Читать книгу Sunchild - James Axler - Страница 10

The Armorer was restless as they made their way through the darkened corridors of the redoubt toward the elevator shafts and stairwells that led to the surface.

“If there are still survivors up there, then they may be able to tell us about this so-called promised land…if they don’t try to chill us first,” he added with a wry inevitability.

“Erewhon,” Mildred muttered.

J.B. gave her a questioning look.

“Sorry, John,” she answered him. “It’s just the name that journal gave it.”

“An apt name,” Doc interjected dreamily. “A source of much pride to an ancient philosopher who should have known better. Would Samuel Butler smile at his Erewhon Eden being used for something that may be so apt?”

Dean shot Doc a quizzical stare. “What does all that mean?”

Doc smiled. “Erewhon, nowhere…just change a few letters. It could all be so apt.”

They came out into a loading bay about forty feet square and ill lit by the one remaining, flickering light. It was dustier than the rest of the corridors, and the temperature dropped a few degrees in the wide concrete expanse.

Directly in front of them were two large elevator bays, with the tempered-steel alloy doors closed. Small gatherings of dirt and dust on the floor swirled slightly in a faint draft, and collected at the point where the supposedly airtight door met. It didn’t encourage a belief in the working condition of the elevators.

“Could be that just the seals have broken down,” Ryan muttered, hunkering down to feel the dirt, and to judge the draft.

Krysty joined him. “Not good,” she whispered, almost to herself. “This isn’t just surface dirt—this is rock dust.”

Ryan stood, noting that his own sense of unease was mirrored in the way Krysty’s hair had tightened to her skull. The one-eyed warrior examined the comp panels that had controlled the elevator. They were dead, blank screens failing to register any signs of life no matter how many buttons he pressed.

“Guess it’s the stairs and maintenance shafts, then,” J.B. drawled, watching Ryan. “Good exercise.”

Ryan smiled. “Guess so. Gonna be a hell of a climb, though.”

“Why?” Jak asked.

“These people were obsessed with getting deep into the earth, and this is much deeper than the usual redoubt. So we’re going to have to climb farther,” Mildred explained.

“So the sooner we get started the better, I guess,” Dean said, looking around to find the access door to the emergency stairwells that were used to access a redoubt’s maintenance ducts.

The unassuming entrance was hidden in the dark shadows of the bay, and wasn’t on the centralized comp mainframe for the redoubt. This had been a measure to insure that parts of the redoubt could be accessed by engineers in cases where the mainframe had gone haywire and caused a malfunction that jammed the sec doors or elevators. So each door accessing the shafts on every level was notable only for having no sec lock, but a large lever lock.

For Ryan and his people, trying to get out, this became irritating, as they couldn’t just tap in a code, but had to blast the lock from the door and waste valuable plas-ex or ammo. J.B. complained bitterly to himself as he used yet more of the valuable explosive to blow the door. He had hoped that the armory would replenish his stocks, but was still sorely disappointed by what they had found.

The door blew, swinging noisily on dry hinges.

Coming forward to the dark hole that the stairwell formed, Ryan peered upward, his good eye trying to focus through the stinging dust. Form took shape in the blackness.

“Still some kind of stairs or ramp, and it looks intact for as far as I can see. We’ll spread out and take it at twenty-yard intervals. J.B., you’re last. I’ll go first.”

With that, Ryan stepped into the darkness.

IT WAS crushingly claustrophobic in the service shaft. There was no way of seeing which way was up and which down; there was no way of telling where the ceiling lay, and how far in front there was actually a floor left. Ryan kept a hand out to his left, his fingertips brushing the side of the stairwell shaft so that he had some kind of bearing. To his right may have been a wall or a sheer drop as he continued upward.

The air was fresher, suggesting that somewhere above them was access to the surface that was letting in air untreated by the redoubt’s defective conditioning plant. The problem with this was that a gap or hole letting in untreated air suggested that there had been a landslide of some kind. That in turn suggested the unpleasant thought that the shaft may be unstable.

In the enclosed dark, Ryan could hear his combat boots on the concrete, coming down in measured tread, with only the occasional skittering of small stones, concrete chips and gravel beneath his feet. Behind him, he could hear Krysty, treading delicately on the concrete, measuring each step for danger. Her silver-tipped cowboy boots made a higher note on the sounding board of the concrete. Her breathing, like his, was slow and measured.

Jak was inaudible, despite being third in line and only forty yards behind Ryan in the enclosed darkness. The albino had uncanny hunting instincts, and was able to move in silence amid the most impossible conditions.

