Red Holocaust

Chapter Three

With the hiss of compressed air, the massive doorway immediately ahead of them began to rise slowly, clearing the corridor. They remained standing still, hands on top of their heads.

"Good," said the disembodied voice from the speaker. "Very good indeed. The Keeper spares you. A sign of anger, and you would have all been cleansed."

None of the eight needed it spelled out. "Cleansed" was just another word for killed or iced or wasted or chilled or blasted or sent to buy the farm.

"You ain't muties?"

It sounded like a question, so Ryan answered it. "No, we're not muties."

"Them women got funny hair. Ain't natural. Green and red. They muties?"

Ryan thought about Krysty. She didn't really look like a mutie at all, despite what he knew of her hidden powers.

"No, none of us is a mutie."

The crackly voice resumed again. "The Keeper says he wants to know how you got in here?"

"Long story," said J.B. Dix.

"Got time. Keeper's got all the time in the world."

"Can we put our hands down?" asked Ryan.

"No. Yes. Yes, the Keeper says yes. Nobody never got in this redoubt. Never in a hundred, never in a thousand, never in a million years. Keeper don't allow it. Doors sealed tight as a bat's ass. No alarms on the outside. Just from the gateway. That how you got in?"

Ryan glanced sideways at J.B. It was a bad situation. The thin, tinny voice sounded crazy. That didn't alter the fact he had them cold. The forces controlling the redoubt would have access to all kinds of sophisticated weaponry. They needed only to shut that bulkhead again and pump in the nerve gas and they'd be dead in seconds. Better to play along.

"Yeah. We come from the Darks. Don't rightly know how or why."

A cackle of laughter. "Not even the Keeper knows 'bout the gateways. You jumped... where from?"

"The Darks. Used to be called Montana. What else do you want to know?"

"Keeper wants to know everythin', friend. Keeper does know everythin', friend. You say you didn't know where you was comin'?"

"Yeah. Where are we?"

"In good time, friend. Keeper has the redoubt in his charge. Keep it safe. Let no man enter with hate in his heart. You got hate?"

Ryan shook his head. "No. We come in friendship."

Around him he could feel the tension of the others. None of them was very good at waiting.

"Surely shall the lion lay down with the lamb. I have to search the books for word on what to do. Keeper has to take care. Move not, friends. Leave your blasters on the floor. I'll watch. So wait."

"Let's run for it," whispered Okie. She was just behind Ryan.

"Where?" retorted J.B. "Pass that door, and there'll be another."

"Can't just fuckin' wait for the bullet," said Hennings, moving to the side of the passageway and sitting, back against the wall.

"Who do you figure this Keeper is? Some warlord? A baron?"

J.B. shook his head at Ryan's question. "Could be. Sounds old." Lowering his voice, he added, "And crazy as all hell."

They put their guns in a pile and waited, mostly in silence, for about fifteen minutes. Eventually all of them except Okie joined Henn on the floor of the corridor.

"The Keeper has considered. You are people of peace? With hearts full of contrite?"

Ryan didn't know what "contrite" meant, but he nodded anyway. Seemed the best answer. "Yeah."

"You are hungered?"

"Yeah." Finnegan got the answer in first.

"Come forward. Leave your weapons of destruction. You will not need them while under the protection of the Keeper."

"Can't wait to meet him," muttered Hunaker, standing and stretching like a big cat.

Hennings went to retrieve the radio, but the voice from the loudspeaker snapped, "No! Leave that. There is no need to communicate with the chill beyond these walls. None."

"Can hardly reach War Wag One, anyway. Range is only 'bout fifteen miles. Could be way farther off than that." Hennings put the radio back with the blasters and grenades.

Ryan led them through the circular corridor, past several doors in the roof. The smell of cooked food became stronger. Intermittently they passed beneath a tiny, silent vid camera.

"This goddamn place goes on forever," moaned Okie, kicking a wall. Sparks flew from the steel tips of her combat boots.

"Doc? You got any ideas where we might be?" asked Ryan.

Since they'd emerged from the gateway, the old man had been strangely quiet, stalking along, the antiquated hat perched on top of the bony skull. The business of the trap and the creaking voice with its orders hardly seemed to have bothered him at all. Now he started at Ryan's question.

