James Axler – Rat King

Mildred went over to him.

“Crazy old fool. Sometimes I don’t know how his mind ever snaps back from the

strain of these jumps,” she said as she ran a quick check on his vital signs.

Doc smiled. “Perhaps it never does, and this scenario is nothing but the product

of a disordered psyche.”

“Big words. Feel better,” Jak commented shortly. “Right about bells.”

“Gaia, I’ve never heard a bell quite like that before,” Krysty said as she moved

toward Ryan. Now fully recovered from the jump, and with a resilience that was

close to the one-eyed warrior’s, she spoke in a low, urgent tone. “Sounds more

like a siren. A warning of some kind, mebbe?”

“New redoubt,” J.B. commented, looking at the walls. “Could have an old alarm

system. Mebbe working off the same power supply.”

“Never heard one before. Why now?”

“Why not?” Dean asked. “Stupe comp systems get faults all the time.”

“Not that often, son,” Ryan replied, his mind racing. “There’s something else—”

“The chamber,” Krysty finished. “We’ve never seen one this spotlessly clean

before. Almost like it’s been swept out.”

“Which would mean someone lives here,” Mildred added.

Electrostatic air conditioning also kept the dust from the floors and walls of

most redoubts—in theory. But in truth there had been occasions where time had

led to at least one part of the system failing.

“Your grasp of logic is most admirable,” Doc said weakly. “Would it therefore be

remiss of me to suggest even more than our usual caution?” He was still shaky on

his feet, but had the heavy LeMat blaster ready, his lion’s-head swordstick

thrust into his belt.

Ryan nodded grimly. “Last thing we need just after a jump. Going into a

situation cold like this is the best way to get chilled.”

But already his fighter’s brain was going into action. Whatever lay behind that

door would expect them to come out blasting…if it was anything like other

inhabitants of Deathlands. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was like Alaska,

where gatekeeper Quint had been using the redoubt as a refuge from the harshness

of life outside?

He dismissed the option. The only way to stay alive was to assume that

everything was hostile until proved otherwise. And maybe even then you’d have to

chill it.

Ryan looked at J.B. and could see that the Armorer had been thinking the same

way. He had the M-4000 in his hands and was checking the load.

“Think what I’m thinking?” he asked laconically.

“Guess so,” Ryan replied. “Mebbe one or mebbe many. Either way, they’ll expect

us to come out blasting. It’s our only chance. Bastard door is so narrow it

doesn’t give us a chance to spread quickly.”

“Can’t stay like rats in trap,” Jak said.

In a trap or walking into a hail of blasterfire. Not much of a choice. The

Trader used to say there was only one choice: choose to live or choose to die.

Ryan knew that they couldn’t stay in the chamber forever.

“J.B., you lay down covering fire when the door opens. I’ll head out and try to

find cover. Mildred, Krysty, you follow. Jak, bring up the rear.”

“What about me, Dad?”

Ryan turned to his son. “You and Doc take longest to recover from the jumps.

Mebbe buy you a few seconds. You come out after J.B. blasts again. Door that

narrow, it’s difficult to come out with covering fire unless you want your head

blasted.”

“Bad enough that some other bastard wants to chill you, without us chilling

ourselves,” Mildred commented with a dark humor.

In just a few seconds, the group had loosened the chains of torpor and fatigue

that the jumps usually left binding them, and were all running on adrenaline.

Krysty’s hair still clung protectively to her head.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, lover.”

“So have the rest of us,” Ryan replied.

She shook her head. “No, not like that. I just get the feeling that this is

going to be the easy part.”

“Fireblast! If this is the easy part, then I don’t want to be around when the

difficult part arrives.”

He turned to the Armorer. “Ready?”