanks, the shaped charge blew the barrier apart and sent a shotgun charge of shrapnel hurtling down the sloped ramp beyond.

At the same moment the rocket launched, the back-blast erupted from the aft end of the boxy weapon just as the second Hummer appeared in the doorway. Holding the weapon steady, Ryan let the sec men drive their vehicle through the fiery exhaust, shattering the windshield and beheading the driver. The sec man standing at the .50 cal was ripped away from the blaster and went flying, leaving an arm behind. The rest of the crew was buffeted by the searing-hot gases, the flesh scalded from their faces. Completely out of control, the Hummer cut a swath through the benches to the sound of splintering wood and crashed into a ticket counter, a whirlwind of ancient paper engulfing the dying men in an impromptu blizzard.

Tires squealing, the third Hummer banked away from the doorway, and J.B. riddled the crew with his Uzi as they drove by. Expertly, the wiry man rode the chattering rapidfire into a tight figure eight, the copper-jacketed 9 mm rounds tearing the sec men apart like rag dolls.

Meanwhile, the companions stayed hidden behind the pillars and rattled the first Hummer as it drove around inside the station. In short controlled bursts, Doc emptied his M-16, chilling the driver. As the rest of the sec men started returning fire with their flintlocks, Krysty rolled a gren under the armored wag. Her aim was good and the sphere detonated under the front of the military wag. The explosion flipped the nose, and, impelled by their speed, the wag flipped over to crash onto the marble floor and slid for several yards.

Pinned underneath, the trapped sec men cursed and beat their fists on the steel plating as the smell of shine from the leaking fuel tank got stronger. Then Dean hit the wag with a Molotov and the vehicle was engulfed with flames, the curses changing into shrieks of terror as the fuel ignited and spread toward the crumpled pod full of Firebirds.

"Gonna blow!" Jak warned through cupped hands.

Realizing their plight, Ryan and J.B. tossed away the launcher and raced past the burning Hummer to rejoin the others and head quickly down the ramp into the subway tunnel. Hopping over the turnstile, they rushed to the edge of the departure platform and looked quickly around for any indication of the redoubt. The only illumination was a weak shaft of reflected sunlight coming down the ramp. Nothing unusual was in sight. Soda machines, benches and pay phones dotted the long platform. On the walls of the tunnel, a vista of mosaic tiles depicted people playing on the beach, the picture gently sloping into a high vaulted ceiling.

"What now?" Mildred asked.

Before Ryan could speak, the whole station shook under the trip-hammer blast of the detonating Firebirds. The titanic concussion blew down the ramp like a hurricane and knocked the companions off their feet. Too close to the edge, Mildred was thrown off the platform to land sprawling across the predark train tracks with her face resting on the third rail.

Gasping in horror, Mildred recoiled from the contact, braced for death, only to remember there couldn't possibly be any power flowing through the rail. But trained responses were hard to break. In her time, even this brief a contact would have been utterly lethal, the dreaded third rail carrying more hard current than a federal penitentiary's electric chair.

"Got to find the redoubt," Dean said, starting to light the pressurized camping lantern.

Ryan stopped the boy. "No lights," he ordered, withdrawing into the darkness.

Heart still pounding, Mildred rose stiffly and shuffled into the stygian darkness beyond the shaft of sunlight pouring down the stairwell.

Then bright lights filled the ramp, and a Hummer bumped its way through the twisted ruin of the grating and rolled slowly down the sloped ramp. Then it surged with speed to ram through the turnstile and screech to a halt at the edge of the platform.

"Over there!" a voice cried out, and the .50 cal started chattering, the big slugs ricocheting everywhere in the confines of the tunnel.

Moving fast, the companions took cover in the darkness of the subway tunnel, splashing through the ankle-deep water and kicking the rats out of the way.

The parallel beams of its headlights washing along the tunnel, the military wag rolled to the edge of the platform, and Mitchum set the brakes but kept the engine running.

"Think we can make that?" he asked aloud.

The corporal at the .50 cal scowled. He really wasn't sure about anything after seeing the obliterated Hummer lying in pieces in that blast crater upstairs. Damn outlanders were trickier than an old baron, and meaner than a two-headed snake,

"Don't know, sir," the corporal replied honestly. "Might bust an axle. But we could winch a wag down."

