Siren Song

They had left Doc at the redoubt entrance, either to welcome Ryan and J.B. or to blast the living crap out of anyone—or anything—else who tried to enter.

The redoubt itself was set half out to sea, one entire side cut away by the quake that had turned this strip of land into an island decades before. Despite that destruction, its automated facilities still functioned, including the ceiling-mounted fluorescent lights and, crucially, the mat-trans unit. Quite how the mat-trans could still operate when so much of the building had been wrenched away was beyond Mildred’s comprehension. They’d built these old places tough.

The mat-trans was a twentieth-century invention designed to move troops and matériel between locations with the minimum of fuss. The matter-transporter units were located in dozens of abandoned military redoubts across the old United States of America and several other parts of the world. While the redoubts remained mostly untampered with by the locals, locked up and hidden away as they were, Mildred and her companions had utilized the mat-trans units for a number of years, zipping from location to location as they sought a better life away from the routine bloodshed of the Deathlands. Finding somewhere to settle had proved a lot harder than Mildred had expected.

Leading the way, Jak stepped into the redoubt control room. Twin aisles of desks ran lengthwise across the room, facing a screen that was blotched with the white stripes of bird feces. The desks, too, were smothered with droppings, and as Mildred entered the room she saw a gull flap its wings in surprise as it rose from one corner. The bird had a nest here, tucked out of sight. Mildred ignored the gull as it swooped around the room, cawing in distress.

The two companions made their way to the door to the anteroom, where they waited for their friends to join them.

* * *

ITWASPANDEMONIUM. Scalies were running in all directions.

While most of the muties had scattered in blind panic, several came searching for the sniper who had executed their leader. Krysty watched from her hiding place in the bole of a tree, the Smith & Wesson .38 clutched close to her breast as two figures broke from the tree line where the bodies hung, running toward Ryan where he lay on the grass picking off their companions. One of the scalies held a knife, and it flashed as it reflected the sunlight. Glass, Krysty realized.

As the two scalies vaulted over a fallen log, Krysty emerged and popped off two shots from the .38. The first plowed into the chest of the scalie on the left, and he seemed to flip over himself as he was driven back and to the ground. But her second shot missed, whipping away just an inch over the right hand scalie’s shoulder. Tough break—he was the one with the knife.

The scalie changed direction. He ran not for Ryan now but for Krysty, drawing the glass knife back in preparation to swing. Krysty whipped up the .38, but the scalie was on her before she could squeeze the trigger.

The two of them went down with a thud of bone-jarring impact. Krysty fell backward as the knife swished through the air just inches from her face. The scalie spread his legs to hold her down, crouching over her crab-style to stop her from escaping. The knife swung again, eight inches of blade flashing with the sun’s rays.

Krysty brought up her blaster and squeezed the trigger. The .38 fired at point-blank range, but the bullet deflected on a callused section of her attacker’s armor-like flesh. The scalie howled in pain and, in the same instant, reached out with his free hand and grabbed Krysty’s blaster by the muzzle, shoving it aside.

Krysty groaned as her wrist was bent backward. The scalie’s grip was as strong as a vise and she could feel the bones of her wrist grinding together as he clenched tighter.

Looming above Krysty, the mutie brought his glass blade down toward her face, hissing through clenched teeth in some eerie victory trill, the blade racing toward her.

Gaia help me, Krysty thought as she watched the blade carving the air. Hear my prayer and come to my aid in my time of need.

Then everything seemed to slow down; the blade hovered in the air as if it was a static object.

Krysty had grown up in Harmony ville where her mother, Sonja, had taught her how to tap into a wellspring of energy that she called Gaia power. Quite how that ability worked, no one could explain, but it drew on the Earth Mother herself to feed her with a burst of incredible strength and stamina. That “Gaia power” had saved Krysty’s life on numerous occasions, but it came at a cost—each time she used it, it ran out fast and she was left as weak as a kitten. Right now, Krysty figured that cost was worth it.

