Sunchild

They ate in silence, none of them realizing until that moment how hungry they were, and how tired they had to have been to sleep without even thinking about food prior to this.

When they had finished, Jak placed his container on the cluttered table and belched. “Air getting bad,” he muttered.

“And you’re not helping,” Dean pointed out.

“Seriously, though, Jak has a point,” Mildred added. “We’re going to have to think about leaving. The air-conditioning plant won’t be able to cope with us for much longer, and the air’s just going to get worse.”

“Okay, we’ll find the armory, check it out, then head on out,” Ryan said decisively. “Let’s check ourselves first, though—don’t want to be too relaxed.”

The group ran through their weapons and supplies. As well as his leaf-bladed throwing knives, Jak also carried a .357 Magnum Colt Python with a six-inch barrel. It was, as always, in immaculate condition. Dean checked his Browning Hi-Power, Mildred her Czech ZKR 551 .38-caliber target revolver, which she favored because it fitted in with her predark shooting skills that had seen her win an Olympic silver medal.

Doc’s favored blaster was a LeMat double-barrel percussion pistol, usually firing two different kinds of shot. It was effective as a scattergun at longer ranges, and deadly in close quarters. A .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 640 was Krysty’s preferred blaster, and this was also checked. Ryan shouldered his Steyr SSG-70 rifle, and inspected his SIG-Sauer handblaster.

Mildred and Krysty made sure that they had gathered the remains of the self-heats and tucked them into their backpacks.

They were ready, if still relaxed. Now to check out the armory.

As with everything else in the redoubt, it was ridiculously easy to find. And there was no sec lock on the door, which was easily opened.

“Dark night,” J.B. growled. “I knew it was too damned good to be true.”

The Armorer and Ryan walked into the room that had once housed the armory. It was empty, apart from one open crate, which contained several rifles.

“Something’s better than nothing,” Ryan commented, removing one of the rifles from the crate and handing it to J.B.

“Guess I was mebbe expecting too much,” J.B. replied, pushing his fedora back from his forehead and taking the rifle with his other hand. “But what’s this?”

“I was kind of hoping you could tell me that, partner,” the one-eyed warrior replied as he, too, examined one of the rifles.

They were of a fairly conventional shape, although the lines of the barrel and stock seemed to almost blur as they molded into one. The blaster was of some alloy with which they were both unfamiliar, and had a large, round red sight on the top, which was non-detachable. There was a crystal in a cage at the end of the barrel, instead of an opening, and there was no way of inserting ammo.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Ryan questioned.

J.B. put the rifle down and carefully wiped his spectacles. “Yep, guess so. Mebbe some kind of laser tech. Who knows how that kind of shit works? Never come across enough of it to figure that out. So if these were left here because they’re defective…”

“Then we leave them because they’re just deadweight to us.”

The Armorer nodded. “One way to find out.”

Ryan nodded agreement. Making sure that the armory was clear apart from themselves, they tried each rifle, toying with the settings. None would fire; most wouldn’t even fire up the digital displays that came up in the red sight. Those that did had low power readings and error messages that made little sense without a trained tech or a manual.

J.B. threw the last one to the floor in disgust—a disgust measured by his treatment of something he would usually cherish.

“Knew it was too good,” he repeated.

“Guess we better just watch that it’s as bad as it gets,” Ryan said quietly.

He and J.B. returned to the others. There was no need to explain, as they had gathered the results.

“So we head out?” Mildred asked.

Ryan assented. “Recce on the way to see if we can pick up anything of interest.”

They began to walk the corridors that led toward the elevators, emergency stairwells and upward ramps that would take them to the surface. The corridors were dingy, with just enough light to see in front, but not enough to stop the corner of vision from being obscured by shadow. They passed through several sec doors that were permanently open.

“Hey, has anyone noticed something weird?” Dean asked suddenly as they passed through yet another open door.

“How would you define weird?” Doc queried.

“Well, because all these doors are open I wouldn’t swear to it being the same all the way through, but I’ve looked at the last couple of sec panels, and they haven’t got numbers scratched on them.”

Ryan frowned. It was something and nothing. Predark sec men sometimes scratched the sec-code numbers onto the scratch plates on the reverse side of the sec door, in case they forgot the number sequence.

“So you think what?” he asked his son.

Dean shrugged. “Don’t know. Guess mebbe this wasn’t a regular military place. Whoever was stationed here, was here all the time, and wasn’t likely to forget.”

“And why all open?” Jak added. “Not usual.”

Ryan shook his head. “No, this isn’t an ordinary redoubt. What—”

He looked round sharply, guided by an instinct that told him Krysty had stopped behind him. She was staring at a closed door, and the hair around her nape had formed tendrils that hugged her neck.

“Mebbe we’ll find an answer in there,” she said. “It feels bad, but not like danger…just residual bad feeling.”

“If it can’t hurt us,” J.B. remarked, throwing a glance at Ryan. The one-eyed warrior gestured, and the Armorer stepped forward to the door. It had a computerized lock with a blank digital display, and when he tried the handle underneath, the door failed to yield.

With a shrug, he took a small piece of plas-ex from one of his pockets, added a detonator fuse and set it. Waiting until the others took cover, he activated the fuse and hurriedly stepped back himself.

The lock and display on the door was of glass and a soft metal, and the small blob of plas-ex was enough explosive to make the metal buckle and yield. Waiting for the friction-heated metal to cool for a few seconds, the Armorer tried the door once more, and it swung open. The smell of the explosion lingered in the poor air, catching at their throats.

Personal artifacts were strewed across the desk and the carpet, as though someone had wrecked the room in a rage. A swivel chair lay overturned on the door side of the desk, and the remains of a body were visible in the hollow beneath the desk.

Mildred moved around to get a better view. The body was dressed in a black T-shirt and combat pants, with scuffed boots. It looked paramilitary rather than military to her, reminding the woman of the punks and metalheads from her own predark days who had become obsessed with apocalyptic and militaristic imagery. Strands of hair still clung to the skull. The skeleton still clutched a gray service-issue Colt .45 with a customized mother-of-pearl pistol grip. The cause of death was obvious: part of the skull was lying across the room, splintered by the bullet that had passed through the right temple and out somewhere above the left ear.

Ryan noticed a poster on the wall. It was faded and crumbling, and over a dreamlike image were written, in gothic lettering, the words “Grateful Dead.”

“Guess he was,” Ryan said grimly, indicating the poster.

The comp terminal on the long-dead man’s desk would give them no clues. It had been thoroughly trashed and was beyond repair, with the keyboard dismembered and the screen smashed. There were only a few pieces of paper scattered about. They were fragile with age and crumbled when Dean or Ryan bent to pick them up. The fragments that remained were so faded with scrawled ink that they were unreadable.

“It seems to me that we are in the hands of some apocalyptic cult or other,” Doc commented mildly, squinting to read several posters that were still hanging—just—from the walls. They were faded, and the light was poor, but there was enough for him to see that they all had biblical imagery or photographs of dead, dying and starving people. The slogans beneath spoke of humankind—what was left—rising like a phoenix from the ashes of mass destruction.

“Creeps knew what coming,” Jak commented.

“I don’t think this was anything to do with the military,” Mildred said, looking around her. “Can you imagine predark soldiers having these weird posters?” She gestured at the walls, and then looked at her companions. “No, I don’t suppose you’d know, really,” she added lamely, suddenly feeling the weight of her years.

Doc broke the silence. “From my somewhat limited knowledge, I would have to agree. I suspect this truly is some kind of nonmilitary base. In which case, it may be worth our searching for clues, as we may find information—if not weapons—that can be used to our advantage.”