Chapter Three
The pale green armaglass door clicked open.
“Phew!” Dean exclaimed. “Even hotter. Think the place is on fire, Dad?”
Ryan shook his head. “No.” But his forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “Never known it quite as hot and humid as this. Not even in the bayous.”
“We are aware how the long-term effects of the nuclear wipeout have included major changes in climate,” Doc said in his best lecturing voice. “Not counting the volcanic action and the nationwide earthquakes. Perhaps we are in a region that has become tropical.”
Doc was right about the changes between the old United States and Deathlands.
Though there weren’t the scientists of the laboratories to verify it, there were rumors that the planet had actually been tipped a few degrees on its axis by the war that truly did end all wars.
The weather changed radically and became more extreme. First had come the long winters, which completed the 99.9-percent recurring megacull of human life that had commenced in the missile-hungry days of skydark.
Though the mighty San Andreas Fault was one of the first to let go, the world was seamed with tectonic activity. California virtually disappeared into the Pacific, and volcanoes erupted from Seattle to Mount Washington. Acid rain fell, strong enough in the first years to strip the flesh from a man’s bones in a matter of minutes. There were ferocious chem storms with brilliant purple-pink lightning and endless thunder. High-rad detritus constantly tumbled from the skies, the useless relics of the world powers’ attempts to use space for military purposes.
Nearly a hundred years had passed since the nukecaust had been triggered and civilization had died, but the repercussions were still everywhere in Deathlands. Not just in the weather and the landscape. There had been horrific genetic damage among the few survivors, resulting in amazing mutations of every sort among every level of life birds, fishes, reptiles, insects.
And human beings.
Particularly in human beings.
“Smells like swamps on hottest day ever,” said Jak, standing behind Ryan with his blaster drawn.
The usual procedure in mat-trans units was to find the gateway opening into a small anteroom, generally stripped bare during the evacuation at the time of skydark.
This time was much like the othersa room eight feet square, with two rows of empty shelves and a backless chair. Nothing else.
Through the next doorway they could all see the main control room to the unit, containing rows of desks, comp screens and keyboards, endless banks of dancing colored lights and flickering crystal displays.
And beyond it was the familiar sight of the closed vanadium-steel sec doors that sealed the gateway off from the rest of the military redoubt.
“If the doors are clamped tight, then how come the air feels so hot and damp?” J.B. looked around. “And how come there’s no mold or nothing like that?”
“Anything,” Mildred corrected.
“What?”
“You should say that there’s no mold or anything like that, love,” she repeated.
Ryan grinned back at the Armorer. “Nice to see someone else getting their knuckles rapped for a change for not speaking proper.”
“Properly,” Krysty corrected.
“Fireblast!” He pulled a face at her. “Anyway, I reckon that the basic air conditioner’s folded. But the stuff they pump through to chill germs has kept the place clean.”
Doc nodded, reaching out and rubbing his hand down the wall of the anteroom. “It is most fearfully moist. But no trace of any sort of sphagnum growing here.”
“Wonder what the redoubt’ll be like?” Krysty said. “Could do with some decent washing facilities. And if there happened to be some canned food”
“Noticed that the control room is smaller than usual?” J.B. asked.
Ryan nodded. “Right. Mebbe it’s a smaller redoubt, as well. No reason they should all be the same.”
“Can I open the door, Dad?”
Dean stood by the lever at the side of the hugely strong sec door, one hand resting on it. From previous experience, they all knew that the green lever, pointing downward, would open the door when it was lifted.
“As usual, son,” he said. “I’ll get on the floor and look out underneath as it rises. Rest of us fall back in a loose skirmish line. Stop it rising when it’s about six inches up to let me check the corridor outside. Drop it like goose shit off a shovel if I shout to you. And don’t take it up any higher until I tell you.”