Seagulls called and circled in the sky against a dark expanse of storm clouds laced with orange and purple. Thunder rumbled softly as sheet lightning flashed in the heavens. Ryan sniffed carefully, but couldn’t detect any trace of sulfur. There would be no acid rains coming for a while.
A lush jungle rose all around the metal building, colorful flowers blooming everywhere. Somewhere in the far distance, a large cat roared a challenge to the world.
Leaving the door open, Ryan turned and whistled twice, short and sharp. Soon the rest of the companions entered the small room, efficiently spreading out. Less than a minute later, they converged across the room near Ryan. Gratefully they gulped in the fresh air as the jungle breeze swirled the exhaust around and around the room, quickly dissipating the fumes.
“Nobody here,” Krysty said, easing down the hammer on her S&W .38 revolver.
“Not anymore,” Dean said, jerking a thumb toward the shelves.
Ryan glanced that way, then strode over. He had missed this in the thick clouds, walking right by the poor bastard.
It was a human skeleton lying facedown on the floor, one hand extended toward the mat-trans unit. From under the tattered strips of dingy cloth, bare white bones gleamed in the reflected light from outside. There were no shoes or weapons.
As there was nothing to salvage from the bones on the floor, Ryan checked the wall shelves. But they contained only sagging cardboard boxes that had once been filled with ammo, and other assorted trash lying under a thin coating of dust. He frowned. Somebody had stored a lot of supplies here, probably getting ready for a jump, and when they departed, took everything not nailed down,
“A whitecoat,” Krysty observed, identifying the style of clothing of the dead man. “Mebbe the tech who built the gateway.”
“How did he die?” Dean asked, standing near the open doorway and keeping a watch on the ground outside.
Ryan noticed the boy’s attention, and grunted in approval. “You see anything coming this way, just close the door,” he said.
Dean nodded. “Unless it’s coming fast,” he agreed, crossing his arms so that the sleek Browning pistol rested on a wrist.
“I’ll check those machines,” J.B. said, and went to the other side of the console. He ducked and was gone from sight.
“Not see lead or arrow,” Jak noted, poking among the ribs of the skeleton. “Head not bust, no club job.”
“He bled to death,” Ryan stated, pointing at a nearby wall. There, in plain sight now, were a couple of steel sharp spikes sticking out from the metal wall. Smeared patterns of brown went from the spikes to the floor, the trails going straight to the mutilated hands of the dead man.
Doc frowned. “Nailed him to the wall,” he said. “Where he could watch the others leave.”
Taking a knife from her boot, Krysty probed the brittle bones of the hands. “Crude job, center bones are all shattered,” she commented. “That’s how he was able to get loose. These folks obviously didn’t do a lot of this.”
“So he was somebody special they hated,” Mildred said slowly. “Probably wanted him to starve to death, while choking in the exhaust fume, with escape only yards away.”
“Lot of hate,” Jak commented, taking a piece of venison jerky from a pocket and biting off a piece.
“Hate is often more powerful than love, my friend. See?” Doc espoused, tracking the dead man’s progress with his ebony stick. “This stalwart chap pulled himself off the wall to escape, and died of blood loss trying to follow them.”
“Her,” Mildred corrected him, lifting the pelvic bone from the ancient skeleton. “This was a woman, middle-aged, good health.”
“Recent?” Ryan asked bluntly. The bones looked old, but that didn’t mean they were.
Placing the pelvis aside, the physician lifted the skull and unhinged the jaw to glance at the teeth. “Predark,” she stated. “This is ceramic dental work, top of the line. Not old-fashioned silver inlays. From my time.”
“Hey, what’s that?” Krysty asked, and she brushed aside the remains of the right hand, the bones rattling as they rolled under the wall shelves.