Prodigal's Return Read online

  “Here, Doc, you take,” he said, walking across the room. “Six of something better than nine of nothing.”

  “I still carry two charges,” Doc corrected, accepting the modern-day revolver. “But as always, my friend, you are the very epitome of pragmatism.”

  Jak frowned. “That good?”

  “Indeed it is.” Opening the revolver, Doc made sure the bullets were in good shape, then removed them to dry fire the weapon a couple of times, checking the action. The trigger was tight and light, the hammer smooth, the barrel clear of any obstructions. Perfect! But then, considering that the military-grade weapon had been tucked into a locked box, sealed inside a desk that was located within a vault situated at the heart of a nukeproof fortress, he would have been highly surprised to find the weapon in anything but perfect working condition. However, bitter experience had taught him that the first time a person took such things for granted was always when they failed spectacularly, usually sending the person straight into the grave.

  Doc reloaded the weapon before tucking it into his canvas gun belt. The S&W revolver actually weighed less than the ammunition for his LeMat, and he made a somber mental note to aim higher at a target in compensation for the lack of a proper recoil.

  Eventually, the companions were done searching the armory, locating nothing more interesting then a roll of fuse for J.B. to use, even though he didn’t have any explosives to attach it to at the moment. Continuing the interrupted sweep of the redoubt, they were soon satisfied that there was nobody else present, and finally headed for the much needed showers.

  “At last!” Krysty sighed, shrugging off her filthy bearskin coat before starting to remove her shirt.

  While everybody got undressed, Doc went off to shower alone. In his time period, any form of nudity was totally unheard-of, strictly forbidden, tantamount to devil worship, and even though he now knew better, he simply couldn’t shake off the strict lessons of childhood. There were times that his nudity in front of the others was unavoidable, but they were few and far between.

  “Call if you need anything!” Mildred shouted, as he disappeared around a tiled corner.

  “Only the absence of your alleged wit, madam!” Doc yelled back, the words echoing slightly along the hallway.

  Carefully putting their blasters on a nearby shelf, the companions padded naked into the huge communal shower room and turned on every faucet, then got out again fast. A few seconds later, the rattling pipes disgorged a bubbling torrent of thick brown sludge. But that soon change into a murky flow that finally became a steady downpour of hot, clean water. The bars of soap had remained intact, and soon the companions were covered in glorious suds.

  After toweling dry, the men shaved, and J.B. stuffed several empty shampoo bottles into his munitions bag, along with a handful of rusty razor blades recovered from the garbage.

  “These will make excellent shrapnel for when I cook up more pipe bombs,” he explained, at a puzzled glance from Mildred.

  Next, everybody went to the laundry to wash and repair their bedraggled clothing and undergarments. Finding officer uniforms stored inside dry cleaning bags, everybody got a new shirt, while Krysty and Mildred were each delighted to acquire a new sports bra, their threadbare old ones mostly held together with the power of positive thinking.

  Taking some of the plastic garments bags, J.B. then rummaged among the dry cleaning machinery to locate a couple unopened containers of spot remover solution, plus a small tin of desiccated shoe polish. The cracked material inside resembled a fried hockey puck, but J.B. beamed at the dried lump as if it were manna from heaven.

  “You’ll need this, too,” Ryan said, passing over a small bottle of bleach and a handful of loose pennies.

  “Thanks! Now, if there’s a working microwave in the kitchen, we’ll soon have some pipe bombs again.” J.B. grinned, tucking away the assorted items.

  “And disassemble some pipes,” Jak added, checking through a shelf of shoes and boots waiting to be repaired. With a grin, he found a combat boot in his size, and for the correct foot. Happily removing the tattered remains of his old boot, he slipped on the new boot, and tied it firmly. It was a different color than his own, the right boot solid black, the left camouflage-green, but his only concern was that it was a comfortable fit.

  After getting dressed, the companions found a well-scrubbed Doc drinking coffee in the kitchen. The room was huge, and well supplied with a dozen ovens, a score of refrigerators and a row of dishwashers, the largest, in the corner, chugging softly.

