The tumultuous sky above the U.S. Virgin Islands was a solid bank of moving gray clouds. The roiling heavens split asunder as sheet lighting flashed on the horizon, leaving an ionized trail of purple across the ravaged clouds. Huge waves rose to white crests and crashed onto the rocky shoreline of the tropical island with triphammer force.
Dotting the white-sand beaches were the rusted hulks of predark warships, their massive metal forms lolling sideways, the armored hulls split open like dying animals to expose the complex interiors to the savage pounding rains. The corroded remains of cannons and missiles lay in plain sight and thousands of small blue crabs moved freely among the wreckage, consuming anything organic that was to be found: bones, boots and uniforms. Fluttering in the harsh rain, the faded remains of a flag hung from the end of the mast of a yacht. The cloth was bleached white, the crumbling keel covered with barnacles, the smashed hull charred badly in spots from numerous lightning strikes.
“This nuking storm is never going to end,” Ryan Cawdor stated, staring angrily at the savage ocean.
Impulsively, the one-eyed man reached up to adjust the worn leather patch covering the ruin of his left eye. His own brother had taken the organ in a knife fight, and given him a long ugly scar on the right cheek to go with it. But Harvey was under the dirt now, while Ryan was still sucking air, and that was all that truly mattered. The ancient marks of violence on his face were merely two small memories among countless others decorating his hard, muscular body.
Ryan’s hand rested comfortably on the checkered grip of his SIG-Sauer autoloader safely secreted in a hip holster. A large panga in a curved sheath balanced the deadly weapon on his other hip, and a bolt-action longblaster with a telescopic sight was slung across his wide, muscular shoulder.
“Yeah, hell of a storm,” J. B. Dix agreed, lowering the brim of his fedora as if for a bit more protection.
A good foot shorter than his friend, John Barrymore Dix was wearing a mixture of predark clothing: U.S. Army boots, fatigue pants, OD T-shirt and a leather Air Force bomber jacket. His weapons shone like new, lovingly polished and oiled every night by the master armorer. An Uzi machine pistol was draped across his chest, an S&W M-4000 shotgun slung across his back. However, the munitions bag that carried his stash of plas and grens was hanging flat at his side. The canvas satchel was sadly empty, aside from a few loose rounds of brass and a couple of predark civie road flares of questionable service.
Standing in the access tunnel of the underground re doubt, the two men were safe from the touch of the deadly acid rain outside, yet they carefully watched as the chem-rich water fell like a yellow curtain across the mouth of the passageway. The acid rain was mixing with normal rain, orange clouds mixing with black in the violent sky overhead. They hoped it was a good sign for the future, that the acid rains were starting to fade away. But that didn’t lull them into a false sense of security. In less than a minute, the deadly yellow rain could strip a shrieking man of flesh down to his raw bones, in spite of being weakened by the presence of the clean water shower. Of course the strength of the acid rain depended on many factors, one of which was a person’s location in the Deathlands.
“Seen worse.” Ryan grunted, rubbing his smoothly shaved chin. “But not by much, that’s for sure.”
With all that useless water outside, the salty ocean and the acid rain, it had seemed amazing to the companions that the machinery of the redoubt had been still able to deliver all the crystal-clear water the companions wanted the previous night. Everything Ryan was wearing, predark combat boots, denim pants and matching shirt, were in the unusual state of being thoroughly clean. Even his heavy fur-lined coat had gone through the wash, the accumulated blood, mud and food stains purged by the gently chugging laundry machines down on the fifth level. The companions were showered and shaved, warm and clean, a rare treat for anybody these days, and everyone except Krysty Wroth had had his or her hair trimmed.
“I hear ya,” J.B. said, blinking at the tempest through his wire-rimmed glasses. “Dark night, remember that big wash in Tennessee? That was nothing compared to this mother of a storm!”
“And those ruins are so damn close,” Ryan muttered darkly, tensing as if about to take a step outside. But then he relaxed and frowned.
“Mebbe if we had an APC we could chance a run,” J.B. added, crossing his arms. “But I’d sure hate to be the first to try!”
Sullenly, Ryan grunted in agreement. Yeah, a man would have to be pretty damn desperate to risk going into the hellish downpour. Even this deep in the tunnel, the reek of the chem storm was thickly unpleasant. Only the cool breeze coming from the open door of the redoubt behind allowed them to stand this close to the reeking miasma of the rain.
Just then, a huge wave crashed on the rocky shoreline and lightning flashed again, the strident discharge briefly illuminating the area. In the blue light, just for a split tick, Ryan and J.B. could see the ruins of a predark city filling the eastern side of the island. Tall skyscrapers of glass and chrome were still standing downtown, apparently undamaged by the nuke war or the ravages of time. Five, six, some of them even ten stories tall! And scattered about the buildings could be seen the steady unblinking glow of electric lights. Powered by resilient nuke batteries, the old beacons were still giving a warning for airplanes that had ceased to exist a hundred winters earlier. There weren’t many of the lights, only a precious handful. But the beacons shone bright as hope in the tropical storm.
