James Axler - Sky Raider

“She never would have acted like this with Edmund still alive,” a bald man muttered, watching her leave. “Do you think she’ll…you know…to Brian?” He made a vague gesture.

A toothless old woman nodded as the line shifted forward. “She did to all of the rest, so why not him, eh?”

“I’d rather be aced,” another man stated.

“Ghastly,” a young woman shuddered.

Just then, the breeze shifted direction to bring them the tantalizing smell of the cooking food, and the hunger in their bellies drove out any further thoughts of compassion toward the fate awaiting the new young sec man.

TAKING THE STAIRS, J.B. and Mildred climbed over the corpses littering the steps. A lot of the lights were out in the passageway, and Mildred decided it would be wise to use her flashlight.

Reaching inside her med kit, she pulled out the precious device and pumped the small handle several times to charge the ancient batteries inside. The survivalist tool had been among several items the companions had found in a looted hardware store, and it was irreplaceable.

Flicking the switch, Mildred was relieved to see a pale yellow beam from the device illuminate the stairwell in golden tones.

“Dark night!” J.B. cried, swinging up his Uzi as something moved in the shadows. But the man refrained from firing at the very last moment when he saw the rope wrapped around the man’s throat. As a warm breeze wafted from the air vents in the wall, the body moved again, gently swaying back and forth.

“A suicide,” Mildred said, tightening her grip on her revolver.

“Can you blame him?” J.B. answered as they climbed the steps rising past the dangling body.

At the top of the stairs J.B. found a Marine with an M-16 assault rifle by his side, an ammo pouch of clips over his shoulder. The sergeant had been shot in the belly and clearly bled to death, as evidenced from the pool of dried blood around him on the floor.

Checking the pouch, Mildred found only spent clips, but J.B. found the clip partially inserted into the M-16 was fully loaded. Easing the clip into the weapon, he flicked off the safety and worked the arming bolt by hand to cycle all thirty rounds through the weapon. Nothing jammed. Reloading the clip, he slapped it into the assault rifle and slung it across his back. There were hundreds of dead soldiers in the redoubt. If each of them only had a few live rounds on their person, this could be the biggest find of weapons in many a month!

“Sure hope there’s some food, too,” Mildred said, obviously following his train of thought.

“Gotta be,” he said, easing open the door to the next level with the barrel of the Uzi. “This many mouths had to be fed.”

Mildred clicked off her flashlight at the sight of the brightly illuminated hallway. Then she stopped in her tracks, and J.B. muttered a curse.

A sandbag nest had been built in the middle of an intersection of corridors, the dead men lying on top of the belt-fed .50-caliber machine guns. These soldiers had no obvious signs of violence, but more importantly, they were all wearing gas masks.

HEADING DIRECTLY to the galley, Doc and Jak found the doors barred with tables, bullet holes and spent shells everywhere, along with several ruined sections of the corridor that could only have been caused by grens.

“Like started doing wolfweed,” Jak muttered, brushing the silky white hair from his face.

Pressing his face to the window in a door, Doc looked around the kitchen and recoiled in shock.

“They had somebody tied down to a table,” Doc began, then his stomach rebelled and he turned to heave in the corner. But only bile came up. What food he had eaten that morning was long gone, purged from his system by the multiple jumps.

“Cannies?” Jak asked, peeking inside.

Wiping his mouth clean on an embroider handkerchief, Doc spoke softly. “Jak, my dear friend,” he whispered. “I am fully aware that my mind is half gone from…the things that have been done to me by scientists and that madman Strasser, but if whatever befouled this redoubt starts to enact its virulent filth upon me, please…”

“Won’t feel thing,” Jak promised, patting the time traveler on the shoulder. “My word. But you do same for me.”

Doc solemnly nodded, and the two men shared a moment beyond friendship, brothers in blood standing against the world.

“Then let us press on,” Doc said, starting down the corridor. “There is much to do, and I yearn for the feel of clean air on the face.”

“Hope blast doors work,” Jak said, pushing open the door to a lavatory. The smell was long gone, scrubbed clean by the life support system, but the floors were smeared with ancient filth. “Else, why these not run?”

Doc tilted his head at that comment, and looked upward as if he could see the blast door somewhere above them.

“A very good question, my friend,” he muttered. “That is a very good question, indeed.”

THE REACTORS in the basement proved to be intact, the techies inside all killed by self-inflicted gunshots. It seemed clear to Ryan and Krysty that the techies had known what was happening inside the rest of the redoubt, and had chosen the fast way out.

With Krysty standing guard, Ryan did a fast sweep through the armory on the middle floor of the redoubt, but it was as he had expected. Every weapon case was either open or smashed apart. The shelves were empty of C-4 satchels, grens and Claymore mines. Only wrapping paper and warning labels remained. Dozens of longblasters and rapid-fires lay trampled on the floor, the treads of a forklift impressed into the plastic stocks and the bent barrels.

In the far corner, the floor and walls were charred black, and from the bodies on the floor it seemed that somebody had tried to operate a flamethrower on six other soldiers. He’d failed and they’d all died together in a fiery backblast of the erupting fuel tanks.

Trudging out of the room, Ryan noticed a card-board box on a shelf and snatched it quickly, as if it might vanish into thin air. Peeling off the plastic wrapper, he saw it was a full box of 12-gauge shotgun shells. He tucked the box into a pocket for J.B. to use in his S&W M-4000 shotgun, and left the armory.

“Anything?” Krysty asked hopefully, lowering her wheelgun as he appeared.

“Not much,” Ryan said with a growl. “They were fighting in here, too, and most of the stuff got busted bad. I saw a couple of crates of Stinger missiles in the rear, but the seals were broken so the electronics would be dead.”

“We might still be able to salvage the C-4 from the warheads,” she said. “Take a couple of pipes from the bathroom and we’ve got grens.”

“Yeah,” Ryan replied, removing the cap from his canteen and taking a swig. “Sounds good. We can do that tonight after chow. Now let’s finish this sweep. The sooner we get back together with the others, the fucking better I’ll like it.”

Her red hair flexing protectively around her face, Krysty gave a wry smile. “It’s even getting to you, eh?”

The big man shrugged. “This hellhole would get under the skin of anybody. Makes the bug-infested redoubt in Texas seem friendly as a gaudy house in comparison.”

As the couple left for the elevators, something stirred in the shadows of the armory and sluggishly started trailing after them.

As the elevator doors opened on the top level of the redoubt, Ryan and Krysty saw that the garage was filled with row upon row of vehicles, all of them parked neatly within the painted lines on the concrete floor. Most were civilian wags, brightly colored cars, pickup trucks, vans, and about a dozen motorcycles. The bikes looked in good shape in spite of their flat tires.

On the far side of the garage some military vehicles were parked behind a wire divider that went from floor to ceiling. Ryan could see a couple of Hummers, several GMC 4x4 trucks, and even an armored half-track, the front tires flat on the floor, but the rear-looking treads seemingly intact. The half-track was armed with a .50-caliber rapid-fire, a belt of linked ammo dangling from the side. However, none of other vehicles showed any signs of damage.