End Day (24 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Ryan held his ground in front of the porthole window. Warty faces fought for position on the other side, maws gaping, noses pressing, tongues flicking, their secretions smearing the view through the glass.

“How many are there?” Krysty said over his shoulder.

“I can't tell. The window is too small. Can't see into the room. And they all look alike.”

“Does it matter how many?” J.B. said sourly. “One of those bastards can kill us all.”

“We could always wait in here until we dehydrate to death or starve,” Mildred said.

“Or go back to New York and be nuked,” Doc added.

“Stop it!” Ryan said. “We got chased into this machine, thinking it was something else, not knowing what it really did. We figured it was a regular mat-trans unit because it looked like one from the outside. If we'd known what it was when we locked ourselves in here, we would have done something different. We had options we discarded.”

“Such as?” Krysty asked.

“We didn't use thermite on the enforcers in the anteroom because we needed the system intact to get home.”

“We home,” Jak said.

“Exactly. We're never going down the time hole again. And never is anyone else. One thermite gren should do the trick in a room packed with enforcers. The floor has got to be slick with their sweat.”

“Uh, Ryan, the gren could do us, too,” J.B. said. “Those critters go up like napalm. A bunch of them jammed in a small room is a great big gren waiting to go boom.”

“But they shouldn't explode,” Mildred said. “They aren't violating some time paradox here. They should just burn.”

“If we stay at the other end of the chamber, we should be okay,” Ryan said.

“Sounds like a lot of
shoulds
to me,” J.B. said.

“Look out the porthole, J.B.,” Ryan told him. “You got a better plan?”

“Once we undog that door, they're going to be pulling it open,” J.B. said. “They're ugly as shit and they stink like it, but they're not stupe. They'll get their big old hooks inside of it quick as a flash. You know how strong these bastards are, like bastard bulls. We'll never get it shut again, and its got to be shut tight before the thermite goes off or all our oxygen will burn up with them.”

“Maybe Vee's hand cannon can help?” Mildred suggested.

“Shoot them and they don't die,” J.B. reminded her.

“Sure, but shoot them and they catch fire,” she said. “That would make them take a big step back.”

“If we timed it right, that might just work,” Ryan said.

“Okay,” J.B. went on, “assuming we pull that off and don't burn up in here, what happens next? We have to get the plan together now. There's not going to be any time for a sit-down after we step out of this thing.”

“Long way to surface,” Jak said.

“Remember how many enforcers chased us in here?” J.B. asked. “We're not going to be able to burn them all. Not enough grens.”

“Get out,” Jak said. “Get bikes, get away.”

“Excellent plan, but the first part is tricky,” J.B. said.

“We have two weapons we know will work,” Ryan stated.

“But the circumstances have to be just right to use them,” J.B. countered. “And I doubt we can outrun them without a big head start.”

“We followed the sweat trail to get in here,” Mildred said. “Can we really follow it out?”

“I remember way,” Jak told them. He tapped the top of his head. “All here.”

“We don't know what else Magus left behind for us, either,” J.B. said.

Ryan had had enough of the speculation. “I think we have enough to worry about. Mildred, can you handle the Desert Eagle?”

“My pleasure.”

“Krysty will you chuck the gren?”

“What is that,
women's
work?”

“No, I just...”

She laughed at him. “I'm pulling your leg, Ryan. You know I like my lizard butt well-done.”

“Yeah, nice and crispy,” he said. “Mildred, after you take the shot, move to the back wall. Krysty, same for you. Drop the gren and get back. We need as many hands on the inside of the wheel in case they do hook their talons under it. We slam it closed and keep it closed while I dog the wheel. Then we dive for the rear wall, get as far from the fire as we can.”

“Stay low,” Mildred said. “Heat rises. And as long as we're talking about a lot of heat, maybe it could even melt the window glass.”

“Don't say that,” Ricky groaned.

“If this doesn't work out, I just want to say it's been nice knowing you,” J.B. told them. He could hold a straight face for only a second before breaking into a wide grin.

“He's starting to sound like Vee,” Krysty said.

