James Axler - Sky Raider

A single corpse slumped against the wall in the corridor, an automatic pistol dangling from his raised hand, the wall on either side and the front of his uniform stitched with bullet holes from an automatic weapon.

“There’s a lot of lead to be salvaged here, if nothing else,” J.B. stated in hard practicality.

Kneeling by the body, Jak tried to free the blaster, but the hand was locked in a death grip. Pressing the ejector button, he dropped the clip and thumbed out the intact shells. There were four 9 mm rounds, but they were the wrong size for his Colt.

“Here,” the albino teenager said, passing J.B. two of the rounds for his Uzi, and giving the others to Ryan for his 9 mm SiG-Sauer. Everybody else used .38 rounds, except for Doc and his black powder Le Mat.

Pocketing the rounds, Ryan looked around for the body of the shooter, but the hallway was empty. There were no other corpses in sight, just the double line of doors leading to the elevator and stairs at the far end. There were no other signs of violence, no blast marks or spent casings on the floor.

Nobody cared about the hallway, Ryan realized. These soldiers fought for access to the mat-trans-mat. But that made no sense. The blast doors on the top level of the redoubt were large enough for a tank to drive through. A hundred men could have walked out that opening. So why fight over something that could only hold a limited number of people? Ryan scowled. Unless something was wrong with the blast doors.

Walking past the water fountain, Ryan found the usual framed map on the wall. Almost every redoubt was exactly the same, so the companions knew the bases intimately. This one seemed normal in every aspect.

“Okay, we better do a recon of the whole base,” Ryan decided, pulling out his SiG-Sauer and jacking the slide to chamber a round. “We go two on two. Krysty with me, Doc with Jak, J.B. with Mildred. Stay tight. You find anything still alive, blow its mutie head off and come running.”

“Why do you think it would be a mutie?” Krysty asked, her animated hair flexing in harmony with her thoughts.

Frowning, Ryan loosened the panga in its sheath. “’Cause nothing norm would have willingly stayed in this graveyard,” he stated. “We meet in the garage on the top level in an hour. Let’s go.”

As the companions separated into pairs, Krysty and Ryan headed down the main corridor toward the elevator. The doors opened with a soft sigh, exposing a tangle of bodies, knives still thrust into throats and bellies. Bypassing the corpses for the moment, the man and woman shifted the dead out of the lift. The dried bodies weighed very little.

Removing a colonel with large wounds in his back, Krysty discovered a naked woman on the bottom of the pile. Her military uniform askew and ripped in places. Both of the female soldier’s hands clutched a pair of automatic pistols with the slides kicked back showing they were empty, and there was spent brass everywhere. The black-rimmed glasses and rictus grin gave the face of the female mummy a demonic appearance that was unnerving even to the hardened travelers of the Deathlands.

Muttering a curse, Ryan looked at the male soldiers he had placed in the hallway, and saw that some of them had their pants unzipped and belt buckles loosened.

“Attempted gang rape.” He growled deep in his throat. Looking at Krysty, the man had a brief flash of when he’d first met the redhead in a burning barn, a coldheart going after her. “What the hell happened to these people? From what I read, the predark military of America didn’t do this kind of thing.”

“Well, for some reason, these were about to,” Krysty said. “At least the woman died fighting and took them with her.”

“Small comfort.”

“Agreed, lover. But better than the alternative.”

“Guess so,” Ryan stated as he took the woman’s ankles and Krysty took the shoulders. “But the sooner we get out of here, the better.”

“No argument there,” Krysty said, her green eyes flashing in ill-controlled hatred.

Gently, they placed the corpse off by herself and got into the waiting elevator. Ryan hit the button for the basement, and the door sighed shut. The elevator car began to silently descend into the bowels of the subterranean fortress.

In the hallway, something stirred in a shadowy corner and sluggishly started shifting the corpses until there was a clear path to the elevator once more.

Heading for the front gate, Sandra Tregart strode along the streets of the ville. Now that the food had been delivered, she had more important things to do. Much more important.

This was the day to try the Demon! she thought, feeling a tingle of excitement. After so many failures, this one had to work. It would work! Or heads would roll.

Cutting through the marketplace, Tregart smelled the aroma of cooking soup in the air, and people were already lined up with cups or wooden bowls, impatiently waiting for their share. As she passed, the people smiled and waved, and old folk too weak to wait in line joyously called her name from second-story windows.

“Bless you, lady!” an old man shouted. “All hail the Baroness Tregart!”

Several more people took up the cry, and Sandra smiled at that. How amusing. Baroness, eh? Did they think Sandra was her mother, or that she should take over the ville from her father? Either way, they would only have to wait a few more days and the matter would be settled. Permanently.

Turning a corner, Sandra saw a commotion near the front gate and spotted a couple of outlanders arguing with the sec men on guard duty. Then one of the outlanders passed over a bottle half full of amber liquid, and the sec men waved the strangers through. She stopped in her tracks, rigid with fury. A sec man took a bribe to admit an outlander!

“Hold it right there!” Sandra bellowed, starting forward again quickly.

The sec men blanched at her approach and cowered in fear. One of them threw the bottle away and it crashed on the street. However, the outlanders only drunkenly leered in frank appraisal of the woman. Her clothes were clean, and her blouse was open at the neck, exposing a wealth of rising cleavage.

“Nuke me running,” the tall outlander said with a chuckle. “The gaudy sluts come to mee’cha right at the gate! Black dust, now that’s what I call hospitality!”

“I’d give a working blaster for a ride on that,” the short man agreed, slurring the words. Spitting into his palms, he smoothed back his greasy hair. “Yes, sir, a working blaster!”

The nearby people went silent, and the guards began to quickly move away from the outlanders. They had seen this all before and knew what was coming.

However, near the edge of the crowd, a teenage boy placed his cracked bowl on a windowsill and started forward. “How dare you speak like that to her!” he shouted angrily, grabbing a rock from the ground.

With a curt gesture, Sandra made him stop. Respectfully, the teen moved back into the line and dropped the stone.

“Shitfire, ya sure got him well trained!” The tall stranger laughed uproariously.

“How much?” the other man asked, jingling a pocket. “We got brass, for that ass.”

“What was that again?” Sandra asked in a deceptively soft voice, crossing her arms.

“You h-heard me, bitch,” the outlander hiccuped, rubbing his crotch. “My buddy and I have just spent a fucking month trekking through sand and rocks to reach the Ohi, and we ain’t seen a gaudy house since Christ was a cowboy.”

“So how much?” the short man added, staring at her breasts. “Come on, name a price!”

“Months, eh? So, have you two been using each other?” Sandra asked, smiling sweetly. “Or do you prefer muties? I hear there is a nest of stickies just to the north of here.” She squinted as if trying to get a better view of their stunned faces. “Yes, several of their uglier young do resemble you two quite a lot.”