J.B. signaled for everyone to halt, then dropped to one knee, squinting along the barrel of the mini-Uzi. “Thought I saw somebody,” he whispered. “Gone.”
And once Ryan himself paused at a place where the corridor bent more sharply. He went around the curve, hesitated then suddenly retreated. Just at the edge of his vision, about a hundred paces away, two or three of the diminutive muties had seen him and had scampered out of sight.
They passed several rooms, most with open doors. Without exception, the rooms had been stripped completely bare. Some had carried signs over them, stenciled on wood, then affixed to the concrete. Though these were all gone, a few ghostly impressions of the lettering remained, in the same way that a picture on a wall will leave a pattern when taken down.
Orthodontal Surgery, one said.
Comsec R amp; R, another, more mysterious one said.
TR Manual 31C, a third said.
One door was much larger than the others, wide enough to get a war wag through it. It was simply headed Stores Subsec 9M.
“Stores sounds promising,” J.B. said, beckoning to the others. “Worth a try?”
“How do we get in? Over, under or around?”
“Or through , Ryan?” the Armorer asked. “Looks like the muties have tried.” There were ample dents and scratches in the dull matt-green metal, but no sign that the door had been opened in the past hundred years. “Control panel’s not harmed.”
Oddly, that was true. There was a palm-print indent in the control panel to the right of the door. A small digital display glowed faintly in the half-light.
“Any guesses?” Ryan asked.
“Probably not a sec lock system,” Doc Tanner said. “No need deep inside the redoubt. Clean the dust off the panel and look at which ones are worn. Bound to show.”
Ryan used his sleeve to wipe the display clear of gray dust. His breath fogged the transparent plastic, and he smeared that away. By squinting at an angle he could see that the old man was right. The letter K was marked, and so was the number 7. He pressed them, but nothing happened.
“Try the other way round. Seven and then the letter,” Krysty suggested.
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Just going to.”
There was the whirring of a motor, straining and grinding, then the door rolled about five feet upward and grated to a halt.
“Something burn,” Lori said. A few wisps of smoke drifted out of the panel. For a moment, a tiny flame glowed red-gold, like the gleam in the eye of a hunting beast.
Finally the dreadful sound of mangling metal ceased, and the fire disappeared. Ryan looked at the heavy door, considering his next course of action. If there were sealed stores behind it, then it might be worth the gamble of ducking under. He touched the frozen metal; it was vibrating slightly, as if a motor were still turning over somewhere within it.
“It’s going to fall,” Jak said, spitting on the corridor floor. “If’n we go, best go now.”
“Go,” Ryan ordered.
A glimpse of the muties gathering behind them had helped him decide. There might be dozens more around the next curve of the main passage, and they’d be caught like nuts in the jaws of the crusher. They ducked under the trembling sec door, Doc Tanner having to stoop considerably to avoid knocking off his stovepipe hat.
They found themselves in a narrow corridor with a high ceiling. The lighting was good, and there was little dust. Ryan wasn’t sure whether he imagined it, but it didn’t seem quite so bone-chillingly cold.
Finn didn’t agree. “Fuck a mutie rattler, Ryan! I’m colder than a fucking well-digger’s ass.”
“Then lets go see what we can find. J.B.?”
“Yeah?”
“Any way of fixing that door so it comes down? I’d feel safer with that locked at m’back.”
J.B. stepped toward the ponderous steel shutter. Then he stopped, hearing what they all hearda loud scraping noise, then the sonorous pinging of large cables snapping. Like the others, he moved away from the door. It fell a couple of inches, jerkily, then suddenly dropped to the floor with a massive crunch, making the stone walls and floor resound. Dust pattered from the ceiling, showering them all.