James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

“Makes sense.” The Armorer took off his spectacles again and rubbed at his eyes with a linen kerchief. “This air sure stings,” he said.

“I believe that Japan, in the last years of predark, was one of the most polluted places on the face of this noble planet.” Doc also wiped at his eyes. “Industry run rampant. Asthma and all manner of respiratory ailments plagued a significant section of the population.” He coughed. “But enough of this merry persiflage, my friends.”

“What’s persiflage, Doc?” Jak asked.

“Raillery and jolly banter, my sweet, ice-topped youth. Not all that appropriate, considering our somewhat parlous position here, I fear.”

Ryan started to walk away from the house, his combat boots crunching through the leaf-littered gravel, the SIG-Sauer still cocked in his right hand. The dry fountain had a dead animal in it, what looked like a mutie rat, with unusually floppy ears and a feathery tuft on the end of its extremely long tail. The statue at the center of the moss-crusted stone bowl was a kneeling woman in a flowing gown, covered in pale green verdigris.

“Come on, folks,” he said. “Let’s keep it on double red for a while.”

The tumbled remains of what might have been a watchtower stood in a corner of the garden, up against a high wall of creamy stone, with residual loops of razored wire laid along its top.

“Quite a fortress,” J.B. commented.

Ryan turned back to gaze once more at the big house. There was something about the design that was definitely not true American, something in the angle of the peaks of the roof and the shape of the windows.

At the end of the driveway was a pair of double gates, at least twenty-five feet high and forty feet wide. They were made of wrought-iron, the gaps filled with corroded sec-steel panels. Sharp spikes were set along the top.

Ryan looked at the formidable obstacle, thinking how appropriate J.B.’s comment had been. The place really had been a fortress.

“Something’s going down, lover,” Krysty said, tugging at Ryan’s sleeve.

“What? Danger?”

“There’s people around. Quite a few of them. Close to us. Not sure whether they’re a threat.”

“Might I proffer a suggestion?” Doc asked.

“Yeah.” Ryan had reached the gate, hesitating, fingers reaching out for the ornate handle.

“Dear John Barrymore hasn’t yet utilized his miniature sextant. It might be of some assistance to know for certain where we are, might it not?”

“Guess so. J.B., give it a try.”

The sun was smiling down from a sky of almost unsullied blue, with just a few tiny wisps of pinkish cloud gathering at the far north.

The Armorer reached into one of his many deep pockets and plucked out the little scientific instrument. Built in predark times, it was of a degree of technical sophistication that it would now be impossible to reproduce. He aimed it at the sun, turning the little milled wheel on its side, checking the angle and reading off the measurement, his lips moving silently.

“Tell you one thing,” he said.

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Not in Deathlands. Reading’s about one thirty-two by thirty-five. Near as I can recall from the old-world maps, that definitely puts us the other side of the Cific Ocean.”

“Japan, John?” Mildred asked as J.B. folded the sextant and put it back in his pocket.

“Probably. Yeah. Close as I can tell, but I don’t have the least idea where precisely we’ve ended up.”

“There was a lot of political tension between us and the Japanese in the last few years before skydark,” Mildred said. “Trade wars at a high level, as well as threats about tariffs and boycotts and cutting off supplies and aid. I don’t think that the sores of the Second World War and the atom bombs have ever really been properly healed.”

“But they started it at Pearl Harbor,” the Armorer protested. ‘”They only got what they deserved.”

“I’m not sure it was quite as clear-cut as that,” she replied. “I remember reading magazine articles saying that we didn’t need to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese were ready to quit.”

J.B. sniffed meaningfully, making it obvious he didn’t place much belief in what Mildred was saying.