James Axler – Cold Asylum

“No,” she said. “Thanks, but no thanks.” The woman reached out to close the door again, triggering the mat-trans mechanism that would send her on another jump.

WHEN KRYSTY OPENED the gateway door, Dean pressing at her back, she found that the usual small room outside was filled with cardboard boxes.

“What’re they?” the boy whispered. “Might be ammo or blasters or knives or some real old jolt we could use.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t look like bullets, guns or drugs, Dean.”

“What’s it say?”

Letters were stenciled on the sides and top of each of the boxes, but the ink had faded over the past hundred years.

“Says ‘This Way Up’ on the top of the boxes. Though some of them are upside down.”

“How about the other words?”

Krysty laughed. “Contents are a disappointment for you, though I might take some for myself.”

Dean crouched, the tip of his tongue between his lips as he spelled out the words. One of the overhead lights was broken, making it even more difficult to read. “Oh,” he said.

TamponsFemale Officers amp; O.R.Internal Use Only, it read.

Beyond the piled boxes, Krysty could see through into the control area of the redoubt. Farther beyond were the massive closed sec doors that would lead them out into the rest of the complex.

“I think we might as well try for a return jump, Dean. What do you reckon?”

“Can’t we explore?”

“Think logical. We want to try and link up with Ryan and the others. Now, where is the one place in Deathlands that we know none of them are?”

“Here.”

“Right. The mat-trans screwed up, but I figure there could be a chanceonly a small chancethat if we rejump straight away we could find the others.”

“Worth a try.” He turned and sat down again on the floor of the chamber, the scarlet armaglass walls giving his pale face a ruddy glow. “Come on, Krysty.”

She was standing in the doorway, looking at the heaped boxes, head to one side. “I was just thinking that me and Mildred might both be grateful for this little trove. I’ll help myself to a few. Won’t take a minute.”

Dean waited until she came back. “I hate these jumps,” he complained. “Makes my head feel double-grunge.”

“Me, too. Still, you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Then here we go.” She pulled the door firmly shut, sat down and put her arm around the boy’s shoulders.

MICHAEL WALKED around the control room, humming a setting of the ode to Saint Cecilia. He ran his finger along the dust-free tops of desks, eyes entranced by the amazing array of colored lights that flickered ceaselessly across the dozens of comp consoles.

He’d noticed the dark green double doors that dominated the area, the steel lever alongside them that was in the down, “closed,” position.

From his previous jumps, the teenager knew that the lever would open the sec-steel shutters and enable him, if he wanted, to go out and explore the rest of thewhat was it called again? The word had slipped from his memory.

“Redoubt,” he said aloud, nodding at the recognition.

Perhaps it would be much safer to go back into the gateway chamber and simply make another jump. But Michael hated the unpleasant sensation of jumping, with the sickness and the whirlpool sucking at your brain.

He put his hand on the cold metal of the lever and gently eased it upward. His Texas Longhorn Border Special remained bolstered.

There was the slightest humming sound, deep within the gray walls of reinforced concrete. Gears engaged for the first time in a century.

Michael recalled that J.B. and Ryan had been careful at times like this. He returned the lever to a central position, stopping the sec doors rising. There was a gap of around ten inches between the floor and the bottom of the doors.

Michael knelt, laying his face sideways to peer through the opening.

“Nothing.”

But there was something.

A soft sound, like padded feet running quickly, or like scales moving over stone, or feathers being brushed across a sheet of rusting iron.

The gap was just wide enough for Michael to push his head a little farther, though the thought of the colossal weight of the sec doors poised above him gave him a moment’s hesitation. But the strange noise was definitely coming closer, making him feel oddly uneasy.