Then came the smell of burning ozone, and the sparks, and the inhuman shrieking.
The fog was alive, somehow, and sentient.
There was no way of getting past the swaying mass safely. If one wanted to go forward, one had to figure out a way to punch a hole and go through the thick mist.
Until seeing it for himself those long months ago, Ryan had taken the descriptions of the fog he’d been given back in Mocsin as exaggeration. The one-eyed man had been confident that once he came face-to-face with…it, getting past would be a simple matter of running through or climbing around.
Now that he was standing in such near proximity to the storm cloud, Ryan realized with a mix of awe and fear that he was confronted with a primal force that functioned beyond his own understanding of natural laws and science.
“We could try some grenades,” someone suggested.
“Might do,” Ryan agreed. “No other trail. No way under it. Damn thing hangs over the edge of that sheer cliff. No way over it, and we can’t go back with Strasser’s men after us, that’s for damn sure.”
“And what’s to stop the fog from reaching upward into the air as well?” Doc had added softly, his normal baritone pitched higher in a singsong tenor voice. “And pulling us down, down, down into the shimmering abyss?”
Ryan was quiet as he pondered the options. “Blow it,” he ordered.
High-ex and incendiary grens were hurled into the gray mass. Noise and fire came whirling out, along with some minor bits of shrapnel made up of rocks and ice, and still the fog hovered, stopping at the bend of the trail, a huge wall of sheer mist.
“Fireblast,” Ryan muttered.
“No, not fire, nor blast. Antimatter, Mr. Cawdor,” Doc had replied, inspired by the epithet. “I believe that might do the trick. Implode, and the foul fiend will be undone-it will separate from its source.”
“Implo gren. Turn that chiller inside out. Yeah,” J.B. had agreed. “Good idea.”
Two of the small bombs were hurled into the mass. Twin hollow booms came bursting out, followed by an elaborate sucking sensation as the grens imploded, pulling all surrounding matter inward into a vacuum of limitless, impossible smallness. The fog began to uncoil, the spectral tendrils now nothing more than dropped bits of string fluttering outward and dissipating; disappearing into frail streamers that crumbled in upon themselves.
Then the hellish fog was gone. In front of them, past the edge of the ravine, was the sanctuary they sought. Inside the nondescript building built flush against the mountain itself, and unknown to all of them but Doc, was the gateway, the path out of the Black Hills and into a new situation, a new part of Deathlands, a direct line on a one-way trip hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of miles away.
Ryan shook his mind free of the memory of that early discovery, and moved on to the next. Considering how his group of friends had already begun to grow acclimated to the process of matter transfer, coming across a sterile scientific stronghold like the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement was no big deal. The hidden secrets of Deathlands were beginning to be told, and with each new revelation came numbness, disbelief and finally, acceptance. It was hard to dispute the nose on your face.
“Pandora’s box,” Doc answered him in a whispered voice.
The words took Ryan out of his reverie. “Who’s Pandora? She kin to the Emily you keep talking about?”
Doc sniffed. “No, Pandora has no ties to my own beloved Emily, and I should ask how you know her name, but I suspect I have begun my old habits of babbling in my sleep.”
Ryan looked over and met Doc’s blue eyes. “Might have heard tell of her that way, yeah.”
“I shall endeavor to keep quiet from now on,” the old man replied. “As for Miss Pandora and her box, well, it is better known as ‘the gift of all.’ The revenge of the gods upon all mankind. She was a laughing, beautiful creature set upon this mortal plain by Zeus, who also gave her a shining box filled with all things evil and harmful to man and bade her never to open it, while knowing the foolishness of such a decree.”