Ryan waited as she donned clothing, then they headed for the cafeteria. Lunch was the same as dinner. The companions forced down more of the hot gray soup and ate another generous helping of the cat food. It left a bad taste in their mouths that wouldn’t go away even with brushing or gargling. But it eased the pain in their bellies and put strength back in their hands. Good enough.
Afterward, the companions spent the rest of the day finishing the crude weapons. Doc trimmed the dining-room knives to notched arrowheads, Dean lathed broom and mop handles into wooden shafts, Mildred used her delicate touch with a blade to split pillow feathers into fletching, Krysty used glue and thread to attach them, and Jak fixed the arrowheads into place with electrical tape salvaged from outlets and light switches. The arrows were ugly, but balanced. That was all they could ask for.
Ryan and J.B. did the heavy work. The big lathe cut table legs into stocks, and the long, flat metal strips from the beds became the cross-member pieces. The string for the weapons was the difficult part. Twine wouldn’t take the tension. J.B. tried, and the hundred-year-old rope snapped every time. Mildred suggested hunting for a guitar, or a piano. The metallic strings of the musical instruments would be prefect for the crossbows, but none was available.
Ryan solved the problem by attacking the elevator with a hacksaw and removing the support cable. The main cable was a bundle of thin wires twisted together to form smaller cables, which were braided to make a thick one. It was incredibly strong, and as difficult as hell to get loose. The cable snapped free halfway through the operation and shot into the upper levels like a whip. The companions ran out of the shaft until the wildly lashing cable settled down and they could claim the smaller ones. The first tries were unsuccessful, then Doc suggested braiding a couple of the thin wires into a slim cable, like the guitar string that Mildred had suggested. It took the rest of the day, but seemed to work fine. When J.B. shot off some trial arrows, the bolts slammed completely through a wood desk and became embedded in the cinder-block wall behind.
“That’ll do,” Ryan said, hefting the crossbow. The weapon was slow to load and heavy to use, but the crossbow would silently chill from a distance, and that was all they wanted for it. They knew it was a gamble to check the tunnel before trying a mat-trans jump first. But the thought of going through the machine in their weakened condition was an even bigger risk. Even when well rested and fed, it took a lot out of them. The storm outside was still raging, so of their two choices, it was the least dangerous.
Mildred and Jak made some quivers from pieces of carpeting cut off the floor of the commander’s office. Wire stitched them closed and their belts made effective straps.
“Two crossbows, ten arrows. That’s all we got,” J.B. announced, placing the weapons on a table. “Too much of the stuff cracked when we tried machining it into shape. There are lots more shafts and feathers, but no more arrowheads.”
“Sharpen shafts,” Jak suggested, drawing a knife. “Better than nothing.” J.B. slid over a quiver, and the teenager got to work.
“Many hands make for light work,” Doc said, drawing his own blade and starting to whittle on the next batch of shafts.
Rising from her chair, Krysty got a bowl from the cabinet, filled it with water and placed it between the men. “Be sure to char the points when you’re done,” she instructed, putting a butane lighter beside the bowl. “That’ll make the wood harder, less likely to splinter when it hits.”
Whittling away, the men nodded as shavings curled under the blades and fell quietly to the floor.
“This’ll give us twenty-two arrows,” Ryan said, drawing his blaster and checking the clip. “Anybody ever used one before?”
“Sure,” Jak said, flicking a lighter into life. Holding the sharp tip of an arrow over the flame, he let the wood get black, then removed it quickly and doused it in the water. The difference between making it hard and setting it on fire was a matter of split seconds. A crossbow was how he had gotten his first blaster. It caught a mercie in the throat, and he finished him off with a rock. Jak got the dead man’s blaster.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124