Doc, in the middle, was even more audible than Krysty. Despite his tenacious strength, the battering of time travel and torture had told heavily on Doc’s reserves of stamina and the way in which he could cope with such obstacles. His feet shuffled, his swordstick tapping rhythmically on the concrete floor. His breathing was regular, but hard and rasping.

Dean, behind Doc, was out of hearing range, but Ryan could feel his son’s impatience, lest Doc slow too much and leave the party falling too far behind. With Mildred bringing up the rear, Ryan knew he could rely on her to be on hand to help Doc, and that J.B. would keep things together.

So far, Ryan had resisted the urge to either call out to his people or to use one of the precious flares that he carried. Like so much other salvaged tech, the flares were inclined to be erratic when set off, and sometimes could fail to ignite…or would explode with enough force to take off the hand of whoever tried to ignite them.

“Listen up,” he said in a low tone that he hoped would carry sufficiently to the back of the strung-out group. “I’m going to light a flare, see what the fireblasted hell is in front of us. So no one jump when the lights go on.”

He had been unwilling to raise his voice. Since entering the service shaft and stairwell they had all maintained silence, broken only by the odd whispered word of warning to the immediate follower if there was an obstruction on the path that could cause injury, a raised piece of concrete that could turn an unwary ankle and hold them all up. Without a recce of the shaft ahead, there was no way of knowing if a sudden noise would set off a collapse of some kind. So they had all kept quiet. But the risk of startled exclamations and shouts when the flare went off was a greater risk than Ryan’s hoarse cry.

“You okay, lover?” Krysty whispered.

Ryan nodded, forgetting the dark. “Just about. But we need to see what’s ahead.”

He took the flare from the canvas bag that was slung on the opposite side to his Steyr. The flare spluttered twice, small sparks illuminating Ryan’s concerned, concentrated visage, before seeming to die off. Then, when he was almost at the point of giving up, it suddenly hissed and sputtered into life, throwing a phosphorus glare around the shaft.

Looking back over his shoulder, Ryan could see his companions in a line behind him, all adjusting their eyes to the sudden light. He could also see the way in which the shaft was constructed. Reinforced-concrete beams supported the roof and lined the walls at regular intervals. Also regular, but falling in between the beams, was a series of graduated steps, each forming a platform of about twenty-five feet in length, some of which were irregularly raised.

“Most ingenious,” Doc murmured on observing this, taking the brief opportunity to halt for a moment’s rest. “Not steps, but neither a ramp. The slightest movement of the earth will merely alter the one platform, rather than stress and crack a complete ramp or break a fixed staircase.”

Ryan looked at his wrist chron. They had been progressing up for nearly an hour. The incline was gradual, and the shaft had a slight bend to it. Looking ahead, he could see that the platforms were a little more uneven, suggesting earth disturbance. But all the columns appeared to be intact. He noted that the width of the tunnel was less than he had supposed, and it would have been possible for him to stand in the middle with both arms extended to touch the sides.

From the elapsed time and the gradation of the tunnel, he suspected that they still had a long way to go.

“Okay, now we know where we’re going,” he said, almost to himself. “Let’s go.”

A flare would last twenty minutes, the last five showing a fading light, so Ryan knew that they had been walking for over fifteen minutes when they came to a sharp corner, the first they had encountered.

But even by the fading light he could see that it wasn’t a constructed corner. The earth had savagely taken the shaft and bent it to its own will.

“Problems,” he said over his shoulder, trying to make his voice carry without raising it. “We’ve got an earth move.”

As he said it, he was aware of the platform beneath his feet moving. It was a slight movement, but growing with every second. The concrete platform was tilting on loosened earth, the angle of tilt increasing the momentum in a dangerous equation.

“Fireblast!” he yelled, the flare falling from his grip as he slid on the platform, a thin coating of moss from the seepage of damp earth causing his heavy combat boots to lose their firm hold as the angle increased.

Ryan tilted his muscular frame to the bend of the earth, not fighting the momentum but rolling with it, using it to adjust his own equilibrium. As the shaft tilted and rolled in his vision, he saw that the others were also encountering similar problems. Krysty had been slammed into the wall of the shaft, and was fighting to regain both footing and the breath that had been driven from her body. Behind her, Jak was down, but already springing to his feet. Doc was down, and beyond him there was darkness, filled with the rumble of moving earth and the crunch and whine of breaking concrete and twisting metal as the support rods in the columns bent beneath the pressure of the moving rock and earth.

And then, as suddenly as it had started, it ceased. Ryan stood silent and still, straining every nerve to detect any further movement. By the fading light, he could see Krysty, propped against the near wall of the shaft.

She caught his glance and briefly shook her head. With her razor-sharp mutie sense, she was the likeliest to detect any further danger in the depths of the earth.

