Axler, James - Deathlands 18 - Shockscape

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Jennison let loose with the scattergun as the four friends moved into a

skirmish line

They dived for cover, giving Gooseneck and Reena time to scuttle from the back

of the rig, the woman limping heavily as she ran for safety.

Ryan had flattened himself behind a live oak, squinting to one side of the gnarled

trunk, seeing, to his horror, that Knuckles remained standing in the open.

"Get down!" he yelled, waving the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer to catch the youth's

attention.

Reena saw him and fired a burst, the lead ripping through the snow-covered

branches just above Ryan's head.

The one-eyed man's shout had no effect. The hunchbacked lad had turned away

and was hopping toward the wag, where Reena and Gooseneck had taken cover.

When Knuckles was only a couple of stumbling steps away, the woman stood, her

hair matted and tangled with the snow, and leveled the scattergun.

"No!" Ryan screamed.

Shockscape

# 18 in the Deathland series

JAMES AXLER

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A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY •

HAMBURG • STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID •

WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is

stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and

neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped

book."

This is for Ian McKean and everyone at F. C. Greens who've worked to keep four

wheels on my wagon for so many years. With my thanks.

First edition June 1993 ISBN 0-373-62518-9 SHOCKSCAPE

this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other

means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying

and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden

without the permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill

Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada MSB 3K9.

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the

author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or

names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown

to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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® are Trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office

and in other countries. TM are Trademarks of the publisher.

Living close to the edge makes you feel a new man. And the new man wants to

live even closer to the edge.

—from Fresh Fields, by Marcus Strafford

Printed in U.S.A.

Chapter One

Ryan Cawdor blinked open his good eye and saw that the armaglass walls of

the mat-trans chamber were a rich cobalt blue.

He drew a long, cautious breath. The instant, uncontrollable jumps the

companions made from place to place generally left them feeling like their heads

had exploded, then been reassembled by a team of blind triple-stupe muties.

"Not too bad," Ryan whispered.

No time seemed to have elapsed since he'd closed the door on an almost identical

chamber in what had once been the thriving and bustling metropolis of Chicago.

Yet Ryan knew that he and his friends would find themselves thousands of miles

from their starting point.

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Apart from a faint nausea, the one-eyed man felt fine. Sometimes a jump was

accompanied by horrific hallucinations, like a combination of daydreams and

nightmares. Images of death would flood through the mind, like eternal chases

along endless dusty corridors by faceless, gibbering specters.

This time Ryan could only vaguely remember sunshine and fresh grass on a

summer hillside, a crystal stream over smooth boulders streaked with a tracery of

silver quartz, and Krysty Wroth at his side, lying on her back in a thin cotton shift,

green eyes shaded by her arm, smiling.

Now, in the real world, Krysty was alongside him, opening her emerald eyes,

smiling up at him, her hand lifting to brush back an errant strand of her fiery

crimson hair.

"Good jump, lover," she murmured.

"Known worse."

"Haven't known many better." The voice came from the slightly built man, sitting

cross-legged on the floor, his back against the opposite wall. He reached into a

pocket of his coat and pulled out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, polishing them for

a moment on his sleeve before putting them on.

"True enough, J.B.," Ryan agreed.

The black woman who sat next to J. B. Dix was also recovering. Mildred Wyeth

was a medical doctor and a brilliant shot with a pistol. She'd been born in 1964,

then cryogenically preserved in the year 2000 when minor surgery went wrong.

The nuclear holocaust that destroyed much of the world, and most of the people,

had left her frozen, only to be revived generations later by Ryan and his friends.

One of Mildred's biggest problems had been coming to terms with the fact that a

hundred years had gone by while she existed through the dreamless sleep. And

that everyone she had ever known was now dead.

She stood, steadying herself on the armaglass. "Best jump I've been through. Now,

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if they were all like that I wouldn't mind doing it more often. No different from a

stroll in the park."

