of brass, Jak started throwing knives into the cloud.
When her ZKR target pistol clicked empty, Mildred backed away. As the SIG-Sauer ran out, Ryan dropped the blaster to grab the S&W M-4000 from alongside Doc. Pumping the choke on the scattergun, Ryan chambered a 12-gauge cartridge and thrust the barrel past his friends to discharge the weapon inside the green cloud. The muzzle-blast of the scattergun sounded oddly muffled, but the howler actually stepped backward as the blast door slid past them to close.
But at the very last second, the writhing tip of a glowing tentacle stabbed through the ever-narrowing opening. With a living being blocking the way, the door automatically paused, then began to rumble open once more.
Chapter Two
Snarling a curse, Ryan triggered the scattergun at the limb, doing no visible damage. Then J.B. lunged forward to attack with a sizzling road flare, and the mutie quickly retreated. However, the blast doors were already in motion.
Rushing to the internal keypad, Jak punched in the access code to try to stop the process. Sometimes that worked, but this time there was no result, and the armored portal continued to open.
On the floor, Doc feebly twitched, and his ebony sword stick rolled over to Jak. The albino teen snatched it up and twisted the silver lion’s-head grip to extract a length of shining Spanish steel. As the glowing cloud inched closer, he wildly slashed through the allotropic mist, going for the head, while J.B. did the same with the road flare, much lower. The howler voiced strong displeasure at the attacks, and something shifted about inside the impossible mist, never ceasing its effort to get closer and gain entry.
Inexorably slow, the blast doors finished their programmed journey inside the wall, then once more started across the twenty-foot span to cycle shut.
Finding his pockets empty of brass, Ryan drew his panga, the curved blade gleaming brightly in the fluorescent lights.
“Mildred, drag Krysty and Doc to the elevator!” he snarled, thrusting and jabbing at the terrible mutie. “If we’re not there in five, or you see green, get in the mattrans and jump without us!”
Shocked at the very idea of leaving the group, Mildred started to object, then reluctantly saw the wisdom of the heroic act. If the companions were separated, but still alive, there was always a slim chance of them finding each other someday.
“John, I love you!” she shouted, taking Doc and Krysty by the collars of their jackets.
“Heaven or hell, Millie, I’ll see ya there!” J.B. yelled over a shoulder, igniting a second flare with the dying flame of the first.
His heart beating wildly, Ryan started to add something for Krysty, but there was no need for words, and she wouldn’t hear him anyway. The two of them were more than lovers and friends, they were soul mates, and he would find Krysty again.
That is, Ryan thought grimly, if I’m still alive in thirty seconds!
As the stocky physician hauled the unconscious bodies around the first turn of the zigzagging tunnel, the howler had to have noticed the departure, and forcibly advanced, uncaring of any damage it might have been receiving from the flame and steel. When the greenish cloud got closer, the three men guarding the door began to feel ill, dizzy and disoriented, their sweaty skin prickly painfully.
“You’re not getting in!” Ryan bellowed defiantly, ramming the long barrel of the Steyr into the cloud. He hit something hard, and his hands instantly felt as if they were on fire. A wave of incredible pain rushed up both his arms, stealing the last of his flagging strength. Knife and longblaster tumbled to the floor, and Ryan reluctantly retreated, fighting against the agony racking his exhausted body. His stomach heaved, his vision blurred and he crumpled to the floor, still trying to rise and rejoin the fight.
After kicking the panga back to the trembling man, Jak swung his leg around to slash a sideways kick at the unseen thing inside the cloud. There was a crack as the steel-reinforced toe of his Army boot contacted something breakable, and the howler cut loose with a strident wail that told of serious damage.
“The sides!” J.B. shouted in a burst of sudden understanding. “Dark night, the rad-blasted thing is only armored in front! We gotta hit it from the sides!”
But he was speaking to himself. A shuddering Jak was on the floor, using the sword to frantically hack at the laces of his boot. Half of it was dead white, the military leather crumbling away to reveal the steel support inside, the metal heavily corroded and dissolving.
Torn for a moment between helping his friend and keeping up the defense, J.B. wavered, and the howler slipped into the redoubt.
However, just as the mutie crossed the threshold, the overhead lights instantly changed from a pleasing blue-white to a flashing dark red, and a Klaxon began to sound somewhere deep inside the subterranean fortress. Unexpectedly, dozens of small vents snapped open in the smooth walls, and thick columns of white foam blasted out to slam into the howler. In perfect synchronization, additional vents opened in the floor and hissing torrents of superheated steam exploded forth.
Steadily moving back and forth, the sweeping cascades of foam and steam bodily forced the determined howler back outside, and sent the glowing cloud tumbling along the glassy floor of the ancient bomb crater.
Rigidly, the redoubt maintained the double assault, concentrating on the narrowing opening of the blast door until it finally boomed shut and audibly locked.
Stunned beyond words, J.B. lowered his flare, and was trying to process what had just happened, when the foam and steam abruptly cut off. It was replaced with a medicinal-smelling orange gel that squirted all over the men from new wall vents.
Sputtering and coughing, Ryan awoke. The three companions struggled to get out of the way, but the gel followed along, drenching them thoroughly until every inch of each man’s body was soaked. They tried not to get it in their eyes and mouths, but hit from every direction, they found no escape, and soon the gel was everywhere. Oddly, it didn’t taste that bad, sort of like overly sweet orange juice, and inevitably some of it even went down their throats.
On and on, the deluge continued unabated, until the Klaxon finally stopped and the ceiling lights returned to their normal color. Then the gel turned off, and down from the ceiling came a gentle shower of soothing, lukewarm water. As the antiseptic gel was sluiced off their bodies, it sluggishly flowed along the floor, to vanish into gurgling drains hidden in the corners. In only a few minutes, the companions were clean again, and soaked to the skin.
“What that?” Jak demanded weakly, looking like a melting snowman. What remained of the bedraggled boot was still on his foot, but the material was no longer disintegrating.
“Musta been one of those antiradiation protocols that Millie theorized about,” J.B. said with a weary laugh, casting aside the extinguished road flare.
“Guess so,” Ryan muttered, feeling oddly refreshed from the strange cleansing. Actually, it made a lot of sense. The redoubts were designed to survive a nuke war. Mebbe the whitecoats had showed some smarts for once and included some autosystems to keep out anything too hot with rads.
“Never knew could do.” Jak sighed, putting his back against the cool armarglas wall. Glancing down, he saw his foot and wiggled the toes. That had been close!
“There’s tons of stuff we don’t know about these places,” J.B. replied, removing his streaked glasses.
