James Axler - Deathlands 50 Pandoras Reboubt

Pandora's Redoubt

Dean scanned the area. "Where's Krysty?"

Startled, Ryan jerked his head around. One glance told him she wasn't in the tank with them. Rushing to a blasterport, the one-eyed man blew away the outside greenery with a single discharge and looked frantically at the alleyway. Ivy was everywhere, thickening by the second.

"Second floor!" Doc cried, standing at the rooftop periscope.

Ryan turned and found her, dangling from the grip of the mutie plant twenty feet in the air. Her .38 discharged once, pointing at nothing in particular. Then she was hauled over the rooftop and gone.

"Combat positions," Ryan ordered, striding past his friends and sliding into the driver's seat. "We're going after her."

To Melissa and Lisa, for doing such a bang-up job. Thanks, amigas.

First edition June 2000

ISBN 0-373-62560-X

Copyright 2000 by Worldwide Library

It is the nature of a thing to be true to its essence: fire can only burn, a rock is unyielding, water flows. Men alone are both animal and intellect and thus must choose if they shall stand erect and embrace the stars, or sprawl in the dirt and feats on blood like a lowly beast.

-- The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, 167 A.D.

THE SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure-in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature's heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville's own Titian-haired beauty; a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan's close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophllus Tkinner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn't have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan's young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity's last hope....

Chapter One

The handle of the door to the mat-trans chamber moved a fraction of an inch, the hinges screeching in protest at the intrusion. Muffled curses came from the other side as the stubborn handle grudgingly moved, and promptly jammed again. More curses. Then the locking mechanism disengaged with a echoing clank of heavy steel on steel The door was muscled open, and seven armed people charged into the hexagonal chamber beyond. A badly scarred man with a patch covering one eye was the last inside, and he stood ready to close the door behind them to trigger a jump.

"Dark night, we made it," J. B. Dix gasped. The short wiry man removed his well-worn fedora to rub a grimy sleeve across his sweaty forehead. "I knew we could outrun it."

"Gaia," Krysty Wroth breathed, her sentient crimson hair tightening protectively about her lovely face, "we're lucky it found the elevator shaft to fall down."

"Gren helped," Jak Lauren said. The slim, snowy-haired albino teen walked across the chamber and sat on one of the disks set into the floor.

"Grens always help," J.B. commented.

Keeping a close watch on the door behind them, Dean Cawdor scowled and said nothing, but shifted the grip on his Browning Hi-Power pistol as if in preparation for an attack.

"Do you think it can get through the door?" Dr. Mildred Wyeth asked anxiously, shifting her backpack of medical supplies on her shoulders.

"The thermal inversion gradient of the armaglass portal is not precisely known," Doc Tanner replied, taking his usual spot on the floor. "But as this establishment was theoretically designed to be nukeproof, therefore, I would extrapolate that the defensive yield potential is-"

"Door!" Jak barked, pointing past Ryan.

Spinning, Ryan saw that the access door to the control room was slowly bulging inward, distending like the bloated belly of a starving man, horribly straining at the resilient alloy framework. The reek of sulfur hit them as yellow steam spurted around the edges and the walls on either side began to glow warmly. Then a wave of dry heat washed over the group, stinging their eyes and searing exposed flesh.

"By the Three Kennedys!" Doc intoned, pulling out his huge LeMat pistol for no sane reason. "The lava is here!"

"Everybody sit down!" Ryan ordered, starting to close the door to the mat-trans unit. But he was unable to remove his gaze from the terrible scene outside. Although stretching like warm taffy, the trembling door to the control room was still in place. The walls on either side, however, were turning orange from the volcanic heat.

"Soon yellow, then white," Krysty warned, sweat dripping off her chin. "Then it'll soften and melt away."

Loosening the collar of his jacket, J.B. agreed. "We'll be long gone by then. Got a minute yet, mebbe two."

As he spoke, the glowing walls beyond the chamber shattered in a crackling explosion, the remaining chunks peeling away like a flower blossoming to the sun, and white-hot lava began to thickly pump into the control room.

Beyond the yellowish haze they could see only an endless plain of reddish flames.

Once Ryan saw that all of the companions were properly seated on the floor, he slammed the door shut, triggering the jump mechanism, and quickly went to sit beside Krysty. Immediately, the usual mist filled the chamber, engulfing the seven friends, sparks forming around them like newborn stars.

Drawing his 9 mm SIG-Sauer pistol, Ryan could just barely see the deadly lava flow inexorably rising higher and higher, moving toward them, the locked door standing ludicrously upright in the lambent field of molten stone. If the mat-trans unit failed to work because of damage from the lava, then he'd use the pistol. First on Krysty, then on the others and himself. It'd be a lot quicker than burning alive. He glanced at her and saw she already had her own .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver out and was looking at him. They shared a moment of understanding more intimate than any embrace.

Then a great surge of power filled their bodies from within as a subsonic hum tore them apart. The universe yawned wide as all eternity. Instantly, they embarked on a subelectronic journey toward an unknown destination, possibly into the great abyss itself

Well over one century old, the predark matter-trans chambers sent travelers randomly to other units, the secret of their precise control lost forever.

As always, during the time the friends were unconscious, hallucinations filled their minds, idyllic dreams and mad visions, phantasms of old enemies, bloody battles and sexual fantasies. But on this journey the visions died before being truly formed. Suddenly, solid, flooring was beneath Ryan's back, and he was reeling a bit from the usual aftershocks of being instantly transferred to a new destination.