  “There’s coffee on the stove,” he said in greeting, sipping from a cracked mug bearing the logo of the Green Berets.

  “French roast or Viennese cinnamon?” Mildred asked playfully, taking a sniff.

  “U.S. Army, regulation grind, coffee, for drinking of.”

  “Oh. Well, better than nothing.”

  Just then, the dishwasher chimed. Rising from the table. Doc opened the machine and used a dish towel to withdraw the LeMat, the metal shining brightly.

  “I’ll never get over you washing a blaster that way.” J.B. chuckled, placing his munitions bag on a dining table.

  “Why not, John Barrymore? There are no nylon bushings like those in a modern weapon to dissolve from the heat,” Doc said, setting the steaming-hot blaster on a wood cutting board. “Besides, after I greased the cylinder to prevent a cross fire, it needed a good cleaning, and this way is much easier than scrubbing it by hand.”

  Then he paused in confusion. “Did…did I ever mention that J. E. B. Stuart used to boil his LeMat at least once a week, as did Ulysses S. Grant? There was an article I just read in the New York Herald about Grant using whiskey instead of water, but I think it was a joke…?.” His voice trailed away.

  Used to the time traveler’s occasional ramblings, the companions merely dropped their backpacks on the floor and went to get some coffee.

  “Anything in the freezer?” Ryan asked, wandering over to yank open a stainless steel door. Inside the unit were numerous shelves piled high with an assortment of objects, all of them so heavily covered with ice it was impossible to tell what was hidden underneath the translucent layers. He scowled at the sight. Fireblast, everything in there would have such bad freezer burn it would be less edible than boiled boot.

  “There’s some salt in the cabinets,” Doc said softly, making a vague gesture. “Along with some rice, but that is all, my dear Ryan. This horn of Cornucopia has blown its last note.”

  “Rice will stretch out our supplies for another day or two,” Krysty said, opening the cabinet doors to find the plastic container. As she took it down, a small jar of honey was revealed tucked into the corner. Probably the private reserve of some member of the kitchen staff. The honey had dried to a hard golden crust the consistency of stone, but she knew it could easily be reconstituted with a little boiling water. As long as they were kept away from air and moisture, honey and rice would never go bad.

  “No food, no brass, howler at door,” Jak said, pouring himself a mug of coffee. He took a sip, scowled, then took another. “How soon jump?”

  “The sooner, the better,” Ryan stated, glancing upward as if he could see the savage mutie pounding on the blast doors. If it got inside again, the antirad alarms would give them plenty of warning. But then their only course of action would be to jump, so why delay the inevitable?

  “Agreed. The sooner we reach another redoubt, the better our chances of finding some food or brass,” J.B. said, picking up his munitions bag.

  After having coffee and a meager breakfast, the companions left the kitchen and took the elevator to the gateway level, marched along the corridor and entered the comp room. Banks of computers hummed softly, several control panels blinking different-colored lights, relaying volumes of information to technicians no longer alive to interpret the data.

  Crossing the room, the companions then passed through an antechamber that led to the mat-trans unit. The armaglas walls of the unit were a dark blue, streaked with
gold and edged with an emerald-green diamond pattern. The mat-trans unit of every redoubt had a different color, for reasons lost in time. The companions had assumed it was for easy place identification. But if it was for identification, why not simply use a sign that gave the name of the redoubt, or the latitude and longitude, or put a fragging map of North America on the wall with one of those little you-are-here arrows? It just didn’t seem practical.

  Stepping into the mat-trans unit, the companions sat on the floor while Ryan closed the door, which would start the jump. He went to join the others.

  Traveling from one redoubt to another took only a few seconds, even when the other base was a thousand miles away. The “journey” usually caused blinding headaches, and in some of the companions induced vomiting.

  Mildred had a theory that this was because they were not using the mat-trans properly. There was an alphanumeric panel set into the wall, obviously there to enter a destination code. But since the companions didn’t know any of the codes, they had discovered that closing the door without entering a destination code would initiate a random jump.

