Strontium Swamp

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One

Ryan Cawdor curled up into a fetal ball, trying to gain some respite from the sand that lashed at his skin, scouring into every crevice, biting through the material of his clothes, the exposed parts of his body raw with the sharp winds that blew the grit against him. The more he tried to cover the exposed flesh, the harder the sands ripped into the few inches of skin that he couldn’t cover. What the sand didn’t scour, the rain did. The howling winds of the storm carried with them a chem-loaded rain that hit hard with each drop, the soft acids within the water making exposed skin soapy and easy to peel back. Like a rubbery solution that eased away from flesh under pressure, the chem rain began to break down any exposed area. Ryan struggled to cover as much of his skin as possible.

The storm had come upon the companions quickly, and in the flat landscape there was nowhere to hide. As the dusk bled slowly into night, the wind from nowhere had whipped up across the expanse of sand, lifting clouds of the vicious, stinging particles and the bludgeoning raindrops that had eaten into the companions with little warning.

In the confusion and the darkness, they had been separated, despite their desire to stick close together. With no landmarks and no outcrops to provide even the barest minimum of shelter, they had stumbled blind into the storm, losing sight of one another. With nothing to identify their position, they were now completely alone.

Ryan tried to protect his body as much as possible from the buffeting of the storm, burrowing into the loose surface of the desert floor, taking the itching, shifting sands as a lesser problem than the stinging clouds of the storm and the eviscerating rain. Hoping it would soon pass. These storms had never, in his experience, lasted that long. But there was always a first time. Mebbe this would be it, mebbe this would take forever to blow itself out, scourging the skin from his flesh as it proceeded, leaving him nothing but a mess of bleeding flesh, the nerve endings rubbed raw by the insistent grains of sand.

Every fiber and muscle ached as he tried to hunker down lower into the sand, forming a barrier between himself and the storm.

It hadn’t started like this. A few hours earlier, it had been different…

WAKING from a jump, the hammering in Ryan Cawdor’s head felt as if every single atom in his body had been ripped apart and then put back together again with sledgehammer force—which it had, but why did it have to feel that way every time? Why the fireblasted hell couldn’t he get used to the jumps in the mat-trans? The companions had made enough of these jumps for their bodies to acclimatize by now, surely?

Getting to his feet, checking almost unconsciously that everything was there, and somehow he hadn’t lost a leg or and arm in the jump, Ryan took a look around the chamber. The armaglass was a smoky gray tinged with electric blue. It was semiopaque and he could see the faint outline of the anteroom beyond, thanks to a dim light. It was empty, which was a good thing; and it seemed to be in one piece, which was another. The random nature of the comp-controlled jumps every time the chamber door shut meant that it was always a gamble: one day they could end up in a chamber where the redoubt had been flooded, or the redoubt had collapsed, so that the chamber trapped them in a mass of compacted rock with no way out. The only consoling thought was that this hadn’t happened so far, and that the old tech would probably screw up under such conditions, meaning that the chamber wasn’t in working order and could not materialize them…hopefully.

There were still a few tendrils of white mist around the circular disks that were geometrically arranged on the chamber floor. So he had come ’round quickly after the jump. He wondered how the others had fared.

J. B. Dix was breathing heavily, slumped on the floor, his hand still unconsciously gripping the stock of his mini-Uzi. His fedora had fallen over his face, masking his features, and his body had the awkward, splayed posture of a man yet to come ’round. Next to him, Mildred Wyeth was sitting against the chamber wall, her head back, her plaits hanging down her back. She was moaning softly, her eyes flickering behind the still-closed lids. Slowly, she was beginning to surface from the rigors of the journey. She coughed as something caught in her throat, bringing her up faster as she fought the choking, her eyes suddenly wide but still not focusing.

Ryan’s attention was taken by the sounds behind him. Whirling, and instantly regretting it as his head spun, he saw that Krysty Wroth was coming to her feet. Her long fur coat was draped across her shoulders, and she hugged it tight to herself as she shivered, her lips twisting into a wry grin as his eye met hers.

“Never get used to that, eh, lover?” she said in a cracked, dry voice.

Ryan shook his head gently, not trusting his own parched throat. He marveled at the way in which Krysty was able to shake off the rigors of the jump. She looked a whole lot better than he felt as she turned her attention to Doc Tanner, who had been lying at her side. He was mumbling to himself, twitching convulsively, his brow beaded with sweat. Doc had suffered more than any of them could ever know from the rigors of the mat-trans. He had been trawled through time as well as space, and the resultant physical strains had made him weak. Every time they made a jump, it seemed as if it could be the last one for the old man. How much longer before his body ceased to fight the demands placed upon it and gave in? Certainly, his wandering mind sometimes had a tenuous grasp upon reality.

While Krysty tried to make Doc comfortable, Ryan turned his attention to Jak Lauren. The albino youth was tough and wiry, pound for pound perhaps the strongest among them. Yet he was the one most affected by the jump. He was still unconscious, and Ryan turned him onto his side so that he wouldn’t choke, for the first thing that Jak did on coming around, without fail, was to vomit copiously.

