Neutron Solstice

pictures or notices had been hung. But the entire complex was clear. Whoever had been there when Armageddon came had done a good cleaning. Nothing remained, not even dust. It was all hermetically sealed, waiting for human beings to return.

'There's no control panel,' said Finn. 'Not like the others.'

The walls around the doors were smooth and clean, lacking any kind of opening mechanism. Ryan looked to Doc for help.

'I confess I'm baffled. The individual design of some of the gateways was outside the scope of the Cerberus people.'

'Blast it. Got some grens.' As usual, J. B. Dix was direct in his thinking.

'I suggest caution, Mr. Dix,' replied Doc. 'Some of these main entry ports are highly sophisticated. If we were to fail to blow it open, then we might find we had permanently closed the building's only exit.'

'So? What do we do?' asked Ryan. 'Feels warmer here than anywhere.'

'Got to bring fresh air in every now and then. Been going for a hundred years, give or take. So some outside air and humidity leaks in. I am of the opinion that the controls for this might be in some hidden master unit.'

'In the big fucking fire!' swore Hennings. 'That mean we can't get out?'

'Wait,' said Lori, pushing past them all and walking slowly, fearfully toward the dully gleaming great doors.

'What's she going to do?' hissed J.B. 'Lean her tits on it?'

'Shut up, Dix,' warned Krysty. 'Looks like the kid knows something we don't.'

About six feet from the portal, Lori hesitated, then took two more long strides forward, her little spurs tinkling.

At first nothing seemed to happen.

Then like a metallic giant unclenching his fists, the doors began to slide ponderously back, letting in a waft of humid air that made all seven of them gasp. The doorway was nearly forty feet wide, and when the doors finally stopped moving, a stretch of corridor, around two hundred paces in length, was revealed. At its end was a steel wall with an ordinary-sized door set in it.

'Come,' said Lori, stepping briskly forward, followed by the others with varying degrees of reluctance.

On the right-hand wall someone had neatly stenciled the word Goodbye.

'How d'you know just to walk up to it like that?' shouted Ryan, his words ringing out above the echoes of boot-heels.

Turning her head over her shoulder, Lori answered, 'Back door out home. Quint show me. Earth slip and cover it. Look same. Eyes see us and open door. Eyes of dead men.'

'Mebbe boobied, girl,' called Hennings, running past her, stopping at the door and pushing cautiously at the handle. 'Locked!' he bellowed.

'No,' said the girl, moving him aside and taking the handle in her right hand. She pulled it slowly toward herself.

It was unlocked.

Henn followed the tall blond girl out into the daylight. Ryan came next, with the others at his heels. He stood on the threshold of the building, staring out. The light was oddly diffused, with shifting green shadows moving in the doorway. He drew a deep breath, filling his lungs, tasting the air, savoring it like a connoisseur.

Ryan Cawdor had visited many parts of the continent. He had walked the cracked avenues of New York City, through the groves of whispering vegetation with poisonous flowers and berries on every corner. Gazed across the oily brew of chemicals to the charred stump of what had once been a mighty statue. Something the locals mostly called Libberlady.

He'd been in the cold and ice of the north and down in the glowing rad-crazy wastes of the southern deserts, where chem clouds flamed from east to west. If J.B. was right, and they were in the southeast, then it was new territory for him.

'Some ozone,' he muttered. 'Can taste gas. Mebbe in the ground or water. Fireblast, but it's hot and wet here.'

Already he was sweating, a trickle of perspiration running down the small of his back. From habit he glanced behind him, seeing to his surprise that virtually all of the gateway was below ground. Creepers twined all about the shallow concrete single-story building, covering it with an impenetrable mat of gray-green foliage. His first guess was that this superb natural camouflage was the main reason the gateway hadn't been entered and despoiled.

'Here we come,' said Finnegan, staring out at the unbelievable landscape around them.

Krysty shuddered. Within the deeps of the limitless swamp that stretched all around them, she sensed a slow stirring.

It was not a good feeling.

Chapter Two

The blind woman sat trembling on a large wooden chair, leaning against the high quilted back, arms folded across her breasts. She wore a thin cotton dress, with a dark brown stain on the right hip. Her right hand fiddled with the slim silver knife, sheathed on a cord around her neck. Every few seconds her pink tongue flicked nervously over her dry lips.

All around her, in the lobby of what had once been the Best Western Snowy Egret Inn of West Lowellton, near Lafayette, Louisiana, men bustled about their business. Not one of them looked directly at her. If Mother Midnight had been summoned by their lord, then it was best to avoid any entanglement. The scar-faced woman was notorious as one of the most cunning of the witches. The magicians of the day were known as houngons, and were frightening enough. But Mother Midnight was one of the dark wizards, called bocors.

Cross her, and she might wish you dead. Might touch you on the cheek with a long fingernail and whisper the single word, Thinner. That had happened only a month ago to tall, strapping Stevie King. Slowly but surely, he began to waste away. Within twenty days he died, shriveled to less than eighty pounds.

And now something had gone wrong. All through the bayous the whisper had gone out of a disaster at a ritual. So the baron wished to see her.

Her sensitive nostrils caught the sharp scent of marijuana, and she turned toward the sound of steps, hearing them stop near the chair.

'He will see you now, Mama Minuit.'

There was not the usual respect in the young man's voice, and the woman tasted fear on her own tongue. The baron ruled over a vast area of the swamps, all around Lafayette. Apart from the renegades, every soul for fifty miles around paid dues to Baron Tourment. Even the Cajuns, deep within the Everglades, would not cross him.

She stood and reached out a feathering hand for guidance. The Best Western had been the headquarters for the baron ever since she could recall. But he moved from room to room daily, fearing assassination. The hand that gripped her fingers was soft as a girl's, and she could smell scent.

'This way. There is a step, then another.'

She wasn't going to ask why she'd been summoned, in case she got the answer she dreaded.

She wasn't going to ask.

'Why does?..' she began.

'He will tell you.'

'Oui,' she said simply.

The carpet was soft beneath her sandaled feet, muffling their steps. Her sense of direction was excellent, but even she lost track of the twists and turns of the endless corridors. Twice they passed clunking machines that made ice for the baron and his army. Once they stopped, and she heard the thin whining of an elevator. They went up one floor, then along more corridors. They entered another elevator. As her bare shoulder brushed against the sliding metal door, she felt the faint whipcrack of a static shock. Down a level.