Читать книгу Shatter Zone - James Axler - Страница 12

The desert night air was cool and sweet, scented with the flowers from the nearby cactus grove. The roiling polluted clouds overhead had broken, allowing the crescent moon to shine a silvery light across the landscape, turning the box canyon a stark black and white. The only source of flickering color came from a small cookfire. Squatting around the crackling flames, the four Rogan brothers licked their fingers and wiped greasy mouths on grimy sleeves.

Hawking and spitting on the ground, Alan Rogan cut loose a satisfied belch. “Now that was a good dog.” He chuckled, scratching his belly. “Don’t you think so, bro?”

The elder Rogan scowled at his brother. “Shaddup,” John snapped, tossing a gnawed leg bone onto the fire. The impact stirred up a cloud of red embers that lifted into the air and danced about to float away on the breeze.

Alan frowned. “Hey, I was only—”

“Go water the horses,” John ordered, licking his fingers clean. “This shithole didn’t have anywhere near the number of people we were told. We ride at dawn.”

“Hopefully to a ville with some sluts,” Robert groaned in a horrible, barely human voice. The large bald norm then broke a bone in two and sucked out the dark marrow. A dirty silk scarf was wrapped around his throat, almost hiding a long puckered scar that completely encircled his neck, the classic telltale mark of a hangman’s noose.

Dropping the pieces of bone into the flames, Robert rubbed a greasy hand across his bald head and smiled ruefully. “Been a long time since I showed some gaudy slut the ceiling,” he croaked. “Too goddamn nuking long.”

“We still have the shovel,” Alan said, jerking a thumb at the darkness outside the nimbus of the firelight. “I’m sure if ya really wanted to you could still find the wrinklie. Mebbe the ants haven’t eaten much of her good stuff yet.”

John snorted a laugh at that, but Robert lowered his head as if about to charge like a rampaging bull. “I’d do you before a rotter,” he growled in mock warning.

Without any expression, Alan gestured and knives slipped from his sleeves into each hand. “Any time you wanna try, big brother,” he replied softly, turning the blades slightly so that the feathered edge of the steel reflected the reddish light of the campfire.

Moving back slightly, Robert raised his hands as if in surrender, and Alan now saw that one fist was holding a pipebomb, the fuse smoldering and spitting sparks.

“Come to Poppa,” the bald man snarled, gesturing closer.

“Cut out the fragging drek and get to work,” John ordered, dismissing them both with a wave of his scarred hand. “Alan, the horses. Robert, go spell Ed.”

Grinning broadly, Robert licked two dirty fingers and pinched out the fuse, then pulled the string from the pipebomb and tucked it away into his voluminous jacket. The bomb itself went into a pouch on his belt. “Sure thing. No prob, bro,” he croaked, and stood to walk away into the night.

“Why is he always on my ass like that?” Alan complained, tucking the blades away again. “I was only joking around.”

“He’s bald as a rock, and you got a ponytail down to your balls. Figure it out yourself,” John said, sneering contemptuously. “Now water the fragging horses, or do ya wanna try that knife trick on me?”

Angry, Alan started to shoot back a taunt, but then saw his elder brother’s face and thought better. John was in charge of the gang because he was the smartest, there was no denying that. But also because the other brothers were terrified of him, and there was no denying that, either.

Forcing a smile onto his face, Alan strolled away into the night, kicking at the sand to raise little dust clouds as he moved toward the remaining horses.

As Alan vanished into the gloom, Edward appeared and sat on the ground. Taking a haunch of roasted meat from a rock near the crackling flames, the barrel-chested man started tearing off pieces like a wild mutie. In spite of the cool evening, he had his shirt mostly unbuttoned, and a grisly necklace of shriveled “trophies” hacked off his enemies was clearly visible.

Lighting a handrolled cig, John sucked in the sweet dark smoke of the zoomer, nodding in satisfaction that he finally got the mixture of tobacco, marijuana and wolfweed just right. A little too much of the tobacco and you didn’t get zoned. Too much of the mary and it tasted like drek. Some people chatted about shine as if it had tits and an ass, but weed was the cure for what ailed a man.

“Any more?” Edward demanded as a question, trying to crack the bone apart for the marrow. But the bone splintered in his enormous hands and he cast the greasy mess into the flames. The glowing charcoal sputtered and started to give off thick smoke.

“Nope, we each got a quarter,” John said, letting the zoomer dangle from his lips. “Share and fair alike, as always, bro.”

“I’m bigger,” Edward complained, thumping a fist onto his hairy chest. “I should get more.”

“Would, should, could. Don’t mean shit to me.”