Doc looked up, not yet daring to clamber to his feet.

“Safe?” he whispered. It seemed uncannily loud in the silence following the miniquake.

Ryan nodded, moving slowly to pick up the spluttering and dying flare, and moving with an infinite care back to where Krysty stood.

“Go back and check,” he said quietly. Krysty assented, and they both crept back to Jak, who was standing perfectly still, feeling for the slightest movement through the balls of his feet. As they approached, the albino looked at them, the flare illuminating his red eyes so that they glowed like coals.

“We move, not it adjust us,” he murmured, indicating that the resettled earth should be still for some time. The three of them went back to Doc, who was gingerly picking himself up and dusting himself down. Without a word, Doc fell in behind them and muttered an oath to himself when he saw that a wall of concrete, earth and rock cut them off from the others.

“Hope they behind, not in,” Jak said simply.

IT WAS PITCH-BLACK, and Mildred clung to the concrete floor, aware that she was at some crazy angle where her feet were above her head and her hands were pressing against the angle where the floor and wall now met.

The dust and dirt that filled the air clogged her nose and mouth. “John,” she spluttered through a mouthful of earth, “are you okay?”

“In one piece,” the Armorer replied quietly. “How about you?”

“Everything works and nothing hurts…much,” she replied with a smile no one could see. “Damned quake’s got me almost upside down, but other than that…”

“I’m coming forward,” J.B. replied. And then there was silence for a short while, broken only by the distant shuffle of earth on concrete. J.B.’s voice broke again. “I must be near you. Things seem to have died down, and it’s all pretty solid. There’s a ten-foot raise in front of me, but enough of a gap to get through.”

While Mildred tentatively picked her way around the steeply angled shaft until she was once again upright, she could hear J.B. ascend to the top of the platform and the scrape of his boots against the concrete as he felt his way down to floor level.

“Millie, where are you?” he whispered, only feet from her. She reached out to embrace him, and they silently thanked fate that each was, so far, okay. Finally, he said, “We need to get forward, find the others. Think we can risk a flare?”

“Uh-uh…too risky until we know how much air we’ve got. If we’re in a pocket, then the flare could use it too quickly.”

“Okay, let’s find out,” J.B. said simply, passing her and tentatively moving forward. He went only a few yards before reaching a wall of rock and earth.

“Shit, we’re cut off back here.”

“And no way of knowing how deep that wall of rock is,” Mildred added, almost to herself.

DEAN KNEW that he had been unconscious, but had no idea for how long. He only knew that his mouth tasted bitter, and his head was ringing as he raised it.

Slowly, allowing himself time to adjust to the crazy angle of the floor and for his balance to assert itself over the waves of nausea that washed past him as he sat upright, he took in his surroundings. There was no light, and he waited in silence for his eyes to adjust to the residual light.

But there was no residual light.

Dean fought back the sudden surprise and panic, and tried to think logically. He was still alive, and although the fall and subsequent unconsciousness had left his body aching, there was no damage that would impair him. On his hands and knees, moving slowly to keep any disturbance to a minimum, Dean explored the limits of his enclosed world. It was only a couple of yards each way around, and the roof was too low to enable him to stand straight when he attempted to rise to his feet.

The extent of his problem hit him squarely. He now knew he was cut off from all his companions, and what was more he had no way of knowing which direction was forward, which direction actually led to the unblocked passage or back to the redoubt, or even if there was a way out.

For a second, the black despair of loneliness threatened to engulf him, and hot salt tears pricked at the back of his eyes. If he managed to get out, was there any guarantee that he would find his father alive, or Krysty or Doc or…?

Cursing himself for being weak at a moment when he needed strength, the Cawdor blood began to tell. A steely resolve settled on Dean, and he shifted onto his knees, picking one end of the enclosure at which to begin his attempts to burrow out. Extending one arm upward, he felt once more the concrete passage support that was keeping the roof in place. His fingers feeling along gently, he could trace stress lines and fracture contours in the concrete where it had been twisted in the tunnel fall. In places he could reach into the column where the concrete had broken away and the cold metal of the steel reinforcing rod was bared.

A tentative push showed him that the roof support, such as it was, was firm enough for the moment. Firm enough for him to start disturbing the earth and rock, moving it away from the pile that had formed at one end of the enclosure.

It had never occurred to Dean that any kind of earthmoving work depended so much on being able to see what he was doing. As he moved the loose earth around clumps of rock, he found himself cursing repeatedly as shifting rocks crushed his fingers, and every time he made some small headway into the rockpile he felt other loose rocks tumble in to fill it—rocks he would have shored up if he could see them.

