LITMIR.BIZ

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around, his scarred face slowly smiling.

      The emergency lights were working here, too, casting a zigzag pattern of illumination. He could see that the entire floor was filled with mil wags, all of them parked in a wild jumble over the neat lines on the concrete flooring. Several of the vehicles seemed to have collided near the exit tunnel, their hoods crumpled and headlights smashed. But the rest of the wags were intact, including several Hummers and a LAV-25 armored transport. He didn’t stop to wonder why such a barren redoubt had so many vehicles in its garage.

      Moving past the maze of vehicles, Ryan went to the wire enclosure of the storage room, shot off the padlock and yanked open the mesh door. Inside were dozens of spare tires and burnished steel rims in assorted sizes, along with stripped engine blocks, cases of headlights, sealed pallets of nuke batteries, and everything else needed to keep the fleet of mil wags in proper working condition. Along with about a dozen heavy-duty jack stands.

      “Everybody take a pair,” Ryan directed, grabbing a couple of the heavy stands. “These things will hold about half a ton. Those gates can’t be putting out too much more pressure than that, or else the floor would crack. A dozen of these should do the job.”

      “Sure hope so,” J.B. muttered judiciously, slinging the Uzi across his back to take a pair of the bulky triangular stands. The things were damn heavy, but even with his backpack he could handle the weight.

      Holstering their weapons, Doc and Krysty each took two stands. Awkwardly, Mildred managed to lift one, cradling it to her chest and obviously struggling to keep from dropping it.

      “Set it down, Mildred,” Ryan directed, starting for the elevator. “One of us has to stay armed.”

      Grunting from the strain, the predark physician thankfully set down the jack stand, and straightened her back. “No problem there,” Mildred wheezed, pulling out her ZKR revolver and thumbing back the hammer.

      Back in her own time period, before she got frozen in a cryogenic chamber and woke up almost one hundred years later, Mildred had rated in the marksman class with the target pistol. That took a lot of skill, not brute force. Besides, physicians didn’t need big muscles.

      Returning to the cage on the lower level, the companions easily lifted up the powerless gates, lined up the jacks on the floor and set the gates into place.

      “I shall go inform Jak,” Doc offered, pulling out the LeMat before heading for the stairs.

      The other companions waited impatiently. But pretty soon, the fluorescent lights strobed in the ceiling and then came back on at full force. In gradual stages, the emergency lights died away and the two gates along the walls crashed back down into position. However, the row of jack stands across the corridor only groaned as two main gates tried to forcibly descend once more. There came a soft whining noise from the ceiling and the jack stands groaned, but nothing else happened.

      “Bet that intruder alarm would be howling like crazy now,” J.B. said, taking out the stogie and blowing a smoke ring at the smashed ruin of the speaker.

      “You can load that into a blaster,” Ryan agreed, warily studying the cage and stands. For just a second, they seemed to quiver, but then it was gone. Probably just a trick of the fluorescent tubes. Damn things pulsed in the weirdest way sometimes.

      “Those appear to be holding,” Mildred said slowly, worrying a lip. “What do you think?”

      Pivoting, Krysty kicked the steel bars as hard as she could with the heel of her cowboy boot. The metal rang from the impact, but nothing more.

      “Yeah, that’ll hold,” J.B. said, puffing in satisfaction.

      Inhaling deeply, Ryan grunted at the news, then lay down and crawled along the floor between two of the jack stands, across the cage and out the other side. Standing, he waited for the others to pass through. A few minutes later Doc and Jak arrived, and slipped through to join the rest of the companions.

      “Good work,” Ryan said.

      “No prob,” Jak muttered.

      Going over to the broken Vulcan minigun, J.B. checked the enclosed feed and yanked out a cotter pin. Something disengaged and the Armorer removed the rectangular tube of louvered steel. Removing a cartridge from inside, he inspected the brass, then used a knife to cut off the lead bullet and poured the powdery contents of the round into his palm.

      “We can use this,” J.B. stated, fingering the granules. “Even if the deeper has been looted, at least we’ll have some reloads. Two, mebbe three hundred rounds.”

      “Good,” Jak said, standing. Then the teen pulled out his Colt Python. “Let’s open door.”

      As the companions approached the frosty portal, a wave of cold swept over the group, but this time it only generated a sense of excitement. Pulling out some tools, J.B. did a pass over the door jamb and declared it clear of boobies and sensors.

      Without a word, Ryan went to the keypad and tapped in the usual sequence that opened blast doors that led to the outside world in all redoubts. The indicator on top of the keypad flashed red, yellow, then green. A series of heavy thuds banged around the rim of the door as the internal locks disengaged. Next came a powerful sigh of working hydraulics, and the truncated door noisily disengaged to ponderously swing aside. With a mighty exhalation, a bitterly cold mist flowed out to block the sight of the companions for a few anxious moments. Ryan and the others tensed impatiently as the warmth of the corridor slowly dissipated the chilling fog.

      The interior of the locker was pitch-black.

      Pulling out his last road flare, J.B. started to scratch it alive when lights rippled across the ceiling of the locker. Row after row of bright tube lights came on until the inside of the deeper was fully illuminated. The glare was almost painful.

      “Bingo,” Mildred whispered softly as dozens of packing crates came into view. Dozens, hell, there were hundreds!

      The locker was stuffed full of stored equipment, the plastic shelving along the walls packed solid with military cases designed for long-term storage, and air tight ammo drums, fifty-five-gallon barrels that held a lifetime of brass for most villes. Wooden crates wrapped in thick plastic sheeting were stacked to the ceiling in huge pyramids, and banks of cabinets formed orderly rows along the spotlessly clean floor.

      Staying in combat formation, the companions eased into the locker, their weapons searching for targets. Just because a sec hunter droid didn’t come rolling out instantly, didn’t mean a hundred of the machines weren’t waiting for them somewhere.

      “Blasters, food, grens,” J.B. stated, reading the serial numbers off the sides of the assorted containers. “This place has a hundred times more supplies than the Alaskan redoubt!”

      “Thank Gaia! And no madman in charge trying to ace us,” Krysty added in a pleased tone of voice. A smile touched her full lips.

      “Okay, everybody stay in pairs,” Ryan directed, shouldering the longblaster. “Just because something didn’t try to stop us at the door, doesn’t mean we’re safe. Hunt for grens first. After that, go for ammo. Then food, you all know the list.”

      Placing two fingers into his mouth, Jak gave a sharp whistle. “Got ’em!” he announced, pulling out a knife and slicing through the tough plastic sheeting around a stacked tray of mil grens. The clear polymer resisted, but the teen finally hacked through and started to yank the resilient sheeting aside.

      Gently lifting off the top tray, Jak beamed in delight at the neat rows of colored spheres resting in gray foam cushioning. The color of the stripes said these were high-explosive grens, steel shrapnel. Excellent! Those were the best kind to find because the grens could be used for everything from chilling muties to fresh-water fishing. Mildred had once told Jak about a type of mil gren that had used plastic shrapnel that could not be seen on an X-ray machine. Weapons designed to maim, not chill. The concept was beyond foul, somehow it felt almost cowardly.

      “Dark night, now we’re talking,” J.B. said happily, removing his cigar and grinding it out on the floor

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