“All right,” he said. “That’s where we’ll go. Jak and Mildred, scout the grounds around it and meet us in the lobby.”
Jak handed his bag of fruit to Dean, and then the albino and the physician quickened their pace with blasters drawn and ready.
“Are you looking forward to a night in bed, lover?” Krysty asked.
“You have to ask?” Ryan answered.
GRUNWOLD CLIMBED the last few steps to the top of the Skylon Tower slowly. The sec chief had double timed it to the lookout station from Fox Farm, and his lungs were complaining against the strain. He took a few moments to rest at the entrance to the observation deck, not wanting to show his men any weakness, then entered when his breathing and heart rate had come back down to something closer to normal.
“Where are they?” he asked the sec man on watch.
“They’re heading toward the Fall view,” the sec man answered, not taking his eyes from the binoculars that were trained on the heart of the ville. “My guess is that they’re going to stay there tonight.”
“Good,” Grundwold said. “Where’s the team on the ground?”
“They’re a few hundred yards behind.”
“Have they been spotted?”
“No. I even lost sight of them myself a few times.”
“Have the outlanders been eating any fruit?” Grundwold asked.
“Yes,” said the sec man. “They were all eating as they entered the ville. Looked pretty hungry, too.”
“Excellent!” Grundwold said with a smile. “That should make them ripe for the picking.”
Chapter Seven
“Jak’s still scouting the inside. The area outside the hotel is clear,” Mildred reported. “And there’s no sign that anyone’s been through the area in a while.”
Ryan nodded. He was glad for the news, but wasn’t sure how a ville with so many buildings didn’t have more people living in it. Where had all the people gone? It was another question whose answer would probably be forthcoming in time. But despite any misgivings Ryan had about staying in the old hotel, it was getting dark out and the friends needed to find a place to bed down for the night. “All right, let’s take a look inside and find a place to sleep.”
The friends stepped through the broken glass that had once been the hotel’s front door and entered the lobby with blasters in hand. While there didn’t seem to be anyone living in the ville, a few of the hungry muties could still be crawling around looking for a meal. But even that seemed unlikely, since there was even less food in the ville than there was in all the surrounding rad-chilled farmland.
As they moved through the lobby, Doc walked behind the front desk to have a look around. “Well, I’m honored to be one of the first guests here since 2001.” he said, wetting the tip of a pencil on his tongue and signing the guest book on behalf of the friends.
The hotel was laid out in a pair of long corridors that stretched out in opposite directions from the lobby. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but they could probably establish a defensible position somewhere in the hotel, allowing them all the good night’s sleep they so desperately needed.
Just then a door opened at the end of the ground-floor hallway. The friends immediately had their blasters raised and ready to fire, but it turned out to be Jak returning from his recce of the hotel’s upper floors.
“Long halls, many rooms,” the albino teenager reported. “Second floor best. One way up, many ways out.”
Ryan nodded. Since the elevators wouldn’t be working, the only way up would be by the stairs. But a building like this had to have at least two stairways, maybe even more in case of fire. “Only one stairway?” Ryan asked.
“Locked others. Now let out, not in.”
“Are the stairs the only way out?”
Jak shook his head. “Windows. Twenty-four each side, not far to ground.”
A ten-foot jump out a second-story window wasn’t Ryan’s favorite way of escaping a firefight, but with forty-eight windows and a few stairways to choose from, not to mention the possibility of going up, the one-eyed man was satisfied they’d be able to escape in the event of a mutie attack, or worse. Besides that, he was too tired to go any farther. If they didn’t stop here for the night, Ryan wasn’t sure he’d be able to go on. “Second floor it is, then.” He looked at the friends to see who was freshest and could take the first watch. “Jak, you take first watch, hour-and-a-half shifts.”