  A strange mist filled the unit, the floor plates glowed, then they were sent hurtling through a swirling subatomic vortex to arrive at another redoubt, unconscious on the floor. Weak and battered, but alive.

  “Dark night, I hate to lose my breakfast so soon,” J.B. muttered, removing his glasses to tuck them safely into a shirt pocket.

  Agreeing wholeheartedly, Krysty wanted to say something comforting to her friend, but after so many jumps, she knew exactly how long it took the chamber to activate, and there was no time. Drawing a deep breath, she prepared to be torn into her component atoms.

  Moments passed, and nothing happened.

  Growing uneasy, the companions began to exchange nervous glances as long seconds flowed into impossible minutes, and still the white mist didn’t engulf them. The mat-trans chamber remained as cold and quiescent as a sealed tomb.

  Chapter Five

  Muttering a curse, Ryan looked around the antechamber, wondering if they had just experienced a painless jump. Where they remained conscious. Unfortunately, it was the same chamber, blue and gold with little green diamonds.

  “What happened?” Jak demanded suspiciously.

  “Mayhap the computer is broken,” Doc muttered, worrying the handle of his ebony stick. “Or do you think the arrival of our noisy green friend outside may have something to do with this deplorable display of dysfunction?”

  “Damned if I know,” Mildred said, brushing a beaded lock of hair off her face. “That mainframe is over a century old, and survived a nuclear war. I’ve always been a little surprised that it ever worked.”

  Doc scowled darkly. The redoubts and the mat-trans system were supremely important to him, more than to any of the other companions. They were his only way to return to his beloved family. If the redoubts were breaking down and the mat-trans system collapsing, then he was truly stranded in this future time, never to see the past and home again. Alone, forever.

  “Mebbe if we try again,” Krysty suggested, standing to open the door and step out the unit. The other companions followed suit, and after a few moments, they all walked back into the chamber and sat, except Ryan, who shut the door. He hurriedly went to sit beside Krysty.

  Nothing occurred.

  “Okay, now what?” J.B. growled, putting his glasses back on. He had tucked them in his pocket for safekeeping.

  His temper flaring, Ryan slammed a fist into the armaglas wall. “Fireblast!” he snarled furiously, massaging his stinging hand. “With the mat-trans dead, and a howler at the door, we’re caught down here like a jam in a breech!”

  Opening the door and marching out the mat-trans unit, the one-eyed man started across the antechamber. “Okay, the Trader always said that when you’re caught in an ambush, then do the unexpected and dive out the window.”

  “Fair enough, but where’s the window?” J.B. demanded, tilting back his fedora.

  “The front door,” Ryan stated. “There’s nothing we can do about the mat-trans, so we’re going to find a way to chill that howler. Afterward, we travel overland to the next redoubt.”

  “Chill a howler? I’ve never heard of that being done before, lover,” Krysty said. “And we’ve been trying.”

  “First time for everything,” Ryan stated, keying in the code to open the door that led to the corridor, his face a dark mask of somber concentration.

  “We might be able to smash past the howler if there was a working APC, or a tank,” J.B. said, cracking his knuckles. “But with only civilian wags, I don’t know…?.” He chewed a lip.

  “Come on, John, I’ve seen you make bombs out of bedsheets and silver jewelry,” Mildred chided in a friendly manner, as they reached the elevator. “There must be something we can do. Some sort of explosive, or poison.”

  “We do not know if poison can kill a howler,” Doc interjected, as the doors opened. “Or even if the cursed thing can be chilled!”

  The companions stepped inside, and the doors closed.

  “Anything get aced,” Jak retorted, then he frowned. “Course, not really know if howler alive, or just a thing, like tornado, or dust devil.”

  As the elevator started moving, Mildred arched both eyebrows. She had never considered the possibility that a howler might not even be a living creature, but some sort of a freak occurrence, like Saint Elmo’s fire—a ball of lightning that chased after people, not to eat them, but merely because human beings had a magnetic field, and it was drawn to them like steel filings to a magnet. It was a sobering thought.

