“From the lack of security, I’d guess this place is commercial. Not military,” Mildred mused. “I wonder what part of Deathlands we’re in this time?”
Ryan tried the handle on the heavy armaglass door. It lifted up easily, and the door opened a crack.
“Never seen a mat-trans unit like this, and the colors of the walls are new. We’re in unexplored territory here,” he replied. “May want to take another jump out of here triple fast. Might be safer.”
Doc remained oblivious, still unconscious and coiled in a fetal position on the floor. “Don’t think these jumps are getting less stressful for Doc,” Krysty said as she knelt next to him and pushed back a few wisps of long white hair from his face and forehead.
“My dear, you have a singular talent for stating the obvious even as you soothe my troubled brow,” Doc retorted, smiling at her while keeping his eyes closed. “I do wish, however, the fates would choose the easier path and set me down gently upon it.”
“You’re not dead yet,” Ryan said. “Get your skinny ass up, you old faker.”
“I believe a predark expression was, ‘My eyes feel like poached eggs,'” Doc volunteered, then curled his long, hawkish nose and sniffed. “Burned poached eggs, at that, if the scent my nose has detected is true.”
Ryan smelled the odor, as well, which was now wafting into the mat-trans chamber through the door he’d opened.
“J.B., you smell it?” Ryan asked urgently.
“Dark night,” the Armorer replied as an affirmative, “smoke.”
“And where there’s smoke” Doc said, his voice trailing off.
“There’s fire,” Dean finished. “We’ve got to go. Now.”
“Can you move yet?” Ryan asked, striding over to where Doc sat.
The old man shook his head slowly. “No,” he whispered. “Not yet. Not at any kind of speed.”
“I’m not asking for a sprint. I just want you to walk fast.”
“Alas, my dear Ryan, I fear even elementary locomotion is beyond my reach. A few moments more, and I might rouse myself”
“We don’t have a few minutes,” Ryan snapped. “Guess you get to improvise, Doc.”
“My good man,” Doc said indignantly, “my life thus far has been nothing but one long improvisation.”
“We’ll have to carry him,” Ryan said simply.
“Krysty, you take his feet. I’ve got his upper body. J.B., take the point. Mildred, Dean, fall in behind him. Jak, you’re on the rear. Let’s see what’s burning. If there’s a fire in the control room, we might not be jumping back after all. Triple red, people. Let’s move!”
“Didn’t count on fighting any fires today,” Mildred said, glancing through the ob window at a bright red extinguisher hanging against one of the white walls outside the gateway. “And I imagine the charge in that old extinguisher wouldn’t even put out a match.”
“That’s what we get for jumping into something besides a good old-fashioned military redoubt,” Ryan retorted. “At least in those, we know what’s coming, most of the time.”
J.B. gripped the heavy handle of the chamber’s door and jerked it open farther. The door responded easily enough, then the Armorer was outside.
Unencumbered, Mildred and Dean were close behind J.B. as he took extralong steps and flattened himself alongside the single door to the small control room.
“Go ahead,” Ryan said after the seven friends were safely out of the mat-trans unit. “Open it.”
THE UNDERGROUND SECTION of the Wayne Feldman Baptist Hospital and Medical Center was burning, and Alton Adrian knew it was only a matter of time before his pursuers discovered him. Once he was found in his hiding place, he’d be a dead man, his freshly chilled corpse nothing more than new kindling to toss on the bonfire of the world. He’d been warned to tread softly into this maze of hospital corridors and hidden stairwells by the old-timers, the scavengers who eked out a living by picking through the remains of the past and bringing back items that were still of value. By the very nature of their business, scavengers liked to talk. Information was just as valuable as something solid you could hold and touch, some times even more so. There were always rumors of lost caches of ammunition, secret stockpiles of gasoline or mother lodes of precious metals.