“This one was overlooked during evac, Ryan. Dozens of packing cases, all sealed tight.”
“Check ’em tomorrow,” Ryan said. “How ’bout that big end door?”
They approached it, noting its similarity to the entrance behind them. It was closed, with a control box dangling from an overhead cable gantry. Unlike the other door, this one looked as if it had only two modes. Red and green. Up and down.
“Try it?” J.B. asked.
Ryan took the control in his right hand, feeling the biting cold of the metal. He glanced at the Armorer, who stood braced, the mini-Uzi at his hip. “Ready?”
“Sure.”
The green button was convex, fitting the ball of his thumb. He pressed it, immediately shifting his thumb to the red button, in case of danger. There was the faint hiss of hydraulics, and the door began to inch upward, a strip of light appearing under it.
“Hold it,” J.B. said, ducking low to peek beneath it. “Nothin’ there. I can see both sides. Concrete corridor that bends left. Must join up where the other one was curving right.”
“Now? Go look or close it up?”
“Safe enough to close it. If it’s shut after a hundred years, it’ll stay another night for us.”
Ryan pressed the red button, and like a massive guillotine blade of armored steel, the door paused a moment then began to descend again, landing with a barely perceptible thud.
“If this one failed, we’d have us some serious problems,” J.B. said. “Take some high-ex to shift it. Probably bring the whole roof down if n we tried.”
It was a bleak thought to take to sleep.
Chapter Four
HE AWOKE INSTANTLY, his body tense, then relaxed when he realized what had woken him. Krysty’s fingers crept across his flat stomach, soft as the caress of a butterfly’s wing as they reached the inside of his right thigh, then touched his penis, rousing him.
“Bitch nympho gaudy slut,” he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply as her fingers closed and squeezed tightly, making him gasp.
“Not even as a joke, lover,” she warned him, “or you’ll be picking this up from the other side of the room.” She tugged at his erection to heighten the warning, succeeding mainly in rousing him further.
Ryan reached across and laid the palm of his hand across her breasts, bringing his index finger and thumb together on the left nipple, feeling it immediately harden like a tiny, responsive animal. Krysty sighed with pleasure at the touch.
“Nice, lover. Keep the slow hand for a while, will you?”
“Sure. But if you’re going t’pull my cock off, what would you find for pleasing?”
“From the satisfied look on Lori’s face some mornings, I might ask old Doc Tanner for some sloppy seconds.”
“He’s fucking antique,” Ryan protested, grinning in the semidarkness of the redoubt stores.
“Nothing wrong with some antique fucking, lover,” she responded. “No substitute for experience, or hadn’t you heard?”
“I heard, I heard.”
As they busied themselves with the sexual mysteries of each other’s body, Ryan and Krysty fell silent.
When she was ready for him, he lifted his hips so that she could guide him into her body. He gasped at the sensation as he slid deep into her waiting warmth, her arms locking around his neck, ankles pulling in the small of his back to deepen the lovemaking. She kissed him, with repeated, gentle brushes of her lips all around his neck and face. He lowered his face to hers, mouth open, tongue flicking against her teeth. Ryan could feel the delicate movements of her long, brilliant red hair, caressing his shoulders as he thrust into her.
The faster he moved, the faster and more urgently she rose to meet him, hips leaving the soft warm plastic of their bedding at each stroke.
“Nownownow, now, now,” she moaned, and he closed his eye, mouth open in a rictus of passion, driving in so hard that the girl cried out in shock at the way he filled her. He could feel the fluttering of her stomach muscles as her own climax rushed on her, and his body jerked and bucked with his own release.
THE LIGHTS IN THE REDOUBT were day-sensor controlled. At about five, according to Ryan’s luminous chron, they brightened, flooding the pallid stone walls and sharpening the ruled shadows.