“It's a big improvement,” Mildred said.

Ryan handed her the Desert Eagle. She cracked back the action, checking the chamber for a live round.

“That puppy will buck some,” he said.

“I'll try not to knock out my own teeth.” Wrapping her hands around it in a double grip, Mildred stood with her right shoulder against the wall, next to the edge of the door.

“One other thing,” she said, “when this thing goes off in an enclosed space, it's going to be loud. I'm not going to stick the whole weapon out the door, just the muzzle. I don't want one of them grabbing it before I can fire. I'm just saying we may lose our hearing temporarily, from the blast.”

“We'll use hand signals, understood?” Ryan asked, looking from face to face for confirmation. Then he turned to Krysty. She knew what he wanted to hear.

“I'll yank the pin after Mildred pulls back,” she said, “shove it out at the bottom of the door. Then hit the back wall. Low.”

“I think we're ready, then,” Ryan said.

Hideous faces were jostling at the porthole, trying to get a look inside.

“They're going to go crazy when they think we're opening up for them,” Mildred said.

“Just do your job and we'll be all right.”

Ryan started turning the wheel, rolling back the locking bolts. The enforcers didn't get excited until they heard the resounding click of the lock snapping open.

“Now, Mildred!” he said, pulling the door open two inches.

Mildred poked the Eagle out and fired once. The noise was earsplitting, the muzzle-flash lighting up the anteroom. She rode the recoil wave, raising the weapon up and out of the gap between door and frame.

The yard of flame fanned across two enforcer faces pressed to the glass. They went up like a pair of match heads. An amber talon hooked around the door for an instant, then it was beating on its owner's face, trying to put out the blaze.

Krysty let the safety clip pop off the red canister and tossed it out onto the anteroom floor.

“Shut it!” Ryan cried, throwing his weight against the inside of the door.

The others did the same and held it pinned while he dogged the lock.

The gren had a three-second fuse. They had only a second to reach the back wall. They were still a yard away when a roar like a blast furnace shook the little chamber. The far side of the porthole was solid flame.

Something heavy slammed into the unit's door. Then again. And again. The enforcers were whirling around, bashing into the front of the unit.

“Get down!” Mildred shouted.

The heat inside the chamber rose with incredible speed. In less than a minute their faces were dripping with sweat. Breathing became difficult because the air was so hot it burned noses and throats. The time-travel unit had turned into a bake oven.

The thumping from outside stopped.

“How long can they burn?” Ricky asked.

“How long before that wheel cools off enough for us to get out?” J.B. asked.

Ryan looked at it glowing red. If it started to melt, they were in deep shit.

* * *

M
C
C
REEDY
BROUGHT
UP
the rear of Magus's welcoming committee. Ahead of him, the cyborg was borne along in the arms of one of his enforcers. Two more of the creatures bracketed them on either side. Behind them was Kossow and a phalanx of sec men. They marched with an absurd dignity, a pomp and circumstance that seemed entirely out of place.

The quintet of enforcers had started acting strangely the moment they'd reached the floor. Normally they were calm, now they were skittish, tongues darting; they seemed agitated.

“What is that smell, McCreedy?” Magus shouted back at him.

McCreedy had no immediate answer.

“I have half a nose, and even I can smell it. Something's burning. It smells like fish.”

When they made a left turn at the intersection leading to the time unit, the burning smell became stronger and a haze of smoke was visible down the hall. At the sound of running feet, the sec men shouldered their weapons and the enforcers closed ranks around their master.

A fireball on two legs came running out of the smoke. It bounced off the wall and kept running, arms out in front like a sleepwalker. A hundred feet down the hall, it collapsed. A pillar of smoke rose from the body, spreading across the ceiling in a churning black fan.

Because of its size, McCreedy had no doubt it was an enforcer. It was one of the creatures Magus had assigned to guard the time unit. Something had gone very wrong.

“Get closer!” Magus shouted.

The enforcers reluctantly moved forward, as did the sec men. The heat from that end of hall was withering; it hit them full in the face.

