Now they could see the recliners and sofa placed before the television, and a gun rack on the wall with several longblasters and several sagging cardboard boxes of ammunition. On the far wall was a large bookcases full of paperbacks that crumbled into dust as they approached, producing an amazingly large acrid cloud. The fresh air from the open door in the lighthouse was seeping into the cottage, finishing the job of destruction started by the sheer passage of time.
Then everybody froze as a soft metallic patter sounded. It came again as a faint spot of light appeared on the bricks of the hearth and with a loud clang the flue moved aside and a blue crab dropped into view.
“Hot pipe, they pried it open!” Dean shouted, and stomped on the mutie before it could scuttle away, grinding it underfoot until the thing was paste on the flagstone floor.
Grabbing a fireplace poker, Ryan hooked the catch on the flue and forcibly pulled it closed, cutting off the pincer of a crab halfway through the vent. The limb fell onto the andirons, and a frantic scratching could be heard as something moved wildly about on the sheet iron.
“Now what?”
“Build fire,” Jak suggested, lifting a wooden chair.
“Have to open the flue or we choke to death on the smoke.”
Ryan pulled the poker tighter to hold the flue closed. “Find something to jam it in place!”
Breaking a chair apart, Jak forced a piece of wood into the fireplace. The chair leg splintered as it scraped across the rough brick, and the teenager had to use the butt of his Colt Python to pound it into position. There was a lot of scampering about on top of the flue from the noise, but he sat back to inspect the work and nodded.
“Not come through this,” he stated as a fact.
Nervously, Mildred glanced at the windows. “Some species of crabs can tunnel,” she said. “We better nail those bookshelves over the glass just in case.”
“Tools in the laundry room,” Ryan said, moving his head. “Jak, Dean, give her a hand.”
“I’ll check the blaster rack,” J.B. said, already moving in that direction.
With the Steyr cradled in his arms, Ryan rested his aching leg on the dining table and watched the open doorway and the fireplace for any sign of movement. The situation wasn’t good. They were still alive, but trapped down there, low on candles, almost out of ammo and food. Eventually, they would have to leave, and then the waiting muties would swarm once more. They might be able to swim to the next island, but that would require a diversion to get rid of the crabs, and they had no more explosives of any kind. Hopefully, the rounds in the blaster rack were still live.
The work of closing off the windows went very slowly, the panes of glass vibrating with every fall of the hammer. Krysty solved that problem by sliding the sofa cushions between the glass and the wood slats. After that, the job progressed much faster.
Shifting to another position, Ryan felt the journal in his pocket. Pulling it out, he used the panga to slice off the lock and flipped through the book to see if there was a diagram of the cottage, or any useful info inside. The handwriting was faded, but still legible in the dancing illumination of the candles.
“Good enough,” Mildred finally announced, and placed aside the hammer. Walking around the cottage, the woman surveyed the work. The planks were double thick over every window, almost four inches. No way could the crabs get through that. “Good idea about those nails, Dean.”
The boy shrugged. Driving some nails through the wood before they attached them over the windows seemed an obvious thing to do. Anything coming through the glass would impale itself on the sharp steel points. Crude but effective.
“Looks pretty solid,” J.B. stated, returning a rifle to the blaster rack. All of the weapon were useless, rusted solid, and the ammo was even worse.
Fortunately, he spotted some silverware in the kitchen. If it was real silver, and not just silver plate, then with some clean sheets and sunshine he could start producing high-explosive guncotton by the pound. Then disassemble the plumbing and they’d soon have some pipe bombs. Fuses were the problem. Maybe he could use the merc primer in the dead ammo to bleed a crude flash-fuse. Yeah, that just might work.