As she focused on her chant, Krysty could feel the power of the Earth Mother race through her like an electric current charging her veins. Krysty’s emerald eyes seemed to shine as she snatched the scalie’s wrist and pulled, altering the angle of the stabbing knife and yanking the scalie with such force that he went sailing from her with a howl of surprise. An instant later the scalie’s flying body slammed against the trunk of a nearby orange tree, and Krysty heard his neck snap.

She lay there breathing hard as the Gaia energies coursed through her, making her feel every whisper of breeze, every blade of grass, as it seared through her body like a fire. Moments later the power ebbed, then was gone.

Still lying in the grass, Ryan picked off the last few stragglers of the attacking party, watching through the scope as the remaining scalies ran for the safety of their pyramid-like home.

“You okay?” he asked, his single eye still fixed on the rifle’s scope.

“Been better, lover,” Krysty replied weakly. She was shaking, and her voice had that familiar tremble, the result of using the Gaia force.

When he looked at her, Krysty was checking her right wrist where the scalie had tried to break it.

“Time to go,” Ryan said.

Krysty nodded. Her wrist was still working, although she may sport a bruise there for the next few days. Ryan bent to help her to her feet. He put his arm around her shoulder and they headed toward the redoubt.

* * *

THEYCONVERGEDONthe redoubt entrance. Doc was using his faithful LeMat to, as he put it, “dissuade the locals from investigating too thoroughly.”

“Good thing, too,” J.B. said as he carried Ricky through the doors and into the corridor beyond. “Wouldn’t do for muties to learn about the mat-trans system. Before we know it, the redoubts would be overrun with crazed scalies only too happy to consume or destroy anything they come across.”

Other than sending another warning shot into the trees overlooking the redoubt entrance, Doc didn’t bother to reply. He pulled back from the entrance, his LeMat still jutting out the doors in search of new targets.

A moment later Ryan appeared with Krysty at his side. As they entered the redoubt, Krysty looked exhausted; her hair hung limply now and her movements were slow and heavy, as if she was underwater.

J.B. caught Ryan’s eye, an unspoken question there.

“She’s fine,” Ryan replied. “Just a little knocked out from her Gaia power.”

When J.B. said nothing, Ryan smiled.

“Had a bit of trouble finding a good spot,” Ryan said. “Did you miss us down there?”

J.B. shrugged. “I figured you’d come through for us,” he said. “Just, you know, quicker would have been better.”

Ryan nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I save your life. Ricky, are you okay?”

“Millie’ll look him over,” J.B. replied for the teen, “once we’re away from this rad-blasted pesthole.”

Doc punched in the code to close the doors. Once he had done that, he turned to his companions and touched his free hand to the brim of an imaginary hat. “I trust we are all ready to leave?”

Less than a minute later the five companions joined Jak and Mildred in the anteroom, then they all entered the mat-trans unit and sat on the floor, except for Ryan. The one-eyed man was last in, and he firmly shut the mat-trans door, initiating a jump. He quickly made his way to Krysty’s side and sat beside her. The mat-trans powered up.

All seven companions disappeared, leaving only the wispy trails of cooling gas and the whine of the air vents in their wake.

Chapter Two

As the companions didn’t have the destination codes for the mat-trans unit, where they ended up was totally random. The jump could take them to a redoubt five hundred miles away or five thousand—or anywhere in the world, for that matter. The companions never knew where they’d arrived until they left the redoubt and got their bearings.

The effects of traveling by mat-trans made a person feel as though he or she had caught a swamp bug. The stomach rebelled, the body went weak and there was the urgent feeling that you were about to crap your pants. Thankfully, the journey itself was momentary, and once it passed—usually—so did the sickness.

The seven companions materialized in a shock of light, and even as they appeared the extractor fans of the mat-trans hummed to life, working their magic to clear the chamber of gas.

They were sitting in a different mat-trans chamber—its dimensions and design exactly like the one they had just left, the only difference being the color of its armaglass walls, which was a sort of red-violet, Ricky thought.

Breathing through clenched teeth, he clutched his side, his eyes screwed up in pain. He still hadn’t got used to the discorporation and reintegration of his molecules that was necessary for the mat-trans to shunt him to a new location, and the jarring only served to make the wound in his side feel worse. “Madre—” he muttered, doubling over in agony.

