Part 5 (1/2)

J.B. glanced down at the b.u.t.ton radiation counter he wore on his lapel. ”No indications of rad leakage in the area,” he reported.

Another door at the end of the room waited. Next to the door was a sec keypad to keep out the unwanted and unauthorized.

”Look alive, people,” Ryan said. ”Appears the gateway has been uncompromised. We can still jump out of here, or we can take this door and see what's causing the smoke.”

Doc was now on his feet. ”I regret the lack of choices, my dear friend. I prefer two optionsthe lady or the tiger.”

J.B. laid an open palm against the door. ”Doesn't feel hot,” he said. ”Whatever's burning on the other side hasn't gotten out of hand yet.”

”Guess it wouldn't hurt to take a look, would it?” Krysty said.

”Guess not,” Ryan replied, before reaching down and pressing the short sequence of numbers. However, instead of the door sliding up into the ceiling or into one of the walls, it merely gave a loud clicking sound.

”What was that?” Dean asked.

”Door unlocked,” Mildred said. ”I'd been wondering if the redoubt codes would work here.”

Ryan pushed the door carefully, allowing it to swing open into the next room. Smoke billowed in from the burning walls and furniture inside the new room, which appeared to be a kind of waiting area or lounge. The haze in the air limited his visibility. Ryan brought up his blaster and readied it to fire, then took a single step inside.

A stickie, dressed in a dirty black pullover turtle-neck and jeans, staggered out of the smoke with both arms outstretched, in a mockery of a vaunted embrace.

They looked at each other, man and mutie, brothers through a distorted looking gla.s.s.

”Youyou're a norm,” the stickie said slowly as the information began to sink into the wrinkled mora.s.s the mutant called a brain.

”And you're chilled, a.s.shole,” Ryan retorted before pulling the trigger of the SIG-Sauer.

Chapter Five.

The single shot of the SIG-Sauer was explosively loud within the confines of the underground network of labs, so loud that Alton Adrian easily heard the shot from where he was hiding inside a silver steel entryway outside of the main cryogenics laboratory.

”Skrag! One of the muties must be packing heat,” he whispered to himself as a chill went down his spine and settled in the small of his back. A stickie with a blaster was triple-bad news. Weapons were hard enough to find in that part of Deathlands.

Blasters were hard to obtain and costly to maintain. Even with a blaster, finding ammunition was even harder unless you had the extra jack to pay top price. Most of the stickies Adrian had ever heard of or seen went for a more basic approach to offensethey used their own substantial strength and incredible mutant abilities to attack their foes bare-handed or with clubs.

Taking a deep breath, he warily slid out of the cool entryway and crawled on his hands and knees down the corridor. The smoke was thick there, and by staying low he could breathe easier and have better visibility.

He paused, wondering if he was indeed heading in the right direction, when more sounds of violence came cras.h.i.+ng around the corner less than fifteen feet away from where he was crouched. Already he missed the cool of the room near the freezie chambers.

He had two choices go back the way he came or investigate what was causing all of the stickie ruckus.

”Follow the ruckus,” he decided. Perhaps he could gain the upper hand somehow. He hadn't spent all this time hoping for a big score to see it p.i.s.sed away by a bunch of idiot muties who liked to set fires.

ONCE RYAN HAD FIRED the first shot, the battle was on. He flattened against the wall, firing a few more rounds blindly into the smoke.

”Come on,” he barked, and the rest of the group filed in past the burning parts of the room. The fires didn't seem to have opened into full flower yet, blossoming out in red-and-yellow petals. The walls, while scorched, weren't ablaze.

”Want to seal off the gateway, Dad?” Dean was standing at the door, where a twin for the sec keypad was recessed in the door frame.

”Do it,” Ryan replied. ”We might need a back door if things get bad in here.”

The boy reversed the order of the locking code, and the door gave off the same queer clicking noise that indicated the magnetic lock had thrown true.

”The fire may burn itself out,” Krysty said. ”Not much here to flame on, really.”

”Mebbe,” Ryan agreed, coughing from an unintended lungful of smoke. He strained to see as they stepped farther into the burning room and near a doorway that led into a wide corridor. He could see more humanoid figures at the far end of the wall, slowly moving closer.

”More stickies heading this way,” he reported to his friends.

Then, before any sort of battle could begin, the ceiling fell in, the smoky air above them transformed into a ma.s.s of cool white clouds, jetting down violently and without warning.

”What is this b.a.s.t.a.r.d stuff?” Ryan bellowed.

”Stay calm,” Mildred yelled back over the rattling of the released emissions. ”It's halon gas! I've seen it before. They used it in predark times to fight fires instead of water in sensitive areas with computers.”

Looking up, they all saw that the gas had been released from a series of s.h.i.+ny sprinkler heads mounted into the ceiling tiles.

”Can it hurt us?” Krysty asked in a concerned voice. ”Should we hold our breath or something?”

”No. It's a chem dump, a deluge. Expensive as h.e.l.l, but it won't harm anything, including people. It's inert. Can't damage equipment or paper and disappears like a vapor. Leaves everything behind except for fire untouched,” Mildred replied.

”Sounds more like the neutron bomb of the firebug set,” J.B. observed sourly.

Already, the chemical was doing its magic, beating back the flames and clearing the air, revealing the damaged lounge area and the remaining three stickies who now could see the humans quite clearly, and vice versa.

”Feel wet,” Jak said, running the palm of a hand down his pant leg.

”Halon gas dries quickly, Jak,” Mildred told him. ”You'll never know it was there in a few minutes.”

”This fire was big enough to trigger any safeguards. I wonder what took the gas so long to launch?” Ryan said, watching the stickies regain their equilibrium from the sudden appearance of the artificial cloudburst.

”No telling,” Mildred replied, sharing Ryan's attentive gaze on their foes. ”Since this isn't a standard redoubt, I'm wondering what's keeping this place powered up enough to operate a gateway anyway.”

”Must be a nuke gen somewhere around here,” J.B. said bluntly.

Mildred chuckled. ”If this is more of a private setup, I'll bet the locals never dreamed there was a small nuclear power plant right under their feet.”

Like others of their kind, the muties were clumsy as they entered chaotically into what pa.s.sed for a stickie attack stance. The freakish deformity of their bodies was painfully obvious as each of them turned to face Ryan and the rest of the group of friends.

The only weapons they carried were torches, and a few blades and other sharpened hand-to-hand weapons. No blasters were in evidence.

Normally the muties didn't need them. However, in such close quarters, their attack against human rifles wouldn't last for more than a few seconds. Chilling the stickies would be a simple task.

But then the ceiling fell in for a second time, the lightweight tiles buckling on top of the group of friends as two more of the murderous muties came cras.h.i.+ng down into their midst.