James Axler - Shatter Zone

Cutting open the seal on a sturdy trunk, Krysty hesitantly lifted the heavy lid. Inside were shiny metallic envelopes.

“MRE packs!” the woman shouted, raising a Mylar envelope. “Hundreds of them! Enough for an army!”

“Excelsior!” Doc cried, lifting a burnished aluminum box.

Laying the container on a worktable, the scholar began pulling out sealed plastic jars of grainy black powder, and clear plastic jars of fine-grain gray gunpowder, the slick material appearing almost oily as it moved. There were several boxes of lead rods for melting into bullets, and even a small assortment of premade balls. None of them were the right caliber for the LeMat, but Doc had enough for a couple of reloads already. He wisely took some extra lead, and all of the copper percussion nipples that he could find.

“Why not get real blaster?” Jak said, looking over the man’s shoulder. He pointed to an open cabinet filled with cardboard boxes. “Boxes of .44 wheelguns over there. Plenty of brass, too.”

“Let the artist choose his own brush,” Doc rumbled, his hands busy purging the spent chambers of the LeMat as a preliminary to reloading. “This has served me well, and I seek no other mistress.”

This was an old argument between the two, and the teen shrugged as always at the impossibility of con vincing the scholar otherwise. Going to a row of cabinets, Jak began opening each door and checking inside for anything good. There were a lot of mil uniforms, combat boots, gas masks, night goggles and a few items that he couldn’t readily identify.

Have to ask Mildred about those later, Jak decided, closing the door to continue his recce of the locker.

“Besides, being able to fire nine rounds without stopping, this has startled more coldhearts than I wish to remember,” the time traveler muttered to himself. For a split second Doc recalled the day when he’d faced that wolfweed dealer in the dusty streets of the burning New Mex ville. Doc had known the other fellow was out of range and so he’d fired the LeMat six times, then only fanned the hammer a couple of times to make the Civil War blaster click loudly. Grinning in triumph, the dealer had charged straight at Doc and raised his ax for a fast chill. When the dealer got within ten feet, point-blank range, Doc had raised the LeMat and fired three more times, ending the coldheart’s regime of terror forever.

“Nine is fine,” Doc chuckled, closing the fully loaded cylinder with a solid, satisfying click.

Prying a board free from a packing crate, Krysty whistled softly at the sight of the brand-new HK G-11 caseless rifles nestled inside. The plastic boxes alongside obviously contained spare ammo blocks. There was a score of them, perhaps more. The woman started to reach for one of the angular rapidfires, then frowned and closed the lid. Dean Cawdor had really liked this weapon, in spite of its faults. Actually, the caseless rapidfire only had a single flaw. It worked too efficiently. All by himself, Dean had once stopped a pack of muties with the dire weapon, only to discover that the rapidfire was empty. The boy had used the entire ammo block of a hundred rounds in only a few heartbeats. The priceless weapon had been abandoned in the street, useless without a replacement block.

“Find something?” Jak asked, draping a bandolier of ammo clips across his leather jacket. The teen was holding a MP-5 submachine gun, repeatedly pulling the bolt to work out the stiffness of the predark spring. The gun had been properly packed in anticorrosive gelatin, but that was easy to wash off with the accompanying solvent.

Wordlessly, Krysty shook her head and continued to search. She truly missed Dean. Such a pity that he was gone forever.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Ryan whispered with a smile, lifting a peculiar-looking gren into view. A whole case of implo grens!

This was the find of a lifetime. Not even Mildred had any idea how the things worked. The tech involved was far beyond her understanding of twentieth-century science. The burnished gray sphere looked like a standard mil gren, but instead of a C-4 explosion, or thermite blast, it somehow generated a massive gravity field for a split second that destroyed anything caught within the collapsing zone. An implo gren could stop a tank, and would smash a sec hunter droid like the angry fist of God.

Judiciously deciding between weight and mobility, Ryan finally took four of the implo grens and added a fifth to his jacket pocket. For the first time since they had arrived, the Deathlands warrior allowed himself to relax slightly. Whatever came their way now could be aced. Norm, mech or mutie, nothing could stand against an implo gren. That was good enough. He wanted more—who wouldn’t?—but the first hard lesson learned in the Deathlands was that having too many weps was just as bad as not having any. It made you slow, and a single moment wasted trying to decide what to fight with could easily be the deciding factor between living another day and ending up in the hot belly of some slavering mutie beast.

Slowly, the long hours passed as the companions expertly combed the Deep Storage Locker for all its precious treasures. Carrying bundles of equipment, they started forming neat stacks in a clear area near the open door and began to organize the materials into piles. Calling a halt for food, Ryan passed out some MRE packs, and the hungry companions devoured the predark meals of beef stroganoff with sour cream and noodles, with the usual nut cake for dessert. It was just food, nothing more. But there was also coffee, wonderful coffee for dessert. Greatly refreshed, the companions returned to the work of choosing supplies and weapons. New backpacks were found to replace their old patched ones. Mil bedrolls were exchanged for the civie versions dug out of a collapsed department store in a distant land.

Neat piles of ordnance were formed, and decisions made. Some of the simpler blasters were set aside as possible trade goods, in case there was a ville nearby. But for once, the companions didn’t need anything from the outside world. There was food and clothing galore, plus enough weps and brass to fight the most powerful baron in the land if necessary. Ryan took a new pair of combat boots. A case of U.S. Army socks and underwear was greeted with cries of delight, and everybody helped themselves. Placing aside her med kit, Mildred sat on a box of landmines to exchange her socks right on the spot. The stiff cloth was cast aside, and the new soft socks were gratefully pulled on, her toes wiggling almost sensuously in the clean cloth.

After a couple more hours, the companions broke for dinner, MREs again; chicken stew with dumplings. It was better than the beef stroganoff, and the packs were licked clean.

Fed and fully armed for the first time in a long time, the companions left the Deep Storage Locker, closing the door in their wake. It had been a long day, but there was still a lot to do before sleep could even be considered.

As the terrible throbbing in his head slowly eased away, Edward awoke groggy on a grassy field, with the bright sun high overhead. Forcing himself to move, the man groaned from the herculean effort. His head hurt, his gut was roiling, and every bone felt as if it had been removed, then shoved back in again.

“Well, it’s about nuking time you came around,” John snapped irritably, walking closer. The elder Rogan was holding a tin cup full of something that gave off wisps of steam and smelled incredibly like coffee. “We were starting think you’d gone on the last train west, ya lazy bastard.”

It took Edward a few times to get his throat working. Blind norad, he felt as if he’d been run over by a baron’s war wag!

“Where—” Edward broke into a rough cough and tried again. “Where the frag are we? And is that coffee?”