“Ain’t fair,” Edward rumbled dangerously.

Blowing out a smoke ring, John debated getting rough, when there was an unexpected flash of light. For a split tick, he thought he was having a vision from the drugs in the cig. But then the light came again, softer, whiter, and rapidly expanded to fill the entire box canyon as if it was high noon.

“Son of a bitch!” Edward cursed, reaching behind his back and pulling out a short hatchet. “What the hell is this?”

Dropping the zoomer, John rolled backward off the rock he had been sitting on and grabbed the blaster from his bedroll. Clicking back both of the hammers on the double-barrel longblaster, the elder Rogan looked frantically about. The weird light completely filled the box canyon, all the way up to the rocky ridge above. But it seemed to stop there, as if it were a pool filled with shiny water.

Now how the nuking hell can that be possible? You can’t carry a bucket of light! he pondered.

Glancing down, John felt his gut tighten at the sight of no shadows on the ground, not even behind the rocks set around the crackling fire. Experimentally, he tilted a boot, and there was no shadow underneath. That was impossible. Mother-nuking flat-out impossible. Light had to come from somewhere. Air didn’t fragging glow! He paused at that. Actually, yes, it did, but only at the bottom of blast craters thick with rads.

Looking for his brothers, John saw Robert standing over by the truck with the loaded crossbow in his hands, the bald man’s eyes darting about madly. Alan was walking toward the horses…

John blinked and looked again. No. Alan was backing away from the horses, and there was an outlander strolling toward them!

The fellow was slim and pale, and his hair was slicked down flat to his head, the soft face as smooth as a young girl’s. The outlander was wearing some sort of white outfit, kind of like a robe that draped from his shoulders down to the silvery moccasins. Oddly everything he wore was spotlessly clean, damn near looked brand-new. Now, that was weird enough, but even more bizarre was the fact that the outlander didn’t have any weapons. There wasn’t a sign of a blaster, blade or a bomb. Yet he was smiling broadly as if he had just won a big hand of poker in a friendly ville.

“Feeb,” Alan whispered, raising both knives.

“Loon,” Edward retorted, leveling his wep.

“Hello, Rogans,” the outlander said with a friendly wave. “My name is Delphi, and we should talk.”

“Frag that,” Robert snorted, frowning at the use of their family name. “Take him!”

Grunting in acknowledgment, Edward instantly fired, the arrow from the crossbow flying straight for the outlander. But a few feet away from the man, it smashed apart in midair, as if hitting a brick wall. The broken pieces tumbled to the sand.

What the nuke? With a snarl, John raised his blaster and cut loose with both barrels, just as Alan jerked his hands forward. But the spray of birdshot and the knives impacted the same invisible barrier around the outlander and ricocheted away.

“Done yet?” Delphi demanded, impatience flashing in his silvery eyes.

This damn mutie is laughing at us, John realized in cold shock. Laughing at the Rogan brothers! As if we were children playing games!

Just then a large rock slammed onto the shield, or whatever it was, around the outlander, and shattered into pieces. Breathing heavily from the exertion, Edward stared at the stranger more in puzzlement than fear.

“Let me know when you’re done,” Delphi said, sounding annoyed. “We have business to discuss.”

Muttering a curse, Robert threw the pipebomb. It landed behind the pale outlander and detonated, the blast throwing out a death cloud of sand, pebbles and iron shrapnel. The entire grove of cactus shook, dropping a hundred pieces of fruit, and just for a single moment there was clearly defined shape around the outlander, some sort of glass ball or transparent sphere. Then the force of the blast faded away, the rolling noise echoing into the open desert.

Not glass, John realized, squeezing his weapon in frustration. But some kind of shield. There was an invisible wall as hard as iron around the newcomer. Was this some form of mutie mind power or predark tech? His bet would be for tech. But there was no way to be sure.

“Enough,” Delphi said, making a gesture. A blue light engulfed Edward and the big man dropped to the ground as if poleaxed.

Rushing over to the sprawled form of his brother, Robert saw that the huge chest was still rising and falling. His brother was only knocked out, but Robert had no doubt that the outlander could have aced Edward if he wanted. Shitfire, the outlander could chill them all at his whim.

“What…who are you?” Alan asked in a strained whisper. His hands flexed as if reaching for more of his hidden knives, but no blades came into sight.

Tilting his head slightly, Delphi gave a half smile as if enjoying a secret joke. “I have already told you my name,” he said in an even tone. “And as of this moment, you now work for me.”

“Yeah?” Robert growled, notching another arrow into the crossbow. “What if we don’t wanna?”

Turning slightly, Delphi stared hard at the big man. “You have no choice,” he replied, making a gesture at the horses.

