locker was stuffed full of stored equipment, the plastic shelving along the walls packed solid with military cases designed for long-term storage, and air tight ammo drums, fifty-five-gallon barrels that held a lifetime of brass for most villes. Wooden crates wrapped in thick plastic sheeting were stacked to the ceiling in huge pyramids, and banks of cabinets formed orderly rows along the spotlessly clean floor.
Staying in combat formation, the companions eased into the locker, their weapons searching for targets. Just because a sec hunter droid didn’t come rolling out instantly, didn’t mean a hundred of the machines weren’t waiting for them somewhere.
“Blasters, food, grens,” J.B. stated, reading the serial numbers off the sides of the assorted containers. “This place has a hundred times more supplies than the Alaskan redoubt!”
“Thank Gaia! And no madman in charge trying to ace us,” Krysty added in a pleased tone of voice. A smile touched her full lips.
“Okay, everybody stay in pairs,” Ryan directed, shouldering the longblaster. “Just because something didn’t try to stop us at the door, doesn’t mean we’re safe. Hunt for grens first. After that, go for ammo. Then food, you all know the list.”
Placing two fingers into his mouth, Jak gave a sharp whistle. “Got ’em!” he announced, pulling out a knife and slicing through the tough plastic sheeting around a stacked tray of mil grens. The clear polymer resisted, but the teen finally hacked through and started to yank the resilient sheeting aside.
Gently lifting off the top tray, Jak beamed in delight at the neat rows of colored spheres resting in gray foam cushioning. The color of the stripes said these were high-explosive grens, steel shrapnel. Excellent! Those were the best kind to find because the grens could be used for everything from chilling muties to fresh-water fishing. Mildred had once told Jak about a type of mil gren that had used plastic shrapnel that could not be seen on an X-ray machine. Weapons designed to maim, not chill. The concept was beyond foul, somehow it felt almost cowardly.
“Dark night, now we’re talking,” J.B. said happily, removing his cigar and grinding it out on the floor before approaching the massed explosives.
Grinning eagerly, Jak started passing out the grens. Everybody tucked several into their backpacks and then a few more into their coat pockets. When the rest of the companions were done, J.B. went to the next tray down and added a dozen more spheres to his munitions bag. The weight of the grens felt reassuring after being absent for so many months. The Armorer always felt vulnerable when he was out of explos. There were few problems in the Deathlands that couldn’t be solved with the adroit application of high explosives.
“Ammo next,” Ryan stated, brushing back a strand of his long black hair.
“I’m going to hunt for medical supplies,” Mildred countered, taking off at a run among the stacks of crates.
“Stay in pairs!” Ryan barked.
Shrugging his bag into place, J.B. said, “I got her six.” Checking his blaster, the Armorer followed after the stocky woman already racing into the maze of green metal cabinets.
Cutting open the seal on a sturdy trunk, Krysty hesitantly lifted the heavy lid. Inside were shiny metallic envelopes.
“MRE packs!” the woman shouted, raising a Mylar envelope. “Hundreds of them! Enough for an army!”
“Excelsior!” Doc cried, lifting a burnished aluminum box.
Laying the container on a worktable, the scholar began pulling out sealed plastic jars of grainy black powder, and clear plastic jars of fine-grain gray gunpowder, the slick material appearing almost oily as it moved. There were several boxes of lead rods for melting into bullets, and even a small assortment of premade balls. None of them were the right caliber for the LeMat, but Doc had enough for a couple of reloads already. He wisely took some extra lead, and all of the copper percussion nipples that he could find.
“Why not get real blaster?” Jak said, looking over the man’s shoulder. He pointed to an open cabinet filled with cardboard boxes. “Boxes of .44 wheelguns over there. Plenty of brass, too.”
“Let the artist choose his own brush,” Doc rumbled, his hands busy purging the spent chambers of the LeMat as a preliminary to reloading. “This has served me well, and I seek no other mistress.”
This was an old argument between the two, and the teen shrugged as always at the impossibility of con vincing the scholar otherwise. Going to a row of cabinets, Jak began opening each door and checking inside for anything good. There were a lot of mil uniforms, combat boots, gas masks, night goggles and a few items that he couldn’t readily identify.
Have to ask Mildred about those later, Jak decided, closing the door to continue his recce of the locker.
“Besides, being able to fire nine rounds without stopping, this has startled more coldhearts than I wish to remember,” the time traveler muttered to himself. For a split second Doc recalled the day when he’d faced that wolfweed dealer in the dusty streets of the burning New Mex ville. Doc had known the other fellow was out of range and so he’d fired the LeMat six times, then only fanned the hammer a couple of times to make the Civil War blaster click loudly. Grinning in triumph, the dealer had charged straight at Doc and raised his ax for a fast chill. When the dealer got within ten feet, point-blank range, Doc had raised the LeMat and fired three more times, ending the coldheart’s regime of terror forever.
“Nine is fine,” Doc chuckled, closing the fully loaded cylinder with a solid, satisfying click.
Prying a board free from a packing crate, Krysty whistled softly at the sight of the brand-new HK G-11 caseless rifles nestled inside. The plastic boxes alongside obviously contained spare ammo blocks. There was a score of them, perhaps more. The woman started to reach for one of the angular rapidfires, then frowned and closed the lid. Dean Cawdor had really liked this weapon, in spite of its faults. Actually, the caseless rapidfire only had a single flaw. It worked too efficiently. All by himself, Dean had once stopped a pack of muties with the dire weapon, only to discover that the rapidfire was empty. The boy had used the entire ammo block of a hundred rounds in only a few heartbeats. The priceless weapon had been abandoned in the street, useless without a replacement block.
“Find something?” Jak asked, draping a bandolier of ammo clips across his leather jacket. The teen was holding a MP-5 submachine gun, repeatedly pulling the bolt to work out the stiffness of the predark spring. The gun had been properly packed in anticorrosive gelatin, but that was easy to wash off with the accompanying solvent.
Wordlessly, Krysty shook her head and continued to search. She truly missed Dean. Such a pity that he was gone forever.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Ryan whispered with a smile, lifting a peculiar-looking gren into view. A whole case of implo grens!
This was the find of a lifetime. Not even Mildred had any idea how the things worked. The tech involved was far beyond her understanding of twentieth-century science. The burnished gray sphere looked like a standard mil gren, but instead of a C-4 explosion, or thermite blast, it somehow generated a massive gravity field for a split second that destroyed anything caught within the collapsing zone. An implo gren could stop a tank, and would smash a sec hunter droid like the angry fist of God.
Judiciously deciding between weight and mobility, Ryan finally took four of the implo grens and added a fifth to his jacket pocket. For the first time since they had arrived, the Deathlands warrior allowed himself to relax slightly. Whatever came their way now could be aced. Norm, mech or mutie,
