James Axler - Dectra Chain

"Lori'll help him do that."

"Yeah."

Krysty walked to the bed and folded herself onto it, leaning against Ryan's raised knees. She ran her hand gently up his leg, stroking the inside of his thighs.

Higher.

"What d'you say, lover?" she whispered.

"I say that I can't. Not tonight. I'm sorry, love, but I can't."

Higher, her strong fingers proving him more of a liar.

"I can't, Krysty."

But he could.

The battering on the door of their dormitory sent Ryan's hand scrabbling for the butt of the SIG-Sauer Waster, feeling the chill of the metal against the warmth of his palm.

But the voice outside was Doc's and he relaxed again, Krysty cuddling up against him under the blankets.

"For gentlemen in England now a'bed will think themselves accursed they were not here and hold their manhood cheap... Upon my soul, friend Cawdor, friend Glamis, are you in there with yon wanton maiden, holding your manhood?"

"If Doc knew I was holding it, he'd go fire-red with embarrassment," Krysty whispered.

"He sounds in good voice." He called out to the old man. "You got first food cooked and waiting for us, Doc?"

"Of course. Eggs fresher than tomorrow's sunrise done just the way you like 'em. Fluffy and full of get-up-and-go goodness. Rashers of orange-cured ham so thick you need a forklift to get them to your mouth. Honey-roasted chicken pieces and crisp link patties. Peaches and melons that fell off the trees five minutes ago. Coffee strong enough and black enough to float a six-shooter. Bread that hasn't even finished being baked yet awhile. And butter that was in the cow less than a half hour since."

"Doc," Ryan said, swinging his long legs out of the bed and starting to pull on his pants, "you got yourself a couple of hungry customers. It really is good as you say?"

"Sure! Come and get it! Come and get it!"

A few minutes later Ryan cautiously lifted the brittle off-white plastic spoon to his lips, grimacing at the familiar gray texture and stodgy consistency of the dull mess resting like a sullen reproach in the middle of the plate.

"You lying old bastard!" he shouted. "It's just fucking self-heat, like it always is."

Doc cackled with merriment, eyes glinting at the success of his small joke. "Yes, dear Ryan, yes. But you had a good couple of minutes there anticipating it, didn't you?"

A decent, uninterrupted night's sleep was such a rarity in the Deathlands that all seven of them were in high spirits as they ate their breakfast, with the possible exception of Donfil More, who was tenderly rubbing the lower part of his back, complaining that the bed was a foot too short for him.

"Every bed too short f'you," Jak sniggered.

Apart from Donfil's Smith & Wesson, there didn't seem to be any worthwhile armament sections in the vast, rambling redoubt. Even the first superficial survey of the morning made it clear that the land, wherever they were, had definitely been subject to a major shift and drop. Whole sections of the complex had totally disappeared, corridors ending in blank walls of smeared earth, as though a gigantic knife had hacked through them.

Some of the redoubts that had been totally abandoned at the time of the long winters had been scoured clear with fine combs; every single artifact, notice, instruction or plan had been removed. But that wasn't the case here, as they found when they finished their dreary breakfast and set out to explore.

Every main passage and junction area had its own 3-D holo map of the entire redoubt that showed where they were at any given moment, as well as tappable info about how to move around both inside and outside.

Since there was no sign of any danger, Ryan agreed that they should split up. Doc and Lori were accompanied by Jak, and J.B. went on a recce with the Mescalero shaman. Ryan went with Krysty.

After studying one of the plans, Ryan realized that the gateway section could be totally cut off from the rest of the redoubt, only accessible now down the tottering ladder at the lowest turning of the tide. Once again there came the nagging doubt that he'd closed the outer sealing doors to the mat-trans section.

The map also showed, at the highest floor level near something marked as Main Entrance, a rectangular building called Visitor Center and Initial Indoctrination Module.

"Sounds worth a look, lover?" Krysty suggested.

"Yeah. Doesn't sound like there's all that much around this place worth a look. It's kind of funny in away."

"What is?"

"We've seen redoubts cleared right out, and yet you still can find something mebbe useful around the place. You know?"

"Yeah."

"This looks like it was in use right up till the nukes started falling..."

Krysty shook her head. "More than that, lover. We already saw that there's somebody around somewhere who's still using the redoubt — least the gateways — to jump."

"I know. But apart from the big landslide, this place is filled with food and everything. We could live here the rest of our lives and never need to go outside again."

"Call that living?"

"No. Call it existing. Once saw some old vid, back around bloody Kansas, with some friends who got holed up in a kind of ville. Muties all around them trying to get in. They sort of existed."

"What happened to them?"

Ryan shook his head. "No idea. Vid player broke before we got to the end of the story. I guess they all died."

Krysty reached in her pocket and drew out the small, gleaming black Apache tear, the smooth stone she'd brought with her from the wilderness of the Southwest. She threw it up in the air and caught it, bringing it to her lips for a gentle kiss. "How 'bout we all go up and get us some fresh air. What do you say to that?"

"Yeah," Ryan said with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. "Why not?"

None of the others had found anything of great interest in the parts of the redoubt they'd been exploring. Donfil had been fascinated by a room packed from floor-to-ceiling with boxes of tablets.

"They were called... What was their name, again, J.B.?"

"Tranks and sleepers," the Armorer replied.

"Yes." The shaman nodded. "Pills to make you sleep and pills to stop you worrying. It is not the way of my people to take such things. There is wrong in the balance if such 'pills' are needed."

Doc laughed, still sounding a little weak after his ordeal of the previous day. "One pill to make you larger and one to make you small," he chanted. "Go ask Alice, but I think she doesn't live hereabouts anymore."

Ryan didn't take much notice, figuring the old man's skull was still a couple of rounds short of a full mag.

The dead mutie had obviously been an old loner, a packie, hanging around the corpses of old buildings for what he could suck out of the ruins. By far the greater threat to their safety was the mysterious, unseen stranger who'd been able to manipulate the controls of the gateway with such apparent ease. He could be dangerous.

So Ryan led them along in full firefight order, blasters at the ready, fingers on triggers, nerves drawn as tight as bowstrings. J.B. brought up the rear of their patrol, with the rest of them strung out between.

The journey up toward the surface was trouble-free and uneventful, and they followed the explicit maps at every turn and junction. The walls were gently curved, with the overbright lighting fading to normal as they climbed into the highest levels. It crossed Ryan's mind that it was odd the redoubt contained no corpses. Where were all the dead? The atomic generators had been built and programmed to provide air, heat and light for a thousand years. But they weren't programmed to shift what must have been several hundred iced bodies.