James Axler – Gaia’s Demise

“Make them think we’re still here. Gotcha.”

“Jak, you’re our best tracker. Find their trail and don’t lose it! We’ll follow soon, so leave a trail for us.” The pale teenager nodded and blended into the weeds.

REACHING THE BOTTOM of the hill, the companions easily found the tracks of the horses and followed them to a large pile of rubble. Ryan whistled once, and Jak stepped out of the shadows under a rock slab.

“Went into ruins,” Jak said. “Couldn’t follow. Rads.”

“Thought so,” Ryan muttered. Piles of rubble rose over their heads, the monolithic buildings soaring even higher. He checked the rad counter on his lapel. The readings were nominal.

“The area is clear,” he announced. “Let’s go.”

Staying low, the companions moved through the weeds and over the predark wreckage, following the faint trail of the green muties. A hoofprint in the soft sand, a broken weed, a tiny pool still rippling, a crushed leaf bending back into shape, a drop of blood on a rock. Jak moved almost without pause, the nebulous marks a wide highway for the Cajun hunter. Ryan and Krysty stayed with him most of the way, but sometimes they were forced to wait until he resurfaced a dozen yards away, waving them onward.

Under the colored moonlight, the companions crept past a tall office building that rose like a knife thrust from the mounds of broken masonry. The front door was covered completely, but third-floor windows were missing where the rubble was piled high, and they knew others had been inside. Whether greenies or norms, it was impossible to tell.

Walking out of the crumbling suburbs, Ryan and the others found Jak crouched, studying a broken parking lot of macadam. Ahead, the downtown monoliths stood silent and foreboding. Nothing stirred the scrawny weeds; not a breath of air moved over the desert city.

“There.” Jak finally pointed, then headed to the left.

A long squat building stood amid an array of houses crushed flat, a sprinkling of sand dusting the ruins. The metal frame of a garage sagged nearby, the beams consumed with rust and age. The building itself was made of brick, granite slabs set as lintels around the doors and windows. The roof was sharply sloped with no skylights or ventilation grilles offering a possible entrance. A bare flagpole leaned away from the building, large stone eagles flanking either side of the recessed doorway. Words were carved into the granite lintel, partially dissolved by acid rains.

“National Guard armory,” Ryan whispered. “Is that the spot?”

“They there,” Jak said, nodding, peeking between the fins of a corroded car radiator. “Nasty.”

“Yeah, this isn’t some library or bank converted into a fortress,” J.B. countered. “It’s a military fort, built to store weapons and troops.”

“Blasters and ammo by the ton,” Dean said eagerly, then frowned. “No, those must be long gone.”

Kneeling on the shell of a transmission, Krysty agreed. “Can’t chance a rush. That door is a death trap,” she added softly, scrutinizing the building. “One man with a rapid fire could hold off a score of invaders.”

“Not sure if the greenies have blasters, but we’re not going to use the door anyway,” Ryan stated. “I know another way inside.”

“The fort was designed to hold off rioting mobs,” Mildred said, shifting her hold on the med kit. “How are we going to get in?”

“Mobs are stupe,” Ryan replied, his Steyr cradled in his arms. “Only people are clever. Stay close. No noise, five-yard spread.”

Slow and silent, they moved around the building with weapons at the ready. In the backyard, the sand was winning over the weeds, the sideways chassis of a large truck gradually returning to the earth from which it was once mined. Empty oil drums used to store fuel were scattered about amid broken pallets, miscellaneous metal parts of unknown origin and stacks of rotting tires.

The rear of the armory was a solid wall of brick and granite, the slit windows covered with bars and located some fifty feet off the ground near the gutter of the sloped roof.

On the loading dock, massive steel doors stood in a row, blocking any possible entrance that way, and off to the side, a short set of stairs led to a smaller door of riveted steel.