James Axler – Deathlands 35 – Skydark

“My friends,” Doc interrupted, “you are not making the best of what is an admittedly bad situation. You are, in fact, further confounding matters by dwelling on the morbid and defeatist.”

“Doc’s right,” Ryan said. “If we let ourselves think we’re done for, we are. I know Elijah, and he’s not

going to leave us to die here in the dark. He’s going to want to watch. More than that, he’s the kind of cheap bastard that likes to milk some benefit out of a chilling, as a spectacle for his followers. Or a few days of slave labor he didn’t have to pay for. At least the sec men didn’t manacle us. They figured we’d be so weak after an overnight session in here that we couldn’t put up a fight. We’ve still got our hands and feet free. Save your strength as best you can.”

After a moment the sounds of splashing water filled the closed chamber.

“Ryan, what are you doing down there?” J.B. asked.

The one-eyed man had dropped to his hands and knees and was crawling toward the corner of his cell. “I’m looking over our dead friend,” he said. “Thought I’d better get on with it. He isn’t getting any sweeter.”

Ryan fumbled in the darkness in front of him until he touched the back of the corpse. Then he ran his hands over the distended body. Its flesh was as hard as concrete and just as cold.

“How long’s he been dead?” Mildred asked.

“Who knows?” Ryan replied. “All I can say is, his hair sloughs off in big clumps whenever I touch it.”

“What about weapons?” J.B. said. “Has he got anything on him that we can use?”

“Haven’t found anything yet,” Ryan replied. He braced his foot against the cell wall and, grabbing the corpse’s shoulder, tried to lever it onto its side toward him. “Fireblast!” he swore. “I can’t turn the damn

thing over. Its underside is stuck to the bars, and it’s swelled up. If I pull any harder, it’s going to split open.”

Ryan fumbled under the water for a second, then said, “It’s got ankle shackles. They’re made of some kind of metal, hinged in the back. No chain between them-the sec men must’ve taken it off before they dumped the poor bastard in here. The shackles’ve got possibilities, but, damn, I can’t slide them off! The ankles are too swollen.”

“Are the shackles welded shut?” J.B. asked.

“No,” Ryan answered at once, “they’ve got a lock. I can feel the hole for the key.”

“If I was down there with you, I could pick the locks easy. I got a piece of wire in my pocket that the sec men missed.”

“Can you lift the corpse’s legs?” Mildred asked. “If you can raise the feet up close to the ceiling, J.B. can reach through the bars and work.”

Ryan tried. He discovered that the dead man’s legs didn’t bend at the knees anymore. They were locked out straight. Not to be denied, Ryan sat on the corpse’s back, grabbed an ankle and pulled back with all his strength. After a moment of teeth-grinding impasse, something snapped underwater and the leg swung up at the knee joint.

“Oh, sweet sufferance!” Doc gasped. “What a smell!”

“I think his guts broke loose,” Ryan said.

J.B. reached down through the bars and, finding the dead man’s foot, set to picking the crude lock that held the shackle shut. As he’d said, it was quick and simple work. It took Ryan twice as long to break the other leg, but after he’d done so, J.B. had the remaining shackle off in no time.

“Feels like they’re made of soft iron,” the Armorer said, testing the tab end of a shackle against the bars of the cage. The hinged bands were two and a half inches wide and an eighth of an inch thick. “They should take an edge okay, but they won’t hold one for long.”

“Don’t need it for long,” Ryan said.

“That’s right,” Mildred added. “Just a couple of well-timed slashes.”

They started taking turns scraping the iron against the concrete floor and walls. It was slow work, and noisy. Every so often, the results would be passed over to J.B. who checked the angle they were putting on the edges.