Doc smiled, displaying his oddly perfect teeth. “And most assuredly, neither did the good baron.”
Taking what they could from the battered APC, the companions filled the Hummer with ammo, MRE packs and assorted supplies, then started the long drive back to the redoubt. There was a lot to tell Dean once they got back.
EPILOGUE
As the door to the redoubt slid open, J.B. drove the Hummer along the antirad zigzagging tunnel and into the garage. Immediately, the companions piled out of the wag and charged across the floor. A dead woman lay near the stairwell door, surrounded by a pool of blood. Sprawled on top of her was Dean, his fist still clench around his pocketknife, which was buried to the hilt in her left ear.
“Son, what happened?” Ryan demanded, going to his side.
Weakly, Dean looked upward, his eyes a blazing red in color. The irritation had to have been severely painful. “Stu” He swallowed and tried again in a whisper. “Stupe bitch didn’t know the difference between a tear-gas gren and a poison-gas gren.”
“Couldn’t read the color codes, eh?” Ryan mused, helping the boy to his feet.
“Guess not,” Dean wheezed. “I waited for her to come get meand jumped her.”
“On the bottom level,” J.B. asked for clarification.
“Yeah.”
“And it ended all the way up here?”
The boy nodded.
“Hell of a fight,” Krysty observed.
Ryan gave a rare smile. “Expect no less of a Cawdor.”
Smiling in appreciation, Dean then got a serious expression and walked over to Mildred. “Sorry,” he apologized. “But she shot up your fancy med kit. It’s all busted to pieces. Along with a lot of our other stuff.”
Mildred tightened her lips to a thin line and closed her eyes for a minute. Then the physician opened them and sighed. “Better to lose the med kit than you. And some of the equipment should still be usable. I’ll go check.”
“Coming with you,” J.B. said, and the two went down the stairs, the door swinging closed behind them.
“Wonder how she got inside?” Ryan muttered, then spied a piece of paper covered with numbers sticking out of her pants pocket. Retrieving the sheet, he found it was filled with alphanumeric codes, most of them crossed out. At the top of the page was a heading From the desk of Silas Jamaisvous.
“Should have chilled you twice, you old bastard,” Ryan stated grimly, pulling out a butane lighter to set the papers on fire. Then he crushed the ash under his boot.
Rummaging through the pockets of the dead woman’s clothes for any further documentation, Doc got an idea and started to check the labels instead. “Let us take her clothes,” he suggested. “We could only salvage Jak’s camouflage jacket and vest. The boots and pants should be about the right size for him.”
“Save the bearskin for me afterward,” Krysty directed. “I need a new coat, and that hide will do nicely once I cut and sew it some.”
J.B. and Mildred returned just then with their arms full of supplies, and the companions got busy relaying the goods to the mat-trans chamber. The consensus was that they wanted out of this particular redoubt as soon as possible. Hopefully, the next would be completely deserted and they could spend a few days resting and letting Jak heal.
Within the hour, they were ready to go. The friends climbed into the chamber, and Ryan closed the door. He sat quickly and impatiently waited for the electronic mists to take them someplace, any place, far far away from war-torn Tennessee.
DAWN WAS BEGINNING to break on the Pennsylvania mountains, when the exhausted barb decided to break his stance. Lowering his lance, the naked outlander waited for the reaction of the strange male in the blue shirt. For two days they had faced each other poised to chill, but neither struck first. After so long a period, the barb could only grant a warrior’s boon to the blue shirt. He offered peace. Hopefully, it would be accepted.
Utterly astonished, the corporal could barely believe what he was seeing. The damn fool was giving up! As the sec man watched, the barb turned and started to walk away. Two days of standing motionless in a Deathlands standoff, and he was done. The barb was just a yellow-belly coward and he deserved to die.