Following their recce, the two men returned to the mat-trans control room, where Dean and Krysty were in conference over one of the comp consoles, with Doc looking on.
“Well?” the Titian-haired beauty asked, looking up as they entered.
“It’s all in working order, and the upper levels look as untouched as down here. My guess is that we’re in an area that hasn’t got any villes nearby, and is off any trade routes.”
“Will not that make leaving here on foot a little risky, to say the least?” Doc asked.
Ryan shrugged. “Everything’s a risk, Doc. If we take enough supplies for a few days, and it looks impassable or too desolate, then we come back here and jump.”
“If we have to do that, I wouldn’t give you much for the chances of picking a destination,” Dean said without tearing his gaze away from the console. “Looking at this is just telling me how little I actually learned at the school. There’s so little old comp tech that I’ve seen…just too much to pick up quickly.”
“He’s right, Ryan,” Mildred added in answer to Ryan’s questioning gaze. “This is so complex compared to what even I learned back in the day.”
“Okay. We leave tomorrow on foot.”
“That will please young Jak,” Doc remarked. “He’s been a trifle restless since we arrived.”
“As if we hadn’t noticed,” Krysty said. “I’ll be glad to move if only because it’ll calm him.”
“Where is he right now?” Ryan asked.
“I asked him to gather everything together from the dispensary and the kitchens,” Mildred replied. “He was driving me nuts just sitting around looking miserable.”
THEY SPENT one more night at the redoubt, a night that was used to get some necessary sleep in a good bed, and in peace. There was no knowing when the chance might arise again, as it was completely unknown territory beyond the entrance doors.
The next morning they ate in silence. Jak was happier, but there was still the general air of tension that preceded the journey into the unknown outside world, which had been exacerbated by his earlier depression. The elevator took them to the top level, and they walked in silence along the corridor toward the exit doors, opening each sec door from the code scratched into the metal plate above the keypad. This was a common feature of redoubt sec doors, where enlisted men feared forgetting codes in an emergency and so scratched the sec number on the inner side of the door. They couldn’t have known how useful their precautionary measure would be in an unimaginable! future.
Finally they stood before the outer door.
Ryan paused before punching in the final code. He was concerned that they had gotten this far with everything going so well. What if the actual entrance was blocked on the outside by a landfall, or that sec door was buckled or warped and so permanently stuck?
He turned to the others. “Triple red, people. Been too good so far…can never be too safe.” With that he punched in the sec code, and Dean pressed the lever. The door opened smoothly…
Chapter Three
There was no landfall outside the main sec door. Neither was there any sign of human or mutie habitation. The entrance to the redoubt was in a shallow valley, thick with lush green foliage and trees that grew tall in spiraling shapes of mutated wonder. Like redwoods modeled on pretzels, they cast shadows across the floor of the valley in roller coaster shapes that reminded Ryan and Jak of the old rides they had seen in the Greenglades Theme Park in Florida, once ruled over by the baron called Larry Zapp. That had seen them come up against another cult leader—Adam Traven—and the chain of thought led Jak to remember the Sunchildren. He quickly dismissed the thought from his mind.
Doc was lost on another road of memory altogether. The height of the trees reminded him of the redwoods he had seen on a family holiday with his beloved Emily, Rachel and Jolyon. All long before the days when he had been trawled by the whitecoats of Chronos and thrust into the nightmare that was now his life. For a moment, Doc wondered if his children had grown strong, and if they in turn had children of their own. Did he have any blood that faced the nukecaust? Were there any vestigial remains of a Tanner family somewhere in the Deathlands even now? He hoped not. He would cope with this life, but he wouldn’t wish it on anyone.