“Uh, Magus,” McCreedy said tentatively, “Maybe we should wait until it cools down a little and the smoke clears.”

“Why?” Magus asked. “I'm not going down there; you are.”

When thwarted, Magus made bad things happen. When he was double thwarted, the things he made happen were double bad.

“Okay,” McCreedy replied, but without enthusiasm.

He set off at a trot, his mind racing. The closer he got to the time unit, the worse conditions got. He realized there was no way he could survive a peek inside. The heat was blinding, the smoke so thick he could barely breathe. If all the enforcers in the time unit were burning, he'd been sent on a suicide mission. He could do Magus's bidding and die in his service; he could die trying to run away from Magus's wrath—or he could simply lie.

He looked over his shoulder. It occurred to him that if he couldn't see Magus, then Magus couldn't see him. He sucked in as deep a breath as he could manage and plunged into the heart of the smoke. The heat stopped him after a couple yards. He counted to twenty, then threw in an extra five for good measure. The last numbers were very hard to hold out for. It felt as if he was going to burst into flames or melt.

Then he ran out of the smoke. He didn't take a breath until he could see Magus again. He coughed, he spit, he made a show of it. All the while, he was thinking through his story. He knew he was going to get only one chance to tell it.

After he regained his breath, he trotted back down the hallway. All he could smell was burned fish.

“Well?” Magus said as he stepped up.

“Looks like a malfunction in the time unit caused a fire that ignited the enforcers. Everything is burned up in there.”

“What about Cawdor?”

“Never got out of the time unit.”

“You saw him?”

“Couldn't open the door. Lock is fused. It's so hot everything in there is melted together.”

“Is he dead?”

“If he isn't, then he's trapped inside the unit.”

“Damn,” Magus said. “This isn't how I planned it at all.”

“At least you didn't send out the invitations yet.”

McCreedy could have bitten his tongue. The remark just came out. He was thinking about Silam, about what Magus did to him after the failure on gladiator island. He decided he wasn't going to stick around for that kind of death. At the earliest opportunity, he was going to quietly slip away, disappear in the hellscape.

The enforcers were getting more and more stirred up. They had started making rhythmic grunting noises, the significance of which McCreedy had no clue.

Magus quickly settled them down.

Smoke continued to roll their way, obscuring more and more of the corridor.

“How could you see through that?” Magus asked him.

McCreedy was trying to think on his feet. He didn't want to give the wrong answer. The wrong answer would get him killed.

“Show me your hands,” Magus said.

He didn't understand why he was being asked that.

“Your hands!”

Understanding was less important than obedience. McCreedy extended his palms.

“No burns on your fingers,” Magus said.

“I'm sorry?”

“If you'd touched anything, your fingers would be blistered and red. You couldn't see through that smoke. You would have had to touch something to find the doorway. Ergo, you stopped short and are lying to me.”

“No, really...”

McCreedy could feel his good fortune rapidly running out.

“If everything is as you say, there is no problem,” Magus told him. “No harm done. If not, you will pay.” To Kossow he said, “Put some manacles on his ankles so he can't run. Then have someone bring him to me. In the meantime I want your men to cordon off this hallway. Make sure nothing gets past you. Shoot to wound, not to kill. If you bring me live captives, there will be a bonus in it for you. After the smoke clears, do a thorough search of the mat-trans chamber. I want a full report. If there are bodies in the time unit, bring them to me at once.”

“The enforcers are really looking jumpy,” Kossow said. “They could turn on us.”

Magus aimed steel eyes on the sec man. “Don't worry about them,” he said. “Worry about me.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The heat inside the chamber had become unbearable. Ryan knew they had to get out soon or their ammo would start to spontaneously cook off. What a sad end that would be: shot to pieces by random bullets they could not escape. He got up from the floor and tried to turn the wheel on the door to their back, the one that had opened onto 2001. It wouldn't budge.

“That door leads nowhere,” Doc said. “Don't waste your strength.”

“He's right, Ryan,” Mildred added. “In this time there is nothing on the other side.”

“We've got to do something,” Krysty said.

“Not wan die here,” Jak agreed.

