James Axler – Bitter Fruit

A thin, irregular line of yellow-and-black static pulsed across the screen, followed almost immediately by red letters that said, “Unit off-line.”

Chapter Five

The swirling dust choked Ryan as the explosive force picked up the sand from the floor and mixed it into the air. Then he was slammed in the ribs by a chunk of rock that he never saw coming. His breath, what little he’d been able to take in, rushed from his lungs in a painful gasp.

He staggered and went down on one knee as his muscles were seized in agony. He maintained his grip on the SIG-Sauer blaster with difficulty, feeling the grit that had slid in under his palm against the chilling machine’s butt-plates.

“Move,” Jak ordered, pushing himself up under one of Ryan’s arms. “Got war wags. Wall not hold out long.”

“I got it,” Ryan snarled, making his body bend to his will in spite of the pain trying to double him up. “I walked into this on my own. I’ll see clear of it the same way.” Still, he let the albino hustle him farther into the installation before disengaging himself.

J.B. took off his fedora long enough to wipe the fresh layer of dust from his face. Once he was satisfied with the effort, he worked on the lenses of his glasses, managing them one-handed on his shirt while he held on to the shotgun.

“More where they come from,” Jak said.

Ryan couldn’t see much in the darkness. Once the entrance had been blocked, nearly all of the light had gone with it. “You seen others like them?”

“Sure. Room full. Not ask questions. They just shooting.”

Ryan followed the teenager’s voice, knowing Jak had marked their way in his mind by memory or things he could touch along the way. He stepped carefully. The debris from the explosion had made walking even more treacherous.

A self-light flared to life, framing Mildred’s face as she cupped the flame. “We blocked them in another room,” she said. “Jammed the controls on the door. If they want to get out, it’s going to take some doing.” The fire in her hand spread up the torch she held, growing until it became big enough to light their way.

“They with the same outfit?” J.B. asked.

“Oh, yeah. No doubt about it.”

“Where’s Krysty and Doc?” Ryan asked as they headed for the stairwell. The large chamber on the other side of the entrance spun out in a wheel, shooting off a half-dozen other tunnels that led into other parts of the structure. Three of them, they’d discovered, were blocked by fallen ceilings and walls. Another had been shut off by a thick steel door that J.B. had said would bring the top of the building down if an attempt was made to blow it.

“Must still be down in the tunnel they were following,” Mildred said. “We haven’t heard anything from them.”

Ryan knew only that Doc and Krysty were somewhere inside the labyrinth they’d ventured into. Since he didn’t know for sure they were dead, he had to assume they were still moving. “We got a way open to us now. Go. Mebbe we’ll run out of places to go to later.” He passed the torch to Jak. “Take the lead. Mildred, you follow. I got the rear, and J.B., you’re about a step ahead of me.”

The other three nodded tensely and got under way.

Ryan waited at the entrance, leaning around the corner long enough to snap off a shot that caught a man in the shoulder as he tried to make more ground toward the stairwell. He fired two follow-up shots to pick the guy off as he spun, but both went wide of the mark by only a few inches. Bullets from the other soldiers hammered him back into hiding.

Suddenly a soft, blue gray light pulsed into being above and behind him.

Ryan whirled, his eye adjusting to the flat monitor screen built into the wall. The color was washed-out, leaving the images only a palette of grays to work with, but he had no problem recognizing Krysty. In the distance machinery seemed to fill the background behind her.