“Okay, Ricky,” Mildred said, hurrying across the small room to the teen’s side and opening her satchel of medical supplies. She moved a little unsteadily, still suffering from the aftereffects of the jump. Mildred was far more experienced in this than Ricky, but it could still catch her unawares sometimes, just the same way it caught everyone unawares sometimes. She usually had a concoction she called jump juice, which was helpful in settling the stomach, but she was all out.

As she moved, Mildred spotted the box. It loomed incongruously at the rear wall of the chamber, clicking to itself in a kind of constant hum. “Um...” Mildred began, stopping in her tracks. “Ryan? J.B.?”

Ryan was still recovering from the jump, but he moved to where Mildred had halted and scanned the device with his single blue eye. “Shit.”

It was about the size of a shoebox, roughly a foot across and half as deep, and the top was open to reveal a mass of wires and a timer. The timer was analog, like an old oven timer, and it clicked quietly to itself as it counted down.

“What the hell is that?” J.B. said, peering past Ryan’s shoulder. “Oh.”

“Three minutes,” Ryan said, reading the dial on the timer.

“Get everyone out of here,” J.B. instructed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tiny pair of wire cutters no bigger than nail scissors. His instruction was unnecessary. Ryan was already rousing Krysty and the others, ushering them to the chamber door. “Triple red, everyone,” Ryan ordered as he turned the door handle. They had less than three minutes. Ryan would wait. He knew why J.B. wanted to defuse the bomb—the importance of the mat-trans was impossible to put a value on. If they’d emerged in a hot zone or a settlement of crazies—or both, as they had in California—then this chamber may be their only means of escape.

J.B. had defused bombs before. They had three minutes, which meant they still had a chance.

Doc and Jak took out their blasters before they hurried through the doorway, while Krysty followed a little more slowly, still reeling from the blow of her post-Gaia comedown. Mildred helped Ricky through, glancing back at J.B. as the Armorer knelt to study the explosive device. A bomb inside the mat-trans meant someone had been in this redoubt, wherever it was.

Anyone with any brains would have gotten out double-quick as soon as they had placed the explosive, but Ryan wasn’t taking any chances. He flipped the safety off his SIG Sauer blaster, left the chamber and anteroom and marched across the control room.

It was a redoubt like the one they had just exited, as most were—concrete walls, low ceilings, anteroom and control room, with winking and blinking lights and dials and comp monitors. The lights were on, but that didn’t mean anything. Redoubt lights functioned automatically when a mat-trans fired to life, which meant that the bomber could be long gone by now. Or just around the corner.

There were several cracks that ran across one side of the room, up the walls and through the ceiling, wide enough to accommodate a person’s arm. Something had struck the redoubt at some time, and struck it hard. Ryan’s people fanned out swiftly. A layer of dust was sprinkled on the age-old com terminals, but Doc noticed immediately that several screens had been wiped clean.

“Someone tried to use these,” Doc said. “Recently, too.”

Ryan waited while the rest of his friends made their way through the room. Jak keyed in the code to open the door, then they all filed into the corridor beyond. The albino youth scouted ahead, checking the immediate rooms of the redoubt, hunting for danger and for somewhere safe to position the group should the bomb go off.

While Ryan waited in the doorway, Doc helped a reluctant Krysty down the corridor.

“Ryan, come on,” she urged. “We can’t...”

“We have to try to save it,” Ryan said, his single eye fixed on J.B.

“Get her to safety,” he instructed Doc without turning.

“Krysty, I’ll see you outside.”

The redheaded beauty wanted to say something else; she was his soul mate and she usually wouldn’t leave him. But in her weakened state, leave was all she could do. And she knew that Ryan wouldn’t leave J.B. alone, not if there was a chance they could defuse the bomb.

Doc guided Krysty down the corridor. “How are you feeling, my dear?” he asked.

Krysty smiled, her usually vibrant hair hanging limply around her face. “Still kind of woozy,” she admitted, flashing him a half smile.

“Lean against me,” Doc instructed. “I may be old but I’m still good for that much, at least.”

While J.B. and Ryan dealt with the bomb, Jak employed his own natural talents to lead the rest of the group out of the redoubt as swiftly as he could.

