Jak Lauren lay face down in a stinking pool of his own vomit; Doc Tanner was bleeding copiously from the nose, the streaks of crimson dribbling over his neck and chest; J. B. Dix was even more sallow than usual, his eyes rolled up sightlessly in their sockets, and he was breathing fast and light through his open mouth; Krysty Wroth had managed to slide into a self-induced trance, deliberately putting herself into a coma to take away the overpowering pressures of a mat-trans jump. Her breath was shallow and slow, and her heartbeat had dropped to less than a quarter of normal.
Ryan Cawdor's powers of recovery were astounding. His body was honed to a razored perfection, ready for any threat, but even he suffered badly from the jumps. And to have to make a second jump so soon after the first was devastating.
His brain felt as if a high-velocity .44 had entered through his right temple and exited somewhere near the base of his skull, blowing a section of bone away and sucking most of his brains out through the exit wound.
He coughed, then groaned softly at the agonizing pain it caused him. He tried to open his eye, but the lancing white light made him close it again immediately. All he wanted to do was to curl up in a ball and lie there on the floor for a few weeks. His fingers were numbed, and his teeth felt loose in the gums.
Very cautiously he eased his eye open again, wincing at the light. This time he managed to keep it from closing. The walls of the chamber were a dull brown color, and there seemed only a dim light beyond them. The disks in floor and ceiling were already fading, and he could taste the bitterness of iron on his tongue. Ryan glanced around at the others.
Krysty looked fine. Pale and drawn, but clearly under control. As he tried to sit up, she moved, shuddering slightly and opening her eyes. Her tumbled mane of bright red hair was curled tightly about her neck and shoulders. The hair was sentient and reacted to whatever was going on. Once Krysty was recovered from the jump it would uncurl and fall naturally down her back.
"Hi, lover."
Ryan risked a nod. "You?"
"Been worse." She paused. "Been better. How about you?"
"Same."
Krysty looked around. "What in Gaia's name happened, Ryan? The Russkie?"
"Zimyanin attacked me during the first jump. Both blacked out. Came around. He got out and slammed the door shut."
"And we jumped again? No wonder I feel so lousy. Like a mutie rattler's been sleeping in my head for three months."
Ryan managed to lever himself up until he was sitting with his back flat against the cold glass wall of the chamber.
"Heard a coupla shots as I went under and saw some kind of... something real big. Mebbe the Russkie's bought the farm this time."
"Guess we'll never know." The voice came from J. B. Dix, who'd also come around. "Wouldn't much like having that mean Red mother hiking around Deathlands after us."
"Assuming we're inDeathlands," Krysty said. She sniffed the cool damp air. "Don't much like the smell of this place. Like coming around in the middle of an old, buried tomb."
Krysty's mutie sense picked up on "feelings," and Ryan had learned over their months together to trust her.
"Danger?" he asked.
"Mebbe. Not close. I reckon we should see to Jak and Doc."
The albino boy was showing signs of coming around. His legs moved feebly, like a drowning kitten's, and he struggled to open his pale red eyes. As Krysty stooped to help him, he coughed and spit, clearing his throat of the clogging bile. He sat up unaided and wiped at his smeared face with the sleeve of his fur coat.
"We jump two times or dream it? Head feels dead inside."
"We jumped twice. One of the Russians came in with us then escaped when we made the first jump. He shut the door and sent us off again."
Jak nodded at Ryan's explanation. "Yeah," he muttered. "Fuck him."
"Doc doesn't look in fighting shape," J.B. remarked.
"The old man always takes a jump hardest of all," Krysty commented. "Good job Rick went the way he did. He'd never have made another jump in that kind of shape."
The memory of the man who'd briefly lived, traveled and fought with them brought a silence. Rick Ginsberg had been a freezie, someone who'd suffered from a serious illness and had been surgically frozen in the last months before the long winters began. Ryan and his friends had been able to revive Rick. The freezie had told them about two other cryonic centers in Deathlands, and Ryan's wish was to try to locate one or both. It was possible that the companions would benefit from these freezies' skills, if more of them could be successfully thawed.