“The immediate enforcer threat is over,” Doc said. “If we can get out of this death trap and through the anteroom, we have a chance.”

“The smoke will hide us,” Ricky said.

“It'll also smother us,” Ryan told them. “If we open that door, it will pour in, and there will be no alternative. We'll have to press onward or suffocate in here.”

“I'm game,” Mildred said.

“We're all game,” Krysty told him.

“Look how thick it is,” Ryan said. “We'll be running blind. There's only so long we can last, breathing it. Then we'll lose consciousness.”

“You're right about that,” J.B. said. “And if we pass out, that's where we're going to die. We'd have to tie ourselves together. If someone goes down, the others can pick them up.”

“I get us out,” Jak said. His ruby eyes flashed.

“How?”

“Forget I know way?”

Ryan had never had reason to doubt the tracking skills of the albino. He'd proved that he could find his way blind on the deadly nukeglass road leading to the Slake City massif, Though the one-eyed man had no idea how he did it. Some questions had no answers.

Making the decision was not easy, but he had made similar ones many times before. At a certain point you just had to take your chances.

“Tear up some clothes for face masks,” Ryan said. “We can stop some of the smoke from getting in our lungs that way.”

“And like I said, we need to tie ourselves together,” J.B. repeated. He produced a coil of thin rope from one of the pockets of his leather jacket. “This should do it.”

“The heat and smoke aren't the only things we have to worry about,” Ryan told them. “There could be more enforcers. Mebbe sec men. Keep your blasters ready. Use the thermite if an enforcer is bearing down on us. Mildred, you got point with the Eagle.”

“What about the sec men?” Ricky asked.

“That's the easy part,” Ryan said. “Shoot them down.”

They set about tearing strips of cloth for masks. When they all were masked, J.B. slipped his line through their belt loops, tied it in front to Jak's waist and to the rear around his.

“We'll go through the door single file after Jak,” Ryan said. “There will be bodies on the floor outside. They'll be hot. If you fall, the people in front and back will feel it, and someone will help you up. Now, let's see about that door.”

The front wall of the unit was so hot it was painful to even step close to it. “We've got to wrap the wheel in something, or we won't be able to turn it,” Ryan said.

Ricky took off his jacket and handed it to him.

After Ryan draped it over the wheel he said, “Everybody take slow deep breaths, get as much air in your lungs as you can. When the door opens, we go. No talking. Save your air. Don't breathe until we get clear of the thick smoke.”

Ryan followed his own advice, pushing as much air out of his lungs as he could, then refilling them deeper. Air out, then in deeper. When he'd reached his limit, he said, “Jak, let's open her up.”

The wheel was searing, even through the coat, and something inside the locking mechanism had stuck; the metal had probably expanded because of the heat. They couldn't budge it.

“Doc, Ricky, give us a hand,” Ryan said. When they were in position, he said, “All together now...”

The wheel resisted their combined force for an instant, then rotated to the left. Ryan spun it as fast as he could. “Deep breath!” the one-eyed man said through his mask. Then he pulled the door open.

Smoke as black as ink boiled into the chamber.

Jak was already moving over the threshold. His white hair vanished into the cloud beyond. As visibility quickly dropped in the chamber, Ryan felt the tug at his waist and stepped out after him. Outside the chamber, he could see nothing. Absolutely nothing. Footing was bad because the enforcers hadn't completely turned to ash. There were lumps, things that rolled underfoot. He stumbled but used the butt of the Steyr to right himself.

He had only thought that it was hot inside the chamber. Outside it was like walking on a bed of red-hot coals. It jolted his every nerve end. Maybe they were red-hot coals; the gloom was so dense he couldn't see past the end of his nose. He felt the tug of Krysty on the line behind him. She had cleared the unit's door.

They were moving steadily, but not fast enough.

He stumbled again, caught himself again, then his shoulder hit something hard. Jak had found the door to the control room. As Ryan slipped around it, he made the mistake of breathing in just a little. It felt as if he'd inhaled razor blades. He choked down the urge to cough.

