Labyrinth

“The bride comes from where?” Krysty asked Mildred.

Ryan and J.B. wore identical puzzled looks. Jak wasn’t paying any attention.

“It’s just the words to an old song, ‘The Wedding March,’” Mildred told them. “Written by Felix Mendelssohn in the mid-nineteenth century. Before the nukecaust it was played as the bride-to-be walked down the aisle of the church, before the wedding ceremony.”

“You think people are getting married in there?” Krysty said.

“If the music means anything anymore.”

“Sounds like a big crowd,” J.B. said. “Maybe the whole blasted ville. If we go in all peace and love, we might not come out again.”

Peace and love wasn’t on Ryan Cawdor’s agenda.

“Everybody got grens?” he asked.

“You want stunners, fog, or frags?” J.B. asked.

“Frags.”

Mildred’s eyes widened. Detonating a half-dozen antipersonnel grenades in a crowded room was some serious, undifferentiated ugly. A head-on train wreck. A plane crash. A twenty-car pile up. “They could be friendlies,” she protested. “Just a bunch of butt-simple dirt farmers.”

“Yeah, and we’re going to give them every chance to prove that’s all they are,” Ryan told her. “But we’ve got to be ready if they aren’t. There could be a couple hundred people in there, easy. If they rush us, either we lower the odds in a hurry, or we get overrun. Let them see your blasters going in. Don’t let them see the grens until I show them mine.”

“There’s a good chance they’re packing all the weapons and ammo we couldn’t find,” J.B. said. “They see us with our blasters drawn, things could fall apart, big-time sudden.”

“If things fall apart like that, you can be sure we’re going to mess up somebody’s wedding night,” Ryan said. “Jak, you and Doc go around the back of the building. There should be an exit or two there. The rest of us will go in through the front.”

Before splitting up, they shrugged off their packs, and filled their pants pockets with extra clips and speedloaders, and their jacket side pockets with predark grens.

While they waited for Jak and Doc to move into position, Mildred clamped a lid on the medical doctor part of her brain, the part that recoiled at mayhem and suffering, and let the battle-hardened soldier in her take command. Though they’d survived the brutal desert crossing, they were a long way from safety. And the mood of the ville folk toward strangers was a huge unknown. As Ryan said, there were way too many of them to take chances. Once the companions made contact, anything less than total committment to the frag plan was an invitation for the townsfolk to attack. In order to avoid a bloody horror show, they had to go in strong, hard, and ready to prime and toss.

On Ryan’s signal, they rolled through the door, blasters up, safeties off. The noise was much louder inside. The floor shook from the stamping feet, and plaster dust fell in clouds from the ceiling.

Unless the celebrants were careful, something much worse was about to rain down.

Like the buildings on the other side of the square, the movie-house lobby had been stripped to the concrete. The candy counter was gone, as were the wallpaper and carpet. It had all the mystery and magic of a warehouse. Scavenged lumber and fifty-five-gallon drums were stacked along the facing wall, with room left for three sets of double doors, all of them closed, all of them leading into the theater.