James Axler - Judas Strike

Now in the flickering light of the candles, the companions did a quick recce of the tower. This area was twice as wide as the beacon room, and it was much cooler, probably because they were now twenty feet under the sand. There were several large wooden lockers full of tackle, and assorted equipment for rescuing drowning people and maintaining the beacon. A heavy-gauge power switch was set on the granite block wall between a couple of windows, each showing only a smooth expanse of compacted sand against the other side of the glass.

A tangle of bones and cloth stood in the middle of the floor. Ryan and Mildred knelt alongside the mess to pull out a human skeleton. There was a terrible crack yawning wide in the skull, but the breakage was fresh, obviously caused by the fall and not from a blow to the temple while the man was alive.

“I found him hanging halfway down the circular stairs,” Dean reported, setting the candle on a wall shelf. “The rope was in fine shape, so I cut him loose and took it.”

As Ryan started to go through the pockets of the ragged clothing, Mildred lifted the skull and turned it.

“Well, he’s definitely from the predark days,” she stated, opening the jaw wide as it could reach. “Look at those ceramic fillings! That’s prime dentistry.”

“How die?” Jak asked bluntly.

“Tell you in a minute,” Mildred replied. Carefully, she laid out the bones, placing them in order. Then she ran her trained hands over the skeleton, checking for damage, and found nothing.

“Okay, he died of strangulation,” Mildred announced, rocking back on her heels. “Damn fool must have tied the noose wrong and it didn’t snap his neck when he jumped off the stairs. Poor bastard just hung there until his air ran out. Might have been a couple of minutes, or a whole day if he was particularly strong.”

“A bad way to die,” Krysty stated.

“There’s no good way to get aced,” J.B. said with conviction. “Some are just worse than others.”

For some reason, that made Mildred feel incredibly sad. Maybe it was because, while they often found dead folks, few were from predark. It made her feel a sort of kinship with the nameless man. “Ashes to ashes,” she whispered, making the sign of the cross, “dust to dust. And may God have mercy on your soul.”

“Soul,” Jak snorted in disdain. “Right.”

Holding a small leather journal in his hand, Ryan stood and tried to force open the lock, but the ancient mechanism was strong. He stopped when the leather cover started to give instead of the lock. Shit, he’d have to open this later or risk tearing it apart.

“Okay, let’s finish our sweep,” Ryan said, tucking the journal into a shirt pocket.

A big door closed with heavy bolts seemed to lead outside from the trickles of sand that rained down along the jamb every time they touched the handle. A second door led to a hallway that opened directly to the cottage, and the third was locked tight.

“This should be the basement,” Ryan decided. “Mebbe storage area, or even a bomb shelter, if we’re lucky. Could be useful stuff down there.”

“On it,” J.B. said, removing tools from his shoulder bag.

But just then, a clang sounded from the second doorway, the noise echoing slightly in the darkness.

Quickly leading the way, Ryan found a set of double doors standing open, and strode into the kitchen of the subterranean cottage. Nothing seemed amiss there, and he waited for the sound to ring out again.

Ryan stood guard while the others swept the kitchen. The range and refrigerator were both electric, there was a dishwasher under the counter and a full assortment of fancy cooking machines, each totally useless without electric power. The cabinets yielded some herbal tea, which Mildred appropriated, and a small amount of exotic spices, but no real food. Checking under the sink, J.B. took some of the cleaning solutions to tuck into his munitions bag, and left the others.

Moving on, they found a small laundry room behind a pantry, the shelves starkly empty. Past the kitchen was the main room of the cottage. It was a big place. The living room had a small eating table with some chairs. In the far corner was a big-screen television and DVD player, stacks of rainbow disks piled high. Near the sand-filled windows was a large desk with a complex military radio and stacks of nautical charts showing the tides, deep currents and shipping schedules. Two side doors led to small bedrooms, one disheveled, the other neat. Everything was coated with a thin layer of dust, but otherwise seemed in good condition.

Holding their candles high, the companions stood in the flickering blackness, straining to hear anything. Then Doc shook off Krysty’s arm and walked over to a sideboard, where he lifted a lantern from amid the items on the table. There was still a small residue of oil in the reservoir, and soon he had the wick going, bright white light filling the subterranean cottage.

Now they could see the recliners and sofa placed before the television, and a gun rack on the wall with several longblasters and several sagging cardboard boxes of ammunition. On the far wall was a large bookcases full of paperbacks that crumbled into dust as they approached, producing an amazingly large acrid cloud. The fresh air from the open door in the lighthouse was seeping into the cottage, finishing the job of destruction started by the sheer passage of time.

Then everybody froze as a soft metallic patter sounded. It came again as a faint spot of light appeared on the bricks of the hearth and with a loud clang the flue moved aside and a blue crab dropped into view.

“Hot pipe, they pried it open!” Dean shouted, and stomped on the mutie before it could scuttle away, grinding it underfoot until the thing was paste on the flagstone floor.

Grabbing a fireplace poker, Ryan hooked the catch on the flue and forcibly pulled it closed, cutting off the pincer of a crab halfway through the vent. The limb fell onto the andirons, and a frantic scratching could be heard as something moved wildly about on the sheet iron.

“Now what?”

“Build fire,” Jak suggested, lifting a wooden chair.

“Have to open the flue or we choke to death on the smoke.”

Ryan pulled the poker tighter to hold the flue closed. “Find something to jam it in place!”

Breaking a chair apart, Jak forced a piece of wood into the fireplace. The chair leg splintered as it scraped across the rough brick, and the teenager had to use the butt of his Colt Python to pound it into position. There was a lot of scampering about on top of the flue from the noise, but he sat back to inspect the work and nodded.

“Not come through this,” he stated as a fact.

Nervously, Mildred glanced at the windows. “Some species of crabs can tunnel,” she said. “We better nail those bookshelves over the glass just in case.”

“Tools in the laundry room,” Ryan said, moving his head. “Jak, Dean, give her a hand.”

“I’ll check the blaster rack,” J.B. said, already moving in that direction.

With the Steyr cradled in his arms, Ryan rested his aching leg on the dining table and watched the open doorway and the fireplace for any sign of movement. The situation wasn’t good. They were still alive, but trapped down there, low on candles, almost out of ammo and food. Eventually, they would have to leave, and then the waiting muties would swarm once more. They might be able to swim to the next island, but that would require a diversion to get rid of the crabs, and they had no more explosives of any kind. Hopefully, the rounds in the blaster rack were still live.

The work of closing off the windows went very slowly, the panes of glass vibrating with every fall of the hammer. Krysty solved that problem by sliding the sofa cushions between the glass and the wood slats. After that, the job progressed much faster.