Lashed to the bumper of the predark truck with knotted lengths of old rope, the three animals shook violently all over, then slumped to the ground with red blood gushing from their slack mouths. The brothers stared in horror at the chilled horses and slowly turned back to Delphi. The outlander was still smiling, the expression tolerant, almost amused. It sent a shiver down their spines.

“Don’t fret about your beasts. You shall receive exemplary compensation for this assignment,” Delphi continued smoothly, tucking his slim hands up the loose sleeves of his robe. “Transport, reconnaissance, heavy ordnance…”

Having no idea what half of those words meant, John said nothing, his fingers aching to reload the longblaster, but knowing it would be seen as a sign of fear. Forcing his hands to obey, the elder Rogan rested the weapon casually on a shoulder. In any negotiation, especially when the other fellow held all the blasters, a man had to stay cool and calm. If all you had was words, then try not to use any. That always threw off the other fellow and helped even the balance a little.

Chuckling softly, Delphi seemed to be extraordinarily pleased by the lack of action for some reason, as if a pet had done a particularly clever trick and deserved a treat.

“Okay, you got our attention,” John stated, taking a step forward. “What’s the job, Whitey?”

“Something has been lost,” Delphi said, anger crossing his pale face for the first time.

“And ya want us to find it.” Alan snorted in disdain. “Easy enough. What is it that you’re looking for?”

“Salvation,” Delphi growled as a strange humming filled the air and white mists suddenly appeared to engulf the four coldhearts. “Salvation!”

Clawing for their weps, the Rogan brothers felt themselves drop into the ground, as the desert disappeared, replaced by an infinite panorama of burning stars.

TWO HOURS LATER the companions were halfway through their inspection of the redoubt.

Starting at the bottom, the companions did a fast recce on the humming nuclear reactors behind the thick walls of unbreakable glass, although Mildred sometimes called it Plexiglas. Then came the life support rooms, where the hundreds of pumps and filters kept the base clean, warm and uncontaminated from the radblasted hellzone outside the redoubt.

Everything was functioning normally and seemed to be in perfect working order. But all of that changed once the companions reached the storage and barracks areas. On that level, the redoubt was as bare as the last one they had visited. Every room, every closet, was completely empty. Even the beds in the barracks were devoid of mattresses and pillows. There wasn’t a pencil in a desk drawer or a roll of wipe on the toilet.

“If the last redoubt never got its supplies delivered or was stripped clean,” Ryan muttered, walking along a corridor, “then this one was still being built.”

“You can load that into a damn blaster,” J.B. agreed, his fingerless gloves tight on the Uzi machine gun. Some of the sections seemed unformed and still rough along the edges. It was just little things, doors out of plumb, keypads off kilter, details that nobody would ever notice, unless they had been in a hundred other redoubts.

Pausing at the next closed door, the companions took combat positions. With Jak keeping cover, Krysty pushed open an unlocked door. The walls were unpainted, and in the next room the floor was only bare concrete, without even linoleum tiles in place.

“Never seen so much nothing,” Jak drawled angrily, the heavy Colt staying tight in his grip.

“I agree with your double negative,” Doc rumbled pensively, easing down the hammer on his massive LeMat pistol. “This is most curious indeed.”

After checking out the entire level, the companions went to the elevator and pressed a button for the cage. When it arrived, they checked for traps, then piled inside. Using the tip of his SIG-Sauer pistol, Ryan started to press the button for the garage at the top of the redoubt, but then paused and hit the button for the next level upward instead.

“Impatient, lover?” Krysty asked, tilting her head.

With a tiny vibration, the elevator started smoothly upward.

“Worried,” Ryan answered honestly. “Sure. If the blast doors are remotely locked by whitecoats, then we’re prisoners.”

“Trapped without food,” Mildred said, frowning as she leaned against the bare metal wall. “Damn, I hadn’t thought of that possibility.”

“Starvation is a mighty slow way to be chilled,” J.B. noted, removing the unlit cigar, only to put it back in place once more.

“Eat blaster first,” Jak stated coldly, tilting his head slightly forward so that his snowy hair fell across his face, hiding the features.

“Then again, maybe Operation Chronos only wants us trapped long enough to get weak, and then they capture us alive,” Ryan guessed, voicing his dark thoughts. Why fight an enemy at full strength when you can wait a few days and clamp on the slave chains without resistance?

“Alive,” Jak growled. “Like for experiments?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Nuke that,” Jak muttered, tightening the grip on his blaster.