"Oh! By the three Kennedys! Have I been bingeing with a bottle or two?" The rich, sonorous voice of Doc Tanner broke the stillness.
"You got bloodied nose, Doc," Jak said. He stood up unsteadily, bracing himself with a hand against the wall.
"Could be, sonny. Could be." Doc touched his lips and peered shortsightedly at his crimson-slobbered fingers. "Indeed you are correct. Tapped the claret, have I not? First blood to Theophilus Algernon Tanner, Esquire. Upon my soul, but I fear that someone has removed my poor head and replaced it with a miniature maelstrom."
"Your mouth, Doc," Ryan said.
"Yes, my dear friend?"
"Wipe the blood off of it. Then close it."
It took better than half an hour before Ryan was convinced that everyone was well enough to take the chance of opening the heavy door. Previous experiences had quickly taught them the need for extreme caution when moving out into one of the redoubts, hidden fortresses that had been keystones in the defense system of the old United States. Gateways within the redoubts had the capability of transporting human beings instantly from one location to another by means of mat-trans chambers.
But the nuclear holocaust of 2001 had destroyed some of the redoubts and buried others. Still more had remained hidden among the glowing hot spots of the Deathlands.
Though Ryan and his comrades had made many jumps, they still had found no way of actually controlling their destinations. To use a gateway was, in every sense, to leap into the darkness.
"Ready?"
They all nodded. The chamber felt dank, and breath misted in the cold air. Everyone kept on the furs they'd acquired during their time in Russia. Zorro was still whimpering and when put down would huddle against his master. Eventually Doc picked up the puppy and stuffed him inside his coat.
"Ride along with me, little fellow," he said. "Though I confess that those who have been close to me have met a sorry end."
"Blasters ready?" Ryan held his own SIG-Sauer in his right hand. The automatic G-12 Heckler & Koch caseless rifle was slung across his broad shoulders, and the long-bladed panga was sheathed at his belt.
Krysty, standing next to him, held her silvered, thirteen-shot P7A Heckler & Koch pistol; J.B., the Armorer, had his trusty Steyr AUG 5.6 mm blaster; Jak held his enormous satin-finish .357 Magnum, which looked too big for him to handle; Doc, intent on the dog, left his Le Mat in its holster.
"Let's go," Ryan said.
The door swung open on stiff hinges, revealing a small bare anteroom. The room beyond that was also closed, and Ryan pushed at it with his hand.
"Black dust!" J.B. exclaimed, wrinkling his nose. "That's a corpse stink, if ever I smelled it. Long dead and long rotted."
Krysty touched Ryan on the arm. "There's bad news out there, lover. I can feel it, real strong. And not far away."
"Muties?" he asked.
"Could be."
"Air itself tastes dead," J.B. said. "Don't relish another jump, but I've been better places than this."
"I was once privileged to be present at the opening of the catafalque of some ancient Egyptian priest. Apthak... something or other. I disremember his name. It had been sealed for centuries. This redoubt has much the same odor." Doc shook his head. The blood had clotted, dark brown, on his grizzled chin, making him look as though he'd been in a fight. He was trembling with fatigue as he stood with the others.
"Me first?" Jak asked.
"Yeah. Watch your step. Door's real stiff. Could be anything behind it."
The hinges were damaged and squealed alarmingly as the teenager heaved against them. The door opened a few more inches then stuck again.
The nuke-plant that ran every redoubt was still ticking over, somewhere deep in the bowels of the military complex, supplying power and keeping the gateway functioning. Beyond the half-open door they could make out the same kind of control room that they'd seen in other redoubts. But it was poorly lit, and the smell was growing ever stronger,
"Give it a good big push, kid," J.B. urged, and received a glare from the boy.
"Don't call me fucking kid, old man!" Jak snarled, white hair pasted to his forehead.
