He turned away in disgust. They already knew the date of skydark. There was nothing to be learned here.
“Come on,” his father said, turning to leave. “Still got the next level to check.”
“And if that’s cleaned out, too?”
“Then we try for police headquarters,” Ryan replied. “We know the droids will be waiting for us, but there should be lots of blasters and grens in the SWAT vault. Those are often airtight.”
Passing by the elevator, Krysty paused for a moment, straining to hear the popcorn sound again, but she couldn’t hear anything unusual. Maybe the popping had something to do with the gas? Made sense.
Without electricity, the elevator couldn’t move, so the companions went straight to the door for the stairs. Looking over the portal with a lantern, J.B. decided it was clear of traps and pulled it open. Inside, wide concrete steps edged with steel led down into the darkness.
SIG-Sauer in hand, Ryan took the point, with Krysty right behind holding the lantern high. That left the man’s hands free, and cast both of them in the shadow of the bottom of the lantern. That would make them a difficult target for a sniper to zero in on. Ryan really didn’t think there was anything alive in the pre-dark building but the mice and beetles feasting off the ancient moldy paper.
Cobwebs festooned the handrail, and Ryan’s combat boots rang on the metal strips supporting the steps. Nothing he could do about that but stay icy. The steps took a turn at a landing, and he stepped over a couple of limp uniforms lying alongside several rusted beer cans. He snorted at the sight, and deliberately stepped on the soldier’s uniforms. Just a pair of goldbricks caught forever shirking their work.
Two more landings later, the stairs ended on terrazzo floor, a duty roster posted by the only door. There were no signs of any boobies, so he tried the handle. The door was unlocked, but swung open only a few inches before hitting something solid on the other side. Ryan tried reaching through the slim crack, but his muscular arm was too large. He threw his weight against the door, and it merely yielded another inch.
“Let me try,” Krysty offered.
Giving her space, Ryan moved out of the way, and the woman squeezed her arm through the crack. For a brief moment, Krysty thought something brushed against her bare flesh, then she found the obstruction and traced its outline with her fingertips.
“It’s a forklift,” she said, extricating her limb. “Must have run wild like the cars on the bypass when the nuke went off.”
“Those things weigh a ton,” J.B. snorted.
Turning, Ryan placed his back to the door, then put a boot onto the cinder block wall across the landing. Lifting his other boot into place, the man heaved against the blockage, and the door began to scrape along the floor, hinges squealing in protest.
Placing aside their weapons, Krysty and J.B. joined Ryan and the trio forced the stubborn door open another foot, the forklift shuddering from the sideways motion. Suddenly, the door swung open all the way and the machine toppled over in a strident crash, the noise echoing through the blackness. Expecting this, Ryan dropped a boot and stopped himself from falling, then stood and spun with his blaster out. Krysty and J.B. were already in that position, studying the room beyond in the light of the pressurized lanterns.
The bottom level of the warehouse was filled with open wooden crates bearing military identification codes. Excelsior stuffing was strewed about in piles a yard deep, the broken tops of the crates dashed into corners. Empty plastic pallets lay on the cold terrazzo floor, tangles of steel packing straps coiled into wild formations. Foam packing pellets covered the floor like snow, and everywhere lay sheets of gray cushioning foam bearing the cutout silhouette of weapons, handcannons, longblasters, rapidfires.
“Shitfire,” J.B. muttered as they walked through the vast piles of litter. “Been looted.”
Bending to pick up the top of a plastic box, Ryan couldn’t read the military code set in raised lettering, but he knew the distinctive shape.
“LAW rocket,” he growled, tossing the lid away. “Just what we needed.”