"And give them a wag to escape in?" the colonel muttered. "Fuck that. We'll stay here."

Suddenly, lights flashed from the ramp and the second Hummer rolled to the platform and parked along the first. But not so close that if one exploded, the other would also be destroyed. The sec men had learned the hard way to be wary of the one-eyed outlander and his crew of coldhearts.

"Orders, sir?" the driver of the second Hummer asked softly.

The private standing at the .50 cal nosily worked the bolt on the massive rapidfire as a preparation to fire.

"Stay where you are and shoot anything that moves," Mitchum commanded, removing the predark revolver from his shoulder holster and stepping from behind the windshield. The sec man stood there for a while listening to the sounds of the underground passageway before speaking. As long as he stayed behind the headlights, the beams should blind anybody out there to his exact presence.

"Ryan! I know you're there!" Mitchum shouted, the words echoing into the darkness. "Surrender, and I'll make your death quick and painless! That's a promise!"

There was no reply.

"Fight me, and it'll take you weeks to die!" the colonel shouted, losing his patience. "And your bitch will be the first to get aced!"

There was a distant cough as if somebody were clearing their throat to speak, then a 9 mm round ricocheted off the fender of the armored wag, missing the sec chief by less than a prayer.

"Chill the fucker!" Mitchum roared, fanning the tunnel with his handcannon. The twin black-powder machine guns chattered to life, filling the tunnel with a hellstorm of hot lead.

Keeping close to the tile wall, Ryan placed the shots of his SIG-Sauer, then switched to the Steyr and better accuracy. Most of the companions were ensconced in similar locations, blasters banging away as they tried for the headlights. The triple-stupe sec men couldn't hit what they couldn't see, but the moment Mitchum thought of using the high beams this battle would turn against them. Privately, Ryan had hoped Mitchum would be stupe enough to try to lower a wag to the tracks. Then they would take it out with their last few grens and the fight would be equal. But the man was too smart, or too cowardly to risk a direct assault.

Sliding in a fresh clip, the Deathlands warrior heard something deeper in the tunnel, then ignored it as the sound got fainter in the distance. Krysty and Dean were moving slowly along the opposite sides of the tunnel, exploring the wall with their hands, trying to find the entrance to the redoubt. Unless the whitecoats used a subway train to move the supplies, the redoubt was right here, hidden somewhere in the dark, maybe under the very gravel they were standing on. But there were no more clues from the dead Protoculte white-coat. They had to find it by themselves, or get flatlined. That was all there was to the matter.

Just then, the .50 cals stopped firing and four brilliant beams of light filled the tunnel with blinding illumination, trapping the companions in plain sight. Diving to the ground, they took cover in the shallow pools of duty water, rats scurrying over their bodies as they crawled backward trying to reach the darkness again. The .50 cals raked the ground, the muzzle loaders adding their firepower to the incoming barrage.

Then a gren bounced along the train tracks from deeper within the tunnel. The sphere stopped near Ryan, and he saw the handle was still wrapped in electrical tape. A gift relayed from Krysty. Reaching out, he tried to reach the gren, but the heavy slugs from the sec men were hitting everywhere and Ryan was forced to duck low again. He tried once more and got a bullet through the hair.

Fireblast! This was triple bad. They were trapped and the next step by Mitchum would be to launch a Firebird and blow them to hell, guided by the tiny pilots in the warheads.

Now they were going to have to try to run for it. Never a good plan, and confined in a tunnel it was damn near useless. But the one-eyed warrior knew to never surrender, never give up. Life wasn't neat and orderly. Folks made mistakes, got lucky breaks. One lucky break was all they needed. Just one.

Working the bolt to clear a jam in the Uzi, J.B. glanced overhead and saw the ceiling was coated with sleeping bats, thousands of them. They were safe from the blasterfire because of the angle, but maybe he could do something about that.

"Doc, cover me," the Armorer shouted, switching weapons.

Without pause, the old man dropped the Webley and fanned the LeMat, the smoky discharge of the weapon making a dense cloud of gray fumes in the air.

Immediately, J.B. stood and swung up his shotgun to pump all four shells at the sleeping night flyers. The blasts from the 12-gauge scattergun echoed louder than thunder, and the bats awakened, screaming and squealing. A few took flight, a couple more, then dozens.

