James Axler – Bitter Fruit

“Why?” Krysty asked.

“To keep his power,” Mildred replied, “and his position. Plain as the nose on your face if you’ve been around the brown-nose system.” She smiled. “Course, I’d understand you not really getting the full picture, seeing as how there’s not much in the way of bureaucracy in Deathlands.”

A powerful, swooping hiss drew Ryan’s attention to the trees on his left. An owl, thick and squat with an almost unbelievable wingspan, leaped from the upper branches and took silent flight.

“What about Burroughs?” Ryan asked. He didn’t bother sliding the SIG-Sauer back into leather. It hadn’t left his hand since they’d departed the cave. The cold wasn’t enough to interfere with the action.

“Burroughs is the man who killed him.”

“Why?”

“After the nuclear war, you got to remember what it was like in the complex. People afraid of dying. At the same time knowing they can’t go outside, so maybe they’re afraid of living, too. Probably very confused times.”

“Adding to this was the paranoia of each department trying to keep its research secret. Days passed, then weeks and months. Things got crazy in there. They’d been set up to take orders and be responsible to outside parties that no longer existed. Burroughs took it on himself to get control of the situation.”

“And he did,” Mildred went on. “He tried to talk to people first, then started killing.”

“If Walker had access to a gateway,” Krysty asked, “why didn’t he just get out of there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe right after the nukes fell, he didn’t want to chance going through the mat-trans unit. Electromagnetic pulse bomb could have screwed up the atmosphere and signals for a while. Two and a half months into the big freeze, Walker got nailed by one of Burroughs’s snitches about nosing into project development. Power was still on in sections of the installation. The woman writing the journal knew that Burroughs killed the colonel. Everybody knew. It let the complex know for sure that Burroughs wasn’t going to cut any corners in his bid for taking control.”

Ryan understood the methodology easily enough. When he’d been with the Trader, they’d been attacked by road gangs from time to time, young guys who should have had more sense, but they’d let themselves get cocksure following a would-be mercie who knew the talk and tried the walk. In the long run it was generally easier to kill the one doing most of the talking, let the others know they were going to be dealt with seriously. Most times the violence on the part of the road gang ended before their leader’s brains hit the ground. Killing one could save a lot of lives.

“Burroughs didn’t know about the mat-trans unit or the hidden tunnel,” Krysty said. “Makes you wonder what kind of information Walker was keeping on all those computers in that room.”

“Guy was able to keep everything that bastard secret,” Ryan said, “you got to ask yourself who he was working for. Especially since this isn’t near Deathlands.”

“So Walker had a rat hole to bolt to if things got messed up,” Mildred said.

“I think it was more than that,” Ryan said. “But there’s no way to prove it. Trader always said a man who worked his ass off to cover his tracks was probably planning big things even if he never got it worked out. Whatever this Walker fella had going on, he had a partner. Bet on it.”

“A hundred years ago, lover,” Krysty said, “knowing that might have mattered. Whoever was around then is dead and gone by now.”

“Major Drake Burroughs isn’t,” Ryan reminded her, glancing back at her.

She nodded, her sentient hair coiled tight against her skull for the added warmth, her breath making soft white plumes in the gentle breeze.

“You really think he’s going to send someone after us?” Mildred asked.

“Hard to say,” Ryan said, sidestepping a large pool of water covered over with ice. “But I’d rather plan on him being right back there over my shoulder for a while than to look up and be surprised.”

RYAN PUSHED THEM, keeping his friends moving for two straight hours before allowing a brief rest. They’d been awake for more than twenty hours, and going from the desert heat into the chill was sapping their reserves. Still, he was determined not to rest until he’d pushed them as far as he felt he safely could.