Ryan watched the fireball dissolve on the horizon behind the silhouetted park trees, like the last embers of the world’s biggest campfire. As the light faded, the underside of the mushroom cloud became less and less distinct, until it blended into the overcast sky and disappeared.
Then silence closed in.
No traffic sounds. No sirens. No blasterfire. No screaming. In the wake of the unthinkable, the city had stopped breathing.
“Is it coming?” Ricky asked in a shaky voice.
No one had to ask him what it was; they all knew; overlapping Russian nuke strikes that would eat the city alive and turn everything in a ten-mile radius to ashes and slag.
It was the end of the world.
If that was the case, there was no reason for them to budge from this spot. Ryan had never put in much thought about where he was going to die. Or where he wanted to die. This seemed as good a place as any, and he was in as good a company as he could hope for.
Seconds passed as he waited for the barrage to begin. Seconds now were precious to him. He reached down into the front compartment and took Krysty by the hand. When she looked up at him, her emerald eyes were shining and there were tears streaming down her beautiful face.
“I love you more than anything,” he said.
“I know, lover. And I love you.”
Behind him in the compartment, the other companions were embracing. Slapping one another’s backs and saying words that had never seemed appropriate until now. Not just “thank you for having my back.”
To one another they said, “You are my brother.”
“You are my sister.”
“You are my steely fucking heart.”
And when the words that needed to be said were all said, they moved apart and prepared to die.
A minute passed, then five, and they were still waiting.
“What’s the bastard holdup?” J.B. finally asked in exasperation.
The remark was so off the wall that it made them all laugh.
“What’s the matter, you got a hot date on the other side, J.B.?” Krysty asked.
“I thought this party was organized,” J.B. said. “But it’s the same old, same old clusterfuck. Hurry up and wait.”
“Or ‘Due to circumstances beyond our control the scheduled end of the world will be experiencing a slight delay. We thank you in advance for your patience,’” Mildred said.
More laughter rang out.
As time passed without incident, Ryan began to rethink their analysis of the situation. Maybe they’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. Maybe the explosion hadn’t been Armageddon’s first strike after all. He wasn’t the only one with doubts.
“If it hasn’t happened by now, folks, I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Vee said. “An all-out missile launch is just that. The superpowers aren’t going to wait around for the first one to hit before they fire some more. It’s shoot until all the bullets are gone, then open your eyes.”
“She’s right,” Mildred said. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen.”
On the horizon, the glow of the fireball had dwindled until it was barely visible behind the row of dark trees.
“If it isn’t happening, what are we waiting for?” J.B. asked. “Let’s get back to her apartment and make the chron jump.”
“Indeed, let’s,” Doc said.
“Crank it up, Vee,” Ryan instructed. He didn’t have to remind her that time was an issue.
Once again she flattened the gas pedal and they shot off, engine wailing. Over her shoulder she said, “That blast is between us and my apartment. How wide a berth should I give it?”
“Streets might be blocked by debris,” Ryan said. “Don’t want to have to double back to get around it. Better swing wide as you can.”
“Don’t worry about the traffic signs,” Mildred said. “There’s no such thing as a one-way street anymore.”
“Like minds,” Vee replied.
In the dark, with the berth Vee gave it, they couldn’t see the blast crater or its glow, but the haze of smoke pouring through the streets was triple thick. Vee had to slow down because, even with fog lights, they couldn’t see more than twenty feet ahead.
With the engine’s howl gone, they could hear the sounds of an intense firefight in the distance. As they drove on, the noise grew louder and louder.
When the smoke started to thin out, Vee stomped the gas again. “We’re two minutes away!” she shouted over her shoulder.
In those two minutes the firefight peaked. There were tightly spaced explosions. To Ryan they sounded like grens popping off inside a building. By the time Vee turned the EMT truck onto her street, it was over.
Her headlights lit up the rear of a very long wag parked in the middle of the road. All its doors were open. And the light inside was on.
“Good grief,” she said as she took in the ruin that surrounded them. “It’s Mogadishu.”
