nodded. “Ten seconds,” he said as he followed Ryan into the stark corridor.
Then the two men started to run, hurrying for the nearest doorway, which was cracked open. They pried it open wider to accommodate their size and slipped inside.
“Four...three...two...one,” J.B. intoned. When he got to “two,” both men turned away from the direction of the blast and placed their hands over their ears.
A moment later a dull sound like a thump reverberated through the redoubt, followed by a much louder boom accompanied almost instantaneously by the tinkling sound of shattering glass. Ryan and J.B. fell to the floor as the shockwave rocked through the redoubt.
* * *
JAKWASWITHDoc and Krysty when the bomb exploded. They were standing in a garage area of the redoubt, close to the surface and far enough away that they heard the explosion as a kind of distant cough. Still, they all knew exactly what it was and for a moment a solemn hush seemed to pass over them.
Krysty tensed. “Ryan...”
Doc held on to her, pulling her close. “Relax, Krysty, my girl,” he said, trying to calm her. “We don’t know what has happened yet.”
“I want to go back,” Krysty told him.
“Going back would only serve to place us in more danger,” Doc said reasonably. “They will come to us when they are ready.”
A few paces ahead of them, Jak had adopted a semi-crouch as he walked toward the door to the redoubt. The door lay on one side of the wide, garage-like area within which a few military vehicles still remained. The vehicles had been stripped down to shells, their components and armament long gone, tires removed along with anything else that anyone might be able to put to use. Worryingly, the door to the redoubt was open and showed about four feet of blue sky along with the scrappy dirt of an overgrown track.
Jak’s Colt Python had materialized in his hand once more. He didn’t like the fact that the door was open. It meant someone had been inside, which the bomb had already indicated, and that maybe they hadn’t had time to close it again, which meant they could still be nearby. Jak’s pale hand flicked at the Colt’s trigger guard absently as he approached the opening, padding toward it on silent feet.
Jak stopped for a moment at the open door and listened, isolating the sounds coming from outside. There were birds chirruping, the buzz of insects...and a being, moving amid the undergrowth, feet shuffling on leaves and grass. A moment later Jak heard another sound—more figures approaching, moving in unison with military precision, moving fast.
Blaster poised in front of him, Jak stepped through the open door of the redoubt.
The redoubt door had been propped open using a web of sawed-down tree limbs and pieces of metal, Jak noted as he stepped through the opening. The construction was well planned and solid, raised on a scaffold-type arrangement. In addition, attention had been paid to the meeting point where the door slid into the wall. There was no exposed hinge or mechanism there, but someone had gone to a lot of trouble to bend the thick titanium door so that it would not snap back. Someone who wanted to get in and get out again.
There were trees all around, and it took a moment for Jak to zone out the noises of the local fauna and locate the sound of shuffling feet he had first noted from inside the redoubt. There. To the left.
A dirt track led to the redoubt entrance with a scrubby grass border to either side, wide enough to carry a wag. The scarred remains of a tarmac road had all but disintegrated, leaving black chunks of broken tarmac dotted amid the dirt. Jak stepped over the path and onto the grass, where he could ensure his passage would remain silent. The grass shone with dew, catching the morning sunlight in sparkling spots like glitter.
The sounds of marching feet were getting closer, and they were moving fast. Jak guessed at least three people were among the group, but it was hard to tell from the way the footsteps echoed. There could be three or three hundred moving in step.
Crouching, his blaster held in one hand, Jak scrambled across the scrub, weaving swiftly between stubby trees. His keen eyes spotted the figure crouching behind a bush, tiny red berries arrayed across it like beads of blood. It was a man, mid-thirties with a little gray clouding his dark beard, wearing cotton clothes, light and simple and remarkably clean. His hands were dirty, though, and there was a streak of what looked like either oil or dirt on his face. He was breathing heavy, fearful. Jak slowed as he spotted the blaster in the man’s hand. It was a Smith & Wesson, not much more than seven inches in length, its once-gleaming surface pitted and blackened with age.
The man turned at the albino youth’s approach, as much sensing him as hearing him. Jak was still twenty feet from the man. Even from that distance, Jak could see the man’s blue eyes were wide with anxiousness, and he brought the Smith & Wesson around to target Jak at the same time as he turned. But when he saw Jak, something seemed to change in his expression—first surprise, then relief.
“Thank heaven,” the man said in a breathless whisper. “I thought you were...”
He stopped, alert like a dog, his head turning to locate the sound of the marching feet.
Jak spotted the figures moving through the trees for the first time. Dressed in white robes, they were easy to see. They didn’t walk together but had spread out, taking different routes down the slope, but still marching in time. Jak counted five of them wending through the trees above, fluid and almost mist-like in their movements. It wasn’t like watching soldiers, it was like watching dancers.
Crouched by the bush, the bearded man glanced back at Jak, his eyes pleading. “Did the bomb go off?” he whispered. “You can’t let them—”
His words were cut short by a woman’s voice coming from upslope. “William! Will? What are you doing?”
The man—presumably William—turned back, raised his blaster and fired. The discharge sounded loud in the stillness of the woods, its thundering echo accompanied by the frightened cries of birds taking flight in its wake.
Jak ducked back, dipping behind the nearest tree and using its trunk for cover. It was a birch, and the trunk was too narrow to give adequate protection, even for Jak’s small frame. But there was no time to find better, not now that bullets were flying.
William had clearly missed his target, and he blasted again, firing another shot into the trees. Upslope, one of the figures in white moved, stepping swiftly behind a tree as the bullet struck a branch.
Jak watched the figure slip out from cover and he could discern that it was a woman—perhaps the same one who had called to William.
“Help me,” the man called, his voice raised now in panic. He glanced back to where Jak was hiding, his brow furrowing as he saw that Jak had disappeared. “Please, you know what they’ll do...”
Jak almost gasped as the white-clad figures emerged from the trees, converging on the armed man in a flurry of fluttering robes. All five were women, young and tall and svelte with long limbs and long hair styled atop their heads in some kind of elaborate braid or plait. The robes were made of a light, gauzy material, pure white like predark summer clouds, covering each woman from her neck all the way down to her ankles. There were wide pleats within the design of the robes that made the skirts and sleeves billow around them like mist, making it hard to determine where
