“Give me a sec, it’s locked,” he announced, pulling tools out of his bag.
Moving deeper into the behemoth, Ryan saw the main body of the aircraft extended for yards and yards, with huge canvas lumps filling the central passageway, the mounds of cargo resting on thick pallets and firmly lashed into place by a dozen ropes and chains. The distant rear of the craft was lost in shadows. Dean headed that way along the left wall, and soon came back along the right.
“Nothing else but these things,” the boy said, nudging a pallet with his boot. “No more bones or doors.”
“Careful opening those,” Krysty warned, lifting her candle high to follow the path of some power cables. “The gov often booby-trapped important cargo.”
“Gotcha,” Dean said, moving away from the canvas mound. He made a mental note to ask J.B. to start teaching him about traps and locks. It was an important skill these days.
At the open hatch, Doc stomped on the deck, crushing something with a lot of legs under his boot. “Begone, Visigoth!” he snorted, and kicked the dead millipede onto the wing. As it landed on the leaves, the vines twitched and a flower bent over it to close its rainbow petals about the pulped insect and start eating.
“A sylvan glade, indeed,” Doc muttered, holstering his LeMat.
Going to the wall seats, Ryan inspected the desiccated skeleton of paratroopers still strapped in place. Their uniforms were only rags now, the fresh air making them crumble apart. Each man and woman was armed with an M-16 carbine and a side arm. But all of the weapons were so heavily rusted salvage was impossible. Only the plastic stocks of M-16s and the rubber grips of the handblasters were still in pristine condition. The rest of the steel had been corroded by acid, eaten clean through in spots. The weapons had been fired just before the plane crashed, the cordite exhaust gas mixing with the moisture in the atmosphere to make carbolic acid that destroyed the weapons slowly. He checked the clips and found them full of lumpy green brass and loose lead rounds. Placing the rapidfire aside, he tried the automatic blasters and found they were in the same condition. Had to have been a hell of a firefight somewhere. He studied the sheets of insulation lining the hull and saw no signs of bullet holes. Perhaps the troopers had seized the craft by force to escape the nukestorm. He would never know, but it seemed a logical guess.
Inspecting the collection of uniformed bones, Krysty discovered that one of the officers was a woman with a large military chron on her wrist. Krysty removed the timepiece and wound the stem to see if it worked. The watch started ticking without pause and continued steadily. Thank Gaia! She removed her own wrist chron smashed in the bus crash and slid on the new chron. It fit fine, and hopefully was a lot tougher than her old model.
“How are the blasters?” she asked, adjusting the strap on the mechanism.
“Pure junk,” Ryan stated, shoving the rusted lump of metal that had once been a 10 mm Colt back into its dusty holster.
“I see something,” Mildred said, retrieving a briefcase from under the wall seats. A handcuff dangled from its steel handle, but there was no way of knowing which of the dead soldiers it had once been attached to. Setting her flashlight on an empty seat, Mildred tried to open the case but it was firmly locked. However, her belt knife swiftly cut through the leather flap holding the carrying case closed. Inside were hundreds of papers bearing government seals, but the printing was so faded with age it was impossible to read in the dim light.
“Probably just a duty roster,” Krysty said, holding her candle dangerously close to the yellowed paper.
“Most likely,” Mildred agreed, watching some of the faxes crumble into dust at her touch. “I’ll take these outside and see if I can read them there.”
As the woman left, Krysty started going through the remnants of the uniforms, and Ryan went to the base of the stairs. “How’s it coming?” he asked, his voice echoing slightly in the confines of the great vessel.