He had no idea how deep the fall went; it was something that he couldn’t even think about. It could have fallen all the way to the top of the shaft, in which case he would run out of air long before he had the chance to make any progress. But there was nothing else he could do. So he concentrated on the matter at hand.

SWEAT RAN in rivulets down Mildred’s face and neck. She could feel it down her back, gathering in a cold pool in the hollow at the base of her spine. She had stripped down to her undershirt, her clothes bundled beside her in the angle where wall met floor. She felt as though she had been shifting rock and dirt for all her life, and still she seemed to be making no headway. The atmosphere was already fetid and rank, and she was glad for the small flow of cleaner air coming through the gap where J.B. had climbed from his part of the fall.

Loose earth gathered at her feet, while large rocks were passed back to the Armorer, who disposed of them at the back of the enclave, piling them carefully. He would have liked to heft some of the smaller ones over the gap and into the space behind, but couldn’t risk one loose rock landing in such a way as to trigger a minor slide.

They worked in silence, to preserve air and energy, and because they had to concentrate intently on the task at hand. Neither wanted to think about the possibility of the rocks building up behind them before they broke through, and their making for themselves an even smaller, tighter prison.

J.B.’s head was filled with random thoughts of the past, or early days traveling with the Trader, of meeting Ryan and of the friends they had lost along the way. Now to be lost himself? He dismissed that as he took another rock from Mildred.

Mildred was remembering when she was a girl, scared of the dark and locked in the basement at her father’s Baptist church. She had only been there an hour after the door had closed behind her while she was exploring. How old was she then, about six? It had been so boring and so cold until she was discovered. She could do with that cold now, and someone like her father to just come along and open a door that would let them out.

BY THE LIGHT of the flare, it was easier for Ryan and Jak to remove rocks and brush falling dirt out of the way. Krysty and Doc took the rocks as they were removed from the earth fall, piling them at the sides of the shaft so that they still left a clear path.

With light and more air, Jak and Ryan were working at speed, forming the beginnings of a tunnel. Jak used the flatter slabs of rock to shore up the two-foot-high tunnel, enough for a crawl space if little else. They were working on limited time for themselves as much as anyone who was left on the other side of the landslide: there could be another miniquake at any time, triggered by their activity in the shaft.

Jak suddenly froze. “Stop,” he hissed. “Listen.”

Ryan also froze, straining every fiber of his being to pick up whatever Jak had heard. The albino’s face was rapt, his eyes narrowed, his teeth biting into his bottom lip with an intense concentration that was beginning to draw blood.

Krysty and Doc exchanged a look, both standing expectantly, feeling useless at that moment.

It was there again: Jak briefly looked at Ryan and nodded once, then again, in time to the noise.

A smile flickered at the corners of Ryan’s dust-caked lips. Faintly, so faint that it was almost impossible to hear, came the rhythmic scraping sound of rock being moved.

“Still alive,” Jak stated baldly, “and trying to get through.”

DEAN FELT exhausted, and was on the verge of giving up. Not with frustration, but simply because it seemed to have been going on forever. Deprived of all other sense, there was just the darkness, the heat, the stench and the rocks. He felt as though he were moving automatically, not even knowing what he was doing or why.

He moved another slab of rock, which jammed against one that was sticking out of the mass at an angle. The stones grated on each other, and Dean pulled at them, powdering small fragments that he breathed in with the increasingly bad air, feeling it scour his nasal passages and bite into his throat. Even to cough was too much effort, and he choked down the bile that the reflex of coughing brought up. He maneuvered the stone from side to side, trying to lever it clear.

The blackness was becoming all-encompassing. It wasn’t just lack of light. It was lack of sound, lack of feeling, lack of everything.

Dean began to slide once more into unconsciousness.

“STOPPED…get moving,” Jak said, snapping back into action with renewed energy. His sinewy limbs twisted around rocks, digging out earth with his bare hands to grip the rocks and pull them loose, but still making sure that he shored up the small tunnel as he went along.

Ryan didn’t waste time on a reply, but joined the wiry albino in his task. Ryan’s hands were larger, his arms thicker, but he worked just as determinedly to loosen the rocks and tunnel deeper.

Behind them, Krysty and Doc cleared the rocks and dirt that they left in their wake as their progress increased rapidly. No one spoke, but they all knew that the cessation of the noise was a bad sign. It could only mean that whoever was digging had either reached the point of exhaustion or had become unconscious.

And either option was bad.

MILDRED WAS LIKE a machine. She could no longer think about what she was doing, just act purely on instinct. And instinct was telling her that what she had to do to survive was keep digging out those rocks and dirt, keep shoring up that space she was making, keep passing it back to J.B.

