The blood was drying, black around the neat hole just above the man’s right eye. It had leaked over his face, filling the gaping mouth with a pool of crimson. A lot more blood had oozed from the exit wound at the back of the skull.
There was an odd weapon hooked to the belt of the dead mutie. It consisted of several narrow lengths of hollow wood, each about twelve inches long, ending in a sharp, barbed tip of something like ivory. A rawhide cord ran through the middle of the sections. J.B. bent over it.
“Interesting.”
“What is it, Mr. Dix? I confess myself somewhat puzzled by it.”
“Spear.”
Doc Tanner smiled doubtfully. “You are teasing me, are you not?”
“No.”
“A spear only a foot in length? Perhaps for hunting the inhabitants of the land of Lilliput.”
“Where the fuck’s that, Doc?” Finn asked. But his question was ignored.
The Armorer unhooked the strange weapon from the belt of the corpse. He held the cord and flicked it hard with his wrist. Miraculously the sections slotted into one another, producing a lethal, six-foot-long spear.
“Gimme,” Jak said, holding out a hand. He took the spear, let it fall into its component sections, then whipped it out to full length. Grinning delightedly, he said, “Be good. I can keep it, Ryan?”
“Sure. Why not? Come on, let’s go.”
THE AVALANCHE COULD HAVE happened anytime. Maybe only a month ago, maybe when the bombs had rained down on the free land of America. Concrete, stones and earth had slipped, blocking the corridor and leaving only a small gap barely three feet high at its apex.
“Anything?” Ryan asked Krysty.
“No. Not close. But I can hear something, quite a long way off. Maybe an engine. Maybe feet moving. Can’t tell. Blurred by the deeps here.”
“I’ll go look,” Jak volunteered. “I’m smallest here for it.”
The albino scampered lightly up the earthslide on hands and knees, pausing a moment and staring into the hole.
“Does it go through?” Ryan shouted.
“Yeah. It’s around ten feet. Easy. You coming?”
Finnegan had the most difficulty, wriggling along on his stomach, pushing his gun ahead of him, panting, red-faced, sweating despite the chill, but eventually he made it.
When Ryan himself was halfway through, bringing up the rear of the group, he was suddenly oppressed by the thought of how many trillions of tons of dirt hung above him. It had fallen before. One day it might fall again.
The corridor resumed on the far side of the dirt tunnel. It stretched out, ill-lit, curving gently to the right. The air tasted noticeably fresher, and it was much colder.
“Fucking freezing, Ryan. Got to get some warmer gear. Left most of mine along the way.”
Finn was right. If it was as bitter as this deep down in the redoubt, it didn’t much bear thinking on what it would be like if they got out into the open.
“If they evacuated in a rush, there could be some clothes around.”
“If they haven’t got to ’em first,” J.B. said, pointing with his mini-Uzi at the many footprints that patterned the dusty floor.
“Must be hundreds of ’em,” Finnegan said, bending to study the marks. “Most got skin boots on, like the chilled mutie back there.”
“But they didn’t get in the gateway,” Ryan said. “Controls aren’t hard. Just the number code on the panel. Figures they can’t read. That being so, there may be other parts of the redoubt they haven’t penetrated. We stay here, we freeze. We go back to the gateway and move on, then we never follow up that radio beam.”
“Then it’s onward and upward, my dear Ryan,” Doc Tanner said, grinning and showing his oddly perfect teeth. “Let us carry our banner with its strange device and cry ‘Excalibur!’ to all we meet.”
There were times when Ryan thought the old man would never get his full set of brains back.
EVERYONE WAS ON BATTLE ALERT.
J.B. took point, with Finn three paces behind him on the other side of the corridor. Doc and Lori walked together, followed by Jak. Krysty came sixth, and Ryan covered the rear, twenty paces behind her.