"I want a pee, Dad."

Ryan's eleven-year-old son, Dean, had awakened and was investigating something

in his right nostril.

"That's disgusting," Krysty told him.

"Better out than in." He grinned at her.

"That boy will undoubtedly go far. And the farther the better."

The sting of the remark was taken away by the cackle of laughter from the

grizzled old man squatting next to J.B.

"How you feeling, Doc?" Ryan's right hand eased toward the butt of his P-226

SIG-Sauer 9 mm automatic.

Doc Tanner's mind hadn't been stable since a time-trawling experiment, focused

on November 1896, had plucked him from his home, wife and children, and

eventually, brought him forward to the Death-lands present.

It had been only an hour earlier that he'd been trying to return to his own time, so

deranged that he'd fired a shot at Ryan from the massive Le Mat he wore on his

hip.

Amazingly he now looked and sounded as near normal as he ever had.

The only one of the group of seven companions not yet recovered from the jump

was their most recent addition, a youth once known as Brother Michael, from the

isolated and enclosed religious order at Nil-Vanity, above Visalia in the California

Rockies. Only nineteen years old, he shared with Doc the unique experience of

having been successfully brought forward through time. In his case, from shortly

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before the United States of America ended and Deathlands began.

Being jolted to the new wastes had been difficult for the teenager to handle. But

he'd made the adjustments, insisting on changing his name, reversing it to plain

Michael Brother.

Now he was stirring, his dirt-caked bare feet shuffling on the floor. His long robe

was rumpled, showing muscular thighs. The cord around his waist had worked

loose, and two slim-bladed daggers clattered on the steel disk beneath him.

"I thought I was asleep back in the community," he said, brown eyes blinking.

"How do you feel, Michael?" Ryan asked.

"Not bad."

"That was a good jump, wasn't it, Dad? Can we get moving?" Dean rubbed his

hands together. "Hey, it's cold."

Ryan stood, flexing the stiffness from his back. The boy was right. It did feel

colder than usual.

Now everyone was standing, adjusting clothing and weaponry.

Krysty breathed in, long and slow, closing her eyes for a moment.

"Feel anything?" Ryan asked.

"No. Doesn't feel like anyone close. Usual redoubt kind of… dead and empty, and

a sense of a long time gone."

Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer, hardly even aware of the familiar weight and balance,

an extension of his own right arm. "Everyone ready?"

"Have we completed a jump, or are we about to commence one? If you will all

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forgive an old man's question."

Ryan glanced at Doc, seeing the confusion in the milky-blue eyes.

"Just made one, Doc. Got us away from Chi-town, remember?"

"Just got in from the Windy City and… How does it go on?"

Ryan caught the look of concern on Mildred's face. Doc's mind came and went.

Sometimes it was close to normal.

Sometimes it wasn't.

Right now it looked as though the appalling experiences of the previous few days

had either opened up some of the old scars or carved fresh ones.

"Doc, just stay close to me," said J.B., holding his Smith & Wesson M-400012-

gauge cradled against his right hip.

"Stay close, my dear John Barrymore? Does the darkness gather? I am reminded

of lines written by a clever fellow I met back in… whenever it was? Rexford.

Eben Rexford. Odd bow I can recall things from two hundred years ago and

scarcely have any remembrance of what I ate to break my fast this morning."

Ryan had paused, fingers on the cold metal of the gateway's door handle. Looking

back at Doc, it crossed his mind, as it had dozens of times before, that it might be

a whole lot easier to put a full-metal jacket through the old man's skull.

The Trader would have done it. He would have said that anything that made your

life easier and safer should be done.

But life would surely be a lot duller without Doc Tanner.

"We gotta be away from here, Doc," Ryan said quietly. "Let's go."

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"Remember me when I am far away, far off in a distant land where—" Doc

stopped. "No, that was not what Eben wrote. He wrote a beautiful song about

having silver hairs among the gold." His voice lifted into a surprisingly melodic

tenor. "'Shine upon my brow today, life is fading fast away.'"