  Just because the thing sort of looked like a hellgrammite, she noted dourly, didn’t mean that it was.

  The elevator doors opened with a musical chime, and Ryan strode across the garage level, studying the array of crashed vehicles. “We’ll start with that motorcycle,” he said, rolling up his sleeves.

  WHEN THE WORK was done for the day, the companions had dinner and hit the showers again. However, this time everybody was free to use the private stalls reserved for officers.

  Standing with his head bowed under the warm spray, Ryan let the water wash away the day’s accumulation of sweat. They had almost exhausted the meager supply of acetylene in the welding tanks, finishing the job, but it was done and as good as what could be achieved under their present circumstances. But as the Trader always liked to say, the proof of the plas-ex was how far the bodies flew. The next day would tell if the plan worked or not.

  As Krysty removed her sweaty shirt in the changing room, she noted the collection of new scars on his body. They were almost lost among the host of others earned from a thousand battles, hard fought and won. The puckered circles of bullet wounds, the freckling from shrapnel, the straight line of a knife slash… Ryan wore the history of his life etched into his living flesh.

  Just for a moment, she recalled the first time she’d seen him, charging through the billowing smoke of that burning barn, bodies strewn across the ground. She had been positive that she was going to die, but Ryan had changed that, saved her, and asked nothing in return, not even to share her bedroll for the night.

  And he had certainly earned the right to ask, if nothing else, she thought, sliding off her pants. But he had waited until she approached him first. Gallantry was a word few people understood these days, and she loved him all the more for it. Deep inside, Ryan was a gentle man who wanted nothing more than to live in peace. But when trouble came, he shook the world until its teeth rattled. He was the ultimate Deathlands warrior. In her opinion, he was the only real man she had ever known.

  Gathering a fistful of soap residue from a plastic container, Ryan started lathering his hair, the excess suds cascading down to flow across his hard muscular frame. Krysty felt a visceral surge of excitement at the sight, as she removed her bra and panties.

  “Care for some company, lover?” she asked, looking over the frosted plastic door of the stall.

  “Always room for you,” he said, smil
ing through the dripping suds. Her shapely form was only a vague blur through the distorting plastic, and for some reason that seemed to make her even more desirable than usual.

  Swinging open the door, Krysty stepped into the stall and closed it behind her. Ryan shifted to the side to allow her to get wet, her prehensile hair flexing almost happily in the misty warmth as her fingers gently massaged apart the filaments.

  “Been a long day,” he said, watching as she soaped up a washcloth to build a lather.

  “Tired?” she asked, washing her face. The suds flowed down her body, clinging to every curve like the finest lace.

  “Never been that tired.” He chuckled.

  Suddenly, the washcloth fell, and she bent over from the waist to retrieve it from the floor.

  “You sure?” she asked, maintaining the tempting position.

  Reaching down, he cupped her chin and drew her up until they were inches apart. Silent words were exchanged in the intimate moment. Moving closer, they kissed, tenderly at first, savoring the delicious contact, then with a growing passion as their naked bodies touched, hands roaming over slippery skin, caressing, holding, stroking…?.

  With the warm water cascading over their bodies, the couple became lost in their sex play. Then they parted, and Ryan gently set Krysty on the tiled floor. Spreading her legs, he moved closer and eased himself inside her, the heady contact of rock hard and velvet soft combining with the rush of intimate heat to invoke a visceral sensation beyond words. And so began their dance of love, an affirmation of life and devotion in the harsh reality of the Deathlands.

  Chapter Six

  The next morning, a yawning Dean opened the door to the little cabin to be hit by a tumultuous roar of men whooping, dogs barking and blasters firing.

  For an instant, he thought the ville had been taken back by the baron, and the sec men had come to chill him. But as the last dregs of sleep left his mind, he saw the crowd of people was composed entirely of Stone Angels, along with a scattering of women wearing chains. Dean recognized each of the men: Natters, Bradshaw, O’Shay, Durante, Lutz, Shapario, and oddly, Hannigan, his expression unreadable.