He focused the glasses, taking a deep breath to hold them steady. 'Bastard,' he breathed.
'Not one of the women?'
'No, J.B., it's not Krysty or Lori. It's a man up there.'
'But it looks like there's no...'
'Yeah. That's right, friend. It's been castrated. And there's no hands neither. And no feet.'
'The bastards! Like some dirt-crazies, that shrink heads or take hair.'
'The eyes, nose and ears are gone, as well.'
'Who do?..'
'Looks like an old man. Could be past fifty. I reckon it's the lad's father.'
'Whitey's old man?' This was the nickname that Ryan had given him. 'Yeah. That would, figure what we know of this baron.'
Ryan pocketed the binoculars. 'Let's go. Tell the kid what we've seen.'
He wriggled away, with J.B. at his heels, ready to return to the old cinema.
They were about halfway back when they heard boot-heels ringing on the overgrown, gravel road. Ryan hesitated only a second before pointing to the left, then dived over a rotting picket fence and moved quickly along the side of a trim little house. He felt J.B. at his back and stopped once they were both safely around the corner.
'Wait,' he whispered, peering toward the street. Six men, making up the sec patrol, were marching toward their base. Most of them were smoking and carried M-16s slung across their chests. Ryan's keen nostrils caught the unmistakable aroma of maryjane drifting over the weed-infested garden. The sound of their footsteps vanished away down the road, and Ryan and J.B. were able to relax again.
'Could have took them,' said the Armorer, easing his finger off the trigger of his Mini-Uzi. 'Hit 'em all in one burst.'
'They'd have heard it and figured it was the start of the attack. This Tourment may be the meanest fucker in the land, but he can't be a total stupe. He'll know we might come after the women. No point giving him any warning.'
J.B. nodded. 'Guess so. Let's move.'
'Wait.'
'What now, Ryan? You don't want to take a leak, do you? Trader always said when you first joined you was always sneaking off to take a piss before the shooting started. That it?'
'No. What the fuck's that there? In the middle of the garden, by that dead rosebush?'
It was a metallic dome that rose about three feet above the matted surface of what had once been a neatly trimmed lawn, now overrun with crabgrass. Ryan picked his way through the knee-high weeds, then bent over the strange protuberance.
'What's your guess? We could do with Doc here. That old bastard knows more about the times before the long winters than any man does. Or should.'
'Small redoubt?' guessed J.B., tapping on the top with the butt of his blaster.
'Private one. Wait. Didn't you once tell me 'bout the last years, when folks installed their own nuke shelters. This could be one, still here.'
The Armorer set his weight against a large wheel set in the top, but it didn't budge. 'Bolted.'
'Yeah. But look at the rust round it. Might go if'n we both give it a try together. Come on. Heave on three. One,
There was a brittle snap as corroded metal gave up its resistance. The wheel then turned fairly easily, with a thin grating sound that made Ryan look behind him. 'Check the road. I'll come get you when it's open.'
It took thirty or more turns before Ryan heard a latch disengage, and he was able to lift the trap. It was enormously thick, obviously counterbalanced by weights; it opened with a clunk. There was a faint hissing, and a waft of overpoweringly stale air, so dry and sour that it almost seemed to Ryan to clutch at his throat, like a hundred-year-old wraith.
J.B. joined him as he flashed his torch into the entrance. They saw a tunnel that dropped vertically about thirty feet, with a white-painted set of ladders, its rungs throwing sharp shadows.
'Going in, Ryan?'
'We got time. I'd kind of like to see inside one of these places.'
He went first, slinging his H&K caseless over his shoulder. It was obvious that the shelter hadn't been opened for a century. It was probably one of the few totally safe places in all of Deathlands.
There was a door at the bottom, with a simple catch on it. Stuck to it with contact adhesive was a flowery notice. It said: 'Don 'n' Peggy's place. If you got no beer, you can't come in.'
A smaller card said: 'This is the golden door that has a silver lining.'
The shelter was small and cramped, with a living space opening to a couple of bunks. There was a kitchen area and toilet and washbasin. Beyond that was another door that hid the controls, generator, air purifier, water recycler and stores.
Ryan saw the two corpses immediately.
Unlike those above ground, these hadn't deteriorated into skeletons. They were mummified bodies, leathery lips peeled back off yellowed teeth. The skin had shrunk and tightened across the faces, showing the skulls that lay beneath.
The woman, with long black hair, lay on one of the bunks, looking as though she'd been laid out in a funeral home. The skeletal hands were folded neatly on her shrunken breasts. She wore pale blue dungarees, stained and filthy, with a black and white badge pinned to the shoulder strap. Both J.B. and Ryan recognized it from old books as the emblem of a society that opposed all forms of nuke growth.
'Didn't do her no good,' said J.B., his voice flat and muffled in the cramped metal tomb.
The man's body was in the John, huddled over the chemical toilet-bowl, almost as if he was at prayer.
'Looks like he died puking,' commented Ryan.
There was plenty of food in tins. J.B. switched on the water purifier and found it still functioned. Ryan sat down on a canvas chair, looked around the shelter and saw a primitive vid-machine, with a camera wired to it. He pressed the button marked Battery, and a faint red light glowed on the display, as if some tiny hibernating creature had just been awakened. 'It works, J.B. Ч it works.'
He wasn't totally surprised. In some of the better-protected redoubts that they'd found during the years with the Trader, they'd quite often come across battery-operated machinery that still functioned. But generally the charge was only held for a few minutes, and then the equipment would grind to a halt forever.
'Press the On button on the telly there.'
J.B. hit the starter, and the screen lightened, revealing a jagged pattern of gray and white. Ryan had already noticed that there was a reel sitting in the vid-machine. He leaned forward and pressed the control to set it in motion.
'You don't think there's...' The voice of the Armorer faded away into a stillness that verged on awe.
The jagged dashes and dots changed to colored splashes and streaks. The speaker crackled, and then they heard the sound of music.
'Testing, five and four and three. Coming through real good. Just turn off my new Pogues compact. There.' The music ceased.
Suddenly something appeared on the screen, a great blurred outline, like a football. It vanished, and then they saw the head and shoulders of a man who sat in the same chair where Ryan now sat. He looked to be around fifty years of age, with thinning black hair and a small neat mustache. He had plump, well-shaved cheeks and immaculate teeth. Teeth so good they couldn't possibly have been genuine. He wore a bright shirt, decorated with garish bananas and pineapples. On his right hand was a ruby fraternity ring and on his wrist a platinum Rolex watch.
'Hi there to the future.' There was a sheepish grin on his face, and he seemed a little embarrassed at his own presentation. 'My name's Donald Haggard, and I'm an optometrist here in West Lowellton, part of the great city of Lafayette in the great state of Louisiana. Don't know rightly why I'm telling you this, because I guess you'll know all that. I've just broken off from Christmas brunch to tell you a little 'bout... Guess I damned near forgot to