Understanding the plan, Ryan whistled loud and sharp, once long and two short, and everybody froze motionless. This was exactly the type of situation they had created coded whistles for, when you couldn't yell out a warning without letting the enemy know your plans. And the companions never needed to keep their intentions secret more than right now.

The bats wheeled about over the companions, confused and angry, unable to comprehend what was happening. Then they noticed the sec men who were continuing to fire their blasters, all the while shouting and cursing over the engines of the Hummers. Attracted by the noise and lights, the bats poured along the tunnel in a river of wings.

"Shitfire!" Mitchum cursed, covering his head as the bats arrived. "Shoot these freaking things!"

The .50 cals fanned death down the tunnel, dozens of riddled corpses fell to the tracks, but the night flyers swarmed over the warm sec men, getting tangled in their hair and clothing. The warm hoods of the Hummers were coated with the creatures, the headlights blocked by the leathery wings. Darkness enveloped the Hummers.

"Launch some Birds!" Mitchum ordered, crushing a wiggling bat in his bare hand.

"We can't!" a sec man cried, slapping the bats aside with his blaster. "They'll only hit the bats and detonate yards away. Mebbe right in the pod!"

"Then gut them!" the colonel snarled, drawing a machete and slashing the winged rodents apart.

Knives were used to hack the animals off, but the smell of blood only excited them more and a feeding frenzy began. The tiny fangs first ripping open the flesh of their own dead, then the humans were next and the screaming really began.

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

 

 

 "Now's our chance," Ryan said, standing from the puddle and starting down the tunnel.

Muddy and wet, the companions quietly hurried away from the broiling firefight between the sec men and bats. The high beams were only a flickering glow blocked by the multitude of angry bats. They couldn't see Mitchum any more than he could them. How long the condition would last was another matter entirely, so they moved fast.

"Over here!" Krysty shouted in the gloom.

Following the sound of her voice, Ryan found her and his son standing before a plain steel door set into the tiled wall. A burnished plate listed it as Access 9 Sewer Pumps. The companions gathered close as J.B. picked the lock in the dark and pulled the door open.

Inside was a small antechamber, closed off by the standard black metal entrance to a redoubt. The alloy was smooth and unmarred, without handle, hinges or keyholes. Just smooth steel. Searching along the sides, Ryan found a small steel plate set into the wall and eased it aside to find an armored keypad. Quickly, the man tapped in the entry code.

As the nuke-proof portal slid ponderously aside, the companions rushed forward, only to stop as a strong smell of ozone filled the antechamber.

"Fireblast!" Ryan cried out, shoving the others backward from the door.

Then the first wisps of crackling white fog flowed into view. A wafting tendril touched the barrel of Jak's M-16, dissolving the predark steel, leaving only a hollow nubbin sticking out from the frame.

"Fuck!" Jak cried, throwing the useless blaster at the fog. The rapidfire went into the mist and vanished.

Retreating into the tunnel, the companions could only watch as a swollen expanse of gray-white fog flowed out of the redoubt. There was no true surface, but its bulk was impenetrable, forever moving and alive with countless tendrils of mist. Heaving as if taking deep breaths, an eerie glow emanated from its core, casting the tunnel into ghostly blue shadows.

Half of the companions had never seen such a thing before, but they clearly remembered the horror stories told by Ryan, Krysty, J.B. and Doc about the incredible monstrosity, the ultimate guardian of the redoubts. Sometimes the underground bases were patrolled by sec hunter droids or comp-operated weapons systems for protection from invaders. But only an occasional redoubt had ever had this hellish bastard of science and insanity.

The companions fell back before the fog, and it pulsed from the redoubt, expanding and swelling in size to fill the tunnel. A bat on the ceiling screamed at the sight of the thing, and tried to fly past the glowing fog. A tendril of mist caressed the animal in flight, and it was gone, only the bloody tip of a wing tumbling down to splash into a puddle between the railroad tracks.

"Beware of the Cerberus," Doc rumbled softly, the LeMat and Webley held steady, his arms crossed at the wrists to support the heavy handcannons.

The fog seemed to react to the sound of his voice, almost as if it recognized the old man. Then a .50 cal crackled around the corner, and the fog abruptly paused, unable to decide between the two groups in the stygian tunnel.

"Keep nice and slow," Ryan growled, a hand on his blaster. "No sudden movements or it'll strike."

"Let me try something," Dean said, unbuttoning his shirt pocket.