By the time that Jak stirred, and wretched his guts onto the floor of the chamber, the others were all conscious and beginning to return to their normal selves. Soon, they were ready to tackle the redoubt beyond the chamber door, waiting only for Jak to fully recover.

Once conscious, and once he had spewed, Jak’s progress was always rapid.

Their tactic was always the same: move swiftly but carefully, advancing, securing an area and then moving on until they were into the corridors of the redoubt, and knew whether there was any immediate danger.

In this instance, they were safe. The redoubt was empty, with little sign that it had been disturbed since the nukecaust that had rendered all of these old military posts obsolete.

HOWLING AROUND HIM, the storm ate into Ryan, sapping both his strength and also his will. The iron-hard resolve that had kept him going in these situations was draining under the assault of the storm, the pain of the sands flaying at him, and the cold that was riven into his bones with the winds and every heavy drop of chem rain. Tiredness crept over him like a warming blanket, tugging at his mind and begging him to give in to the desire to fall into a sleep—a sleep from which he would never wake. He knew the first signs of hypothermia and knew that to give in to the desire to sleep now would be the first step in his own chilling. The bone-freezing cold of the desert night was intensified by the bone-shattering winds, and he had to fight to stay awake, to keep moving, no matter how little, to keep the circulation going around his body.

If only he wasn’t so tired. If only they had been able to rest up in the redoubt.

But it hadn’t been possible…

THE REDOUBT HAD BEEN empty for a long time, and the old tech powering the comp systems had been in a long-spiraling state of decay. Gradually the machinery and plant that powered the redoubt had begun to break down. And as one piece fell into decay the effect spread to another part, making it malfunction, so the gradual decline of the redoubt began.

As the companions searched the redoubt, the extent of the shutdown became clear. Corridors were swathed in gloom where the lighting had failed. The elevators were stuck, failing to respond to the call button. Sec doors had closed as the key circuits had fused, causing them to fall and jam. It was only because the companions had used the redoubts for so long, and knew that within the circuits lay a manual override that they were able to get the doors raised. Not that it led to anything. The darkened corridors beyond told their own mute stories.

The biggest immediate problem was that there was no running water. They had been hoping that, at the least, they would be able to shower. But the only water that could be found was the bottled variety kept in the kitchen areas. The pump for the water recycler and tank had long since ceased to function, and the only way to access the tank would be to try to break into it. Even then, given that the system had failed, all that would await them would be the contents of a stale and stagnant tank.

Further exploration revealed that dried foods and self-heats were still intact, but anything that had been kept in cold storage had spoiled as this system, too, had succumbed to the ravages of entropy. At least they would be able to stock up on water and self-heats to take with them into the outside world. For any chance of staying to rest within the redoubt, even without the luxury of bathing, was to be lost to them.

“Notice anything?” Mildred had asked as they explored the redoubt.

“Hard to breathe,” Jak murmured. “Sweat, too…”

“Yeah, exactly—only we haven’t been working our asses off, and it isn’t too hot,” Mildred replied.

Ryan agreed. “Figured the air was stale in here. It smelled kind of musty when we first came out of the chamber, and it’s not been getting any fresher.”

“Right,” Mildred said firmly. “Which can only mean one thing, right Ryan?”

Ryan looked up at the blank ceiling of the redoubt tunnel, as though it would give him an answer other the one which he feared. But there was only one real option here. “Cooling and recycling for the air is as fucked as the water. We’re breathing it in, and it isn’t going anywhere. If we don’t get out of here real soon, then there isn’t going to be any air left.”

“That’s assuming we can get the main door open,” Krysty murmured.

“We’ll take that one when we come to it,” Ryan muttered. “Best to get what we can and get up there as soon as possible. J.B., you and Doc take the armory, see if there’s anything we can use in there. Jak, Krysty, you go back and gather as much water and self-heats as you can. Mildred, I’ll go with you and see what’s in the infirmary. We try to do this as quickly as we can, and then get the hell out.”

“Remember, hurrying is going to make it worse,” Mildred counseled before they split up. “Take it easy, and make every move count. Try to conserve the air by not breathing so hard. Quick, but not so quick you get shorter of breath than this air makes you, okay? And let’s keep talking to a minimum.”

J.B. shot her a look that told her he felt that last sentence had been a waste of words in itself, stating the obvious. She grinned back at him before they went their separate ways, keen to loot the redoubt of any resources while they still had the air to keep them alive.

Moving swiftly and silently, with no need for words now that they knew what they were doing, they soon had their tasks completed. For Jak and Krysty, to return to the kitchen area and gather up the water and self-heats was a simple task, and they were soon on their way to the main corridor leading out into the outside world.

For the other two pairs, things were not so clear-cut. The redoubts had all been planned and built along similar lines, which made finding their way around a relatively easy task. However, some were larger and deeper than others, and in some the positions of some of the storage and working areas had been altered to accommodate the specific purpose of that redoubt. So although each pair knew where it should head to find the infirmary and the armory, they couldn’t be sure if each should be where they suspected until they reached them. And if the locations had been changed, then it would take up valuable time to find the alternative placement.