While they had landed in an unknown redoubt, these military bases roughly followed the same basic design. Jak followed the widest corridor, turning each time it split and choosing the widest corridor again. The overhead lights flickered to life at each junction Jak stepped into, brought to life by motion sensors, filling in the void ahead with each step.

The others followed as fast as they were able—Doc helping Krysty along at his side, Mildred watching Ricky carefully as the lad struggled with his wounded side.

Mildred looked worriedly at Ricky. She glanced back at the open door to the control room—not to check on J.B. but merely to see how far they were from the potential blast. Mildred had feelings for J.B.—they were lovers—but she remained professional and focused during times like this. She had seen too many mistakes caused by people not paying attention, and as a doctor her first concern had to be her patient.

Mildred could see that Ricky wouldn’t make it to the outside in the two minutes they had left. He was slowing even now, not quite limping but certainly dragging his heels. His face was looking paler, too: blood loss.

“Jak, we’re going to have to stop,” Mildred called.

Without slowing his pace, Jak glanced over his shoulder and nodded. “We go. No point all dying.”

It was a harsh truth, Mildred knew. She turned back to Ricky, indicating an open doorway. “Stop here,” she instructed.

“But Ryan said...” Ricky began.

Mildred shot him a look. “I need to look at that wound,” she said. “In here.” She led him through the open doorway into what appeared to be a television monitoring room. The room contained two swivel chairs and a bank of television screens that dominated one wall in a gentle curve.

Ricky looked around with evident concern. “Lot of glass here if the bomb goes off.”

Mildred ignored him. “Lift up your arms,” she said, and Ricky did so.

* * *

RYANSTOODINthe doorway to the control room, wondering how long they had.

“J.B.?”

Inside the chamber, J.B. crouched by the device, warily eyeballing it. The timer was attached to a chemical mix with an explosive and an accelerant to increase the blast. When it went off, it would appear to be a single explosion, but in fact there would be two in very quick succession, the first triggering the full payload of the device. The Armorer judged the size of the device.

“The armaglass will hold the explosion,” he called back to Ryan.

“What about defusing it?” Ryan asked.

J.B. shook his head, still holding the wire cutters in front of him. “This bastard’s wired up six ways to Sunday. I’d need hours to figure it out,” he admitted.

“How long do we have?”

“Thirty seconds,” J.B. replied, slipping his wire cutters back into his jacket pocket. Then he got up from his crouch, knowing better than to rush. Rushing only made a person careless; the one time in a million that a person would slip on the floor of a chamber and earn a concussion. Thirty seconds was plenty of time to get out.

Ryan was waiting for J.B. at the door to the control room. If the bomb went off early, they were dead, but Ryan wouldn’t leave J.B.—they had been brothers in arms for too long for him to do that.

J.B. made his way swiftly to the chamber door and pulled it closed behind him. Once the door was closed, the mat-trans chamber was designed to be airtight to ensure a clean jump when in use. J.B. trusted that to help protect them from the blast. There were fifteen seconds left now before the bomb went off.

J.B. turned, checking his pockets nervously as he hurried from the room. He still had the M-4000 and the Mini-Uzi he habitually carried; it wouldn’t do to escape the explosion only to find himself weaponless.

Ryan watched as J.B. strode toward him.

“What are you still doing here?” J.B. asked, irritated.

“You think I’m letting you get blown up on your own?” Ryan snapped back. “Too much water under the bridge for that.”

J.B. nodded. “Ten seconds,” he said as he followed Ryan into the stark corridor.

Then the two men started to run, hurrying for the nearest doorway, which was cracked open. They pried it open wider to accommodate their size and slipped inside.

“Four...three...two...one,” J.B. intoned. When he got to “two,” both men turned away from the direction of the blast and placed their hands over their ears.

A moment later a dull sound like a thump reverberated through the redoubt, followed by a much louder boom accompanied almost instantaneously by the tinkling sound of shattering glass. Ryan and J.B. fell to the floor as the shockwave rocked through the redoubt.

