Ryan rolled the story over in his mind. Immortality was one of the greatest things mankind had ever lusted after. He glanced at Mildred. “His name’s in the book?”
“Yes.”
Ryan stared back out into the corridor. “Did you see any radiation scarring on his men?”
“No,” J.B. replied. The others answered the same. “Means they had to have stayed in the redoubt after the nukes dropped,” Ryan said.
“They live in project area,” Jak said. “That time. Not now.”
“Stands to reason they’ve got a base set up somewhere outside the radiation zone,” Ryan said. “Probably keep a close watch on the mutie communities.”
“Sure,” J.B. said. “We worked our way through the villes outside here, everybody warned us away from the area ’cause of the muties. Man like Burroughs, he’d see the mutie populace as a built-in sec device. Probably adds to the stories about how violent they are to keep outlanders away.”
“Only we didn’t turn so easy,” Mildred said. “He had to come after us because there’s still something here he’s protecting.”
“Too late, Ryan,” Burroughs called. “Now you’re going to burn.”
His attention drawn back to the outside corridor, Ryan watched as three teams of men carried small barrels out into the open. He fired his blaster at the nearest of them, catching one man in the head and dropping him. But it was too late to keep the barrel from being thrown. It rolled and tumbled straight for the door, skittering across the debris. The two other barrels followed.
“Krysty,” Ryan called out.
“Another moment, lover. I’m setting the detonation switches.”
The barrels kept coming, sounding like thunder in the corridor.
Moving swiftly, Ryan grabbed one of the corpses’ feet and yanked. Brittle cartilage snapped like twigs. Shorn of flesh, the foot didn’t fill out the shoe anymore, so it tumbled free, taking several toes with it. With the long, hard length of bone in his hand, the one-eyed man returned to the door. Aiming deliberately, he flung the leg and foot into the path of the oncoming barrels.
The sock fluttered loose as the leg bone turned end over end, then landed in front of the lead barrel. The cylinder hit the leg with a crunch, then halted and reversed direction, banging back down into the barrel just behind it. Both came to a stop less than twenty yards from the door.
Ryan aimed his blaster at the rolling barrel and fired as fast as he could pull the trigger.
The thumps of the bullets hitting their target sounded thickly hollow. With the fourth or fifth round, the barrel exploded and was engulfed in a wreath of flames less than ten yards from the doorway. The heat washed over them, riding in like a thermal tide. The flaming barrel stopped little more than five yards distant, uncoiling black smoke in thick ropes to pool against the ceiling.
Gunfire from Burroughs’s group looked like a string of fireflies across the hall.
“We stay, they see easy,” Jak said.
The room had brightened considerably. Ryan leaned around the door long enough to target the other two barrels, picking up the shadows that suddenly sprinted forward. He waited a heartbeat, letting them draw even with the barrels. One of the men even leaped into the air to hurdle the barrels.
Ryan fired, feeling a round blaze through his shirt and scream along his forearm from his wrist to his elbow.
The other barrels ignited at once, filling the corridor with the sound of the explosions. The leaping man was fried in midair and died without a sound. The burning corpse fell to the floor on the other side of the twisted wreckage of the barrels.
“Ready,” Krysty yelled.
There was a momentary lull in the gunfire as the military group dealt with the unexpected carnage. The concussion ripping free of the fuel containers had thrown a sheet of flames over the immediate vicinity.
“Go,” Ryan ordered.
The group pulled back, filing into the secret passageway on either side of the sideways door. J.B. hesitated a moment, glancing at Ryan and Krysty.
“I’ll be along,” Ryan said. The air was already getting thin as the fire burned up the oxygen, feeding itself in a rush.