"What was that, my dear Mr. Cawdor? Ifear that my thoughts were elsewhere."

"Any idea where we are?"

"In a redoubt, sir."

"We fuckin' know that," sighed Hunaker.

"It is a place of some size, unless I miss my guess. My memory is clouded — after a jump, I have always been a touch... there were so many."

"How many?"

"Many stockpiles and also many redoubts. Indeed, in places of the blessed land where it was thought attacks might be concentrated, I recall they built some redoubts that were also stockpiles. Perhaps this is such a place."

They'd been walking, by Ryan's calculation, for nearly fifteen minutes, covering more than a mile at their brisk pace.

When they reached a steel barrier, blocking their progress, they stood and stared at it. Finally Ryan stepped forward and looked into the nearest camera,

"I am becoming tired of this. We are all hungry and thirsty and in need of rest. We come in peace. We have laid down our weapons, yet still you treat us like an invadin' enemy."

Even as he spoke, he realized that he had unconsciously slipped into the same form of address as the person behind the screens.

"The Keeper has never seen the like," came the reply, crackling and wheezing. Either the sound reproduction was poor or a decrepit old man was talking. Or both.

"Then let us see this Keeper. Let us talk to him. We are few. This redoubt must hold hundreds of armed men."

A burst of laughter spluttered from the loudspeaker, followed by silence.

J.B. moved closer to Ryan, and whispered, "Could use the plasex and run for that gateway."

"Yeah. Get the fuck out of this fireblasted place. Let's..."

He was interrupted by the door ahead of them beginning to slide slowly upward, revealing the legs, then bodies, then heads of three people standing facing them.

"I'll eat my bastard blaster," whispered Okie, shaking her black hair in disbelief.

Two women and a man were spread across the corridor, two paces apart, each holding a gun. Ryan sized them up, trying to hide his bewilderment. He'd expected to see the cream of the redoubt's guards: a squad of uniformed sec men, helmeted and masked, each with a gleaming laser rifle or sonic stunner.

The man at the center of the trio stood a scant five feet tall, Ryan guessed. He was dressed in a bizarre assortment of rags and tawdry finery: a jacket that bore sparkling sequins, leather breeches that were hacked off raggedly above the scrawny knees, and a woman's high-heeled boot on the right foot and a stained shoe of blue canvas on the left. Numerous medals on scraps of iridescent ribbons, jingled from his left breast. A bandolier that crossed his chest contained an extraordinary range of ammunition. Even at a snatched glance Ryan could make out six or seven different calibers.

It was tough to estimate his age. He was so stooped and bent that he might have been ninety. His long white beard was stained amber, seemingly with nicotine, and strands of orange and green ribbons were plaited through it. His hair was streaked silver and gray, and straggled to his shoulders. His face was in shadow, but it was possible to make out a narrow mouth, a hooked nose and deeply set eyes beneath beetling brows.

On the right was a woman of a similar age and garb. Her jacket and leather breeches were so dirty that their original color was indeterminable. She wore a cap, pulled to one side and decorated with cheap glass brooches. She was grinning, showing a picket fence of broken and chipped teeth.

Ryan finally rested his eyes on the other woman. Close to six feet tall, she had natural poise and elegance. Her hair was a tumbling mane of bright gold over a red satin blouse. Her belt had an ornate silver buckle. Her skirt was pale maroon suede — it ended well above the knee — and her legs were encased in high boots of polished crimson leather, the high heels ornamented with tiny silver spurs that tinkled softly as she moved. A pearl-handled pistol hung at her right hip.

Her eyes were a deep summer blue, gazing frankly at Ryan and each of the others in turn. The touch of her eyes was like a caress across Ryan's cheek, and he was astonished at the girl's power. She couldn't have been more than sixteen.

All three of the strangers carried the same weapon and held them with the casual ease of professionals. Yet there was something about them that gave Ryan pause. Their ease was studied, almost as if they'd mastered it from a picture in a book. Real killers had a constant tension to them; they never relaxed.

"Heckler & Koch silenced sub-MG," whispered J.B., at Ryan's elbow.

