” ‘A summary notice of execution for two soldiers who tried to leave the redoubt without proper authorization,'” he read aloud. ‘”The charge is treason.’ ”
“Probably trying to get back to their families,” J.B. said. Then he saw the pained expression on Doc’s face and stopped talking. The man had been yanked away from his family in 1896 by Overproject Whisper.
“Could have been plain old thieves,” Mildred said, quickly changing the topic. “Maybe black market runners.”
“Don’t care,” Jak said, his stomach rumbling audibly. “Need find food.”
Continuing up to the next level, Ryan paused before opening the door and tilted his head against a cloth-covered grille in the wall.
“Music,” he said, sounding amazed. “Weak and off tune.”
“Mebbe this place isn’t deserted,” J.B. said grimly.
With a rusty creak, the door swung open on a long chemical laboratory. The tables were stacked with retorts and beakers in a wild state of disarray, and the wall shelves were stacked with countless bottles of unknown chemicals. A pile of animal cages was filled with tiny bones.
“Germ warfare?” Dean asked nervously.
“Wrong equipment,” Mildred stated. “Don’t know what it’s for.”
Walking through the cold, sterile laboratory, Ryan curled a lip in disgust. “Science rules,” he muttered softly. But that had been months ago, at the redoubt filled with Kaa’s army. This one was stripped clean as a fresh corpse.
Leaving the lab, they went past a communications room and at the end of the corridor found the heavy door to the Armory. Behind the veined portal of burnished titanium, the U.S. government had stashed away food and blasters for the troops to utilize after skydark. Unfortunately for the companions, the redoubts were usually picked clean during evacuation.
“Mebbe we’ll find some reloading equipment,” J.B. said hopefully, tilting back his fedora. “Not many folks thought to take those, and I can make enough ammo to hold us for a good while if the tins of cordite are still good. Even make something for Doc.”
“Smokeless gunpowder will not function in my black powder gun,” the tall man rumbled.
“Will if I cut it enough.”
“And the primers?”
A shrug. “There you’re out of luck. I can’t make those.”
Doc touched the cardboard box in the pocket of his frock coat that held the precious copper nipples for his handgun. He was down to eighteen. Maybe it was time for him to switch to a modem breechloader. He savagely shook those thoughts from his mind. No, that would never happen.
Shouldering his rifle, Ryan grabbed the release lever of the vault door and released it instantly. “Cold,” he said, sounding amazed. “The bastard door is freezing cold!”
“Heavy armored and arctic cold,” Krysty whispered. “Gaia, you…you don’t think this might be a deep-storage locker?”
“Naw,” Jak drawled contemptuously. “Impossible.”
“More than likely, you are right, my young friend,” Doc rumbled thoughtfully, reaching out to touch the icy metal. “We never found one before.”
“But if it was…” Mildred started. “My God, we could find anything in there. Enough food to feed an army for a year, clothes, medicine, anything, everything!”
“What’s a deep storage?” Dean asked. The term puzzled the boy until suddenly he remembered his father telling him about them over a campfire one night. Or rather, his father had relayed the tales told by the Trader. Deep-storage lockers were very special vaults designed to protect food and ammo for centuries, not just for a few years like a regular armory. It was to be the predark government’s emergency reserves in case food couldn’t be grown outside, or the fighting was worse than ever imagined.
“A DS locker,” J.B. whispered, trying to keep the excitement from his voice. “All the equipment needed to rebuild a high-tech civilization from scratch behind one door.”
“Mebbe, mebbe not,” Ryan said, grabbing the lever and easing it downward. “Let’s find out.” The handle resisted his efforts, and it took all of the man’s prodigious strength to shift its position until the main lock disengaged.
Silently, the massive door swung ponderously open a hairline crack, pale gases loudly streaming out from the thin opening.
“Back,” Mildred snapped, and the companions retreated to a safe distance while the vault disgorged its contents of nonbreathable inert gases into the air system of the redoubt.