“Warm enough, lover?”
Krysty nodded. She’d peeled off her khaki coveralls, folding them neatly at the bottom of their makeshift bed. Her cowboy boots stood alongside them. The overhead neon strips that still worked threw pallid light, glinting off the silver chiseled toes and silver leather falcons that or-namented the designer boots. The only thing that marred their elegance were the splashes of gray mud and the dap-pled, darker patches of dried blood around the heels and the sides of the soles.
Ryan took a chance on undressing, breaking one of his own cardinal rules. He’d slit the bottoms of his pants so that he could pull them off over his combat boots. Care-fully he ranged his weapons alongside the makeshift bed.
Krysty lay on her left side, facing away from him, and he cuddled against her, spoon-fashion, feeling his swell-ing erection as it pressed snugly into the strong curve of her buttocks. For a moment she responded to the pres-sure, then half turned toward him.
“Sorry, lover,” she whispered. “I know it’s not the most original excu se, but I really do have a bastard of a headache from the jump.”
“Yeah. I guess I don’t feel at my steel-breaking best. The jumps get worse. I wish I knew where the fireblast we ended up on that one today. One of these days we’re going
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to end up reconstituted under a million tons of moun-tain.”
“Quick way to go,” she said. The idea made her start to giggle, making her body press harder against him, with the inevitable result.
Afterward, Krysty cradled him in her arms. “Ace cure for a headache, lover,” she whispered.
Chapter Two
in one of the stone-walled rooms near the main entrance of the redoubt, they found a shelf filled with backpacks. At J.B.’s suggestion, everyone in the party took one, fill-ing it with spare ammo and self-heats. Each of them also carried a couple of clear-plas cans of springwater, the kind that had a ring-pull opener. At some time a round button had been kicked under a metal cabinet. Jak Lauren picked it up and pinned it to the lapel of his ragged leather and canvas camouflage jacket. It was bright red and carried a picture of a helmet. The gold-lettered words said simply Forty-Niners Go.
The 352 code opened the outer door, revealing a morn-ing of bright sun bursting from a sky tinted purple. The chem cloud storm of the previous evening had vanished. The temperature was a few degrees above freezing. Far on the other side of the wooded valley, Krysty spotted a hunting bird, circling on a thermal, its great wings spread wide. Its wingspan looked to be about fifteen feet.
The bird was the first sign of life they’d seen since the jump.
The first problem to overcome was to find a way down from the redoubt. Inside the main door Lori had found a plan of the entire fortress, with its corridors lined in blue, the exit marked in orange. There was only the one exit shown.
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Ryan checked both ends of the broken roadway. The drop was sheer for about forty feet, then he could make out the remains of tracks beaten through the scrub.
“That’s what’s kept the place clean,” he said. “Unless you had a rope launcher, you’d never get up that face. It’s smoother than… than Jak’s chin.”
“For an old man with only one eye, Ryan, you got a fucking big mouth.”
“Just a joke, son, just a joke.”
“See me laughing, Ryan?”
“When friends fall out, then their enemies make merry,” Doc said, pouring a little oil on the troubled wa-ters.
There was an uneasy moment of stillness within the party, which was broken by the Armorer. “Need some fixed lines up here. Then we have to find a way of mak-ing sure nothing an’ nobody gets in while we’re away.”
Ryan stood a moment, looking out across the wilder-ness. “Anyone had any thoughts about where we’re going?”
“Let’s have a look around,” Krysty suggested. The wind was still strong, tugging at them as they stood on the broad ledge. She’d tied back her long crimson hair to keep it out of her eyes.