Ryan didn’t know what that meant, but there were no police wags in sight. “Everybody out,” he said after she pulled up behind the long wag. “Stay low. Watch for movement in the windows. We’re on triple red.”
On his signal they moved up on either side of the long wag. He poked his head in the rear compartment. The white leather upholstery was dazzling, but it had puddles on it. Stinking puddles.
“Magus beat us here,” he told the others. “Could have already jumped back to Deathlands.”
“I don’t think so,” Vee said with conviction. “Magus is still here.” She aimed her blaster at the front of the apartment building next to hers. “Not going anywhere anytime soon, either.”
Ryan turned and saw the body sprawled across a long flower box not thirty feet away. Keeping wary eyes on the windows above, and blasters ready, they all moved closer.
It looked like a cast-off meat puppet. The flesh-and-bone part of its head had been completely blown away, leaving the cirque of steel plate intact. The cavity had been virtually emptied of all its contents, right down to the brain pan. The guy wires on its cheeks had snapped, and the metal half of its jaw, complete with a row of metal teeth, drooped down the side of its neck.
“No way to mistake that unspeakable abomination,” Doc said.
“Hard to believe it’s over,” Mildred added. “And that we weren’t the ones to chill it.”
“Yeah,” Jak said, poking the corpse with the muzzle of his Python.
“Cops must have gotten lucky,” Vee stated.
“It’s the most recent version,” Ryan said. “It’s got two steel eyes.”
A single gunshot roared from the roof across the street, ending the discussion and making them scatter and duck for cover. It wasn’t aimed at them, though. There was no follow-up.
“That’s a bastard fifty cal,” J.B. said.
From the top of the building opposite, someone started screaming. Before the companions could react, the noise stopped. A few seconds later body parts started raining down into the street. An arm, then a head hit the roof of the long wag and bounced into the gutter.
“Magus might be gone, but the enforcers are still here,” Krysty said.
“I think we’d best be on our way,” Doc suggested.
“I’ve got to release the paramedic first,” Mildred said. “At least he’ll have a chance to make a break for it.”
“Go ahead, we’ll cover you,” Krysty told her.
Keeping low and moving fast, Mildred went to the rear of the EMT truck and slipped inside. A few seconds later she was helping the paramedic out of the vehicle. She pointed back the way they’d come. “Run that way and don’t stop,” she told him.
Without a word the man took off, high-kicking as if a stickie was biting at his heels.
Jak took the lead as they charged up the steps and into Vee’s building. The carnage beyond the foyer hit Ryan like a punch in the face. He had seen a lot of death from a lot of battles, but this wasn’t a battle. It was a meat grinder, just like what he’d seen at the police station. The floor in front of them was clogged with body parts. It looked as though someone had shaken up a big bag of heads, arms, legs, torsos and dumped them out. It reeked of burned cordite, blood and guts. There were huge black scorch marks on the walls and ceiling from the gren explosions.
A big operation had been set up here, either to catch Magus or them. Or both. Lots of men, lots of blasters, but the trap had backfired.
Ryan looked at the stairway leading up to Vee’s apartment. It was the only place in sight free of detached body parts.
Jak started up. Ryan followed close behind. They were almost to the landing when a door in the hallway below banged back and something not human let out a deep bellow.
Ryan swung the Steyr around as an enforcer stormed down the hall toward the companions waiting at the foot of the stairs. They had their blasters up, a fat lot of good that would do them. He reached for a thermite gren. Even as his fingers closed on the red canister, he knew it was too late. The monster was already on top of them.
Vee stepped forward to greet it, putting her body directly in its path. Ryan couldn’t see her face because her back was to him, but her stance said nothing short of death was going to move her aside.
The enforcer was four feet away when she touched off the Desert Eagle. It was three feet away when the gold handgun bucked in her double grip, emitting an earsplitting crack, two feet away when yellow flame a yard long and two feet high leaped from the muzzle. It engulfed the creature’s head.
