James Axler: Red Holocaust

"The shoulder, Okie?" Ryan asked.

"Stiffening. Never saw what hit me. Arrow, mebbe? I'm fine. We goin' out?"

Ryan moved toward the heavy door to the gateway, but J.B. stopped him. "Best check the weapons. Sooner's better'n later."

J.B. had been the armorer to the Trader for more than nine years, joining the Trader's group about a year after Ryan Cawdor. Despite his mild, almost scholarly appearance, J.B. Dix knew more about armaments than anyone alive. When the world exploded in 2001, every single industrial center vanished in a nuclear cloud. Since then, the manufacture of guns had virtually ceased. But all over the country were hidden stockpiles that had been packed with the requisite tools of war nearly a century ago. And J.B. Dix knew about all of them.

For a couple of minutes the chamber echoed with the clicking of bolts and the testing of springs. Ejected cartridges rattled brassily on the metal floor as the group tested the action of their handguns and rifles.

Ryan drew his panga from its scabbard, felt the honed edge with his thumb, nodded his approval and slid the eighteen-inch blade back out of sight.

Krysty removed her three slim, leaf-bladed throwing knives from the bandolier across her chest, flicking them casually from hand to hand, finding the points of balance.

Only Doc had no weapon. He dusted off his tall hat and attempted to brush his frock coat clean.

"Ready?" said Ryan, getting nods of approval all around. "Then let's go."

The door opened smoothly with the hiss of an air lock. As he led his group into the adjoining room, Ryan heard the faint sound of a distant siren and stopped to listen, but it faded out.

Rectangular and roughly five paces long by three wide, the room was similar to those that he'd seen in other gateways in other redoubts. There was a plastic table on one side and four shelves on the other and nothing else in the room except a polished copper bowl on the table. Hunaker picked the bowl up and peered inside.

"Nothin'. Mebbe somethin' dried at the bottom. Brown crust like blood."

She banged it back down, and it rang like a temple bell, the noise surprisingly loud. Ryan glared at her, and she tried an apologetic half smile. With Hun that was better than nothing.

The far door was shut. If this was like the other redoubts they'd briefly explored, the room beyond would be the main control site for the matter-transmitter complex. Ryan drew his handgun, the weight of the fifteen-shot SIG-Sauer comforting. Around him, the others readied themselves. That was one of the good things about the Trader's training: nobody needed to be told what to do in this sort of situation. You got your finger on the trigger, nerves stretched tight, eyes moving. It was a time when mistakes got made and men died.

One of the things that Ryan liked about the P-226 was its safety. The pistol fired when you pulled the trigger. Not before. Not when you dropped it. He remembered Brecht, the bearded tail gunner from War Wag Two, dropping his old Beretta 92. That was enough to set it off and the bullet hit Karen Mutter, the oldest woman aboard any of the war wags, in her left buttock. Her scream could have shattered crystal at a half mile.

She had been among the dead at Mocsin.

The door opened on a greased track, and Ryan Cawdor stepped through the doorway. It was just like the others. Consoles of whirring instruments, lights flashing red and blue and green. Banks of comps with tape loops that jittered on as they had for a hundred years. It was a great tribute to the technical skill of the engineers before the Chill that these things still functioned after a century of neglect.

He sniffed the air, trying to catch some clue that might prepare him for what lay behind the massive door to the gateway. His limited experience told him it should open on a corridor that was part of a fortress built like some of the stockpiles that they'd found in the last few years.

He flicked on the rad counter in his lapel. It cheeped and muttered quietly, but there was nothing of the fearful crackling that would indicate a hot spot.

"Clean," said J.B., rubbing a finger along the top of one of the consoles, showing it to Ryan.

"Don't spill any dirty blood, Hennings," warned Finnegan, chuckling at his own joke. The tall black limping along at the rear of the party didn't bother to reply.

To the right of the polished metal door was a green lever set at the single word Closed. Cautiously Ryan eased the lever upward toward the word Open.

There was a whisper of gears meshing, and the door began to move sideways. As soon as it had opened a couple of inches, Ryan stopped it. Very carefully he put his good eye to the gap, looking both ways. Sniffing again.

"Anythin'?" asked Okie.

"No. Blank wall. But... I think... seems like I can smell food."

"Food?" Finnegan quickly repeated.

"Yeah, it smells like meat cooking, but it's very faint, maybe from some days ago."

The rad counter was silent, surprising Ryan. What kind of place was this, he wondered, that had virtually no radiation? Had to be a place where there'd been no fighting. Or where they'd used some low-yield weapons with short half-lives.

"Any idea where the fuck we are, Doc?" he asked, leaving the door barely open.

"Not a clue, my dear fellow. Trouble with these jumps. All the control instructions long gone. They took care that the redoubts held nothing, in case any Russkies came sauntering along. All coded and tucked away. All gone?"

"Russkies?" said Krysty Wroth. "Back in Harmony, my Uncle Tyas McNann used to talk to Peter Maritza, about Russkies."

"Russians," J.B. said. "Used to call 'em reds, 'cause they killed so many people. Huge land out west of us beyond where the coast all fell in. Mean bastards — so the old books I read kept sayin' about 'em."

"I'm openin' the door." Ryan pushed the lever all the way up, and the door slid open, revealing a blank wall and a narrow corridor running in either direction as far as they could see. Not that they could see very far; the passage was gently curved, its ends out of sight.

Joining Ryan, they entered the corridor, fanning out with guns ready. He tasted the air again, still catching the elusive but undeniable scent of cooking.

"I can smell it, too," whispered Finnegan. "Good meat stew and fresh bread. That way," he said, pointing to the left.

"Best go that way," said Hennings. "Fat little tub ain't never wrong 'bout food. He'd ride the tongue of the mouth of hell for a mug of broth."

"Left it is," agreed Ryan, leading them off, his bootheels ringing uncomfortably loudly on the stone floor.

This redoubt was different from the others they'd seen. There were no rooms opening off the main corridor, just a long bare passage with a high domed ceiling. At its zenith, lights were deeply recessed behind thick glass. The walls were a restful cream color, unmarked by the passage of the hundred years or so since the place was built.

"See any tracks, Hun?" Ryan asked, after walking a couple of hundred paces.

The girl knelt, placing a hand on the stone, lowering her head until the stubble of her green hair brushed the floor. The others watched. Hunaker was probably the best scout in the group; the Trader had often complimented her about it.

"It's cleaned," she said. "Swept in the last few days by a buggy with fat, soft tires. There's a layer of rubber down here that's real old, like someone's been drivin' the buggy for fuckin' years. No prints."

Ryan led on, every fifty paces or so noticing a slit in the ceiling. Finally he stopped and stared up at one. "Looks like a heavy-armor shield. Drops down to seal off a section."

"Spotted the mini vid cameras?" asked J.B. He pointed with the muzzle of his Steyr 5.6 to a tiny glass bead on a thin metal stem protruding from the wall where it curved sharply into the ceiling.