"Do nothing!" his father ordered sternly. "Only weapon that can kill this are implo grens."

"Don't have any," J.B. said, shaking his head. The man held both the Uzi and the shotgun at the ready, even though he knew they would be useless against the living death cloud.

"Maybe we can outrun it," Mildred suggested, feeling very small and defenseless before the colossal fog. "Trick it somehow and then double-back and slip inside. No way it could reach us past the nuke-proof door."

There was a sense of intelligence about the creature, and she wondered if it could actually understand their words, or if it was merely responding to the tone of their voices, as a dog would.

Billowing endless, the fog started toward the companions, but another barrage of blasterfire from the sec men made it reconsider.

"Trick this? Not a chance," Krysty said, moving away from the creature. Her hair tingled from its proximity, and her skin seemed to crawl as if alive with static electricity.

Holding the last gren, Ryan pulled the pin and dropped it at his boots. "No way we can reach the redoubt now," he said grimly. "We can't kill it, or even harm the bastard thing. So when I drop the gren, run down the tunnel and don't stop. If anybody makes it to the surface alive, head for the bank. We'll meet there."

"We return to the city of the gorillas," Doc stated, holstering his piece as a prelude to running, "yet a fighting chance for life is better than none."

"Get ready," Ryan said. "On my mark."

Pushing his way past the adults, Dean walked straight to the towering Cerberus and held out a small plastic rectangle.

Instantly, the fog pulsed toward the boy but then stopped, and a single thin tendril extended to brush over the mag strip on the B12 identification card from the corpse on the crashed Hercules aircraft.

Just then, bright light bounced along the walls of the tunnel and a Hummer drove into view, Mitchum at the wheel with a revolver in his hand. His face was in ribbons, blood everywhere, the dead bodies of his crew hung off the armored war wag, clusters of tiny bats still feeding off the nutrient-rich life fluids of the corpses.

"You fucking bastards are gonna pay for this!" the colonel screamed, spittle spraying from his mouth as he fired the blaster.

Suddenly rushing forward, the mist split apart and flowed around the companions, leaving them undamaged in its midst. But they were surrounded, unable to move in any direction.

"Smoke wouldn't hide you!" Mitchum screamed, firing his revolver into the swirling banks of glowing fog.

Oddly, the bullets didn't seem to reach the outlanders even though they were only fifty feet away. Slamming on the brakes, the sec chief climbed into the back and grabbed the .50 cal, only to notice the ammo belt was gone, completely used up in the fight against the bats. Shitfire!

Clambering into the rear of the Hummer, the colonel lit the main fuse for the Firebirds and swung the pod at the companions. Instantly, the fog surged forward. One by one, the Firebirds launched and punched into the cloud to simply disappear.

"Impossible," the sec man muttered as the fog flowed irrevocably over the military wag. The headlights dimmed and a strange stink of lightning filled the air, making it hard for Mitchum to draw a breath.

"This can't be happening!" he screamed from within the confines of the shapeless fog. Still launching, the Firebirds left the pod and their exhaust winked out, the impotent rockets falling to the ground and breaking apart, spilling their precious cargo of black powder.

As the cloud began to thin around them, Ryan raised the Steyr to try to chill the sec man, but it was too late. Already the clothes were dissolving off his body, then his skin began to sag and melt away, showing the network of muscles and veins. Gurgling horribly, the dying man swung the pod about, still valiantly trying to chill his inhuman attacker even as his organs slid from his torso and piled at his feet, white bones appearing within the raw, red flesh.

The cloud was gone from around the companions as Mitchum's bloody skeleton toppled over, knocking the pod to swivel about and point straight up. The last couple of Firebirds slammed into the roof of the tunnel to violently explode, broken tiles and concrete debris raining upon the companions. J.B. pulled Mildred out of the way of a falling slab of concrete, and Dean cried out as a chunk of ceiling hit his hand, knocking the card into a puddle.

"Hot pipe!" he shouted, sucking on the minor wound while rummaging about in the dirty water with his other hand. "Where the hell is it?"

As if understanding the words, the Cerberus cloud billowed about in a circle and started hastily for the companions.

"Get inside!" Ryan commanded, starting for the steel door.

"But the card!" Dean cried out, splashing in the muddy water.

