James Axler – Bitter Fruit

The sound made Ryan’s teeth ache. He followed Krysty to the door. Jak had been left posted up top as a guard, with a couple self-heats containing a vegetable stew and a ring-pull of water. The hidden door had closed with difficulty.

Krysty tapped the door in front of the wag at upper and lower contacts. “Blast plates,” she said, striking them hard enough that a heavy gong sounded. “And a detonation switch in the wag.” She walked back to the vehicle and indicated the compact plastic box on the dash. “Someone set off the explosives, I’m guessing that they were designed to blow the door outward. The wag could roll out over them.”

“I assume there must be some sort of escape route, then?” Doc asked. He hunched down beside Mildred. The first thing they’d hooked up to the generator after the lights was a compact hot-plate-space-heater combo. He held out his hands to absorb the heat.

“Nothing but forest out there,” Ryan answered. “Not even anything close to a road that I could see.”

J.B. nodded in agreement.

“So even if we were able to juice the wag’s batteries enough to get the engine to turn over,” Mildred said, “we’d be all revved up with no place to go.”

“That’s about the size of it.” Ryan took the self-heat J.B. handed him. It had already heated itself up. He didn’t even bother to read the label when he opened it. Whatever it was, it would be hot, and for now that was enough. His mind was filled with the possibilities of the jump. As far as he knew, crossing the Lantic Ocean was impossible by craft. Deathlands wasn’t much, but it was home. “The trenching tool still holding?”

The Armorer nodded. “For now. Way it’s folding though, could be the contacts will get close enough to allow a jump soon.”

“Nothing else to put in there?”

J.B. shook his head. “This place is full of disposables. Nothing really impact resistant. Best bet would be to shove a blaster in there. Steel they’re made out of can take a ton of pressure before they give. Don’t have anything harder than those.”

“How many extra do we have?”

“Nine,” Krysty said. “Seven handguns Doc and I salvaged, and two rifles Mildred and I found down here.”

“Keep them,” Ryan said. “We might need something to barter.” He sat with his back to the wall, gratefully soaking up the warmth given off by the space heater. H spooned up the stew inside the self-heat and chewed with real satisfaction. His eyes fell on the .50-caliber machine gun on the wag. “But there’s one we can’t take with us.”

KRYSTY FOUND a toolbox in the back of the wag. It too more than half an hour to unbolt the heavy machine gun from the rack. Though it was probably originally airtight, the hideaway had given way to erosion and the passage of time. Moisture had crept in and partially rusted the retaining bolts.

Ryan ended up having to wedge the tire tool against two of them and snap them off. When the gun was loose, he and J.B. carried it back to the mat-trans unit.

Lights were on in that room, as well, running off the generator. As with every other gateways the companions had found, this one had its own independent nuclear source. But the builders had obviously chosen not to tie into it for the hideaway’s needs.

The doors on the gateway had almost succeeded in crushing the trenching tool. There was barely enough room to slide the .50-caliber’s barrel into the slot left open. It took a lot of effort to get the machine gun positioned inside.

All the while, blue skeins of electricity kept arcing across the contact points. Thin clouds of the familiar mist twisted inside the mat-trans unit. The glowing disks intermittently flashed to brief life.

“We can’t stay here,” Ryan said when they’d finished.

“Maybe we could wait outside somewhere,” Mildred said. “If those soldiers do come through, we could leave them a false trail to lead them away, then circle back and use the mat-trans again.”

Ryan considered that. None of them was happy about being trapped on the wrong side of the Lantic. “How many people did you see coming at the gateway back in New Mexico?”