Ryan felt himself being pulled away from the security of the wall. Jak was leading them into the redoubt proper. When the left-hand wall brushed his arm, he put his palm against it and let it slide along over it.

The smoke hadn't thinned at all. His chest began to ache. A deep throbbing ache. The reflex to inhale was getting harder and harder to fight. If someone fell, he thought, they were all going to die. Then he felt a reassuring tug from in front and behind. Everybody was moving.

At first it was almost imperceptible, but it was definitely getting lighter ahead of them. Black smoke was turning gray. He could see the line stretching out in front of him. Then he got a glimpse of Jak's white hair.

Hold it, hold it, don't breathe yet, he commanded himself. Another few steps. Just another few steps. The smoke had cleared, but it still swirled around him. He wasn't sure he could inhale without breaking out in a fit of coughing. If there was someone or something waiting for them on the other side of the dark haze, the sound would be a dead giveaway.

Then Jak reached back with a throwing knife and cut the tether between them. That told Ryan two things: the pall thinned out even more ahead and Jak thought they needed to be able to move quickly and independently. Something dangerous was just out of sight.

Ryan pulled out his panga and, with a swipe of the blade, cut the cord between him and Krysty. Her prehensile hair had pulled up close to her head in tight coils. The tightest coils he had ever seen it make. Although her hair showed fear, her eyes were bright and sharp. She nodded at him and reached for her own knife.

They kept on moving forward. After another ten steps Ryan could make out the sides of the corridor. He took a quick breath through the mask. The air rasped down his throat but didn't make him cough. Jak darted away from him to the other side of the passage.

Whatever lay ahead was close now.

Ryan turned and hand signaled for Krysty to go that way, too.

He didn't remember how many doors there were along the route; he'd been running for his life the last time he'd come this way. There was an intersecting corridor, though. He remembered that. From its corner, he and Jak had chucked thermite grens at the enforcers. The rest of the passageway they were walking down was a long, unprotected straightaway.

In other words, a shooting gallery.

* * *

K
OSSOW
'
S
MIND
HAD
long since drifted onto things other than waiting for the fire to burn down and the smoke to clear. He was reminiscing about a particularly favorite gaudy slut of his when one of his men jarred him with an elbow out of the reverie.

“Something moved down there.”

He knew that was impossible. Nothing could survive the heat and smoke, not even an enforcer. The rest of his men were looking at him expectantly. It was comical how stupe they were. But for Deathlands they were the cream of crop, the best of litter. “You're seeing things, Reggie. You've been staring into the smoke too long. Take a break.”

“No, there it...”

The sound of a longblaster shot cut him off in midsentence—a boom from the edge of the murk, then a thwack as the slug plowed into Reggie's head. It was a big bore slug. The back of the sec man's skull exploded in a wet whoosh of gore, and he toppled onto his back. His legs kicked once, then were still.

Kossow blinked in astonishment. It took a terrible, long second for him to fully realize what was happening. The impossible was happening. As he opened his mouth to give the order to fire, something slammed into the side of his head. It happened so fast, the impact barely registered; in the next instant his brains lay in a plume on the floor, alongside Reggie's.

* * *

R
YAN
TOOK
THE
second shot, watched his target fall, then shouted to the others. “Go! Leapfrog! Covering fire!”

Bursting out of the smoke, they laid down a bristling carpet of blasterfire. From the intersection, longblasters barked back. Bullets sang over Ryan's head and skipped off the floor. The one-eyed man aimed and fired, working the bolt like a machine. Downrange, men dropped on faces and on backs.

As more of them fell, the survivors seemed to lose heart. Then shooting from that direction stopped. The sec men had turned tail.

Ryan stared down his scope. The intersection was deserted. The shooters had fled in both directions. There was no way to get them all.

A second later, the warning Klaxon began to sound. It pulsed over and over, echoing down the long hallway.

They had to keep moving; they were several levels from the surface. Ryan remembered the traps they'd passed. Those were out of commission; there were probably others that could still bite.

“Jak!” he shouted. “Back the way we came. Exactly the way we came!”