“Here,” Mildred said, giving J.B. and Ryan a towel each, giving a third one to Krysty, keeping the fourth towel for herself.
Both women started to rub the old man dry, scrubbing at his pallid skin until it glowed with the friction. Doc moaned, opening his eyes for a moment.
“Where is your sense of dignity, ladies?” he asked softly. “I am shamed.”
“You’d have been dead, Doc, if we hadn’t got to you in time. That morgue was Arctic cold.”
He swallowed hard and nodded at Mildred. “For once I cannot find the means to argue with you, madam. Except—” his hands dropped to cover his groin “—I think that I can dry myself in the private parts.”
“Sure, help yourself, Doc.” Mildred handed him the towel. “Scrub well, then we’ll get you under the blankets for an hour or so. You’ll be fine.”
MILDRED’S JUDGEMENT was dead-on. Just the single hour had drifted by when the long shape under the heaped blankets began to stir. Coughing, the tangled head appearing into the stark lights of the dormitory.
“By the Three Kennedys! That place was cold as death itself. But now I am myself.”
“Thought we might eat some more of them stored cans, Doc,” Ryan said.
” ‘Those’ stored cans, lover,” Krysty corrected. “Sounds like a good idea. Then we can mebbe get outside and see where we’ve ended up.”
“Smelled that pine scent again,” Dean said, sitting cross-legged on the bed next to Doc.
“Me, too,” Ryan agreed. “One of the nicest smells I’ve ever smelled.”
Doc’s teeth had stopped chattering, and some color had returned to his seamed cheeks. He ran his long fingers through his mane of silvery hair. “I would not be averse to spending some time in the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines.” He laughed. “And I’ll shiver the whole night through.”
AFTER THEY’D FINISHED EATING and disposed of the dirty dishes and cans in the clattering garbage dispenser, Ryan called them all together. “Make sure you got all of your clothes and weapons,” he said. Everyone went through the motions of checking their blasters, though Ryan knew it was hardly likely that any of them, even absentminded Doc, would walk out into Deathlands unarmed.
He then led the way out of the living quarters, with J.B. carefully closing the sec door behind them. The main entrance was only about three hundred yards away, past a number of locked side doors. One of them was labeled on the central map as being the armory, and J.B. spent a little time there trying to work it open. But it blankly resisted all of his efforts.
“Wish we’d gotten some plas-ex,” he muttered, finally giving up. “Though from what we’ve seen, they’d likely have stripped it bare before the final vac.”
“USUAL CODE, DAD?” Dean asked, pausing by the control pad at the side of the enormous double sec doors.
“Try it.”
“How about the risk of a booby?” Krysty queried. “Though I don’t feel anything.”
“Doubt they’d put one on the outer doors.” Ryan shook his head. “No. Their only worry was obviously of someone coming in the back door, through the mat-trans. Try the 3-5-2 code, son. See what it brings us.”
It brought success, and the familiar sound of gears, muffled and distant, as the hidden machinery began to open the double doors, shifting hundreds of tons of vanadium steel strong enough to withstand anything except a direct nuke hit.
Ryan had positioned himself at the center of the gates, the SIG-Sauer drawn and cocked. He squinted through the widening gap, watching for any sign of danger, ready to warn Dean to instantly reverse the number code and close the sec doors at the first hint of a threat.
But he kept silent, watching as the doors slid wider and wider, revealing forty or fifty feet of the ground outside. There was bright sun, throwing stark shadows, and the smell of pines flooded into the redoubt.
“Oh, that is wonderful,” Krysty said, sighing, throwing back her head and drawing in a great lungful of the scented air. “Just smell the green.”
Dean moved away as the doors hissed and shuddered to their full width.