Hunching his shoulders, Ryan frowned. But there was something there even more important than the electric lights. Surrounding the buildings on every side was a thick forest of green trees, the oddly shaped leaves shiny-slick from the combination of rain and ocean spray. Leaves, trees…it was almost fragging unbelievable, given the acid rain and all.
Standing in the access tunnel near the somber men was a beautiful redheaded woman leaning against the brick wall of the passageway, her left arm moving steadily as she brushed her teeth. The long hair hanging to her shoulders flexed and stirred against the direction of the breeze coming from the redoubt as if the crimson filaments were endowed with an independent life force of their own.
“Think we’re still in Deathlands?” Krysty Wroth asked, once again dipping the toothbrush into an open box of baking soda.
Her cowboy boots shone with polish. She’d traded in her jumpsuit for denim pants and a crisp white shirt, found sealed in a plastic box. Around her waist was a police gunbelt supporting a .38 revolver, a deadly compact blaster that had seen many battles. But very few of the ammunition loops of the gunbelt held any live brass, mostly they were filled with spent cartridges waiting to be reloaded.
“Nuking hell, we could be anyplace,” Ryan answered gruffly. “No way of telling through this drek.” He paused at a peal of thunder, then added, “But it doesn’t resemble any area I’ve been to before.”
Folding back his collar, J.B. touched the minisextant hanging on a chain around his neck. “And without a clear view of the sun, there’s no way for me to get a reading. We might be in Europe or Brazil for all I know.”
“That memo we found on the trash bin mentioned the Virgin Islands,” Ryan reminded him, glancing sideways.
J.B. shrugged. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean this is them. Mebbe the guy was planning on going there when the world ended.”
With a dissatisfied grunt, Krysty went back to scrubbing her molars. Thankfully, the pain wasn’t too bad today. She had the beginning of a major cavity, and was fighting off the day when it would be necessary for Mildred to use pliers and yank the rotten tooth out by the roots.
How odd, death I can face, Krysty thought privately as she scrubbed diligently away. But not pain. Have I experienced so much that I am getting weak? Mother Gaia, help me, if that ever happens!
Suddenly the sound of boots rang on the concrete behind them, and the three companions turned to see a stocky black woman walk out of the redoubt.
“Aw, hell, still raining,” Mildred Wyeth said angrily, contorting her face into a dark scowl. “Damn it, we’re never going to get a sample of those trees!”
The short physician was dressed in Army fatigue pants, an officer’s white shirt and a loose denim jacket. Clipped to the front of her canvas web belt was a Czech ZKR target pistol, and draped over her shoulder was a canvas bag with the faded letters M*A*S*H on the side. The predark field surgery kit had never left her possession since she’d recently found it. The medicine was long gone, but the few surgical instruments it contained were beyond price.
“Nobody’s going anywhere, Millie,” J.B. said kindly, curling an arm around the woman’s waist. “Sorry.”
Mildred moved a little closer to the Armorer, savoring the warmth coming off the man. “Who would have thought it ever possible,” she muttered, squinting into the storm. “Plants, living green plants immune to the acid rain!”
“Some new mutation, probably,” Krysty said, tucking the toothbrush and box of baking soda into a pocket of her bearskin coat. “Not every mutie wants to eat people.”
“Just most of them.” J.B. snorted in droll humor.
“Mebbe these plants feed off the rain,” Ryan said unexpectedly, his brow furrowed. “We know for a fact that the predark whitecoats were working on making things that could survive skydark.”
The companions grew silent at that comment. They had encountered the experiments of the crazy whitecoats before, the bioweps, genetically altered creatures that could withstand certain hostile conditions, some even surviving the deadly rads in the blast craters.
“If only I could get a sample…” Mildred muttered, easing away from her lover.
For a moment there flashed in her mind the legend of Johnny Appleseed from the eighteenth century, how he traveled across North America scattering apple seeds and creating entire forests of fruit trees, changing grasslands into beautiful forests. She could do that with just a few cuttings from the strange plants out there. Mildred would just have to plant a few sprigs everywhere the companions went. Oh, she would never see the final results, but someday, in a hundred years, the continent could be green again. Deserts turned into forests. It would work! The Deathlands could be defeated! If only…
Lost in her reverie, Mildred started forward when a gust of wind from outside washed along the access tunnel and she flinched at the sharp stink of the rain. If only we had an APC, she thought. But would even an armored personnel carrier, or a U.S. Army tank be safe in this downpour? Probably not.
