James Axler – Watersleep

After closing the sec doors, the companions made their way slowly down the dirty corridor to a slight bend, which would then lead around to where the stairs and elevator would normally be in the standard redoubt layout.

“Bad smell,” Jak commented.

“Right on. This goes beyond mildew and mois­ture,” Mildred agreed. “Smells like rotting meat.”

“Not much longer now,” Ryan said. “As I recall, around this corner is—”

There was a popping sound from underfoot, which stopped him short.

On the floor in front of him was a human arm, curled back at a broken angle around the corner. Ryan held up a warning hand for the others to wait and glanced around the side, darting his head out, then back to safety like the tongue of a snake. In the brief look he’d gotten, he’d seen that the arm was attached to a corpse, facedown on the dirty floor. He had stepped on one of the dead man’s pasty, brittle hands with his right boot.

“Lock and load, people,” Ryan said softly. “There’s more of them chilled around the bend.”

“Dark night,” J.B. muttered over the sounds of everyone preparing their weapons for potential battle.

Ryan swung the SIG-Sauer around the corner, peer­ing intently along the line of sight. The wide room on the line to the elevators looked pretty much as he remembered, except for the new addition of a mass of rubble that had fallen down from above, twisting the staircase into an unclimbable mass of metal and totally blocking the ruin of a stairwell. The flat land­ing area at the top, which contained the doorway to the second stairwell, was also wrecked and jammed with broken concrete.

“All clear,” Ryan said, recognizing the irony of the phrase. While there were no live sec men or hostiles to challenge them, the absence of the stairs was going to prove a daunting obstacle.

As they came around the corner one by one, Mil­dred took note of three more bodies, all in twisted postures with small entry and large exit wounds. “Well, we know this wasn’t due to rad poisoning, like we’ve seen take down stiffs in other redoubts,” Mildred said in her best clinical voice.

She bent at the waist for a closer look. “They’re not in military uniforms, and they all died from gun­shot wounds. From the condition of the bodies, the feel of the skin and the heavenly aroma, I’d guess these boys have been getting ripe for at least a month or more.”

“This just keeps getting better and better,” J.B. muttered. “How did these guys get down here in the first place?”

“And who chilled them?” Ryan added.

“Chilled each other,” Jak responded. “Trapped, had argument. Way bodies fall and positions, they got in fight and everybody lost.”

“Give me a hand, here, John,” Mildred said. She was kneeling, attempting to turn over one of the corpses.

The Armorer complied, and together they flipped the body onto its back.

The sight would have been sickening to most, but it was a familiar one to all of the group. They’d looked down on many a dead man during the time they’d traveled together. The corpse’s features were nothing special: flat nose, thin lips, hair that appeared to have been dyed blond, but now had a greenish tinge. He looked like a hundred other dead men Ryan had seen over the years. He wore a black leather jacket with lots of tarnished buckles, a red T-shirt, jeans and brown boots.

The only unusual thing was a patch sewn on the front breast pocket of the jacket. It was round and about two inches in circumference. The entire circle was black, with a white patch in the center.

“Looks like a skull wearing a cycle helmet,” J.B. said.

“Yeah, but check the eyes,” Mildred replied. “There are little red dots in the eye sockets.”

“Looks like Jak wearing a cycle helmet, then,” J.B. amended.

“Screw cycles. Two wheels good way to get shot,” the albino snorted. Jak was correct. While a cycle gave one speed and more mobility than a wag, a rider was pretty much a deaf and dumb target, since the engine noise shut out any sounds, and one’s eyes were naturally on the road.