Just then, the elevator gave a musical chime and the doors parted. As the companions stepped into the corridor, they became instantly alert. In spite of the warm breeze from the wall vents, there was a dry chill in the air. This was something they had encountered only once before, a long time ago.

“Just like that redoubt in Zero City,” Ryan said as a warning, bringing up the barrel of the Steyr longblaster. The two blasters were rock-steady in his hands.

“Just as long as it isn’t another Alaska,” Krysty added grimly, her hair tightening in response. The old madman in charge of that redoubt had a lot of funny ideas about breeding, and the companions had been triple glad to leave that place far behind. A recent visit had spooked them all.

Easing along the corridor, the companions saw only bare, blank walls until taking a corner. A huge steel door stood at the far end of the next passageway, the metal-and-ceramic surface touched with patches of snowy frost along the edges. There was no doubt that this was the source of the cold.

“A deeper,” Jak stated, stopping in his tracks.

Ever so slowly, Ryan gave a nod. Yeah, definitely looked like a Deep Storage Locker. He remembered the first time the Trader had told him and J.B. about such things. Just another legend, they’d thought at the time, only this one happened to be true. A deeper, a Deep Storage Locker, was a special vault filled with dead air—inert gases, Mildred called them—and then made colder than winter ice. The combo was supposed to keep everything from aging, suspended animation was the whitecoat term. The ammo would be live, the canned food fresh, the blasters in perfect condition, the medicine still potent. The companions had found only one of these before in all of their travels, and that deeper had been guarded by a sec hunter droid.

“How much C-4 do we have, John Barrymore?” Doc asked, using his left hand to pull back the massive hammer of the LeMat. It locked into place with a solid click, the single-action revolver now ready for immediate firing.

“Plas? Not a scrap left,” J.B. said around the cigar. “I’m down to road flares and bad language.”

“Mebbe we should check the blast doors first, lover,” Krysty said hesitantly. “Just in case we have to run.”

There was logic to that, Ryan had to admit. But there was also no denying the fact that somebody had rigged their last jump, and he’d sure as hell feel a lot better about that with some spare brass jingling in his pocket.

“We keep going,” the one-eyed man growled, hefting his longblaster. “But spread out more. We’ll need space if there’s a sec hunter droid inside the locker.”

“What we’d need is a freaking bazooka,” Mildred muttered under her breath, shifting her grip on the scattergun.

Proceeding warily along the corridor, the companions took their time and checked every room along the passageway in turn, making sure there wouldn’t be any surprises left behind them if the locker proved to be guarded.

Once past the last door, the companions gathered in front of the icy portal and studied it carefully. There was a painted curve on the floor to show the swing of the armored slab, and a keypad on the wall offered easy access.

Holstering the SIG-Sauer, Ryan started forward, but the moment he crossed the painted line, a siren started to bleat, and a red light began to flash above the icy locker.

“Warning!” a mechanical voice blared from the ceiling, rattling the tiles. “Warning! Intruder alert! Intruder alert! All security personnel to Section 9! Repeat! All security personnel to Section 9!”

Swinging the Steyr upward, Ryan blew the speaker apart with a single shot and blessed silence returned to the hallway.

“Stupe machines,” J.B. commented, using the barrel of the Uzi to push back his fedora. “Can’t tell the difference between—”

The Armorer never got to finish the statement as there came a soft hiss and the corridor behind them was suddenly closed off by a grid of steel bars that dropped from the ceiling to violently slam onto the floor. If anybody had been standing under the gate, he or she would have been mashed into bloody pulp.

“Good thing…” Ryan started, then felt cold adrenaline flood his body as a second sigh sounded. On impulse he dived forward. While in the air, something smacked into his left boot, sending the man tumbling. He hit the wall hard, gritting his teeth against the pain shooting through his ankle. Nuking hell!

Looking backward, Ryan scowled at the sight of a second gate sealing off the corridor, the other companions now trapped between the array of steel bars. Caged like rats.

Her hair flexing wildly, Krysty started to speak, but then jerked her head toward the ceiling as panels swung open and a Vulcan minigun dropped into view. The deadly rapidfire was covered with armored cables and enclosed in cascading ammo feeds.

“Drop your weapons!” a voice boomed through the speaker mounted on the Vulcan, the volume almost deafeningly loud. “Drop your weapons, or die!”

Wasting no time, Ryan ignored the pain in his ankle and stood up to grab with both hands the electrical wiring attached to the bottom of the minigun. He pulled with all of his strength, and the smaller wires easily snapped free. But the larger cables were sheathed in flexible metal and only bent under his weight.

