Doc coughed. “I once believed that the pen was mightier than the sword. Until I attempted to fight a duel with a feathery quill pen against a sturdy piratical cutlass. I must here admit that I was most damnably fortunate to escape with my life from that incident.”
Everyone laughed, lightening the heavy, melancholy atmosphere of the redoubt.
“Let’s head for the rest-and-washing section of the redoubt,” Ryan said.
Now the corridors were more narrow, and a lot of the lights had gone out. A network of fine cracks ran along some of the walls and the ceiling, with deeper crevices here and there, looking like quake damage or possibly ancient nuke tremors.
Someone had painted a crude hammer and sickle on one of the locked doors to the right, with the warning Reds Out! You Want The Gain, Then Take The Pain.
“There was talk of invasion well before the actual time of skydark,” Mildred said. “Rumors of millions of Russians and Chinese pouring across the Bering Strait into Alaska, marching down through San Francisco.”
J.B. stopped a moment to adjust his weaponry, easing the straps. “Surprises me that we don’t come across more boobies in these places. Way the world had war terror and total paranoia about the Russians beating us When they left the redoubts, they must have had a genuine fear that the russkies would come strutting in and take them over.” He pushed back his fedora. “Be easy enough to set some triggers.”
“Guess they were frightened that any sort of booby trap might take out their own men once they came back after the war,” Mildred commented.
“After the war,” Doc said wonderingly. “Apres la guerre. Where are the snows of yesteryear? Gone to graveyards every one. After the war, madam? Yes, verily I believe that was once what decent people hoped for. It would have been a brave land fit for heroes. Fit for muties and the rad sick. After the brief war was over, there was precious little left. Spoils to the victor. A spoiled world to the victor.”
He had moved ahead as he spoke, his knees creaking softly, down a side corridor that the map had showed would soon lead them to the sleeping-and-washing quarters of the complex. A whole row of lights had gone down, and a stretch of forty or fifty paces was in total darkness.
Ryan was staring at the ceiling as the old man vanished into the blackness. “Funny,” he said quietly.
“Back there the ceiling lights had simply gone out. Here they’ve been broken. The glass covers smashed. Deliberately broken. Now, why would anyone have done that?”
The answer came to him like a bolt of lightning from a clear summer sky.
“Doc!” He started after the vanished figure. “Don’t move! Don’t”
But the cry of shock and pain told him that his warning had come too late.
Chapter Six
As Doc strode away, much of his mind was preoccupied with the thought of having some good hot water to luxuriate in and the possibility of a night’s rest in a decent bed. Though his memory was erratic, he remembered all too vividly a redoubt, not all that long ago, when the comfort of hot water had been overlaid with instant horror.
Another part of his mind was flirting with a recollection of his dear wife, Emily. They had visited some caves down in the desert Southwest, with dark passages and the smell of dank air. The corridor with its broken lights brought back something of that timehis wife’s small hand in his, and himself glimpsing out of the corner of his eye, the cameo locket she often wore around her throat as they stepped cautiously over the sandstone floor.
And another bit of his brain was considering what John Barrymore Dix had just been saying about the possibility of booby traps. How odd it was that they rarely encountered them in evacuated redoubts.
“Odd indeed,” he mumbled as he stepped along in the gloom.
He felt the taut wire brush against his knees and knew instantly what it was and reacted with, for him, astounding speed.
Doc dived sideways and down, hands stretched to break his fall, letting go of the ebony swordstick so that it clattered on the cold stone floor. As he went down, Doc was aware of a whispering noise just above his head and he felt something tug lightly at his silvery hair as it sliced by.