* * *

JAKWASWITHDoc and Krysty when the bomb exploded. They were standing in a garage area of the redoubt, close to the surface and far enough away that they heard the explosion as a kind of distant cough. Still, they all knew exactly what it was and for a moment a solemn hush seemed to pass over them.

Krysty tensed. “Ryan...”

Doc held on to her, pulling her close. “Relax, Krysty, my girl,” he said, trying to calm her. “We don’t know what has happened yet.”

“I want to go back,” Krysty told him.

“Going back would only serve to place us in more danger,” Doc said reasonably. “They will come to us when they are ready.”

A few paces ahead of them, Jak had adopted a semi-crouch as he walked toward the door to the redoubt. The door lay on one side of the wide, garage-like area within which a few military vehicles still remained. The vehicles had been stripped down to shells, their components and armament long gone, tires removed along with anything else that anyone might be able to put to use. Worryingly, the door to the redoubt was open and showed about four feet of blue sky along with the scrappy dirt of an overgrown track.

Jak’s Colt Python had materialized in his hand once more. He didn’t like the fact that the door was open. It meant someone had been inside, which the bomb had already indicated, and that maybe they hadn’t had time to close it again, which meant they could still be nearby. Jak’s pale hand flicked at the Colt’s trigger guard absently as he approached the opening, padding toward it on silent feet.

Jak stopped for a moment at the open door and listened, isolating the sounds coming from outside. There were birds chirruping, the buzz of insects...and a being, moving amid the undergrowth, feet shuffling on leaves and grass. A moment later Jak heard another sound—more figures approaching, moving in unison with military precision, moving fast.

Blaster poised in front of him, Jak stepped through the open door of the redoubt.

Chapter Three

The redoubt door had been propped open using a web of sawed-down tree limbs and pieces of metal, Jak noted as he stepped through the opening. The construction was well planned and solid, raised on a scaffold-type arrangement. In addition, attention had been paid to the meeting point where the door slid into the wall. There was no exposed hinge or mechanism there, but someone had gone to a lot of trouble to bend the thick titanium door so that it would not snap back. Someone who wanted to get in and get out again.

There were trees all around, and it took a moment for Jak to zone out the noises of the local fauna and locate the sound of shuffling feet he had first noted from inside the redoubt. There. To the left.

A dirt track led to the redoubt entrance with a scrubby grass border to either side, wide enough to carry a wag. The scarred remains of a tarmac road had all but disintegrated, leaving black chunks of broken tarmac dotted amid the dirt. Jak stepped over the path and onto the grass, where he could ensure his passage would remain silent. The grass shone with dew, catching the morning sunlight in sparkling spots like glitter.

The sounds of marching feet were getting closer, and they were moving fast. Jak guessed at least three people were among the group, but it was hard to tell from the way the footsteps echoed. There could be three or three hundred moving in step.

Crouching, his blaster held in one hand, Jak scrambled across the scrub, weaving swiftly between stubby trees. His keen eyes spotted the figure crouching behind a bush, tiny red berries arrayed across it like beads of blood. It was a man, mid-thirties with a little gray clouding his dark beard, wearing cotton clothes, light and simple and remarkably clean. His hands were dirty, though, and there was a streak of what looked like either oil or dirt on his face. He was breathing heavy, fearful. Jak slowed as he spotted the blaster in the man’s hand. It was a Smith & Wesson, not much more than seven inches in length, its once-gleaming surface pitted and blackened with age.

The man turned at the albino youth’s approach, as much sensing him as hearing him. Jak was still twenty feet from the man. Even from that distance, Jak could see the man’s blue eyes were wide with anxiousness, and he brought the Smith & Wesson around to target Jak at the same time as he turned. But when he saw Jak, something seemed to change in his expression—first surprise, then relief.

“Thank heaven,” the man said in a breathless whisper. “I thought you were...”

He stopped, alert like a dog, his head turning to locate the sound of the marching feet.

Jak spotted the figures moving through the trees for the first time. Dressed in white robes, they were easy to see. They didn’t walk together but had spread out, taking different routes down the slope, but still marching in time. Jak counted five of them wending through the trees above, fluid and almost mist-like in their movements. It wasn’t like watching soldiers, it was like watching dancers.