“They are as unreachable as the stars, madam,” Doc Tanner rumbled, his voice sounding deeper than the thunder.
The four companions turned to see their other friends amble through the open doorway of the redoubt. With nobody standing in the way anymore, the multiton door slid closed, the titanic slab of metal easing into the adamantine wall as silent as a knife in a dream.
Tall and lean, Doc Tanner was dressed as if from another century with a swallowtail jacket and frilly shirt. But the impression of gentility was beguiled by the strictly utilitarian .455 LeMat handcannon on his gunbelt, the grip of the massive black-powder weapon worn from constant use. Tucked under one arm, Doc carried an ebony walking stick with a silver lion’s head for a handle. Hidden inside was a rapier of the finest Toledo steel.
“NASA has sent probes to the stars, you old coot,” Mildred snapped irritably.
“Indeed, madam, so you say,” Doc continued unabated. “But they brought nothing useful back that we know about, and so shall it be again this time, I am afraid. We can look, but not touch.”
“Just like in vid,” Jak Lauren stated, brushing back his snowy-white hair. The albino teenager was wearing camou-color clothing. His jacket was a deadly weapon, as bits of razor-sharp metal had been sewn into the fabric here and there. If anyone grabbed him by the collar, the person would lose fingers. A number of leaf-bladed throwing knives were hidden about his person, and a massive .357 Magnum Colt Python was holstered at his side.
“What vid was that?” Ryan asked over a shoulder.
Jak shrugged. “Dean and I saw in another redoubt. Victory for Victoria, mebbe. Skinny man standing in snow look through window at fat baron in a gaudy house stuffing self with food.” The teenager frowned. “Not follow story after that. Boring, but only vid that still played on comp.”
“Victor/Victoria,” Mildred corrected him with a wan smile. “Yes, I wouldn’t think that a musical comedy would be to your liking.”
Jak arched an eyebrow. “Why say? Like music vids. Always lots of food, pretty girls.”
“And that, my young friend, is as good a description of paradise as any in these draconian days.” Doc sighed. Slipping the walking stick out from under his arm, Doc strode to the very end of the tunnel, stopping only a few feet away from the damp spot on the floor where the rain had been blown inside.
“Most people, I believe, shall never see, a poem as lovely as… What was that line?” Doc whispered softly, then spun fast. “Ryan, we simply must have those trees! Surely something can be done. That city cannot be more than a league away. Maybe less.”
A league? “We wouldn’t last ten feet in that,” Ryan stated gruffly, hitching up his gunbelt. As the lightning flashed once more, the big man turned his back on the storm. “Come on, we’ve wasted enough time. Let’s go.”
“But…”
“Cut the gab,” Ryan snapped impatiently. “We agreed to wait a day for the storm to end. Well, it’s still here and the day is gone. Time to go. You zero that?”
“Yes, my friend, I understand,” Doc rumbled in acquiescence. “It has, indeed, been a full day, and fair is fair.”
Going to the entrance of the redoubt, Ryan tapped a code into the armored keypad set into the doorjamb. There was a brief pause, then the huge black portal ponderously slid closed. Ryan gave one last look toward the nameless city and its surrounding forest. Trees that could withstand the acid rains. With a grimace, the one-eyed man turned and entered the redoubt. The rest of the companions stayed close behind.
As the group walked along the entranceway of the redoubt, they heard the massive nukeproof door slide shut with a subdued boom of compressed air.
Running stiff fingers through his black hair, Ryan tried not to let his anger show. Shitfire, this base had been a triple zero. No food, no ammo, no exit. Oh, sure, all of the basic stuff in the base worked, everybody had washed their clothing and soaked in hot baths until they felt clean again. Hell, J.B. had even found a pair of decent socks, and Doc had located a tiny plastic vial of silicon lube. The stuff was made for comp printers, but worked just fine on the sword hidden inside his walking stick. But that had been the lot. The rest of the redoubt had been stripped clean, bare to the walls. And worse, their food supplies were getting dangerously low again. The companions had six days’ worth of MRE packs left. After that, they’d be eating stewed boot if they couldn’t find anything in this redoubt. There really was no other choice. The companions would have to jump again, whether they wanted to or not.
Exiting the passageway, the somber group crossed the vast parking garage and retrieved their backpacks. All around them, the painted lines on the concrete floor of the garage were empty and waiting. This was where the staff of the redoubt would have parked over a hundred wags: civie cars, motorcycles, Hummers, APCs, trucks and even the occasional tank. But the garage looked brand-new, as if it had been built and then abandoned. There wasn’t a single tool on the pegboard racks behind the workbenches, only the tape outlines of where each tool should be placed after it had been used. The drawers were empty, the supply closet vacant, and there wasn’t a single stain in the grease pit. Even the fuel storage tanks were bone-dry, the seals on the new pumps intact and unbroken.
