The heat outside the chamber was even more striking and oppressive.
"Feels like home," Jak said. "Good Louisiana warm and wet."
"Hot as the hobs of Hades." Krysty sighed. "Don't rightly know what that means, but Uncle Tyas McCann used to say it in summer back in Harmony."
Ryan led them into the anteroom that they'd come to expect. Most of them had been evacuated and bare, showing signs that there'd been warning in some redoubts of the sudden conflict of 2001.
But this particular room looked as though it had been abandoned about ten minutes ago. The small square table held four hands of cards, and a shelf contained some mugs and a tattered book. There were posters on the walls, faded and torn, revealing their age.
The friends paused and looked around. Only Doc showed no interest, head drooping on his breast, eyes dull. It looked as though he'd have slumped like a discarded puppet if Jak and Krysty hadn't been supporting him.
Ryan always felt a buzz of excitement at a moment like this. To find some sort of time capsule, undisturbed for a century, meant a thrill of glimpsing the lost past through this peephole.
He looked first at the posters. One showed a Russian hammer and sickle, both dripping gobbets of blood, descending toward the skyscrapers of an American city. A young man stood legs apart, fists raised, ready to try to combat and deflect them. The caption beneath the picture was vaguely familiar to Ryan, who'd seen it before:
"Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country."
Two of the other posters were what he knew used to be called pinups. One depicted a tall blonde, sitting astride a huge black and chrome two-wheel wag. She wore a pair of thigh-length boots in dark green leather. Other than the boots she wore only a bright smile. On the other wall was a life-size poster of a heavily muscled, bronzed man, wearing a smile similar to the woman's. But he wasn't even wearing boots. The caption simply said: Stud Study X.
Doc was near collapse, and Krysty helped him to sit down at the table, where he immediately laid his head on his folded arms.
Ryan looked at the table. On one corner was a pile of small change that looked as if it had gotten rained on — the metal had sprouted a mold. "They were playing poker when the sirens sounded. Or the bells. Or whatever it was that told them dark night was on its way."
Jak picked up one of the hands of cards. "Two pairs. Queens an' fours."
Krysty smiled. "This hand won't beat you, Jak." She turned the cards over. "Pair of threes. Like I always say. There's some you lose, and there's some you draw."
"I win," J.B. said, flipping over the third hand of cards. Three sixes. "Beat that, Ryan. If you can."
One by one Ryan picked up the moist, rotting playing cards and turned them over. "Eight of clubs, ace of spades, eight of spades, ace of hearts."
"Still not good enough," the Armorer told him, wiping moisture from his glasses. "Come on, Ryan. Turn it and see what you got."
"I reckon it'll be good enough to beat you. Want a bet on it?"
"With what? Last time I had a fistful of jack was... was so long ago I can't even remember."
"Bet you first go at the next hot water we find," Ryan suggested. "How's that?"
"You got it. Turn the card." The rectangle of pasteboard was clammy to the touch. "Ace of clubs. A full house. Aces on eights. I win, J.B., I win."
"Dead man's hand," Doc Tanner announced in a frail, uncertain voice.
"How's that?" Krysty asked.
"Same hand Bill Hickok was holding when he was gunned down from behind. I saw him once. Out in Deadwood. I was about seven years of age. Didn't look like a hero to me. Blind as a bat, though bats see fine in the night. Dark glasses. Held aces on eights when he was shot down. Mount Moriah cemetery, if I recall it right."
The voice faded away into stillness. Ryan sat down opposite the old man and tried to catch his eye. "Doc, you feeling better?"
"Dead man, Emily, my dear. Only alive in the dear days of the past."
"Doc?"
This time there was no reply.
At a word from Ryan, Jak slipped back into the chamber and removed the corpse of little Zorro, tucking it out of sight behind a corner cupboard in the anteroom. It seemed best to do what could be done to ease Doc's mind. His seeing the puppy dead wasn't going to be a help — though Ryan was concerned that the body would stink and rot too fast in the humidity and heat.