The Armorer was also acting like an automaton. His spectacles—useless in such a situation—were secure in his pocket for when he would need them. His fedora was jammed on the back of his head, his close-cropped hair underneath wet with sweat. His clothes stuck to him with a paste of perspiration and dust that would have felt uncomfortable if he had been able to spare the attention to focus on this. But there was no part of him that could afford to focus on anything other than collecting and disposing of rocks.

Mildred kept burrowing until something jolted her out of the routine she had established. Something that took a moment to register.

She was picking at loose soil, and a warm draft came through that dirt. Then she was picking at nothing….

“John, we’re through. It’s empty….” Her voice was nothing more than a pained croak, but in the silence it was enough to penetrate the Armorer’s consciousness.

“Millie, keep going…got to get there,” he returned, suddenly aware of how dry and cracked his own throat seemed.

Jolted back to a form of consciousness, Mildred redoubled her efforts and had soon made a hole large enough for herself to crawl through. She had a bad feeling as soon as she was through, and coughed at the poor air in the new enclave. She crawled a few feet farther to allow J.B. to follow, pushing her clothes and their blasters before him.

“It’s too hot. Must be a hollow in the slide,” she whispered. Grasping before her, she felt a leg in the darkness. “Oh, sweet God,” she wailed, continuing to feel up the leg until she came to the torso, “Dean?”

“Is he alive?” J.B. managed to husk.

Mildred could feel his chest rise and fall in shallow breath. She nodded, then managed to croak “Yes” when she realized that J.B. couldn’t see her.

But how could they go on? What lay in front of them?

“FASTER,” Jak murmured, his mouth set in a thin, determined line.

“Not too fast—bring it all down on us,” Ryan reminded him, feeling tightly enclosed in the dark tunnel. Jak was a couple of feet ahead, passing rocks down his body and packing the walls and ceiling. He was full length, and Ryan knew almost the whole length of his own body was in the tunnel. So they had to have burrowed through at least three yards of earth and rock.

“Nearly there,” Jak snapped back. “Earth loose…”

MILDRED HEARD the movement of the rocks and earth grow louder, and climbed over Dean to where the rock that had defeated him stood, jammed in the tunnel entrance he had made.

“Pull him back, John,” she whispered, and as the Armorer pulled Dean’s prone body back from under her, she began to work at the rock. The rocks and earth around it began to loosen as the opposite side of the rock moved. She used the way in which it had wedged to swing it around and shore up dirt that was beginning to fall from the roof of the small tunnel.

The earth fell away slowly from one side while she clawed at it from the other. A residual light from the other side of the tunnel, almost unbelievably bright in the total darkness she had been forced to work in, backlit the white hair and scarred pale features of Jak Lauren.

Mildred almost cried with joy to see him. The flicker of a smile even flitted briefly across the albino’s features. It was driven away as he remembered how precarious their position was at that moment.

“Quick, not last long,” he breathed.

Mildred nodded and began to enlarge the hole where the tunnels met. Soon it was large enough for Jak to crawl through.

“Come,” Mildred gasped, “Dean’s unconscious.”

As she backed out of the tunnel, Jak crawled through. He was completely blind in the total blackness, but felt Dean’s limp body, and slithered back into the tunnel, dragging the prone boy after him.

Ryan scrambled back out of the tunnel, having heard Mildred and realizing that he would be of better use at the tunnel mouth to help bring his son into the open shaft.

As Jak appeared, pulling the still unconscious Dean, Ryan suppressed the fear that his son was dead…but not enough for Krysty not to notice and shoot him a worried glance.

Mildred crawled through, drawing the cleaner air in great gulps through her tortured throat. J.B. brought up the rear, and lay gasping for breath as Mildred immediately checked Dean, ignoring her own condition.

“He’ll be okay,” she told Ryan in short gasps as she drank greedily from the canteen of water he offered her. “Just needs to recover from the heat and the air—get some oxygen into him.”

Even as she spoke, Dean was stirring slightly. Krysty was resting him in a reclining posture against her, and Doc held the boy’s head, gently tipping water to his lips.

“Take it easy, my dear boy,” Doc whispered. “The worst is over.”

“Mebbe,” Ryan said softly, overhearing Doc, “but we need to get moving quickly, no matter how tired we are. We can’t risk staying here.”

“Take turns carrying Dean until recovered enough walk alone,” Jak offered.

Ryan nodded. “Me and you first to give J.B. and Mildred a chance to recoup their strength.”

The albino nodded and turned away, looking at the sudden bend in the shaft.

“Hope not hit another slide,” he said quietly.