Genesis Echo (Deathlands 25) by James Axler

“I’ve never heard one in any of the other redoubts.” Ryan looked at it. “Wonder why they left it on?”

“Better question is why they bothered to turn it off in the other places.” Krysty looked around. “Nothing here for us. Let’s go out and recce a little, lover. Might even find some beds for the night.”

Trader had thrown his Armalite onto one of the desks. “Sounds good. You said that some of these places had plenty of blasters, and some had food and shit like that.”

Jak had been leaning against the wall. “Some do, some don’t,” he said.

“Might as well go and take a look. J.B., you know the drill for opening the big sec steel doors. Rest of you get on watch. Still triple red.”

Trader grinned across at Abe. “Triple-red warning must be in case one of these ‘nominated screens gets off its ass and attacks us.”

Ryan ignored him.

J.B. put his hand on the large green lever at the side of the massive door. It was down in the locked position. The Smith amp; Wesson M-4000 scattergun was propped against the wall next to him, the Uzi slung over his shoulders.

Everyone else had their weapons out and ready as they crouched in a semicircle around the entrance to the control room.

“Ready, Ryan?”

“Do it.”

“Few inches for starters?”

“Yeah.”

The Armorer started to tug the lever upward. Some of them, in other locations, had been stiff and resistant, but this one moved like a hot knife through ice cream. They could all just hear the distant, muffled sound of the gears engaging, slowly powering open the incalculable weight of the door.

A tiny slit of light appeared beneath the bottom of the sec steel, widening to eight or nine inches.

“Stop,” Ryan ordered.

He dropped flat on his belly, the SIG-Sauer probing ahead of him, sliding to peer under the door. He could see the wall of the passage opposite, brightly lighted. By squinting he could make out the curve of the corridor, both ways. There was no sign of any sort of life.

For a moment Ryan thought that he might have caught a very faint scratching sound, but when he strained for it, the noise was gone.

“Watch out for the attack of the killer lemmings,” Trader whispered.

Ryan found it interesting, and increasingly irritating, the way that his old war chief was reacting. If Trader had been in charge of the group in an alien environment where a danger could threaten them from anywhere, be would have been the first to insist on triple care being taken by everyone.

Now, conscious that Ryan was the man, he couldn’t resist getting in the little sarcastic digs.

Ryan ignored the comment and stood. “Right, J.B., take her all the way up.”

They all waited, taut and silent, until the vanadium-steel door had opened to the top. There was no movement from outside in the corridor.

Edging slowly around the corner, Ryan glanced quickly both ways. “Nothing,” he said. “Let’s go. Drop the lever once everyone’s out, J.B., and we’ll take a look.”

One of the most common factors in all the redoubts that they’d visited through the mat-trans systems was that the passage beyond the control room almost always ran a short way to the left and then ended in a blank wall of bare stone, as though the gateways were always at one of the burrow ends of the complexes.

This one was no exception.

Less than thirty yards from the open door of the control area, the curved walls came to an abrupt stop.

“Other way,” Ryan said.

“What’s the sign say over the sec door?” Trader asked, pointing with the barrel of the Armalite.

Dean read it out. “It says ‘Entry Forbidden To All But B12 Cleared Personnel And Above. Mat-Trans Unit. Project Cerberus. Overproject Whisper.’ Did I get that last bit right? Real stupe long words.”

“You did well,” Krysty said.

Almost immediately they reached a side tunnel. But it was less than fifteen yards in length, with a lower ceiling, ending in yet another blank wall of concrete.

“Bullet holes,” Abe said. “Look, took great scars out of the stone. Around four feet from the floor.”