Worse, the entire roof of the redoubt was gone, windblown trash and leaves filling the garage. A warm breeze blew over the men as they glanced at the unf amiliar stars overhead. None of the known constellations were in view.
“Resembles the Southern Cross,” Ryan said irritably, looking upward.
J.B. shrugged. “Could be. But why would the American government set a redoubt in Australia?”
“Why would they put one in Japan or Russia? Or seal that tunnel closed with plaster? Who the fuck knows? The old whitecoats were crazy.”
“Mighty odd,” the Armorer agreed.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ryan felt as if an important piece of the puzzle of the redoubts had just fallen into place, but he couldn’t understand its subtle meaning. This was something he would have to think hard about later.
A beeping sounded from his wrist chron. “Ten more minutes,” he announced. “Five to reach the mat-trans unit, gives us five. Double-time to the armory!”
The men sprinted across the garage, only to find the corridor that led to the armory was also carpeted with leaves, the door sagging on broken hinges, fronting an empty room. The hundreds of shelves were vacant, and not a single ammo clip or loose round was anywhere in sight.
Going to a pile of junk, J.B. lifted the top off a crate marked Claymore Mines. Inside there were only empty slots in the mass of foam cushions.
“Nothing,” J.B. stated, and sailed the lid across the room to crash into a distant wall.
“This redoubt has been looted long ago,” Ryan agreed, glancing around one last time before heading for the stairs. “Let’s go.”
Returning to the mat-trans unit, Ryan’s watch began to beep a warning as he hit the LD button. The electronic mists rose from the floor, engulfing them once more.
“Are we late?” J.B. asked, worried. “Did we miss the thirty-minute mark?”
“Find out soon,” Ryan grdwled, clutching his longblaster and bracing for the coming onslaught of jump sickness.
Chapter Twelve
Splashing through the wetlands, the LAV-25 of Alpha team rolled over snakes and logs with equal ease. Gators bawed at the vehicle’s approach, but backed away from its bad smell and retreated to their secret underwater lairs. Humming insects bobbed about the machine, searching for flesh to feed upon, but found only impenetrable steel and sizzling hot exhaust, the reek killing them in midair. Snug inside, the sec men relaxed in the cool breeze of the air conditioner and ate a meal from MRE packs.
The armored wag dipped as its front wheels found a deep hole, then leveled as the back wheels spun in the mud and forced the APC onto hard ground. Thick Spanish moss hung in curtains off the sickly trees, black birds with two heads flying slowly through the humid air. Everywhere the rusted bodies of predark cars dotted the wetlands. Hoods had been removed, displaying mossy engine blocks to the inclement weather, or exposing gaping holes where the engines had once been. Some of the wags were completely submerged under the water, only their roofs showing, or thin antennas sticking up like metallic reeds.
Smoking a cig and eating a sandwich, Lieutenant Brandon wasn’t surprised by the condition of the vehicles. Auto junkyards could be looted for lots of thingstires to resole boots, windshields removed to be windows in a house, seat cloth to make clothing. Radiators made good stills to cook shine, old-fashioned batteries had lead plates inside to melt into new bullets. Sometimes there were even tool kits in the trunks, or better, suitcases full of clean clothes and sometimes even blasters. The fuel tanks were always empty. There were magnets in the radio speakers a smart person could use to make compass needles, the needles coming from manual carburetors, not those fancy injector things. Those were useless. Floor mats sown together made rain gear that could keep you alive in an acid rain storm, and paper maps in the little dashboard box could be used when you went to the lav. The plastic ones were only good for patching a small hole in a roof, but the papers ones were very good. Oil pans were good cooking pots, hubcaps could be used as plates. Safety harnesses could be made into belts, and you could use the mirrors to reflect candlelight, making one as bright as two. And for reasons lost in time, a lot of cars carried bags of sand or rock salt for no reason anybody had ever figured out.
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