His father grabbed the boy by the collar and hauled him erect. "No time. Leave it!" Ryan commanded, pushing his son toward the open doorway.

Tendrils of fog were already snaking along the ground as they piled into the alcove. The armored portal of the redoubt had automatically closed, and Krysty hurriedly punched in the code to open it. As before, the massive truncated door ponderously slid aside, and the companions squeezed through the widening crack to get inside.

The door was still opening when the main body of the fog arrived before the outer doorway. Throwing the gren into the tunnel, Ryan then fired from the hip, the slug hitting the wall behind the door, the ricochet slamming it shut with a loud bang. A heartbeat later there was an explosion, and the door shook, fumes seeping around the edges. Then the fumes began to coalesce and pull the weakened barrier away from the jamb, static electricity crackling over the warping sheet of metal.

"Molotovs!" Ryan shouted, and Dean rummaged in his shoulder bag for the firebombs.

Doc was already at the interior keypad, tapping in the access code to try to make the redoubt door close faster. But the armored slab didn't increase or diminish its speed. Slow and steady, it reached the far wall, paused and began the journey back home.

Flicking her butane lighter, Mildred started igniting the greasy rag fuses and the companions crashed the Molotovs into the alcove, the combined bottles building a raging conflagration that overflowed into the redoubt. Jak added a pint of whiskey he had taken from the department store. The flames soared as the materials ignited, and the companions waited breathlessly to see if the door would close before the death cloud breached the bonfire.

The opening between the black metal door and wall was only a foot wide when the first tendril writhed out from the dying flames. The companions poured hot lead into the narrowing crack, but still more of the fog pulsed into the redoubt when the door finally slammed shut. The piece of the Cerberus lashed about wildly as if in pain, then began to dissipate and vanished from sight.

"Safe." Mildred exhaled, slumping against the wall. Warm currents from the life-support system were already carrying away any trace of the cloud or the firebombs. The replacement air was dry and flat, tasting of iron and antiseptically clean, the floor vibrating with a faint hum of powerful machinery. The overhead fluorescent lights were bright, with only a few dark tubes in the fixtures, and one flickering as it struggled to stay active.

"The hell we are," J.B. cursed, backing away.

Faint wisps of cloud were seeping through the hairline cracks around the massive portal.

"Mat-trans chamber," Ryan ordered, working the bolt on the Steyr to chamber a fresh round.

Heading down the zigzagging antirad tunnel from the front door, the companions burst into the garage of the redoubt. The area was packed solid with the materials and supplies from the National Guard armoryvehicles, Bradleys, trucks and a dozen Hummers. Crates of weapons, explosives and blasters were stacked to the ceiling. It was the wealth of the predark world.

"Implo grens!" J.B. cried and went straight to the case. The other companions assumed defensive positions and watched the mouth of the entrance corridor for any sign of the approaching fog.

"Well?" Ryan snapped after a few seconds.

"Almost got it," the Armorer grunted, struggling to rip open the packing case. His knife slipped and hit the floor, skittering away.

Jak gestured and handed him another.

"Move it, John!" Mildred shouted, pointing as the first tendril of the Cerberus cloud came sneaking around the corner.

"Buy me some time!" J.B. cried, stabbing a knife into the resilient plastic. Flakes chipped away with every blow. In just a couple of minutes he'd have the grens they needed.

"Pray tell, with what?" Doc retorted hotly, both hands busy reloading his Civil War blaster.

"Try this!" Dean said, throwing the last Molotov.

The tendril retreated a bit from the small blaze, and Ryan looked over the assortment of military hardware for an answer. There was enough here to conquer the world, but nothing was primed and ready. In five minutes they would be safe, in an hour unstoppable. But they had only moments before the cloud would be here. They needed something right now.

"The lantern!" Ryan said, and grabbed it from Krysty to smash the pressurized lamp on top of a sealed wooden crate carrying the alphanumeric sequence for thermite grens. The wick ignited the oil and the flames climbed high, burning into the wood.

"Time to go," Ryan ordered, stepping into the maze of crates. "Take the stairs. The elevators might not be working."

"Just another couple of sees," J.B. grunted, hacking away at the stubborn wood. There was already a hole in the top of the crate, and he could see a piece of an implo gren. It was only inches away. The Armorer tried to shove his hand into the opening, but it was too muscular. The splinter stabbed his flesh, making the hand slippery with blood and he forced it in deeper, a fingertip brushing the handle of the deadly high-tech gren.

