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"Holy!" She jumped to her feet and raced toward the exit doors, reaching out
for the green lever, not bothering in her panic to check for safety. She
plunged under the rising mass of steel as soon as it was high enough and
immediately reversed the direction. She knelt the other side, panting as if
she'd run a half mile across a plowed field, the revolver in her hand.
She could hear the recorded voice inside, shut off by the sec doors. "Matter
transfer in progress. Any personnel with a sec rating below B-19 must leave"
The clock on the wall showed precisely 0859.
Krysty Wroth and Dean Cawdor were just completing their second jump.
Chapter Eight
Out in the corridor, Mildred was more aware of the odd smell in the redoubt.
"Formaldehyde? Can't be. Surgical disinfectant and some kind of gangrene."
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The mix of medical scents was puzzling.
To her left the corridor ended in a totally blank wall, blocking off any
thought of progress in that direction. The other way was a winding, well-lit
passage, like ones that she'd seen in other redoubts.
Mildred noticed that the ceiling was dotted with miniature surveillance
cameras, reminding her of visits to the shopping mall in Lincoln, Nebraska.
"Here goes nothing," she said, keeping the ZKR 551 in her right hand.
J.B. WOULD NEVER HAVE admitted to anyone, not even Ryan or Mildred, that he
suffered from claustrophobia, but the truth was that he found any confined
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spaces extremely difficult to handle.
It dated back many years, before he met the Trader and Ryan Cawdor.
He'd been born in Cripple Creek in Colorado, a beautiful town that had boomed
during the nineties with the legalization of gambling in the old mining
township. A boom that was predictably followed by bust, not long before
skydark, when that same legislation was repealed.
The hills around the township were littered with hundreds of old mine shafts.
Since the long winters, many had been used by the ragtag collection of
rad-sick survivors, countless numbers of them dying in those cold, barren
caverns.
The young John Dix had been a great explorer, preferring his own company to
that of the teenaged gangs around Cripple Creek. He knew that some of the
mummified corpses in the tunnels had died with blasters in their possession.
Even at the age of ten, J.B. had been fascinated by weaponry.
He'd taken to roaming for days on end, living off the land, exploring the more
isolated diggings.
It had been called the Lucky Chance Mine. Boards across its entrance had been
pulled down for burning, and the entire site had almost vanished under a rock
slide. But there was a gap just big enough for a skinny little boy to wriggle
through, his pocket oil lamp primed and ready.
At first it had looked like it was a deuce on the line. No signs of human
habitation. J.B. had persevered and gone deeper into the winding passage.
At first he thought he was imagining it, holding the light higher, so that its
flickering golden glow reached into the deeper shadows.
A cabin was built within the mine. Using the old props and timbers, the
rickety roof actually held up the roof of the mine. As the boy had walked
closer, the echo of his feet brought down a fine dust from the curved ceiling,
a sure sign of serious danger of collapse.
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There was a glider on the porch, its swing long rusted through. A dried corpse
lay among the tattered rags of a blanket. J.B. had looked at it from a few
yards off, seeing to his disappointment that there was no blaster around.
Moving as if he were treading on eggshells, he'd picked his way past the body,
the lantern ahead of him, into the ramshackle hut, aware that even his light
weight was making beams shift a little, creaking in protest, like a sleeper
being pulled back to the light of morning.
There was a table with a couple of plates on it, both covered in a sheen of
gray dust; a collapsed armchair and a fireplace, soot-blackened and empty;
half a dozen empty bottles and a few cans, still silver-bright in the dry
atmosphere.
And a double bunk bed in the far corner.
As the lad had stepped across toward it, he'd felt the floorboards shift, and
somewhere there was a brittle, snapping sound.
But he'd seen the gun, glittering like a jewel in a pirate's den. He'd
recognized it immediately as a chromed Colt Cobra 1973, a 6-round
double-action revolver that fired a solid .38 round. It had a snub-
nose two-inch barrel, and J.B. reckoned he could get a handful of jack for it
at the general trading store.
There was a bundle shape on the top bunk that he figured might well be the
partner of the corpse out on the porch. Likely they'd both starved to death or
succumbed to the long-term effects of rad sickness. He'd seen enough of that
himself in the previous few years, hair loss and bleeding gums, and sores that
spread to cover most of a person's emaciated body.
He had moved like a frail ghost, setting one foot slowly down in front of the
other, trying to ignore the ominous sounds of straining timbers and the fine
dust that floated around the sheltered flame of the oil lamp.
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As the boy knelt to pick up the gun, his hand brushing the checkered grips,
the cabin collapsed. The ceiling gave way, bringing down part of the roof of
the old mine shaft. The bunk bed folded over on top of J.B., knocking him to
the floor, trapping him faceup, boulders and splintered wood confining him in
a tiny cave.
For a few moments the shock robbed him of his senses. But when he opened his
eyes he realized that the lamp was, amazingly, still lighted at his side. And
that the body from the bunk now lay above him, pinning him to the floor in its
dry embrace.
The skull face was inches from his.
The mane of long brittle golden hair that caressed J.B.'s cheeks told him the
corpse had been female. The eyes had long vanished into the smeared sockets,
and the skin of the cheeks had shrunk and tightened across the planes of bone.
The lipless mouth was wide open, the irregular yellowed teeth actually nipping
at his own skin, below his left eye.
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J.B. had started to scream then, screamed for so long that his throat became
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