As the companions crowded into the spotlessly clean elevator, J.B. hit the middle button and the cage swiftly descended to the center level of the redoubt. When the doors parted with a sigh, the companions trundled along the corridor and dutifully checked the straps on their backpacks and the loads in their weapons. The corridor was lined with doors on each side, and when the companions had arrived the previous day, every one of them had been closed and locked. One at a time, each door had been carefully opened, only to reveal a deserted room or office, without so much as a piece of furniture or a candy wrapper on the carpeted floor. It had taken most of a day for them to go through the entire base before finally admitting that the place was as empty as a mutie’s pockets. This wasn’t the first redoubt they had found in this condition, but it seemed to be happening more and more often. Was somebody looting the underground forts besides themselves? It was a sobering thought, and one that left the companions apprehensive and uneasy. The redoubts had been their lifeline more times than could be counted.
Reaching the door for the control room, Ryan pushed it aside and strode past the banks of humming comps. This was the heart of the redoubt, or more correctly, the brain. These were the machines that controlled the mighty fission reactors deep down in the subbasement for the life support systems, air-recycling, water sanitation, the freezers, the front door and the all-important mat-trans units. Without the comps, the base instantly became an airless tomb.
After passing through the anteroom, Ryan drew his 9 mm SIG-Sauer blaster before further pushing open a door to a room surrounded by armaglass. As the vanadium portal swung aside, he gave the chamber a quick scan with his weapon at the ready. The companions weren’t the only people who knew about the secret mat-trans units, and more than once they had found evidence of others just leaving the gateways.
However, the entry chamber was uninhabited. With his blaster leading the way, Ryan warily stepped through the doorway into the next room. The hexagonal chamber was a deep red in color, sprinkled with flakes of a hundred colors. The gateway chamber in each redoubt was a different color, supposedly for the purpose of identification. But if there was a chart to show what the colors meant, they had never found such a thing. The wall of this chamber vaguely resembled the terrazzo flooring used in most government buildings and major shopping malls, only with a much greater depth of color.
“It’s clear,” Ryan announced, holstering his blaster.
The others filed into the chamber, past Ryan. As he closed the door behind them, something rolled out of the shadows at the far end of the control room. With its two metallic antennas quivering, the boxy device rushed to the main computer and urgently extended a probe to quickly connect with the master control panel.
HALFWAY ACROSS THE WORLD, Delphi suddenly felt a vibration inside his left wrist, and flipped his hand over to see a message scrolling along the palm monitor. Excellent! The prey had been found at last!
Quickly typing instructions on his bare wrist, Delphi waited impatiently as the droid accessed circuits undisturbed for a century. Come on, come on…
Now, a roster of available redoubts was displayed. Frowning at the list, Delphi chose one at random. It was a base he had never been to before because it was on the Forbidden list. But this was a day for breaking the rules, and once the process had started he saw little reason to be cautious now.
“Get ready, traitor,” Delphi muttered, his heart quickening to the thrill of the hunt. “Here I come….”
RYAN CHECKED to make sure that everybody was safely inside the unit and seated on the floor.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah, ready as we’ll ever be,” J.B. mumbled, removing his glasses and tucking them safely away in a pocket. The jumps always hit the companions hard, often sending them to the floor puking out their guts from the shock and pain of the instantaneous transference. Doubling over, J.B.’s glasses had once bent when they flew off his face and someone had stepped on them. It had taken him days to repair the frames, and he subsequently swore that sort of triple-stupe mistake would never happen again. His backup glasses were functional, but unflattering.
“Once more into the breach, dear friends,” Doc said in that singsong quality that meant he was quoting something.
Mildred merely snorted at the Shakespearean reference, and Ryan slammed the door shut. As he hurried to sit next to Krysty, a fine mist swirled upward from the disks on the floor to engulf the companions, mists from the ceiling descended upon them. They braced themselves for the expected snap of tiny sparks to crackle over their exposed skin. But instead, there was only a soothing warmth that spread through their bodies as the thickening mist began to swirl faster with every heartbeat.
What in nuking hell? Ryan thought in confusion. Something didn’t feel right. After so many jumps, there was a certain “sameness” that the companions had come to expect. So anything out of the norm was suspicious. Was the mat-trans broken? Were they being sent somewhere, or worse, were they going nowhere? Mebbe the computer was having a malfunc. Nuking hell, he had to stop this jump!
Frantically trying to stand to reach the door, Ryan felt the floor drop away and he knew that he had been just a split second too slow. The jump had begun.
As gently as falling through a cloud, the terrified companions descended into the artificial forever of the matter transfer, and vanished from sight.