James Axler - Crater Lake

"I encountered that halting fellow with the plas-steel fingers, the one who can hardly stammer through his voice box."

"Avian," Krysty said.

"Yeah. Got friendly. One scientist to another. He showed me part of his lab. Near shitting his breeches in case any of the others found out. Had him some pure alcohol. Showed him how to dilute it then mix it with some of that good spring water they've got here. We... Phew, but I fear I have imbibed a little too... I must..."

He pushed them aside and tottered off into the washroom, where they heard him retch. Lori went to follow him, but Ryan shook his head.

"Leave him be, girl. Best thing when you feel like that, with your mouth like a sticky's crotch."

Doc reappeared, looking rather more jaunty, singing some old chant about being born in a dead man's town. The rest became inaudible as he bent double with a coughing fit. His cheeks were almost purple as he fought for breath. Eventually he managed to straighten.

"Upon my soul, I am getting too old for this sort of taradiddle. I shall eschew all alcohol. I swear it."

"Tell us what you found, Doc," Ryan urged.

"Indeed, I will. Dr. Avian and I shared a beverage or two. His capacity was markedly less than my own. After a beaker or two — or three or four, I disremember me how many — well, he stammered out the whole filthy, despicable tale of Wizard's Island. Should be called Devil's Island. How it started. How it's gone on. What they do. What they'd done. And what they will be doing within the next week. We have arrived at what Dr. Avian called a 'nodal point' in the life of the complex. The past hundred years have been research and rehearsal for the next week. And we, ladies and gentlemen, are here. And we must stop it." He coughed again, then looked around at each of them. "There can be no argument. We must stop it."

For a century, Doc Tanner told them, the scientists had stuck to their chosen path with a crazed, religious fervor. As a generation died, the flame burned more brightly. As they bred and interbred, the streak of genetic madness grew broader until all sanity was lost forever.

All that mattered to them was research for Central. And now Doc had found out just where that research was being aimed.

Very simple. Bigger and better methods of total genocide. Ways of wiping the last pitiful survivors of the planet from their fingernail hold on a form of life. As though the slaughter of the long chilling of 2001 hadn't been enough, the scientists of WICSA wanted more.

Doc spoke for a long while, his voice pitched low, drawing the others into the nightmare world he'd accidentally stumbled upon. Once he asked Finn to bring him a glass of water for his dry throat. The rest of the time he just talked.

The scientist operated largely by committee. With their ranks thinning, and with any sense of balance gone forever, they had decided some months ago to test-launch all their new babies into the unknown world beyond the lake. And their arsenal contained all manner of horrific weapons.

Some old-fashioned and conventional.

Some chemical, some biological and some postnuclear in design.

Doc told them that the scientists had perfected a particle beam missile, linked to a rail-gun employing kinetic energy bullets, a missile system, fully integrated, using pulsed laser beam riding and a multifunctional infrared-coherent optical scanner.

The complex was protected from the results of its own toys. Even a high-power electromagnetic pulse that would knock out all conventional electronics and computers wouldn't touch the deeply buried Wizard Island complex.

The scientists were also producing grossly malignant strains of germ culture that could be disseminated by low-yield missiles and used on a fire-and-forget premise. Doc talked about the old Russian-initiated chemical agents, how the scientists had taken them and made them more foul. Particularly there had been research, led by Dr. Tardy, in the uses of tabun and thickened soman.

"The 'dirty' missiles were specifically designed to produce the most fatalities and the highest incidence of terminal cancer in survivors — hundreds of milli-Sieverts pouring out across the ravaged Deathlands.

"I'm not surprised they've developed a successful rail gun," Doc said. "Parallel conducting rails, linked to a direct current. Sliding armature between them that completes the circuit. Plasma-arc materials were always best. Current on. Down one rail and through the armature up the other rail. Acceleration is produced by the Lorentz force. Put the projectile in front of the armature, and it goes with it."

"How fast?" J.B. asked.

"Between fifty and one hundred kilometers per second," Doc replied.

The Armorer laughed at that. "Come on, Doc. That's around three hundred and fifty thousand kilometers an hour. Nothing goes that fast."

"Rail gun does," Doc said simply.

He also told them what Dr. Avian had stammered out to him about some of their germ and drug research. Most of their testing had been on their own breeding stock of muties. One drug, based on an animal anesthetic, had made the victims begin to devour their own bodies. They'd start with their fingers, then pluck their own eyes from the sockets and tear strips of flesh from their own chests and stomachs.

Ryan asked Doc why he wasn't surprised about the success of the scientists with projects like the rail gun.

"They've built on foundations before the long chill. Way back over a hundred years ago, round 1986, the people hereabouts spent a hundred million dollars on rail guns."

The catalog of megadeath and horror went on, voiced in Doc's calm, well-rounded tones. Things that would travel in the air. Some in the water. Some that would come with fire and noise. Some that would come with silent invisibility to coat the skins and eyes of sleeping innocents. The products of one hundred years of the most concentrated work by the scientists — for their beloved Project Eurydice, for the Central they worshipped, blind to the fact that it no longer existed.

"And they aim to release all this? Soon?" Krysty asked when Doc Tanner finished his recital and lay back on his bed with a sigh of exhaustion.

"Next week. That is their plan."

"We'll stop them, won't we, Doc?" Lori asked.

"Indeed we will, light of my life, fire of my loins, sweetness of my heart."

Lori smiled and blushed.

"Just how the fuck do we stop 'em, Doc?" Finn asked, standing up and stretching, moaning as his muscles locked from kneeling on the floor by the old man's bunk bed for too long.

Doc Tanner opened his eyes again. "Kindly allow me to make myself quite clear, ladies and gentlemen. From the drunken mumblings of poor Dr. Avian, who is madder than the craziest of hatters, I have no doubt whatsoever that within the week Dr. Tardy and her comrades will have put their toys out to play. The result will be the end, within less than six months, of all life, not only in Deathlands but throughout the planet."

"You mean people, Doc?" J.B. asked.

"I mean life. Animal and vegetable. There will not even be a speck of bacteria. Earth will be utterly, eternally barren. And that must not happen, even if our own poor lives are pawns in the great game."

"Talk's cheap," Ryan said thoughtfully.

"I am aware of that, my friend. I am also aware that the saying goes on about the price of action being quite colossal."

Ryan glanced at the Armorer. "What d'you think, J.B.? Can we take this place out? It's the strongest redoubt I ever saw."

"May just be the weakest as well," J.B. replied, his glasses reflecting the dim light from the far end of the room.

"How, when and where?" Ryan asked. "That's what the Trader used to say about making a war plan. Not much else matters."

"When is the easiest. Has to be in the next couple of days. We have to spring the kid first."