Judas Strike

“Yeah.”

“Morphine is doing me fine, but you go right ahead and have one for me. Hell, have one for everybody!”

“There’s lots of food,” Ron found himself saying. He had no idea why. It was as if somebody else were speaking through him. God, what was he doing? Dave was his best friend. Pulling the 10 mm U.S. Navy pistol from his belt, Ron clicked off the safety, the tiny noise incredibly loud in the locked bunker.

“Trouble?” David asked, struggling to sit upright. He reached out a hand for Ron, and the man stepped out of the way. “Somebody at the bunker door?”

Ron felt a hysterical laugh bubble up from inside. “I wish to God there was somebody at the door,” he said softly, “but there isn’t, and there never will be. We knew the risks when we took this assignment. World War III, pal. We’re all alone and nobody is ever coming to rescue us.”

“Nonsense,” David began gently, a shaking hand rubbing his bandages. “Why, over on Kwalein Island they have an underground base the size of—”

“Shut up!” Ron screamed, his hand shaking so badly he almost dropped the weapon. “Shut the fuck up! There’s only enough food for twenty years! Twenty, that’s all!”

“So?” David asked, puzzled, leaning back in his bunk. “Hell, that’s plenty. A lifetime!”

Ron fired again and again at the blind man until the corpse fell off the blood-soaked bunk.

“Now it’s forty years,” Ron whispered, watching the body twitch and then go terribly still.

That was ten years ago. Long lonely years. Taking up the fountain pen once more, Ron shook his head to banish the memory of that insane day. But it had been a decade since he heard a human voice. The TV and radio never worked again, the phone only static. The CD player and VCR were junk, the computer useless. The hundred thousand Web sites of the Internet vanished in the first microsecond pulse of the nuclear detonations. His new URL was now www.gonetohell.com.

There were still ten thousand gallons of diesel fuel in the storage tanks for the generator that powered the lighthouse. But he hadn’t turned on the beam in years, first to save fuel, then out of fear others would arrive and discover his crime. Murder. That was the word. He was a murderer. Assassin. Coward.

Thousands of people were probably raping and killing one another across the world, but this had been while the ground was still shaking from the bombs. While the taste of civilization was still in his mouth. There had been enough food for forty men for one year, or two men for twenty years, or one man for forty years. The math was easy, the results unacceptable. He had wanted a full long life, but now Ron was paying the price for his bloody crime.

Sometimes in the dark, Ron could hear the dead sailors from the Navy base whispering, asking why he did it, calling him a traitor. He woke screaming, drenched in sweat and used up all of the whiskey to force dreamless sleep. When it was gone, he switched to the morphine, but now that was depleted, and the nightmares were tearing apart his mind, until he wasn’t sure when he was awake or asleep. David stood behind him a lot these days, never visible, but always there, reminding him that he had something to do. One last act before he could finally sleep.

Putting aside the pen, Ron slowly walked to the middle of the stairwell, checked the rope he had tied there yesterday, slipped the noose around his neck and jumped. It was that easy.

The shock of the noose tightening filled him with cold adrenaline when Ron realized in horror that he hadn’t tied the noose correctly. It was supposed to break his neck and kill him instantly. This was slow strangulation! Standing at the foot of the stairs, David watched him thrash about with those pure white eyes and did nothing to help. Clawing madly at the rope slowly crushing his windpipe, Ron managed to suck a sip of air into his burning lungs. Then another, and another. He was going to live. Live! With excruciating slowness, Ron started to climb the rope, going hand over hand back to the stairs.

That was last week.

He was ready to try again. David had told him what he had done wrong, so he wouldn’t fail next time. Knot the rope more, that’ll do the trick. Soon, he’d be asleep forever. Absolved of his crimes.

Oh God, please let me die this time.

“THAT’S IT, the rest is blank,” Mildred said, closing the journal and placing it flat on the table. “Guess he finally made it.”

Dean chewed a lip. “So he went mad from loneliness?”

She smiled sadly. “It’s called cabin fever. Almost got it myself once.”

