James Axler - Death Hunt

The obliquity of the jump was something Ryan welcomed.

The deviation, however, didn’t last long.

He was haunted by dreams, not the surreal nightmares of a mat-trans jump, the effect of every atom being broken, twisted and turned into an electron stream shot from one unit to another before being painfully reassembled. Those kinds of nightmares, at least, had shape to them. They were sickening, and exposed every fear and loathing contained within the human brain. But they were just nightmares, just the subconscious dredging up the detritus and spewing it out in protest of the battering it was taking from the jump.

These hauntings were worse. They weren’t nightmares. They weren’t even dreams: neither in the sense of having coherence nor in having narrative; not even the distorted logic of most dreams. Instead, they were fragments: wisps as much as the white mist that had swirled around him before he’d finally passed out, with as much substance and with as much seemingly benign malevolence.

A succession of images and memories passed through his brain like a cavalcade; Dean as a small boy—absurd, this, as Ryan hadn’t known of Dean until the boy was nine—Sharona as she was before the rad sickness; the Brody school in which he had enrolled the lad when he had found him again. The circumstances of his rejoining their party the last time, after being used as a gladiator in a sport of barons. What had happened since: snatching him from Jenna, the twisted wife of Baron Alien, who had mixed old-occult practices and the old tech nuke to make her own new way of promulgating a master race…Fireblast, but Ryan had thought Dean had been lost forever.

The last image ripped from his head and held up in front of him was of Dean as he had last seen him: at rest in the redoubt, with plans for the next day. Plans to explore the underground base, to join his father and friends in stripping it before moving on to their next location, the next step in their search for…

Well, for what? What was there now, beyond survival? Twice before Ryan had found his son and then lost him. Was there to be a third chance?

Ryan opened his eye with the feeling that, should he part his lips, his intestines would vomit themselves out through his mouth and the pressure would blow his brains down through his nose.

Except, this time, he wouldn’t fight it and he wouldn’t care.

But he did. The nausea and sense of being turned inside out, the pounding in his skull, as some kind of consciousness returned…served to kick in his sense of survival. Operating on instinct rather than intellect, he pulled himself together, battling to regain the full use of all his senses as rapidly as possibly, lest the mat-trans chamber be vulnerable in any way, leaving them open to attack. He was first on his feet and the first to organize the six companions into a party capable of securing the immediate area.

As always, it was Jak and Doc who took longest to recover from the jump. Doc’s body and mind had been through too much to withstand the jumps, but still the seemingly old man’s stubbornness pulled him through. As for Jak, he was tough, but there was something in him that didn’t respond to the jumps. The albino was always the last to come around, puking painfully as his body readjusted.

J.B. and Mildred exchanged concerned glances as they secured the area. Ryan, perfunctory about the operation, made himself go through the motions, seemingly not as sharp as usual. Fortunately, Krysty could feel the darkness coming off him, which had nothing to do with her doomie sense and everything to do with her feelings for the one-eyed man, and was able to cover and compensate.

A thorough recce determined that the redoubt was secure, so they settled in for some rest before heading into the outside world. In itself, the redoubt had been no problem. Deserted, it had remained untouched since the advent of skydark. The only signs of passing time were the layer of dust that had gathered where the gently wheezing air-conditioners had slowly begun to wind down without continuous maintenance. The air was slightly stale and some of the comps had cut out where transistors and fuses had died of age.

As with most of the redoubts they had visited, there was no sign of life. Unlike many of those other redoubts, there was little sign that the land around the installation had suffered much upheaval. The levels they explored showed little other than minor cracks in the reinforced walls and ceilings.

And unlike other bases, this one hadn’t been completely stripped. The armory would replenish their ammo supply and the clothes stores would provide much-needed new underwear, T-shirts and fatigues for those who wanted them.

The companions rested, then spent a whole day taking inventory and planning their next move. Another good night’s sleep refreshed them enough to tackle the unknown that lay beyond the redoubt. They knew from preliminary recces that the levels were intact up to the surface, that the maps and charts on the walls of some of the offices and comp rooms suggested they were in the northwest of the Deathlands, an area prone to erratic climatic and temperate conditions. All levels to the final exit door were known territory: what lay beyond was in question.

Which was how they found themselves gathered in the kitchen area, waiting for their last meal, Doc’s impatience and anxiety expressed in the way he once again sang old snatches of half-remembered songs and poems.

“How long before we eat? I’m getting antsy waiting down here,” J.B. muttered.

“Yeah—get going. See what face,” Jak agreed.

“It’ll be ready when it’s ready, like everything is,” Ryan commented flatly.

“It’s not like you to get all philosophical on us,” Mildred said with a note of surprise she couldn’t quite disguise.

Ryan shrugged. “Had some time to think, and I’ve had a lot to think about. But, fuck it, you just have to keep on, right?”

“If you say so, lover,” Krysty said gently. “But it doesn’t mean we should give up.”

“Give up what?” Ryan asked. The clearness of his good eye as he fixed it on her betrayed that he was genuinely confused as to her meaning. Was she saying to never give up on looking for Dean, or did she mean never give up on their quest? But what use was looking for the promised land when he would never be settled inside?

“Give up on anything…on each other,” Krysty said.

There was little else to say. Ryan knew she was right. If nothing else, the companions had to look out for one another. They had been through too much together and lost too many friends along the way for it to be any other way.

He nodded. Brief, but enough. “You’re right. Let’s eat, get ourselves together and get out there.”

Within an hour they were ready to go. At least an hour remained until, by their estimation of the time zone, the light would be good enough to call it daybreak.

“Dark night, let’s not leave it any longer. Even if it means watching the sunrise, I need to get out of this pesthole,” J.B. said irritably.

They used the elevators to move them through the base, unwilling to expend unnecessary energy now that they were laden for the journey ahead. There was a silence over the group as they entered the elevator that would take them to the top level. Mildred, looking around at the companions, felt that it would benefit them to get out of the redoubt and into whatever was outside. Action would break the torpor that hung over them.

However, whatever was outside, in fact, was their next problem.

Knowing they were in the northwest, and that the earth and rock around the redoubt hadn’t suffered from shock waves and tremors, they knew little about what was beyond the exit door. As they left the elevator and moved up the gentle incline toward the thick, reinforced exit door, the unknown began to assume importance. Would the exit be blocked by a rockfall? Were they in a valley, or up the side of a hill where the scree may have eroded and thus leave them stranded? Was the redoubt entrance under water? What was waiting on the outside?