Ryan rolled away from Krysty, wincing at the dried stickiness that joined them from their lovemaking. The light and the movement woke her, and she eased away from him, shading here eyes with her hand.
“Time to be up an’ doing, lover,” she whispered, looking around.
“Yeah. Go look for these guys who sent the radio message.”
“You think it’s for real? Could be a trap.”
He rose, pulled his pants on over his boots, then checked his weapons as if by instinct. “Could be a trap, Krysty, sure. But if there was someone around who knew how to work the gateways”
“You want to go home,” she said quietly, keeping her voice down so that the others, a few yards away in different side rooms, wouldn’t hear.
“Home? Where?”
She stood up and buckled her belt, smiling at him. “Don’t try and shit me, lover. You know where home is to you.”
“Front Royal ville, up in the Shens? Yeah. I guess home is always the place where you were born and raised.”
“You said you didn’t care.”
“Care about home? I was wrong. Been thinking ’bout it for a few days.”
Krysty stamped her feet into her boots, making the stone floor ring. “That’s better. Got cramp in my toes. Front Royal? You could go back and talk to your dear brother and his wife.”
Ryan’s left hand lifted, seemingly of its own accord. He touched the leather patch over his ruined eye, brushing down the scar that furrowed the skin of his cheek. “Yeah, lover. Talk to my brother about paying some debts ‘tween us.”
Finnegan came striding noisily up. He’d been on the last watch of the night. “Thought I heard some noise behind the door over there,” he said, pointing to the broken entrance to the redoubt. “Then it fucked off and there wasn’t a sound. But have you seen the room along by the other door?”
“Which one?”
“Got an ob-slit in the door and dozens of cases, all sealed tighter’n a cherry’s love nest.”
“We saw them last night. Figured we’d take us a good look this morning, ‘fore we leave here.”
Doc Tanner approached. “What might they be, my dear Ryan?” he asked. “I trust they are not some new and fearsome chemical poisons or some disseminators of hideous death.”
“I’d settle for some small grens. Lost most of mine along the way,” J.B. said.
“Knives,” Jak said, licking his lips in eager anticipation. “Long, thin knives with edges that’ll slit clean through a sec man’s spine.”
“Bloodthirsty little bastard, aren’t you?” Krysty said. “I’d settle for some clean underwear and a flask of brandy.”
“How ’bout you, Lori?” Ryan asked. “What would you like to find in those locked packing cases?”
The girl blushed. She shuffled a few steps to one side, reaching out to grip Doc Tanner by the hand. “Theophilus tells me all ’bout weddings in old days. I’d like there are weddings in the boxes.”
Once again the arched bunker filled with the steam and aromas of the self-heats being opened. Ryan and the others stuck to more or less the same selections they’d taken the previous evening. Jak tried different combinations, gobbling some thimbleberries and smoked cod, following that up with some bottled water and topping off the meal with curried pickles.
Then he found an empty side chamber and noisily vomited up the whole mess. The others waited for him. There was a long silence, and finally Finn called out, “Hey, you all right, Whitey?”
“Sure, Fats. Sure. Just looking through this to see if anything was worth eating second time around.” He waited for the yelps of revulsion. “But guess I’ll open a coupla fresh cans.”
When they finished eating, they packed up, each taking a couple of tins and a bottle of water. Ryan, heels ringing on the stone, led onward through the complex of rooms. Doc came second, arm around Lori, who was shivering again with the cold. She’d made a sort of cloak out of the plastic packing, and it rustled around her shoulders, J.B. followed, talking to Krysty about the relative stopping power of round-nose versus sharp-nose ammunition. At the back, Finn was using his fingers to ladle a sticky caramel goo out of an unlabeled tin. Krysty had warned him that it was probably either glue or a laxative.