“His mental failure was completely understandable,” Doc rumbled, joining the conversation. “Most crimes merely mutter their presence. Only murder shouts.” He had awakened in the middle of the reading and stood quietly by until she was done.

Out of breath, Krysty appeared at the hallway door. “We’re in,” she said urgently. “Lend a hand, we need some help moving the door.”

Leaving the table, Mildred, Dean and Doc joined the others and put their backs into forcing aside the massive portal to the bomb shelter. Digging in his heels, Dean was surprised at the weight of the door, until he saw it was only wood on the outside, the thin veneer covering a mammoth slab of steel and lead. Good camou.

As the portal swung aside, air billowed out, smelling stale and dry.

“Been closed tight for a long time,” J.B. observed, covering his face until the dead air dissipated. There was a cool breeze coming down from the open door atop the lighthouse, carrying the tangy smell of the sea.

While Jak jammed a knife under the door to make sure it didn’t swing shut, Ryan jacked the action on his SIG-Sauer pistol and started down a short flight of brick stairs. In the enclosed space, the old lantern gave off a wealth of light, and the man could see the deactivated palm lock and keypad mounted on the wall normally used to seal off the shelter from intruders. A grille at the bottom of the stairs was ajar, and Ryan followed the path of a zigzagging tunnel very similar to the ones used in the redoubts. Rads could only travel in a straight line, and with a dogleg junction, once you stepped past the corner you were safe.

The tunnel opened onto a small room filled with stacks of crates and machines. The walls were lined with shelving packed with boxes and mysterious objects wrapped in vacuum-form plastic. Closed blaster racks were filled with military weapons, and tarpaulins covered large piles that could be anything.

“Jackpot,” J.B. said, almost smiling.

The silenced muzzle of the SIG-Sauer sweeping the room ahead of him, Ryan strode through the maze of boxes, looking at everything but touching nothing. Doc stayed near the grille, a hand resting on the lion’s head of his swordstick. Sometimes they found others waiting for them in a military supply dump—sec men, muties that had sneaked in through the ventilation system, wild animals and on a couple of occasions a sec droid, almost unstoppable machines designed to kill unauthorized intruders.

Warily, the companions spread out and started to hunt through the piles of supplies for specific items. Later on, they would do an inventory and decided what to take, but first and foremost it was ammo and food. Everything else was secondary.

“MRE packs.” Dean grinned in delight, going to a nearby shelf and pawing through a plastic box marked with the military designation for the long-storage food packs. Prying off the lid, he felt another rush of trapped gas and started running his fingertips carefully over the assortment of foil envelopes searching for even the tiniest pinprick or corrosion.

“Perfect condition,” the boy announced happily, filling the pockets of his jacket until they bulged.

Snapping the pressure locks on a large plastic box, J.B. flipped off the lid and grinned at the M-16 automatic rifles nestled in a bed of thick black-green grease. Another crate yielded an M-60 machine gun, but upon closer inspection there was a crack in the case and the weapon was heavily corroded, especially its main recoil spring. As careful as if handling a bomb, J.B. closed the case and set it aside. The only way the M-60 could handle its incredible recoil was to house an eighteen-foot-long spring. Once long ago, the Armorer had been trapped without ammo, and let the spring fly loose just as a stickie was crawling in through a window. The coiled length went straight through the mutie and kept going for another fifty yards. A damaged M-60 was a dangerous thing.

“Ammo over here,” Krysty reported, opening a sealed cabinet. The interior shelves were neatly filled with a wide collection of different caliber ammunition. A lot of it was in 10 mm, which they couldn’t use. They often found the ammo, but never a 10 mm blaster. However, there were a few boxes of the older 9 mm rounds, and some civilian grades. Probably stored here to trade with any survivors outside. Pushing aside the .44 and .45 packs, Krysty discovered quite a lot of plastic-wrapped 5 mm ammo blocks for a Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless rifle. Ryan used to carry one, and gave it up because ammo was so hard to find.

