Chapter Three
The seven friends advanced into the room, moving slowly as if mired in molasses. They had seen death hundreds of times, but that didn’t make finding a dead child any easier.
“Jak, J.B.,” Ryan said, jerking his rifle in different directions. The two men moved off to disappear around the standing rows of lockers. They reappeared a second later at the other end of the room, and gave the clear signal.
Dropping her med kit, Mildred knelt beside the girl and took a limp hand in her own. She pressed on the thumbnail and watched the results. “Dead no more than minutes,” she announced. “Skin is warm, blood is viscous and lividity isn’t present.”
“Minutes?”
“Still smoking,” Jak said, pointing to the blaster on the floor. Shifting his rifle, Ryan lifted the pistol. “Barrel is warm,” he said, cracking the cylinder. It contained six cartridges of assorted makes, one spent shell. “We just missed her.”
Holstering her .38 pistol. Krysty cursed bitterly. “That must have been the odd noise we heard before. A gunshot muffled by the floors between us.”
“Makes sense.”
“Just skin and bones,” Doc rumbled, leaning against a closed locker.
“Check her numbers,” Ryan suggested.
The physician brushed aside the bloody hair covering the neck. “Yes, her elevens are showing.”
Everybody knew what that meant. They saw a lot of it in the nukelands of America. When a person got close to death by starvation, the twin tendons at the back of the neck would begin to stand out prominently. It was the sure sign that death was only days, maybe hours, away.
“There was no food in the kitchen, or in storage,” Mildred said. “No food anywhere that we’ve seen.”
Her hair tightened fiercely about her face as Krysty frowned. “Which means the only thing left to consume was-”
“The dead men.” Ryan scowled. “That’s a choice few of us can make.”
“Rather die,” Jak spit, setting his jaw. “Near did once.”
“Yeah,” the Armorer agreed. “A slug in the head sounds mighty good compared to long pig.”
“To consume the flesh of another human,” Doc said in his rumbling voice, “is a journey into bestiality that most of us simply cannot take, even if our own lives are forfeit.”
“Hot pipe!” Dean said loudly, almost startling himself with the fervor of his cry. He moved his shoulders, making his bulky backpack rustle. “And here we are with a freaking ton of MREs only a floor away. Enough food for an army!”
“Life is timing,” Ryan stated, resting a hand on his son’s shoulder. “A minute too soon is as bad as a second too late. Remember that.”
Bowing her head, Krysty began to say a short prayer to guide the child’s spirit into the world beyond this. The others were respectfully quiet, but stayed alert during the brief ceremony. When Krysty was done, Doc made the Christian sign of the cross and muttered something in Latin.
“One girl, twenty or so men,” Mildred mused thoughtfully. “The leader’s child? A ransom victim?”
“Or the recreation officer,” Ryan said. “Mercies who kill their own usually don’t waste time with fancy stunts like kidnapping.”
“Not a willing one,” Krysty snapped. She lifted the girl’s stiffening arm. “See the chain marks on the wrist?”
“That’s why she didn’t make a run for the door,” Doc growled, “The coldhearts were bedamned slavers.”
A former slave himself. Jak said, “Good they dead.”
Mildred stood and shuddered as if emerging from a river of ice. “The girl might have thought we were the others coming back.”
“To claim their prize.”
“Yes. To either rape her again, or…”
“Eat her?”
“Mebbe both.”
“Sweet Jesus.”
“So she was what they were fighting over.”
“No,” Ryan said abruptly, “she wasn’t. The prize was much more important than her.” He turned to face the second door across the room. “And we’ll find it on the other side of that door.” Krysty glanced at the closed portal. “How do you know?”
“Just a hunch. I think I know what this base is.” Rifle resting on his hip, Ryan loosened the SIG Sauer pistol in his belt and removed a gren from his pocket. Carefully, he removed the tape holding the spoon in place and put the primed bomb into his coat.