“Smart. Thank you,” Krysty said, accepting the light and going inside.
The others followed, with Ryan going in last. Halfway through the door, he paused and turned at the waist.
“What was that again?” he demanded hotly.
“I said fuck you, outlander,” the sec man with the Remington snarled. “Can’t stand you hangers-on. She’s the baron, and you’re just some leech sucking on her ass. Baron gives the word, and you’re all in a cage.”
“Should chill ya right here,” the short man snarled, swinging his big-bore weapon around.
“Go for it,” Ryan muttered, dropping into a gunfighter’s crouch, his hand inches away from the SIG-Sauer.
“Not with her inside,” the sec man growled, lowering his blaster. “I miss you and a ricochet might set the whole place off.”
“Later,” the goateed man promised, shaking his longblaster.
“Any time,” the Deathlands warrior replied and walked backward into the building, never taking his eye off them. Once inside, Ryan rammed the interior bolts home.
“From now on,” he said, “we travel in pairs. Nobody goes anywhere alone. The locals are itching to replace us as the baron’s bodyguards.”
“Definitely using the slaves,” J.B. said, craning his neck to see around the dark room.
Lit only by the one lantern, the armory was masked in heavy shadows, but they could still see that the walls were made of a different color brick than those outside, so there was probably two layers of brick, maybe three. It would be extremely difficult for anybody trying to break in. And the floor was composed of slabs of sidewalk concrete. Ryan thumped a boot heel down hard and heard only a muffled thump of solid rock.
“Whoever built the bunker knew what they were doing,” he said. “The original builders must have disassembled a city to make this place.”
“I’ll bet they had plans to do the streets, too, before they died,” Krysty added, checking out the ceiling.
More sidewalk slabs, and there was no sound of the sec man walking on the roof.
“Makes sense.”
To the left side were racks of longblasters lining the brown brick wall; to the right was a quadruple row of hand flintlocks. Barrels of black powder were stacked on bricks to keep them away from any water in case of heavy rain, and buckets of white sand hung from brass hooks attached to the brick column supporting the ceiling, crude protection against a fire.
In the middle of the room was a ship’s cannon, set in a wall of sandbags, a fuse sticking out of the glory hole, the big muzzle pointing straight for the front door.
“In case of attack,” J.B. said, reaching up to adjust his glasses, then angrily lowering his hand. “Triple stupe. The concussion would deafen, if not kill, everybody in the room.”
“Unless there is another way out of here,” Ryan said thoughtfully. Now he moved among the barrels, rapping them with a gun butt and listening for echoes.
Along the back wall was another door, and several long tables. One held a small brazier, bullet molds and a lot of miscellaneous lead, some misshapen lumps streaked with brown.
“They dug the bullets out of the dead to reclaim the lead,” Mildred muttered, lifting a lump for inspection. “Grisly, but efficient.”
“War is a nightmare,” Doc remarked, pocketing a nice bullet mold. “And we are but the dreamers.”
The other table was covered with pieces of flint and cigar boxes. Krysty lifted a lid and found steel chisels nestled on a bed of fragrant leaves. Curious. She lifted a piece to briefly inspect it, then felt the oil on her fingertips. Ah, it was to ward off rust. Not total fools, then.
“All crap,” Jak snorted, moving from table to table, glancing briefly at the collection of crude blasters before moving on. There was nothing here of any use that he could see. “Where vault?”
The back door was heavy wood bolted in a zigzag pattern to more wood, but it proved to be unlocked. The next room was a lot smaller, containing small barrels of assorted pieces of blasters for repairs, coils of cannon fuse and more buckets of sand. There was also a third door, but this was made of burnished metal, its seamless expanse unmarred. There was a combination dial and a swing lever. The hinges, if any, weren’t readily located.