James Axler: Crater Lake

Jak Lauren's eyes, pale pink, snapped open.

A fearsome stab of pain jerked through his narrow skull, making him moan and close his eyes again. His fingers curled, nails digging into the palms of his hands. As he moved, leaning against the thick glass walls of the chamber, the tiny shards of razored steel sewn into his clothes sparkled brightly.

"Was blind, but now I see." Why did the words of the old hymn come floating back into his mind at that moment?

He cautiously opened his eyes again, screwing them up against the bright light. There was a pattern of raised disks of polished metal that glowed faintly, the image fading even as he looked at it. The smoked glass walls were deep crimson. That wasn't right. They'd been blue. Blue. He held on to that fact. His head felt awful. Worse than the time — it had been his tenth birthing day just over four years back — when his father had been burrowing. Digging into the cellars of some of the derelict houses on the edges of West Lowellton, near Lafayette, in what had once been Louisiana, his father had found a bottle of something called Southern Comfort — a ribbed bottle of clear glass with a golden cap. He'd given it to Jak. The warm liquor had tasted of peaches and summer, and it had burned his throat. He'd drunk nearly the whole bottle and then been monstrously sick.

But that hadn't been anything compared to this awful swirling feeling. It was as if someone had sucked his brain from the caverned chambers of his skull, leaving only an echoing hollow, or pumped his brain like a pink-gray slurry through the twisted copper tubes of a moonshiner's still, then spat the results back into his skull again.

"How're you doing, Whitey?"

Jak leaned over and groaned. He felt like throwing up. His long hair, purest white, trailed like plumes of lace over his shoulders. He drew in deep breaths, fighting for control. He did not want to show any sign of weakness in front of his six new friends.

"Not friends," he whispered to himself. Friends would betray you. Or they could be used to try to make you turn traitor. "Companions" was better.

"What's that?"

He didn't realize he'd spoken out loud.

"Cold," he said, seeing the fog of his breath. Back home in Louisiana he'd never seen that. Never seen snow or felt the bite of frost. He hadn't really believed that this gateway place would actually work and transmit them somewhere else.

"Yeah. Just sit back and relax. It's a shit feeling, but it'll pass."

"First time's the worst, Jak." That was a woman's voice.

He risked opening his eyes again, keeping his head perfectly still. The armored glass felt cool against his skin. The others were strewn around the room in varying stages of recovery from the mat-trans jump.

Jak's eyes first focused on the girl called Lori. At six feet she topped him by at least nine inches. Her long blond hair tumbled over her shoulders and across the bright red satin blouse that clung to the soft swell of her breasts. The boy's eyes were caught by the nipples, roused by the bitter cold in the gateway, peaking under the thin material. Her long thighs shone beneath the short maroon suede skirt. Jak knew that Lori was only a couple of years older than he was. He'd admired how she bore herself in combat situations, despite wearing the most absurd boots he'd ever seen. They were made of crimson leather, well over her knees, and had incredibly high heels. He had watched with disbelief when she'd run like a gazelle in those boots. Now she moved uneasily, the tiny silver spurs on each heel ringing like bells. At her belt she wore a pearl-handled .22-caliber Walther PPK pistol.

Next to her, one arm protectively around the girl's shoulders, was the oldest of the party, Dr. Theophilus Tanner. He looked around seventy, with grizzled hair and a graying stubble on his cadaverous jaw. He was tall and skinny and wore cracked knee boots splattered with Louisiana swamp mud. The pale blue denim shirt and stained frock coat that he wore seemed like relics, something out of an old, old picture book from well before the Big War. A kerchief with a blue swallow's-eye design protruded from the top pocket of his coat, and a battered stovepipe hat was beside him on the floor.

"I trust you are feeling a little more like rejoining the land of the living, my young friend?" the old man asked in his rich, mellow voice.

"Better," Jak said, nodding.

Doc patted Lori companionably on the arm, dislodging his walking cane from his lap. It was made of polished ebony, with a carved lion's head in silver at its top. Jak knew, because Finnegan had told him, that the stick concealed a rapier-thin sword. The old man also carried a bizarre double-barreled cap and ball pistol called a Le Mat.

Finnegan winked at Jak. The short fat man looked pale from the jump, beads of sweat dappling his sallow forehead. "Way weird, huh, kid?"

Jak nodded. He envied the way Finn dressed, though it did make him look a bit like a sec man — matching sweater and pants in dark blue and high black combat boots with steel-capped toes. One of the things that Jak Lauren knew a lot about was killing and all the ways of doing it. His father had often told him that killing was a craft like any other. And, like any other, it had to be learned.

Jak had learned it well.

In a soft leather sheath on his hip, Finnegan carried a long butcher's cleaver, its edge honed until it sang. In his belt was a 9 mm Model 92 Beretta. Finn's chubby hands cradled a Heckler & Koch submachine gun. Able to fire fifty rounds on either single, triple or continuous, it also sported a trim silencer. Jak had seen blaster catalogs in the undamaged houses where he'd been raised and recognized the weapon as a development from the HK54A2 from the late nineties.

Jak pushed against the wall, trying to stand up. The man next around the circle shook his head. "Give it time."

J. B. Dix, the Armorer, never used four words when three would be enough.

J.B. was the calmest, quietest man Jak Lauren had ever met. Lightly built, he weighed not much more than Jak's own one-twenty. Around forty years old, with a thin face and a yellowish complexion, he wore rimless glasses and habitually sported a battered fedora. Jak noticed he had the trick of never watching you when you expected it and always watching you when you weren't ready.

In a handmade canvas sling at his waist, he carried a mini-Uzi, complemented by a Steyr AUG 5.6 mm handgun on his hip. Jak suspected, though he hadn't seen any evidence of it, that J.B. also had a variety of hidden knives and other weapons about his person, perhaps under his leather jacket and nondescript pants.

"My first jump I thought I was going to die," a woman's voice said.

"Know what you mean, Krysty," J.B. replied, managing a wan smile.

Krysty Wroth scared the shit out of Jak. She was also tall, close to six feet, with a great body that fueled his adolescent fantasies. She had piercing green eyes and the brightest, thickest red hair the boy had ever encountered. Several times since their first meeting, he'd almost sworn the hair had had a bizarre life of its own, the vermilion fronds swaying gently in the breeze when there'd been no wind at all.

Krysty also had the power of seeing. He knew that. She could "feel" what was going to happen. Not like a full doomie, but enough to give a distant early warning of trouble. Also she had staggeringly good hearing and vision. Added to the fact that on occasion she was capable of feats of almost superhuman strength, it was enough to scare anyone.