On a lower shelf behind some cleaning kits, she finally found some boxes of .357 ammo, whistled sharply and threw one to Jak. The teenager made the catch and nodded in thanks. Going to another locker, Krysty uncovered a staggering cache of .38 rounds and took every box, stuffing her coat pockets full. Never had enough of this caliber. It was used by herself, Mildred and Dean. Jak, too, sometimes.

Clearing some space on a workbench, Jak opened the cardboard box and reloaded his blaster on the spot, then he tucked a few extra rounds in his pockets and put the rest in his backpack. Armed once more, Jak continued his search for clothing. Their pants and shirts were in tatters, underwear and socks always in short supply, and his left boot had a spot worn thin as a baron’s promise. Unfortunately, he was only finding things like flak jacks, scuba suits, rain gear and a lot of those computerized helmets that attached to the telescope mounted on a MR-1 rapidfire blaster. J.B. had told him you could stick the blaster around a corner and see what was on the other side on a tiny vid screen suspended from your helmet. Then flip a switch and see in pitch darkness, or track an enemy by his body heat. Amazing stuff. When it worked. But that tech required heavy batteries, and all sorts of computer software. None of which they had ever found in any redoubt. Now where the hell were the boots?

Heading directly for a large red cross on the far wall, Mildred found a small medical section, most of the chem in the bottles only dust now. The latex gloves for surgery cracked apart from sheer age when she tried to put one on, and the rubber on a stethoscope was as brittle as glass. The frustrated physician located the M*A*S*H field-surgery kit mentioned in the journal stuffed in the fridge. She had hoped it would be in there. The refrigerator would make the morphine last longer, and even with the power off, the fridge should keep out most of the moisture and air. The med kit was almost identical to her own, except in much better shape, and Mildred immediately began transferring the contents of her old med kit into the new bag.

Reaching a clear area situated before a steel desk, Ryan saw a complex radio wired to a nuke battery from a Hummer. Checking the dials, he found the batteries had been left on, and were totally drained. Even those amazing devices had limits. It was a sobering thought. The radio would have been worthless anyway, but they might have been able to use the nuke battery to power some electric lights. Too bad. They often found wags, or at least parts of vehicles in the redoubts. No chance of that in a bomb shelter.

He found a chem bathroom in the corner, next to a row of shower stalls carpeted with mildew, and a line of bunk beds attached to the wall, the pallets reaching from the ferroconcrete floor to the ceiling. Accommodations for a full company of soldiers. Only a single bed was disheveled, but another was stripped, the mattress gone leaving only the bare metal springs and frame. The scene of the crime, as Mildred would say.

Following the power cables attached to the bare wall, Ryan soon located the generator, or rather, what was left of it. A tiny drip from a water pipe in the ceiling had slowly reduced the huge machine into a pile of rust over the long decades.

“Never get those going again,” J.B. stated, joining the man. He pushed back his fedora. “This isn’t the prize we thought. Half this stuff is useless.”

“But half isn’t,” Ryan stated. He gestured. “Any fuel in those tanks?”

The Armorer rapped on the side of the tank with a knuckle and got a dull answering thump. “Sure, lots,” J.B. answered, puzzled. “But it’s diesel. Turned to jelly decades ago. Even if we got some to the gateway, it would be too thick to run the turbines. Need to cut it with something.”

“Shine?”

“Anything that burns would be okay.”

“Good, save a gallon to take with us,” Ryan said, then paused to let the throbbing in his leg ease. They had been on the run, fighting every step of the way for too damn long. The half-healed cut on his gun hand was starting to stiffen, seriously slowing his speed. Not good. Across the shelter, Krysty was rubbing her bad shoulder, and the others looked as if they had been run over a couple of times by a war wag. Everybody was scratching at the itchy dried salt on their clothes, and down here in the close confines of the shelter house, the rank smell of unwashed bodies was starting to leave an oily taste in his mouth. Mildred was always touting cleanliness for health, but more importantly, when they went outside the stink would reveal their presence to anybody in the vicinity, and leave a hell of a fine trail for dogs to follow. And those triple-blasted crabs.