Dean nudged his father. "Blade's broke off the hilt for Doc, Dad."

"Temporary, son," Ryan replied, keeping his fingers crossed that it wasn't

permanent.

AS THE HEAVY DOOR swung open, a distinct wave of cold air rushed in.

"Usually keep them at a steady temperature," J.B. observed. "Looks like the

central master comp may have malfunctioned."

"Doesn't that mean that the gateway might not be working properly?" Mildred

asked. "We might not be able to jump out of here. Wherever 'here' is."

"Could be."

Ryan looked out, seeing the usual mat-trans setup—a small anteroom,

unfurnished, and another closed door beyond that. Normally that would open onto

the main control area.

"Ready?" he asked.

Chapter Two

The control section, with its banks of desks and flickering information processors

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was totally, clinically bare. The small room immediately next to the gateway was

stripped. Normally there was some evidence of human habitation, even if it was

only a single line of graffiti or a crumpled paper cup.

This time there was nothing—no table, no chair, no shelves on the off-white

walls.

"Looks like we won't be finding too much in the way of food or supplies," Ryan

commented.

Michael Brother was wandering around, stopping a moment to rub a finger along

the tops of the brightly lighted consoles. "No dust."

"Air-conditioning keeps the delicate areas of the redoubt clean." Krysty looked

around. "Whoever had the job of sealing up this place did it real well."

"Mothballing," Mildred said.

"What?" J.B. grinned at her. "That one of your twentieth-century sayings?"

"Yeah. Means sealing up against the elements. What they've done here."

Dean rubbed his hands together. "I'm cold and I want to pee."

"Wait until we get outside this part. There might be some warm clothes in another

section of the redoubt, son."

"We going to open the sec door?" J.B. stood by the green lever that controlled the

huge slabs of impenetrable armasteel.

"Red alert," Ryan said quietly.

At Ryan's nod the Armorer threw his weight against the lever, helped by Mildred.

Gears and counterweights rattled, and compressed air hissed.

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Very slowly, like a dinosaur roused from slumber, the sec door began to rise.

Dean dropped flat on his stomach to peer under the door, his Browning Hi-Power

in his right fist. "Nothing," he reported, his voice squeaking up the scale with

tension.

Ryan knelt, looking below the rising wall of gray steel, into the familiar blank

expanse of corridor. It had a high, rounded roof, with overhead strip lights and

occasional tiny sec cameras.

J.B. checked the movement by returning the green lever to the central position,

waiting for the word from Ryan to continue.

"Looks all right. Bastard icy wind blowing out there." He glanced out again.

"Take it all the way up."

The sec door stopped with a jarring thud, about eighteen inches from the top.

Ryan glanced up, seeing that the bare rock above it was cracked and rippled.

"I'll go first," Ryan said. "J.B. brings up the rear. Rest of you pick your own

places. And let's take care."

SINCE THEY'D FIRST discovered the highly secret matter transmitters hidden in

buried military redoubts, the group of friends had made a number of successful

jumps, finding themselves in a variety of unexpected places.

Some of the high-tech complexes had been partly destroyed, and most had been

stripped in the last days before skydark. Many had been found during the long

winters, but it was a constant surprise to Ryan Cawdor how many still remained.

Not many of them had been as bitterly cold as this one.

Now that they were outside the comparative shelter of the control room, the

temperature had fallen well below freezing.

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dummy1Jennisonletloosewiththescattergunasthefourfriendsmovedi toaskirmishlineTheydivedforcover,givingGooseneckandReenatimetoscuttlefromthebackoftherig,thewomanlimpingheavilyassheranforsafety.Ryanhadflattenedhimselfbehindaliveoak,squintingtoonesideofthegnarledtrunk,seeing,tohishorror,thatKnucklesr...

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Axler, James - Deathlands 18 - Shockscape

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