He set his scrawny shoulder to the paneled metal and braced himself against the concrete floor, gritting his teeth and straining at the task. Ryan took a half step forward to help the boy, but a sideways glance from the crimson, feral eyes stopped him dead.
Steel grated on stone, and the door moved slowly back, revealing the control area, with its familiar banks of chattering comp-consoles.
"Some of them aren't working," Krysty observed. "I don't much like the look of that."
Doc followed Jak into the larger room, staring around with an expression of fascinated horror and amazement.
"How in tarnation did we make this jump? Pile of rusting scrap like this shouldn't have jumped a fly across three inches of tabletop. Half these contacts are blown." He ran a finger across some of the banks of dead machinery. "Tell you what, my dear companions. If we ever leave here and arrive anywhere safely it will be the greatest miracle since Teddy's election. Dreadful neglect here."
"Hasn't been dusted in the best part of a hundred years, Doc," Krysty said, tapping one of the displays of flickering, fading lights with the barrel of her blaster.
Immediately the entire row of digital displays went blank. There was a sound like a distant turbine running down and shedding blades, and half of the overhead strip lights went dark.
"Don't do that again!" Ryan snapped. "That's double-stupe, Krysty!"
"Sorry. Looks like you're ace on the line, Doc. This place is ready to lie down and die, right here in front of us."
"Think we should wait here and recover some strength? I got me the feeling that whatever's out beyond the main entrance door isn't going to be smiling news."
"I think we all got that feeling, J.B.," Ryan agreed. "Doesn't look like there's any food or water around here. And we're not exactly overloaded."
"You want to go out there, lover?" Krysty asked.
"I don't wantto. If you got a rock and a hard place, you pick the hard place. Let's move out of here. J.B., take the main door."
There was a note of bleak determination in Ryan's voice that they all recognized.
"Sure." The Armorer moved light-footed between the rows of long-abandoned desks, toward the heavy double doors that sealed off the mat-trans unit from the rest of the redoubt.
Stenciled on the wall beside them was the faint message: 352 Open. 253 Close.
"Nothing like a secret code that no son of a bitch can remember." Ryan grinned. "Green lever's down. Lift it and press the buttons."
"Here come the discards and retards," Doc muttered. "Gentlemen rankers, all out on... Can't recall. Just remember that we were to be damned for all of eternity."
The rambling stopped when he caught Ryan's glance. It was a worry that the old man's mind still sometimes slipped a couple of notches, though he was better than when Ryan, Krysty and J.B. had first met him. Then it had been ten parts madness to a smattering of sanity.
The scientists who'd established matter-transmitting had also dabbled in temporal transfer — time jumps. In years of ultrasecret experiments there had only been one successful trawling of a live human being from the past... and a lot of hideously pulped abortions of failure.
The one success, nearly, had been Doc Tanner, picked out of November 1896 where he'd been a happily married man with two young children and dumped a century, then two, later. He made himself such a nuisance that he was eventually retrawled forward another hundred years.
None of that made for a well-balanced, incisive mind.
Doc nodded to himself, lost in some half world of his own, as J.B. threw the lever and coded in the numbers. The door, operated by its antique mechanism, began to move slowly upward.
"Fucking stink!" Jak gagged.
As the door made its ponderous ascent, the stench came seeping in below it, almost like a visible tide wave — rotten flesh and endless nauseating decay.
"No," Krysty whispered. "No, Ryan. Something's out there."
"Yeah, but it's gotta be long dead."
The door shuddered to a halt, about three-quarters open. Beyond it they could see only that the passage was completely dark. The light from behind them spilled out, then was swallowed by the stygian blackness.
"Need lamps," J.B. said.
"Nothing." Jak looked at Ryan for orders.
"You all wait here. I'll go a ways up the corridor and see what I find."
Within five paces the darkness absorbed him.
"Let it lie, lover," Krysty called, her voice muffled.
Ryan turned to reply, and was instantly knocked to the cold damp floor.