“A what?” Jak asked, raising his candle to the other exhibits. More creatures stared at him with dead glass eyes, forever frozen in a tableau of mock ferocity.
“Sort of a trophy room,” the physician attempted to explain. “For folks to see the creatures that once roamed Earth.”
“All aced?” the albino teen asked curiously.
“Time itself did that,” Doc replied haughtily. “For once, the hands of humanity were clean of the crime of slaughtering living things for pleasure.”
“No hunt fun,” Jak corrected. “Hunt food.”
The scholar smiled benignly. “Ah, my dear Mr. Lauren, your wisdom is boundless.”
As the group moved through the display of dinosaur skeletons and dioramas of Neolithic life, they came upon a Tyrannosaurus rex rising high above the terrazzo floor, standing dramatically on a raised platform, with velvet ropes holding back the visitors to protect the creature from them.
“This real?” Dean asked, poking at a leg bigger than a wag.
“Real, but long dead,” Mildred explained. “Most of the creatures lived and died millions of years ago.”
“Millions?” Jak asked, scowling.
“A century of centuries of centuries,” Doc espoused, walking around the Jurassic behemoth. “The preDark world, of the preDark world, in a manner of speaking.”
“Come on, the offices are what we want,” Ryan commanded, and headed that way, leaving behind the killers from the past.
After finding a secure room, the companions dug in for the night, buttressing the doors with marble benches. Once settled in, dinner was cooked over a small fire built in a metal waste can and fed pamphlets and brochures from the tourist shop. When those were gone, they moved on to paper from the desks and then the desks.
“At least we don’t have to burn the oil paintings in the executive office,” Doc rumbled, contentedly picking his teeth with a paper clip. “It was an unwelcome experience to dine on hundred-year-old military stew warmed by the million dollar fire of a stack of burning masterpieces.”
“We saved the Gauguin and Edward Hopper,” Mildred added around her toothbrush. Then she rinsed with mineral water and spit into a trash can. “But we should have done the Jackson Pollocks. Never did like the abstract expressionists.”
“Agreed, madam.” Doc smiled, displaying his oddly perfect teeth. “But the fumes from his depressing works would have only made the food sour.”
Mopping his mess kit clean with a piece of bread from the MRE pack, Ryan idly listened to the old timers chat and really could make no sense of it. Some of the artwork had been beautiful stuff, pastoral scenes of flowers. The rest were just splotches on canvas.
After dinner, Ryan and Krysty took the first shift of walking a patrol of the building while J.B. showed the others how to make pipe bombs from the plumbing supplies, mixed with items from a paint store and a garage. If there had been the time, the Armorer could have made much more powerful guncotton from the treasure in most banks. A big stack of money, a sack of silver quarters, a high school chemistry lab and in less than a week he was producing fulminating guncotton at a tremendous rate. The stuff was ten times more powerful than dynamite, yet much easier to make. He and Ryan had tried reloading bullets with the stuff once and even with a half charge mixed with common dirt, the blaster was blown apart. Since then, he never tried again, using the reloads found in the redoubts. They were infinitely safer.
One at a time, each section of pipe was filled with a batch of cooked chems poured from a coffeepot, then the end cap screwed on tight and gently laid aside. While they cooled, the bombs were sensitive to shocks, but once cold, you could toss one down a flight of stairs and nothing would happen. Unless the fuse was lit, and then they detonated with staggering force, throwing out a deadly halo of shrapnel from the lead pipe.
Doc, Jak and Dean took over the production of the explos, as Mildred and J.B. walked a patrol. Ryan and Krysty found the private office of the curator with a comfortable sofa for sleeping and settled in for the rest of the night. Their next tour wasn’t until just before dawn.