Genesis Echo (Deathlands 25) by James Axler

“Two minutes to total vacuum in sections four and five. Two minutes and counting.”

“How far is Doc behind you?”

“Don’t know. Don’t know, Ryan. What dowhere do I go now?”

“Into the gateway. Listen, Abe. Triple important. If I don’t make it, tell them not to wait until it’s too late. Tell them to shut the door and jump. Got it?”

“Sure. Don’t wait until too late. Jump. Yeah. Want me to come and”

“No. Just go.”

Ryan raced into the corridor. It seemed to be shrinking in front of him, and the lights overhead were moving and dancing, like figures at the end of time.

The air was very thin now, and every step was labored and painful.

He’d started to try to run his mental clock, but the effort of concentrating was too great.

All Ryan knew was Doc would irrevocably die if he wasn’t helped, and that he might die with him, trying to help.

The floor was surprisingly hard, and he yelped with pain as he banged his knee. But that was before he even realized that he’d fallen.

Ryan pulled himself upright with the aid of the right-hand concrete wall of the corridor, slipping as he started to walk back again.

He had a moment of horrific doubt that he might have lost his bearings, that he was now walking away from Doc, toward the gateway entrance.

A booming voice told him that there was one minute left before terminal purging of the air supply.

Ryan could hear his own blood pulsing through his ears, deafening him.

“Dear friend”

“Doc?”

“Here.”

As Ryan fumbled across the floor, his fingers brushed against clothing. A hand gripped his. Heaving at it, he dimly made out the figure of the old man. He tossed an arm around his shoulders, then the two of them stumbled forward together.

“Like three-legged racers,” Doc wheezed, but the words made absolutely no sense at all to Ryan.

The air was almost gone.

Time and distance had blurred into a tortuous metaphor for existence.

For living and dying.

Ryan retained enough of his atavistic combat skill to keep to the left side of the endless wavering passage, knowing that he and Doc would eventually fall in through the open door to the mat-trans section.

Miss it and they were doomed.

It seemed as though they fell down, and he lost contact with Doc. For a paralyzed moment he reached out and found nothing, nobody.

Then the fingers were in his again.

Brighter light.

“Nearly there,” someone said.

But the air was gone.

As Ryan fought to breathe, his lungs resisted, finding nothing to draw on, no sustenance.

The brighter light grew dimmer.

He saw the rows of desks, meaning they were so very close now to safety.

“Come on, Doc. Last fucking mile.” The croaking voice was dragged from gods knew where.

A small part of Ryan’s memory knew that it was already over and done.

The others would have closed the door to the gateway chamber and would have jumped away to safety. Knowing that made it easier to bear dyingand made him angry at the thought of being abandoned by his lover, son and friends.

At least they would

Then the lines went down, and Ryan Cawdor became involved with the enigma of his own passing.

Chapter Eleven

It was a pleasant sensation, floating in a lake of dark water so saline that his body lay effortlessly on the surface, unmoving.

The temperature was so close to Ryan’s blood heat that it was almost like floating inside his own body.

Everything was calmness. A gentle, placid glow suffused him, filling him with well-being.

Whatever else he might have done in some previous, bleak existence, this was all that Ryan now wanted to do for the next hours, days, weeks, months, years. For the whole remainder of infinity.

“Stop fucking smiling.”

He had a vague, satisfied smile on his face as be floated on and on.

There was a tunnel around him, just visible if he opened both his eyes, walls and ceiling of slick, black marble, moving quietly by him.

“He’s slipping away, Krysty. I don’t It’s like he’s stopped fighting.”