The heavy slug whined off its temple, a glancing impact that barely slowed it, but the flame didn’t go away.
Vee shifted to the right and ducked under its arm. The companions fell back to let it pass.
The enforcer’s head burned from the neck up, flames streaming out behind as it ran with outstretched arms for the front door. Ryan saw tendrils of fire shooting down its back, then with a whoosh, it was ablaze from head to foot. In a ball of fire that touched the ceiling, it crashed out the doorway and fell down the steps. By the time Ryan reached the doorway for a look, it was on the sidewalk, flames were leaping ten feet in the air and it was sizzling like bacon in a frying pan.
“Way to go, Vee!” Ricky exclaimed in pride and triumph.
“Amazing show of courage, dear girl,” Doc said. “You stood like a matador facing down a charging bull.”
“Did you know it would combust like that?” Mildred asked her.
“No,” Vee said, “I just wanted to get one good lick in before it killed me. Not something I ever want to try again.”
They walked single file up the stairs. The hall looked clear, but they took defensive positions against the opposing walls anyway. In a pale blur, Jak went through the open doorway to Vee’s apartment, Python in two hands; everyone else followed in close formation.
The place she had called home was in even worse shape than when they’d left it. Debris was ankle deep and now evenly spread from wall to wall. Fragments of glass from the blown-out windows glittered like ice crystals. And there was blood, too, mixed in with the rubbish. The time unit’s door stood half open.
Ryan watched the distress descend over Vee’s face. Then it turned to despair. It looked as if she was going to break down in tears. It was a radical transformation from her mood seconds ago. Since he’d never owned a ten-thousandth of the material goods stored in the apartment, it was hard for him to understand her loss.
Doc had a different take on it.
“This,” he told her, “is a preview of the devastation to come. You can’t possibly think of staying here, my dear.”
“That is for certain, Vee,” Ricky said. “There is only death here.”
“You and I could have a life in the future, Vee,” Doc told her.
“But you could have a better one with me,” Ricky said defiantly.
Ryan looked at Krysty and frowned. “Am I missing something? What the hell is going on?”
“You are guaranteed clueless, lover.”
“Why does she have to choose either of you?” Mildred asked.
“She does not,” Doc replied, then turned back to Vee. “Just come with us and live.”
She smiled at Doc and Ricky. “Everyone dies and nothing lasts, boys,” she said. “If the world is going to end tomorrow, I want to be around see it. It’s as simple as that. I’m not leaving.”
Doc’s face turned red, and Ricky looked absolutely crushed by the news. Vee had delivered a harsh verdict: she’d rather be incinerated than go on living with either of them. Ryan had to turn his head away for fear he’d break out laughing.
Krysty shot him a glance that said, “You’d better not, mister!”
Vee left them and went into her bedroom. When she came back there were tears in her eyes. She said, “My cats have run away. Not that I suppose it matters, given the big picture.”
Vee held out her arms to Doc and Ricky. “Come say goodbye, my friends. It’s time for you to go.”
First Ricky, then Doc gave her a hug and kissed her on the cheek. Ricky knuckled tears from his eyes while the others said their goodbyes.
Before Ryan closed the door to the time unit, Vee leaned in and said, “Thanks for the fun. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
To everyone’s surprise, she then unfastened her chest holster and handed the Bengal tiger–striped Desert Eagle and the extra mags to him. “Looks like I’m not going to need that baby where I’m going, but it might save your lives at the other end of the time hole. Chill a few of those knobby bastards for me, okay?”
“You can count on it, Vee,” Ryan said as he lowered the weapon and harness to the floor. “ We’ll never forget you.”
“I won’t forget any of you, either,” she said.
Ryan shut the door and spun the locking wheel. Then he turned to Doc, who was standing slumped at the far end of the unit. “Hit the LD button, Doc,” he said. “I’m hoping it doesn’t have a time limit.”
“Honestly, my boy, I would prefer not doing the honors. It would make me feel like I am the one killing her.”