Grabbing the arm, Mildred pulled the man away from the crate. "We have to go now, John," she shouted, firing her revolver at the approaching fog.

Blood dripping onto the floor, J.B. glared in raw hatred at the packing crate, then grabbed his Uzi and started off at a run.

Almost every redoubt was built along similar designs, and this was a configuration the companions knew by heart. Dodging through the crates, they reached the stairs and jumped down the steps. As they reached the third level, they plowed out of the stairwell and charged for the mat-trans chamber.

Slamming open the door to the control room, they saw that the comps and monitors were operating normally. Going to the chamber, Krysty opened the veined door and everybody raced through. The last one in, Ryan saw a wisp of fog snake into the control room.

"It's here," he stated, then hurriedly closed the door and sat quickly on the floor.

As always, the mat-trans unit waited patiently a few moments for a destination code to be pressed into the keypad. When nothing was entered, the machine commenced to activate a random jump.

Static electricity began crackling in the air as wild lights sparkled. Slowly, a swirling mist began to cloud the chamber, twinkling lights like tiny stars shooting through the material of the floor and the companions themselves. Only yards away, Ryan saw the door begin to dissolve under the arrival of the Cerberus fog. Seconds counted now.

The lights grew in numbers and brightness until they were immersed in a swirling galaxy of flaring novas. The universe vanished, and the companions fell through the floor into infinite nothingness, and beyond.

 

Epilogue

 

A hundred miles away, Lord Baron Kinnison was driving his Hummer through the farmlands of his island, heading for the sulfur mines to review the torture status of some slaves, when a powerful quake shook the land.

"What the fuck was that?" he demanded, braking the military wag to a fast halt amid the young green plants.

Sitting beside the obese norm, the Lady Deirdra Kinnison looked up in terror, every fiber of her being jarring in warning. Without a word, she scrambled from the vehicle and started running toward the nearby ocean.

Utterly confused by the strange behavior, Kinnison scowled at the woman when another quake shook the mountain range and the dormant volcano erupted.

Hot ash and smoke thundered from the ragged peak, the noise so loud it became silence to ruptured ears. Fiery balls of burning sulfur spewed from the mountain, then the side of the range cracked open wide and out poured a river of molten lava.

Spitting curses, Kinnison started the wag and twisted the wheel to escape even as a soft gray snowfall of pumice ash fell to blanket the ground. The Hummer traversed only a few yards before the tires slipped in the loose material. Baron Kinnison stomped on the gas pedal, pushing it to the floor, but the engine rattled and died, the air intake completely clogged by the thick ash.

The bandages around his face acting as a natural mask, the fat man struggled from the wag and waddled hastily away, his heart pounding savagely in his laboring chest. Again and again his boots slipped in the swirling ash, and he finally went sprawling as a sulfur ball crashed nearby and the explosion tossed him away, a broken, bleeding lump of flesh. His smashed body racked with agony, Kinnison could only lie there weeping as the ash slowly covered him. Another tremor shook the island, and then the ground beneath the man yawned open wide. Helpless, the baron fell into the crevice and landed on a sluggish river of lava. Instantly, his hair vanished, his bandages caught fire, as the heat seared into his cracking bones. Saturated with jolt, the baron stayed alive for long seconds, his body sizzling until the intense heat boiled his blood and the fat man burst apart in a gory spray.

Ripping off her new dress, Deirdra continued to sprint for her life, the terrible heat of the lava flow announcing its arrival right behind her. The mutie could feel her hair singe off, the very clothes on her back beginning to smolder. But icy adrenaline poured into her veins and the woman dashed forward with renewed strength, her velvet slippers pounding against the hot soil. The killing heat diminished slightly as she pelted across the grasslands, leaping over small bushes and a dry creek. Yes! She was going to make it! She was going to live!

Reaching the cliff, Deirdra simply threw herself over the edge and arched her body into a diving position as she knifed for the life-saving water below.

She was still falling when a vent from the volcano vomited red hot lava into the sea and the shoreline began to furiously bubble from the stygian geological exhaust.

She barely had time to cry out before she plunged into the boiling ocean, her death scream overwhelmed by the roiling fury of the erupting volcano.

Scanned by the good people of ELF

Proofed by Lintrel of ELF