James Axler - Sunchild

“He’ll be okay,” she told Ryan in short gasps as she drank greedily from the canteen of water he offered her. “Just needs to recover from the heat and the air—get some oxygen into him.”

Even as she spoke, Dean was stirring slightly. Krysty was resting him in a reclining posture against her, and Doc held the boy’s head, gently tipping water to his lips.

“Take it easy, my dear boy,” Doc whispered. “The worst is over.”

“Mebbe,” Ryan said softly, overhearing Doc, “but we need to get moving quickly, no matter how tired we are. We can’t risk staying here.”

“Take turns carrying Dean until recovered enough walk alone,” Jak offered.

Ryan nodded. “Me and you first to give J.B. and Mildred a chance to recoup their strength.”

The albino nodded and turned away, looking at the sudden bend in the shaft.

“Hope not hit another slide,” he said quietly.

“Dark night! This explains a lot,” J.B. said breathlessly, wiping his spectacles on his shirt.

Ryan whistled softly. “Seems stupe to go all the way up just to go all the way down, but I guess mebbe that’s the only way for it to be.”

Jak was sitting with his legs dangling over the precipice. “We okay, but how Doc?”

Doc made an expression of distaste. “I think that after the trials of the past few hours, this will be a mere bagatelle.”

They had finally reached the top of the shaft after several hours’ climb, lengthened because of their weariness in dealing with the landslide. Although all of them would have liked to have rested, Ryan was certain that the only viable course of action was to keep moving. The others knew he was right, even though J.B. and Mildred were almost unconscious as they walked, and Dean was carried for the first hour by a relay of Ryan and Jak, and then Krysty and Doc, the latter breathing heavily the whole way, but refusing to give in to his own weariness until Dean was able to stand unaided.

Ryan’s decision to keep moving was vindicated by the number of partial earthslides and movements that they had to traverse as they made their way up the shaft. It was no surprise that the elevators had long since been decommissioned by the change in geography, as the shaft, which had previously been fairly straight, began to bend at ridiculous angles, so much so that at times they felt they were turning back on themselves. The concrete platforms that formed the steps had moved to angles that sometimes entailed a climb of several feet to get over the top, followed by a drop to where the level had fallen on the other side. It became harder to discern their depth and when they were likely to surface. They could only tell when the tunnel began to lighten, and the hole formed at the top of the shaft became visible.

Eventually, with aching muscles that had begun to weaken to jelly, they saw the top of the shaft widen, and after two more scrambles over bizarrely angled platforms, they found themselves at the mouth of the shaft.

This had to have been the way that the survivors of the redoubt had taken some fifty years before, as the growth of mutated plant and vegetation around the mouth of the shaft was thick and heavily spread, suggesting that it had been established sometime, and therefore the earth movements had occurred during the period when the Illuminated Ones were still in the redoubt.

It was only when they came out of the mouth of the shaft and looked around that they could appreciate what had occurred.

They found themselves some fifty feet above the surrounding country, with the mouth of the shaft facing a sheer drop on one side, and a seventy degree descent on the other among some verdant foliage that almost choked the hillside. The shrubs and plants formed an unbroken carpet, hiding whatever mutated horrors might be found ground level.

It seemed obvious that in the time directly after skydark, when the Deathlands was formed in the upheaval and devastation, this part of the country had suffered severe tremors and quakes that had lifted up a part of the ground that, by chance, contained the gateway to the redoubt. The sec doors to what had once been the entrance were probably hidden and decayed in the lush vegetation beneath. The maintenance and emergency shaft had only been protected and preserved by the concrete platforms of the graduated steps.

They now took the opportunity to rest and recuperate before pressing on. Although it would be easy for them to be spotted from the lower levels, they also had a clear view of any potential enemy themselves. It would be impossible for anyone—except perhaps Jak—to move through the forest below without causing disturbance. The territory beyond the sheer drop was more sparsely vegetated, with the remains of a two-lane blacktop road about three miles to the east, with a ruined gas station and diner sitting on it like a toy. Anyone moving on the terrain would be as visible to them as they would be on top of the hill.

“So which way you reckon we move, lover?” Krysty asked Ryan as the one-eyed man stood on the edge of the drop, scanning the horizon.

“Guess we go down the rock face. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be less risky than going down into that forest,” he said. “What do you say, J.B.?”

The Armorer shrugged. “I don’t reckon either of them, but seeing as we can’t go back, either, I guess there isn’t much choice.”

“Better danger seen than not seen,” Jak added.

“I take your point, gentlemen,” Mildred said slowly, “but do you think all of us are up to it right now?”

“Madam, I shall endeavor as always to do my best. I can ask no more nor no less of myself.” Doc bridled.

“Relax, you old coot, I wasn’t particularly thinking of you,” Mildred answered. “I’m not too sure about myself at the moment, and even more so about Dean.”

“I’ll be fine,” Dean spit. “You can save your worry.”

“Don’t be a fool, boy,” Ryan snapped harshly. “Mildred’s right to a degree. You’ve been unconscious and haven’t had a chance to recover. If you’re concussed, then it could be a tricky descent.”

“I’ll be fine, Dad. What are we going to do, wait here forever ’cause I’ve had a sore head or Jak needs a bandage on a grazed knee or—?”

“That’s enough,” Krysty said softly. “If you stumble, we all do, remember?”

Dean stood and stared for a moment, biting his tongue. Then his temper subsided, and he had to agree. “Yeah, you’re right. But I’ll be okay. I just won’t be stupe about it.”

“Just as a matter of interest, where would you say we were…I mean in general geographic terms?” Doc broke the awkwardness by changing the subject. He knew the cloud cover would prevent J.B. from taking a reading with his minisextant.

“My guess is to the north, probably more eastern than central, judging by that forest,” Ryan replied, indicating the slope to their rear.

“I would have thought so, too,” Doc mused. “I wonder if that means the Iluminated Ones had their bases within more than just mat-trans distance to the so-called Erewhon?”

Ryan pondered on that for a few moments. “You mean like within a fairly easy wag distance, in case they needed to do it over the surface? If the mat-trans failed and they were surface safe?”

Doc nodded. “It’s a thought, is it not? After all, it would fit with what little we know from the journal and also from the surrounding area.”

Ryan nodded. “Then we try and head north along that old road when we reach it. Head for the building first, see if there’s anything there to salvage.”

“Sounds good to me,” J.B. muttered. “Just got to get down there first…” As he spoke, he looked up to the sky. The dark, purple-tinged chem clouds overhead began to discharge a fine spray of rain that began to soak through.