James Axler: Crater Lake

"Hey, come look here!" he shouted, stopping everyone in their tracks. "Fucking furs."

Dozens of furs in all shapes and sizes hung on black plastic racks, with color-coded tags to indicate size. Some of them had fallen to the dusty floor. Perhaps they had lain there ever since some desperate order had halted the departure of the redoubt's garrison.

Lori dived in, vanishing among the serried rows of long coats. Occasionally they could see an arm stretching up as she tried one on, or a muttered curse when one wasn't the right size. Ryan was happy with his own suede coat with the white fur trim, but all of the others helped themselves to a new cold-weather coat.

Finn and J.B. picked identical coats in dark gray leather, with heavy collars in silky black fur. Lori seemed satisfied with one that was a dazzling white, until Doc whispered something in her ear. Looking crestfallen, she returned to the racks, eventually emerging with a more muted, gray coat in neat fur. Doc again whispered something to her, and her face became radiant, blushing with delight.

Doc Tanner picked a strange coat. It looked as if it had been stitched together from a variety of different pelts — some brown, some black, some gray. But its seedy grandeur somehow lent him a strange dignity, and nobody even grinned at him.

Krysty chose a coat that dropped just to the knees. It was a fine fur that was so black it was almost deep blue, the sheen reflecting the strips of overhead lights. Ryan made sure that no one picked an unwieldy coat that was too long or bulky.

Jak Lauren took ages, disappearing at the back of the room, where they could hear his feverish scurrying. Racks were overturned, and metal hangers rattled on the floor. Eventually he reappeared, wearing exactly the same clothes as before, except that now he wore, under his ragged camouflage vest and pants, a bizarre waistcoat of fur, with ragged holes where sleeves had been.

"Had to cut fucker with knife," he said, panting with the efforts of his exertion. "Arms too long."

They were standing outside the locked door. J.B. could hardly contain his enthusiasm for opening it and finding what wonders lay inside the rows of packing cases. "It's got to be good. Something real special that they left till last. Mebbe some secret blasters they were working on. Scopes. Missile launchers. Laser sights. Portable rail guns with megajoule power sources. Grens. New kinds of grens. Handblasters with heat sensors. Got to be good. All in neat rows, greased and packed, ready to take out and use."

It was an unusually long speech for the normally taciturn Armorer. His sallow face was alight with eagerness, his battered fedora pushed back off his high forehead. He squinted through the armaglass slit in the steel.

"Got to be good. Must be fifty cases there. All look the same."

They stared at the door. Ryan noticed that someone had scratched in the concrete, just to the left of the hinges, "Remember Charlie and remember Baker." He'd seen graffiti like that before in redoubts. Generally it was either names or crudely sexual.

"Move back and I'll blow the lock," J.B. said, leveling his mini-Uzi.

"Someone's tried kicking it in," Krysty observed, pointing at chips in the surround to the door. "Maybe in the rush they had to leave it, 'cos they lost the keys."

"Could be," Ryan said. He could feel a tremor of excitement that he always felt in redoubts. To be where no man had been for a hundred years was inevitably thrilling. And with those rows of cases waiting to be opened... The garrison of a large redoubt could easily have run to several thousand personnel, male and female. That meant a lot of armaments.

"Shall I blow it?" J.B. asked.

Ryan glanced around. The only danger was from bullets ricocheting off the door, spitting anywhere in the maze of stone and metal. "Got any plas left?"

"Little. Safer to do it that way?"

"Yeah."

Jak watched, fascinated, as the slightly built Armorer fumbled at the lining of his jacket and peeled out a small strip of colorless plastic explosive. He removed a tiny primer, with built-in rudimentary timer, from the cuff of his pants. Pushing them together against the lock, he pressed the start button on the timer.

"Set on fifteen. Go."

They scurried to an antechamber for cover, kneeling, hands pressed tightly over ears. Ryan instructed Jak to keep his mouth open to minimize the effects of the detonation in a confined space. He and Krysty crunched together, eyes shut, making themselves as small as possible.

The sound of the explosion was surprisingly soft and muffled. They felt the shock wave try to lift them from the floor. Dust billowed everywhere, making them all cough and splutter.

"Open," J.B. shouted as they rushed to join him. The plas-ex had been used with great skill. The force of the explosion had been just sufficient to take out a section of the doorframe, ripping the lock apart. The door responded to a gentle push from the Armorer's hand.

The crates were all identical, about four feet square, with a series of cipher letters and numbers stenciled along each side. But no clues were evident as to what they might contain. Ryan looked around the sealed room, seeing that a rectangular notice board on the left-hand wall had a frayed magazine cutting pinned to it. It had no heading and no date.

The others gathered around the wooden chests, discussing what they might hold. The consensus of opinion was that it would be weapons. Finnegan waxed lyrical about what they'd look like, saying, "Rows of blasters, in nests of grease and oil, stacked one atop the other."

Ryan read the short cutting aloud. " 'Straps have to be strong. Seen some men pull so hard against them that they've broken their own wrist and ankle bones. The first shock throws them forward. Folks don't know, less'n they've seen it for themselves. The eyes come out so far you think they're going to burst from the sockets. Tongue protrudes and starts turning black, and a few wisps of smoke come from it. Times the current doesn't do the job first time, so it takes a couple more jolts. Couple more rides on Old Smoky is what I call it. Hairs up the nose smolder an' all, and the teeth crack with the power. Fillings drop right out. Makes me laugh fit to bust when I think of that part. Worst is the smell. Land o' Goshen, it's terrible. Stench of burning, scorched flesh. Pungent, someone once said. I put Vaseline up my nostrils so I can't catch it so bad. But it gets in your clothes. After a bad one, I have to take my coveralls out back of home and burn them. I claim that on the County, you understand. Course, they always piss and shit themselves. Every one. You get used to it. I counted back the other day an' I've fried me over five hundred in the last four years. Beats all, don't it?'"

"What's that you're reading?" Krysty Wroth asked, turning from the others.

"Nothing," Ryan said, pulling the paper off the board and crumpling it in his hand, letting the dry shards join the dust on the floor.

"Come on, we'll open 'em up." J.B. was more enthused than Ryan had seen him in a long while. Last time he'd been so eager was when they'd found a pile of old gun magazines and manuals in a redoubt near Billings.

"Sure," Ryan said.

There was a crowbar leaning against the nearest case. The Armorer took it up and started to jimmy open the closest chest, tearing the nails out, splintering the white wood. Inside was a layer of greased foil, and J.B. pulled that away so they could see what was inside.

They opened five cases altogether, but they were all the same. Ryan couldn't stop laughing at the look on J.B.'s face. There they were, all in rows, all in a thin coat of grease to protect them through eternity and beyond.

Something like three hundred thousand black plastic zippers.