James Axler – Way of the Wolf

“This is your first time with an elevator, then.”

Doc said.

Albert’s shoulders heaved again as he threw up once more.

Krysty took a step away. Luckily the freight elevator was large enough none of them were too close together.

“Read about elevators before,” Albert groaned.

“Never saw one until today. Never want to see one again.”

Jak laughed, a short, harsh bark of sound. “Think elevator bad? Wait till mat-trans.”

The elevator cage shrilled to a jerky stop, metal grinding against metal. Without some kind of overhaul, Krysty doubted that it would last more than a few more trips to the surface and back.

“Everybody alert,” Ryan ordered.

The companions tramped through the dust, Doc reaching down to hold the back of the dwarfs jacket to keep him upright. At least Albert’s nausea seemed to be gone for the moment even if he hadn’t gotten his land legs back.

Krysty probed the darkness with her mutie senses. Between her and Jak, she knew most of anything that might be waiting for them in the darkness would be caught.

The albino teen hugged the walls, following the blue line that marked the floor under the layers of dust. Every now and again he had to scuff his foot across the floor to make certain the line was still there. He correlated those with the marks put on the wall by the companions when they had come through the first time.

“What is this place, Doc?” Albert asked in a voice not much above a whisper.

“A long time ago,” Doc said, “well before sky-dark even, there was a government entity that operated under the aggrandized nomenclature of the Totality Concept. They constructed these redoubts, and stocked them with myriad things. The mat-trans unit that we are seeking here was developed by a further division of secrets called Overproject Whisper under the code name Cerberus.”

“Heard of Cerberus before,” the little man said. “Some kind of three-headed mutie dog supposedly watching over hell. Called it Hades. The Greeks made up all the stories.”

“That is correct. And as it turns out, the name was most aptly placed, because this Cerberus does open unto the very jaws of hell.”

“There’s one thing I always found curious about the Greeks’ stories,” Albert said.

“What’s that, dear fellow?”

“They wrote about this hell like it was some kind of bad place.”

“Yes.”

“But, Doc, none of it really seemed as bad as what Deathlands turned out to be.”

There was silence for a time. “My friend,” Doc said gravely, “I believe that is because a healthy mind could not really envision how badly things could go for the human race once something like this happened.”

Then Jak’s torch lit up the door ahead of them. The albino keyed in the code, and the vanadium door slid open with near silent shushes. The friends cast aside their torches, as the redoubt was awash with cool fluorescent light.

Jak led the way inside, and they followed a twisting corridor, avoiding the other empty rooms they had found their first time through. From the way most of the rooms had been systematically stripped,

Ryan and J.B. had speculated that the military personnel who had survived the nukecaust had evacuated the structure at some point. But what had become of them remained a mystery, like so many other things after the world had died.

The end of the corridor opened into a large room that contained the mat-trans unit. The chamber was hexagonally shaped, and metal disks set in the floor and ceiling glowed with a pulsating light. Thick armaglass walls the color of fresh-cut jade shut them off from the mat-trans unit.

“What is that?” Albert asked.

“That,” Doc said dryly, “is the very maw of perdition like none of you have ever seen, my little friend.”

“Oh.”

Krysty watched the dwarf and felt sorry for him. Doc could have gone on and elaborated more about what was going to happen to him once the transfer sequence was activated, but it would only have been cruel. When staying wasn’t an option, a person had to go. Krysty had gotten that from her Mother Sonja.

“Everybody in,” Ryan ordered after hurrying forward to open the door.