LITMIR.BIZ

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could be said for Doc, who murmured and muttered to himself, twisting and turning beneath the sheets as his mind replayed incidents from his past, confusing the three centuries into which the man had been mercilessly born, dragged and thrown. Images and people, half-memories blended into fictions, wild dreams from the edges of reason: all these assailed him as he slept.

      And so they passed the night, each in their own cocoon of silence.

      “TIME TO GET TO IT, people,” Ryan said as he rose from his bed. He left the dorm to find Mildred, who had taken last watch and had been glad of the wakefulness to keep her darkest thoughts at bay.

      “Five o’clock and all’s well,” she said with a grin as Ryan came into view.

      The one-eyed man looked at his wrist chron. “It’s past eight,” he replied in a puzzled tone.

      Mildred shook her head, rubbing her eyes as she did. “Forget it Ryan, it was just some old joke that would have been funny if you were as old as me. What’s the agenda?” she added, without giving him time to respond to her previous comment.

      “Eat—if we can face more self-heats—then try and find something that’ll tell us where we are when we hit the surface. Mebbe even take another chance with that shower system. Last chance we may get to stay clean for some time.”

      “Y’know, even the thought of a self-heat and getting scalded is good right now,” Mildred answered with another shake of the head. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

      Ryan laughed. It wasn’t often that the one-eyed man had the opportunity to do that. Far, far too often there was nothing whatsoever to give him cause for laughter. But these snatched few moments, underground and secure, gave them all time to relax momentarily, just enough to stop their minds snapping with the tension of living outside.

      After breakfast Ryan and J.B. mounted their own small recce of the office units in the redoubt, leaving the others to shower and get ready to leave. Neither man knew if he would find what he were looking for, and both would have been grateful for just a sign.

      “Ryan, back here,” J.B. called after a short while, sticking his head through the doorway of an office unit where Ryan was breaking open a filing cabinet. The comp terminal stood useless on the desk, long since fused and failed. “I’ve got a comp that works and is tied in to what Mildred calls the mainframe.”

      Ryan left his task and followed his comrade along the corridor to the office in which he had been scavenging. Finding remnants of what had been before was always a problem: much of the information in all the redoubts had been stored on computer, but these were erratic now, prone to either break down, be broken, or be inaccessible to people a century or more on who don’t have a password. There was some paper information, but then it is a matter of hoping that it could be found or that it hadn’t been destroyed by looters or by the original inhabitants before they bought the farm.

      To find a comp terminal working anywhere other than a low-level, sealed chamber was rare; one that was still connected to the redoubt’s mainframe comp was even more rare.

      Maybe they were about to get lucky for once.

      The two men hunched over the desk, the terminal casting a glow over their faces, shadows and light accentuating the crags of Ryan’s weathered face and the lines of worry and battle that etched the Armorer’s visage. Their mouths were set in grim concentration. There was nothing to be happy about until they actually found some useful information.

      “Got it,” J.B. declared in triumph as he managed to call up an outline map of the area surrounding the redoubt. A couple more keys punched and the map pulled back to reveal the larger area.

      From the outline, they could see that they were in the middle of what had been Arkansas before the nukecaust. There was a large town within a day’s walking distance to the northwest of the redoubt.

      “Worth checking it out?” J.B. queried.

      “Old villes like that are never totally deserted. Usually some kind of life attaches itself. We just have to be triple red until we find out what kind it is.” Ryan paused, his brow furrowed in concentration. Eventually, he added, “Arkansas—that name’s familiar. We ever come this way with Trader?”

      J.B. blew threw his pursed lips as he racked his memory. “Think we might have at one time. Weird land up there, part dust and part sand. Gets real dry and then they have monsoons that sweep everything away. Yeah,” he said suddenly, snapping his fingers, “there was that time when one of the wags got driven off the road in a mudslide after one of the rains. We had to chain War Wag One to it and pull the bastard back onto the blacktop. Trader cursed all the while about the fuel it was taking, then cursed about losing the wag when we said he should just leave it if he felt like that.”

      Ryan smiled wryly. “Came out with some shit about a rock and a hard place.”

      “Yeah, and you told him that he wouldn’t be having this trouble if there had been some rocks and a hard place ’stead of all that mud.”

      Both men laughed at the memory. J.B. shook his head. “I thought the old buzzard was gonna blow you away where you stood, he looked that mad. ’Stead, he just started laughing.”

      “Crazy man and a wise man,” Ryan said softly, remembering the wily old man who had taught them so many of the things that were still keeping them alive. Then something clicked in his brain. “Got it!” he exclaimed. “Listen, I think I remember something. If this is where I think, then there’s a ville near here on one of the surviving blacktops. It was about one day away from where that fireblasted wag hit the mud. Mebbe about two days from the remains of the old ville—About here,” he added, pointing to an area on the screen that was to the west of the predark conurbation.

      “That’s good. It’s somewhere to aim for.” J.B. nodded. “Only one thing, though…”

      “What’s that?” Ryan asked. J.B. grinned. “I hope it ain’t mud season. I just had another shower this morning.”

      The two men left the office and returned to the rest of the companions. They were in the dorm, preparing for the trip outside. Ryan and J.B. outlined their position and destination, giving everyone—including themselves—a half hour in which to be ready to leave. By their wrist chrons, they could see that it was light outside and without knowing how hot the sun got during its peak, Ryan wanted them to make some distance and scout out any shade or shelter should it be necessary.

      Such was their efficiency and experience in getting ready to move out that long before the half hour had elapsed, the companions were making their way to the upper level and the sec door that exited onto the outside world. As J.B. had said, the walls, floor and ceiling of the tunnel leading to the highest level had taken the brunt of whatever earth movements had occurred during and immediately after the nukecaust. Cracks ran along the concrete that constituted the tunnel and, despite the concrete’s thickness, some were large and deep enough for moisture to have seeped through over the decades. Spoors of mold and fungus peppered the areas around these cracks, small pools of stagnant water gathered on the floor.

      “Can’t have been too bad, as the walls are still pretty sound,” J.B. commented. “Figure the door should work okay. The mechanism on all the others has, so it’s only gonna be a warp that jams the bastard.”

      “Let’s hope not,” Krysty added, almost to herself. Some of the upper level sec doors had been shut when J.B. had recced the day before, but had responded when he had punched in the sec codes scratched on the metal plates above the keypads. One of the plates had “Help me” scratched on it, and another “Next stop hel.” The sec man had either been interrupted or he couldn’t spell. Not that it mattered. J.B. wasn’t much of a reader and it was too long ago for him to care. All he was worried about was whether or not the doors would respond. Fortunately, whatever damage the earth movement had caused, the electrics on the doors were still working. So the only thing that could prevent the exit door rising was if the earth movements had buckled the frame, jamming the door.

      All this went through Krysty’s head

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