“Alert! Alert!” the speaker loudly announced as the robotic weapon swiveled, trying to target its attacker. The barrels began to spin and the Vulcan cut loose, the armor-piercing rounds chewing a path of destruction along the floor. The tiles disintegrated, spraying out rubbery pieces in every direction and exposing the hard concrete floor underneath. But hanging suspended directly underneath the Vulcan, Ryan stayed just outside its range.

Ricochets flew everywhere, several of the slugs zinging off the steel bars of the security cage holding the companions prisoner. In response, J.B., Krysty and the others shoved their blasters through the cage and hammered lead at the shielded control cables of the deadly rapidfire. The incoming barrage tore the flexible casing apart, and Ryan dropped to the floor with two fistfuls of sparking wires. Instantly the deadly Vulcan stopped firing and the spinning barrels slowed until they went completely still, the metal ticking as it radiated away the tremendous heat of the brief barrage.

“Anybody hurt?” Ryan demanded, tossing away the circuitry. As the wires hit the floor, miniature computer chips broke off from the ends. He had never seen tech like that before. Curious.

“No blood in sight,” Mildred reported, glancing quickly about as she slung the shotgun over a shoulder. “Damn, that was lucky!”

“Lucky my ass,” Krysty retorted, grabbing the steel bars and trying to shake them. The metal grating didn’t budge. “We’re locked in tight, and you’re trapped between this and the door.”

Walking the perimeter of the cage, J.B. studied every section. Steel bars closed off both sides of the corridor, and more had slid into existence along the walls when he hadn’t noticed, probably when the Vulcan was blasting.

“There’s no way out of this that I can see,” J.B. said in disgust. “There’s no lock to pick or keypad to short out.”

“Pity young Dean is no longer with us,” Doc said slowly, biting a lip. “He could have easily slipped out between these bars.”

“What good would that do?” J.B. demanded. “We need to liberate everybody, not just one of us.”

Jak dropped his backpack and started to remove his boots, then the rest of his clothing. In a few moments the teenager was stark naked and forcibly throwing himself at the smooth bars. Sheer momentum got Jak halfway through before he became stuck. Wiggling, the teenager gained another inch, but then stopped, unable to advance or to retreat.

“Exhale deeply,” Mildred directed. “Contract your chest.”

Grimacing unhappily, Jak did as requested as J.B. put two hands on the teenager’s shoulders and started to push. Both of them began to curse from the exertion. Then, with a lurch, Jak came free and tumbled down the corridor.

“Well done, lad!” Doc stated with a sharp nod. “The legendary Count of Monte Cristo could not have done better!”

“Now what?” Jak demanded, rubbing his scraped chest. The albino’s skin was already starting to show a few bruises.

“Head for the garage and find a crowbar,” J.B. suggested as Krysty passed the teenager his clothes, the Colt and the gunbelt.

“I don’t think a crowbar will lift these,” Ryan said with a dark frown. “And there’s no way you could drive a Hummer down here to try to ram the bars, even if there is one on the garage level.”

“Got no choice,” Jak said as he dressed. “Best light candles.” Turning, the teen started at an easy lope down the corridor toward the waiting elevator.

“Use gloves if you got any!” Ryan shouted through cupped hands.

Pausing at the corner, Jak waved in understanding, then dashed out of view. A moment later there was a soft chime from the closing elevator doors.

“Candles?” Mildred asked in confusion, then her eyes went wide. “Oh hell, he’s going to try to cut the power to the whole redoubt!”

“Think that will also open the Deep Storage unit?” Krysty asked tersely, reloading her revolver.

Frowning deeply, Ryan turned to stare at the giant portal. “Sure as frag hope not,” he muttered, sliding off the Steyr and checking the rotary clip inside the longblaster. “But we better get hard, just in case.”

Long minutes passed as the companions prepared for a close-quarter firefight. If the locker door automatically opened and a sec hunter droid came rolling out, Ryan was the only person in real danger. The droids weren’t armed with distance weps—that they knew about, at any rate. Protected by the thick steel bars, everybody would be safe from the deadly war machine, except Ryan. Trapped between the cage and the locker, the one-eyed man would only have a few yards in which to try to outmaneuver the kill bot. His only defense would be the combined firepower of the trapped companions.

“All for one, and one for all,” Doc muttered in a singsong manner.

“Do we look like the Three Musketeers?” Mildred snorted rudely.

“There were four of them, actually,” Doc corrected with a smile.

“Oh, I know that. Keifer Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Charlie Sheen and the other guy.”

Doc blinked. “What in the name of God are you babbling about, madam?”

Suddenly the ceiling lights flickered and went out.

“Here we go,” Ryan growled softly as the air vents slowly stopped blowing and a deafening silence filled the subterranean mil base.