Krysty and J.B. helped the old man to his feet again, receiving a puzzled smile for their efforts. They led him into the control room.
"Don't know how all this still works," J.B. stated, shaking his head. "Must be damned well sealed to keep dry."
Doc was propped up at a desk, where he immediately fell deeply asleep. The others wandered around the large room, past the display boards, gauges and dials, the dancing arrows and whirling comp-wheels. The thousands of lights — green, amber, red and blue — and coded displays of digital activity suggested to Ryan that this might also be the control room for the entire redoubt, and linked to the deep-buried eternal nuke-power source.
The one-eyed man ran a finger along the top of one of the master consoles, wrinkling his forehead and sighing as he looked at the smear of green lichen on his skin. As the Armorer had said, it was astounding that everything seemed to be working as well as it was.
"Dump all the coats here," he said.
"From the icebox into the frying pan," Krysty commented as she dropped her fur coat.
After some consideration, Ryan shrugged off his beloved fur-collared coat and discarded the silk scarf with its weighted ends, which left him in a brown shirt and gray pants. J.B. was dressed identically. Krysty had on her brown overalls and chisel-toe Western boots. Jak wore gray pants and his ragged vest, made from different-colored strips of canvas and leather. Fragments of razored steel had been sewn into it.
Doc kept on his frock coat and knee breeches.
All of them retained their assorted blasters and steels.
The main doors that would open into the rest of the military complex operated on the same code as all the others. But this time they worked with an impressive silent efficiency, the green lever producing the faintest hiss of pneumatic power as the hugely thick door slid upward.
Leaving Doc slumped in his chair, the others ringed the entrance, blasters cocked and ready. Though it had been warm enough before, the wave of air that battered them through the open doorway was positively tropical in its heat and humidity.
"Wow! Fucking triple-hotter'n home." Jak whistled.
"Where do you think we are, lover?" Krysty asked. "Inside a volcano that's ready to blow?"
"How about Hawaii?" J.B. suggested, tasting the air like a questing lizard. "Could have jumped the Pacific?"
Ryan shook his head. "Let's move real careful, people. We can find out where we are, once we get out into the open."
The air felt slippery, instantly bathing all of them in sweat. Krysty heard a thin, high-pitched buzzing, and slapped quickly at her arm. "Gaia! That little bastard bit sharp." She showed the others the smear of blood, just above the wrist, and the pulped corpse of an iridescent insect. It was more than an inch long, with wings of veiled lace.
"Better get Doc out and close the sec doors again," Ryan said. "Don't want to open it up to any mutie creature out here. Jak, help Doc. J.B., throw the lock."
The sec door slid softly into place, making the gateway section of the complex secure against intruders. Of any sort.
The corridor was much like those they'd encountered in other redoubts. The arched ceiling, with concealed lighting, was twelve feet high and about fifteen feet wide. As they began to follow a slight rise, their boots slithered through the green mold that coated floor, walls and ceiling.
There were no side passages and no entrances to the main corridor. Twice they walked beneath sec cameras. At one time the video equipment would have been in motion, constantly swinging up and down and from left to right. Now the cameras seemed locked in place, immovable. Ryan's guess was that the green moss had built up on the mountings over the years and had clogged their mechanism.
Doc had been leaning heavily on Jak's arm, his feet dragging, slowing their progress. But he suddenly shrugged off the boy's help with an imperious gesture of dismissal. "I have no need of your aid, my good man! If I had a few copper coins I would give them to you in order to rid myself of your importuning. Are there no workhouses for the poor?"
"An' fuck you too, Doc," the albino spit.
"Jak," Ryan cautioned.
"What?"
"His mind's been pushed sideways by that last jump. He doesn't know what he's saying. Just keep a careful eye on him."
"Yeah, yeah. Sure."
The air felt hotter, and the slime around their feet grew thicker and wetter. The corridor dipped, and the companions found themselves wading in several inches of tepid wafer.
