They left the washroom, where both of the bodies were already beginning to float sluggishly on the rising tide of water.
AFTER THE DISTURBANCE, and with the knowledge that the only threat to them had been permanently removed, everyone slept more soundly for the latter part of the night.
Dean woke first, lying on his back, looking around the semidark room, puzzled for a few moments, trying to remember where he was. The memory of the triple-crazy brothers came back to him, and he sat up in the bed.
The big room held two other sleepers.
Jak, his hair blazing like a distress flare, was at the far end of the dormitory, lying flat on his back, hands folded, looking like a carved image on a tomb.
Doc was on the far side of the room, also on his back, snoring.
Dean had been sleeping in shirt and pants, his combat boots standing on the floor by the side of his bed. He swung out his bare feet.
And yelped in shock.
The floor was eight inches deep in cold water.
EVERYONE HAD WET FEET, tucked into wet boots. One of Doc’s worn knee boots had floated into the passage, intent on making its own way toward the main entrance area.
Several of the blasters had also gotten soaked. The Steyr rifle and the scattergun had been laid on the floor for the night, and both were covered in the rising flood by dawn.
Once everyone was up and dressed, they splashed toward the open area, where the brothers’ cooking fire was a mess of drifting gray scum and ashes.
“Can’t we turn something off, somewhere?” Mildred asked. “There’s got to be a danger that the water’ll eventually work its way down and down until it reaches the gateway section. Then we’ll be in serious trouble.”
“Main tanks in a place this size could easily hold several thousand gallons,” J.B. commented.
Ryan sniffed, easing the rifle on his shoulder. “Could be worse than that. We know the water’s coming through the broken pipes, out of the reservoir, somewhere locked away in the heart of the complex. Anyone considered whether that reservoir might not be automatically topped up from some external water source?”
“By the Three Kennedys!” The ferrule of Doc’s swordstick rapped wetly on the concrete floor. “You mean that this flood will simply carry on and on forever? Until the rivers run dry? That is a bad thought, friends.”
“Where will the water go, Dad?” Dean asked as he looked around. He pointed at the main doors. “Can’t we get them open, then it can all run outside?”
Ryan smiled at the boy. “Worth a try, I reckon.”
J.B. shook his bead doubtfully. “Might be pointless, Ryan.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know anything about the internal structure of the redoubt. The water might already be flooding down half a dozen levels, toward the gateway.”
Ryan nodded. “Mebbe. But you can see it’s rising up against the sec doors. Let’s open them and see what happens. And let’s do it now.”
Chapter Nine
The control panel was battered and worn, some of the letters and most of the numbers completely illegible. Particularly, numbers two, three and five were wiped away.
“Water’s a little more shallow here, Ryan,” Krysty observed. “Over by the dormitories it was halfway up my boots. Here it only covers the heels.”
“Some of it’ll drain off soon as we get the sec doors opened.” Ryan called across to Dean. “Ready on three, five, two to open them up.”
“Long as the doors aren’t at the bottom of a slope,” J.B. said, grinning at his old friend. “Most of them that we’ve visited have been high up, so we best keep our fingers crossed.”
While he stood there waiting, the Armorer was trying to wipe his spectacles clean, but was having problems finding any dry material.
“Go for it, son,” Ryan said, standing at the center, where the twin doors met, his SIG-Sauer drawn in his right hand.
The boy peered at the controls, puzzling out which number was which, eventually deciding and quickly pressing the three numerals in order.
The massive single sec door from the mat-trans section usually opened upwards, but the double ones that connected the redoubt to the outer world usually slid sideways.