slammed the door shut, sealing the last of the 12-gauge cook-offs behind armaglass and steel. Over the muffled explosions of the accidentally dropped shells, J.B. cursed a blue streak. He had cause to be upset with himself. In Deathlands, reliable ammo was more valuable than gold.
Even with the door closed, the adjoining walls and ceiling were starting to blister from the heat. Though there were smoke sensors and fire suppression nozzles placed at intervals along the ceiling, the century-old system was inoperative.
Still a bit dazed, Krysty got up from the floor. “What the blazes happened?” she groaned.
Ryan pointed out the deep scoring of tool marks along the door frame. Next to it, a head-size hole in the plaster revealed a mass of melted conduit and charred wiring.
The conclusion was as unmistakable as it was disheartening.
“Somebody’s beaten us here,” Mildred said.
“And when they saw the heavy door,” Ryan added, “they must’ve figured to find sweet pickings on the other side. They couldn’t open it with their pry bars and sledges, so they attacked the wall, looking for another way in. That was a dead end, too.”
J.B. agreed with him. “After the damage was done, the unit just sat there until we showed up,” he said. “The rematerialization power surge short-circuited the system. We were lucky to come through in one piece.”
“One thing is certain,” Doc said as he dusted off the lapels of his frock coat, “the machine has jumped its final cargo. Once again we find ourselves reduced to more primitive means of transportation—namely, our own two feet.”
“The smoke is getting worse in here,” Mildred said. “No telling what kind of toxic fumes we’re inhaling. There could even be a radiation leak if the containment vessel’s been breached. I suggest we take this show on the road before we start glowing in the dark.”
She didn’t have to add that whoever had wrecked the unit could still be lying in wait.
After drawing their weapons and shouldering their packs, the six companions exited the anteroom and control room, then entered the long, doorless corridor that separated the mat-trans unit from the rest of the redoubt. Jak took point, with his lightning reflexes and .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver.
Motion sensors triggered the overhead lights as they rapidly advanced, single file. Some of the fluorescent tubes were missing, some blinked erratically, others just buzzed and snapped. Vandals had caved in the walls in places; chunks of concrete and bits of glass from broken lights crunched underfoot. The dusty floor of the hallway revealed no recent bootprints. The air was as still and stale as a crypt.
The hall ended in an open doorway. As the companions stepped through it, the light banks switched on, revealing a broad, low-ceilinged room. What had once been a communications center had been turned into a debris field of broken glass, plastic and metal, waist-high in places.
At the sight, J.B. muttered a string of obscenities.
He and Ryan had spent most of their adult lives seeking out and pillaging similar predark strongholds. The network of secret installations, complete with stores of food, ammunition, fuel and vehicles, had been built to shelter and support America’s political, military and scientific elite in the case of nuclear war. But the end had come far too quickly for mass evacuations, and the installations were never occupied and used as the builders intended. The quirk of fate had left the redoubts’ caches of matériel and technology waiting, intact, for someone to find.
In this case, discovery was a done deal.
Here and there in the mounds of trash, individual sleeping chambers had been burrowed, then insulated and cushioned with layers of cardboard. In the middle of the room, a four-foot-high berm of trash had been pushed back, exposing an area of the floor and a wide, blackened hole chipped into the concrete. Smoke stained the ceiling above the crude firepit. Ringing the pit were a half-dozen ergonomic chairs missing their wheels and to one side of the hole lay a neat stack of fuel: gray plastic-veneered pressboard from workstations and cubicle dividers hacked into kindling.
Dix knelt and picked up a chunk of charcoal, which he easily crushed to powder. “Nobody’s lived here for years,” he said.
The alcove they found on the far side of the room confirmed that.
Once a lounge for computer operators, its row of vending machines were torn open and gutted, spilling waterfalls of multicolored wire. Shredded candy wrappers and crushed aluminum cans littered the floor. Along the alcove’s opposite wall were eight, molded plastic and tubular steel arm chairs. A large hole had been cut in each of the seats. Though the wastebaskets positioned beneath the chairs contained heaped evidence of their function, it had been so long since anyone had used the communal toilet that no odor remained.
Among the cartoons of sexual organs and acts defacing the alcove’s enameled walls were scattered bits of writing. In addition to the names and erotic interests of people long gone, if not long dead, were some familiar commentaries.
“Science Blows.”
“Jolt Is God.”
“So many muties, so little rope.”
And across the wall in a banner of rusty ink that was most likely blood: “I want to eat your liver.” To Ryan the letters looked like they had been applied with a mop. Or perhaps a neck stump.
Below the graffiti was a postscript so tiny and cramped that he had to lean close to the wall to make it out. It said, “I’m right behind you.”
He didn’t turn and look, of course, but for an instant he thought about it, just as the writer had intended.
With a resounding clunk all the lights went out, plunging the companions into pitch darkness.
From Ryan’s left came the scrape of a chair and shit bucket being kicked over. “By the Three Kennedys!” Doc moaned in dismay.
Heart pounding, Ryan cleared his SIG-Sauer pistol from shoulder leather. If the blackout was a prelude to an ambush, at least they were in a good defensive position, with the closed end of the alcove at their backs. Dropping into a fighting crouch, he let his eye adjust.
After a few seconds he could see the fire’s faint orange glow at the doorway on the other side of the room. He smelled caustic smoke. Then a turbine started to whine on a floor far below them, and the lights came back on, only this time much weaker and with a more pronounced, almost strobelike flicker.
There was no ambush; they were alone.
“There’s no point in our searching the storage levels,” Ryan said as he reholstered his side arm. “This bird’s been picked clean.”
Successful looting of predark caches boiled down to two things: luck and timing. The luck was in finding them, as the redoubts were well-hidden, usually deep underground, often in remote areas. Though the companions’ access to the mat-trans system gave them a big advantage over the competition, it didn’t guarantee piles of booty at the end of the day. Booty required timing; in other words, getting there first. They had faced this disappointment many times before, and they took it in stride, now. Coming up empty-handed was part of the game.
To locate their position in the complex, and find the quickest way out, the companions started searching the adjoining rooms