Something wriggled and splashed just ahead of J.B., making him stop and probe the dimness with the barrel of his Heckler & Koch. But the movement ceased.
Several times they heard the humming of insects, but the attack on Krysty wasn't repeated.
They traveled another few hundred yards without encountering side passages or doorways. Ryan wanted to try to get into the main part of the redoubt, so that they could scavenge for food and drink, maybe top up on ammo. And it would be so good to have a long hot wash.
Over the years Ryan had seen quite a few old vids and read books and mags from the predark times. It constantly amused and amazed him how often people seemed to bathe, and wash their hair. Women in some of the vids seemed to do nothing but wash their hair and then strip off to shower or bathe. Often a preliminary for lovemaking, Ryan had noticed.
Generally the only place in Deathlands to be sure of a hot bath was in a gaudy house with a whore to scrub at you with a cake of lye soap. But the nature of the business meant that you might be the thirtieth person using the same scummy water.
"These caves are becoming tedious, Emily," Doc said loudly. "I shall endeavor to obtain egress for us as soon as I possibly can."
"He might be part-stupe at the moment," Krysty said, grinning, "but I reckon I wouldn't mind getting out of here. Another half hour and I'll be growing mold on the inside of my eyes."
Jak was in the lead and he stopped suddenly, holding up a hand. "What is it?"
"Think see lighter ahead. But... hear weird noise." Krysty half closed her eyes, concentrating on listening. She shook her head for a moment, then, her whole body stiffening, turned to Ryan. "Insects."
"What? Like these little bastards around us?" Jak answered. "No. Lots!"
"He's right, lover. Lots. Sounds to me like the largest swarm of something coming our way. Sounds like the biggest bees ever spawned."
"Bees?" Doc asked with a note of bland curiosity in his voice. "Does this mean there will be honey for tea?"
Everyone ignored him.
The moss-lined walls of the corridor seemed to close in on them, as if trying to suck them into a dark maw. In the silence, Ryan could finally hear the noise, which was a deep and insistent hum with a high overtone of urgency to it. The corridor began to vibrate, and Ryan could even feel the hum deep in marrow of his bones.
There was a prickling of the short hairs at his nape that was the closest he'd ever come to feeling fear.
"Killer bees," J.B. said flatly. "Seen them before. Remember that ville down on the Gulf, Ryan, five years back?"
Ryan remembered the frightening silence and the bloated corpses, bodies covered with a mass of lethal stings. Men, women, children and animals — all dead, victims of predators less than an inch long. Ryan recalled once seeing an old mag story about the way the bees had been bred someplace in South America and had come raiding north.
"What do we do?" Krysty asked. "They'll hit us way before we get back to the mat-trans."
Ryan nodded. "Back's no good. Can't get over or around. Only chance is a door ahead somewhere. J.B. and Jak, take Doc. Carry him if you have to."
He led the way at a fast trot, his rifle looped over his shoulder. One thing was sure — that a blaster wouldn't be much help against millions of murderous insects.
The humming grew louder.
Doc had virtually collapsed, hanging between Jak and the Armorer, the toes of his boots furrowing through the clogging lichen.
"There," Krysty panted at his shoulder, pointing to the right-hand side of the corridor. Even in the dim light Ryan could make out the rectangular shape of a doorway, with a comp-control panel recessed in the concrete halfway up.
The humming rose in pitch, as though the swarm could scent intruders in their warm, green world.
"It's number-coded," Krysty stated flatly.
It was also hopelessly blocked with the intruding fingers of feathery moss.
J.B. and Jak arrived at the doorway, hauling Doc Tanner between them. Both looked at the sec lock, neither said a word. The noise of the insects was almost deafening. The corridor ran straight ahead for a couple of hundred yards before it forked left. Ryan stared into the shadows, suddenly realizing that the advance flight of the swarm was in sight. A shimmering blur of vicious movement raced toward them, heartbeats away.