“Vee knows where and when she wants to die,” Mildred said. “And she’s not afraid. You have to respect that.”
“I do respect it,” Doc said. “It seems such a terrible waste.”
“She brave woman,” Ricky said.
“And stubborn,” Krysty added.
“Yeah,” Ryan said, “she would’ve fit right in.”
“I do it!” Jak said in exasperation. The albino reached behind Doc and punched the button.
Once started, there was no stopping the process.
The floorplates began to glow, and gray fog materialized in writhing tendrils near the chamber’s ceiling. Ryan knew what was coming, and he steeled himself for it. First the stinging mist, then the vertigo. He tried to stay upright by supporting himself with a hand on the wall, but his legs gave out from under him, and he hit the floorplates on his back. His head smacked last with a whip-crack motion that made him see stars and groan.
It was worse than he remembered. Or maybe the problem was, everything was happening in reverse.
It started with violent compression when he was expecting the opposite. So when an impossibly powerful force began pancaking him end to end, he felt a rare moment of panic. That he was in the grip of something he couldn’t fight made the panic worse.
Then it started to hurt. Really hurt.
Under the tremendous pressure, the long bones of his lower legs began to crack, then splinter and suddenly his ankles were grinding up against his kneecaps. His neck bones exploded, dropping his head between his shoulder blades. If the others were screaming, he couldn’t hear them—he was screaming too loud, himself.
The pain didn’t stop.
The compression continued at a faster and faster pace. Thigh bones gave way; ankles and kneecaps rammed into his hip joints. His rib cage disintegrated all at once, in an agonizing poof! With nothing to stop it, his head smashed into the top of his pelvis. In the middle of it all were his insides, and they and their contents were squashed flat. There was no rolling over this time: he projectile-vomited straight up in the air.
If it rained down on him, he never felt it. What he did feel was a powerful grip seizing his wrists and ankles and a force pulling him in opposing directions. Deep down he knew he was in the homestretch, but that didn’t help while he was caught in the moment.
Every broken part of him was stretched out, all the jagged bits of bone, the ruptured vessels, the exposed nerve ends, drawn out thinner and thinner and then thinner still until he went blind, until his heart stopped, until he didn’t exist.
Only the pain existed.
The pain inside his throat felt as if a tiny someone was trapped in there trying to hand saw his way out. Back and forth the blade went, ripping, ripping. The pain was from nonstop screaming.
Then there was a jolt and a sound like a siren winding down, from high pitch to low. Suddenly he was aware of the smooth surface beneath his back and something wet sliding down the sides of his face.
He coughed, sputtered, then opened his eye. He saw fog. Swirling gray fog.
They’d made it, he thought.
The floorplates under and around him were still glowing, but their brightness was fading. With an effort he raised up on an elbow and felt his skin crackle and pop with static. The others were all breathing.
He tried to rise and couldn’t manage it. When he fell back, he hit his head again. He knew they had to prepare for the upcoming fight, but he couldn’t summon a shout to rouse them. He lay there and watched the fog swirl near the ceiling. It had no pattern for the longest time—utterly random movement—then it began to spin counterclockwise, slowly at first, then faster, like water swirling down a drain. As it spun, it got smaller and smaller until it was gone.
It took a while longer for him to recover his strength. By that time the others were stirring. Ricky had puked himself dry again and was still heaving. His expression looked desperate. Mildred leaned over and patted him on the back, trying to calm him down.
Ryan rolled on his side, then struggled to his feet. To stop swaying, he leaned against the wall.
“You okay, lover?” Krysty asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” he lied.
He looked over at the porthole. The lights were on in the mat-trans anteroom, but from his angle of view, he couldn’t see anything past the scratches the enforcers had made.
Using the wall for support, he edged over to the round window. As he pressed close to the glass, a dark, warty face appeared on the opposite side, two inches from the tip of his nose. Yellow eyes bored into him, and a ribbonlike tongue darted out over small, sharp teeth, flicking at the glass. It wasn’t wearing a hoodie.