“She’s severely disoriented from the jump,” Mildred told him. “I can’t find anything else physically wrong with her. Of course, that doesn’t mean too much, considering the tools I have to work with. If I haven’t missed something critical, I’d say she should snap out of it in a few minutes.”
“Can she be moved?”
“Sure.”
“Where goin’?” Jak asked Ryan.
Before the one-eyed warrior could answer, Doc spoke up.
“Ryan, dear fellow, loath as I am to propose it, might we not risk embarking on another jump?”
“Fm afraid it’s not an option in Krysty’s case,” Mildred said. “In her present condition there’s no telling what damage a second jump would do to her.”
Ryan addressed the old man’s suggestion. “At this point, Doc, we aren’t sure what the stickies know about the gateway system. They could use if to follow us, and we could find ourselves fighting an army of the dead-eyed bastards wherever we end up.”
“Oh, wow!” Mildred said, her eyes widening with a sudden realization. “Wait a minute! There’s a basic problem here that I think you’re all missing. It’s a matter of logic-”
“Dark night!” J.B. interrupted her. “Our basic problem isn’t logic, it’s stickies.”
Mildred didn’t appreciate being contradicted, and especially before she had been allowed to make her case. “But-”
Ryan put up a hand. “No, Mildred. Save whatever it is for later. We don’t have time to discuss it now. We’re not safe here. The stickies we just chilled might be missed by the others.”
He moved die still-unconscious Krysty into a sitting position and eased her over his left shoulder in a fireman’s carry. With his Steyr SSG-70 rifle in his right hand, he headed for the elevators on the other side of the control complex.
Chapter Two
Bolted to the wall beside the pair of elevators was a level-by-level map of the entire complex. From the schematic they could tell they were five stories down from the redoubt’s vanadium-steel exit doors.
“Place big,” Jak commented.
“One of die biggest we’ve come across,** J.B. agreed.
Ryan scanned the index, row upon row of color-coded numbers and names that corresponded to points marked on the map. It was more than big; it was a small city. According to the map, the redoubt had its own hospital, residential areas, several theaters, four dining halls, two sports centers, various automated labs, machine shops, hydroponics gardens-alt bunkered underground. In addition to the nuke fuel source that powered the complex, the map showed a fossil-fuel storage cell and an armory.
“Behold the promised Elysium,” Doc intoned. “Sanctuary for predark potentates. Snug harbor for bigwig whitecoats and military, for well-heeled politicians and corporate CEOs.”
Mildred took a careful look at the room behind them. The steady, whistling breeze of a high-tech air-filtration
system kept the floors and elevated surfaces clean, but the corners, where the ceiling met the walls, were hung with funereal drapes of thick, gray cobwebs. “Doc, I think your VIPs got caught with their pants down on Doomsday. They never arrived at their own party.”
Ryan adjusted Krysty’s weight on his shoulder, then warned the others to stand back from the elevator doors. “Be ready,” he said. “We’re on triple red.” He poked the elevator’s button with the muzzle of his rifle. As he moved to the side of the left-hand pair of doors, he slung the rifle over his shoulder and seized his SIG-Sauer P-226 with his free hand.
From above came the mechanical whir of the car’s descent. The light went on behind the plastic arrow over the doors, and an electronic tone sounded. Some sixth sense told Ryan that danger was very close. As the doors jerked apart with a whoosh, his finger was already pressing the trigger.
The four stickles inside the elevator reacted to the sight of humans with amazing speed. Howling, in a blur of intentionally confusing, arm-waving motion, they attacked.
Standing rock steady, Ryan fired the SIG-Sauer.
Blown onto their backs on the floor, the quartet of muties thrashed their arms as they tried desperately to get up. But they couldn’t move their legs or hips because Ryan had blasted great chunks from their spines.
J.B. stepped forward with his Uzi and quickly gave each of the snapping dead-eyes a full-metal-jacket 9 ram round in the head.
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