But Ryan had already recognized the guns. He'd seen odd examples in uncovered stockpiles. The model was the MP-5 SD-2. Loaded, they weighed nearly seven pounds. Not that accurate over any distance, but twenty paces away, as they were now, the trio of guns would rip them apart.

"Greetings from the Keeper of this redoubt, strangers," croaked the old man. "Never have there been such outsiders here."

Ryan was utterly confused. Where were the sentinels? The platoons of armed sec men? Who was this dotard with the two ill-matched women?

"Thank you. Are we welcome here?"

"We think so. The Keeper thinks you are. What are your names?"

"I'm Ryan Cawdor. This is J.B. Dix." The Armorer took off his crumpled fedora and nodded. "Hennings and Finnegan. Lady with the green hair is called Hunaker, and the lady with the red hair's Krysty Wroth. Tall one's Okie."

"What of him?" The barrel of the machine gun swung toward Doc, who was lurking at the rear of the group.

"Name's Doc Tanner. Dr. Theophilus Tanner. I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, sir," he said, bowing deeply, swinging his tall hat behind him. "And you, ladies."

Ryan was thunderstruck. "Tanner? Theophilus Tanner! You said you didn't know your fuckin' name, Doc! How in the?.."

The old man shuffled his feet in embarrassment, like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He grinned expansively and shrugged. "Guess a door sprang open that I'd thought had closed forever. Just came, like that."

"Theophilus," said Krysty. "What kind of a name is that, Doc?"

"My name, madam. A poor thing, perchance, but mine own." He backed away, mumbling to himself. "How could I have forgotten it? How could I?"

"Day of surprises," said J.B.

If Doc's memory had really returned, then there were many questions that Ryan wanted to ask him. But that would have to wait until later.

"You had best come. That is the invite of the Keeper. There is food."

"Our blasters?" asked Okie.

"Later, my pretty little chick. All things later. First come and eat. There is enough."

For the first time, the old woman spoke, laughing in a bubbling snigger like air rising through molasses. "Oh, but there's plenty for us all for eternity." She seemed likely to choke on her own merriment. "Eternity, or even fuckin' longer!"

The stunted old man made sure his "guests" went ahead of him. The two women stayed behind them on either side, and he stayed right at the back, calling out instructions.

"This place is bigger'n most villes," said Ryan, walking beside Krysty. They walked another nine or ten minutes, moving into a part of the redoubt with side rooms, all with closed doors. Twice they reached junctions, taking first the left fork, and later the right.

"Any ideas, Doc Tanner?" Ryan asked, glancing back over his shoulder.

"Just Doc does fine. No. Biggest I've ever seen. I figure there's maybe a stockpile linked. I confess that I have never heard of such a monstrous Gormenghastian pile."

"Got to be hundreds running it," suggested Krysty, but Doc shook his head.

"I beg to differ, Miss Wroth. They were designed to last millenia with no supervision. A child could manage one of these once everything was set and functioning. I recall the malfunction rate was markedly below one percent of one percent of one percent."

Ahead there was yet another barrier.

"Halt. The Keeper commands obedience. Beyond that portal is food and rest for the weary traveler. Not that we've ever had a traveler before, weary or not."

"We can take 'em," whispered Finnegan. "We all got knives. Krysty's got the three throwers. Take 'em all easy as fartin'."

"They'll take half of us. Not good enough," said J.B.

Ryan watched the doddering old man aim a small black remote control device at the top of the closed door. It was obviously a simple sonic switch that activated the opening lock.

"Move forward and enter the demesne of the Keeper of the redoubt."

They stepped through, beneath another raised barrier, and found themselves in a great mall of another century. The floor was a patterned mosaic of soft tiles. At the center of the mall, which was two hundred paces long by a hundred wide, was a glittering fountain shaped from curves of polished metal, with water burbling and chirruping from level to level. And on every side were stores. But stores of a kind that none of them had ever seen even in their wildest dreams.

Ryan looked around, his jaw sagging, his single eye dazzled wherever he stared.

"Blessed Judas Iscariot," he heard Doc whisper. "We've chron-jumped."

But the words meant nothing to Ryan, and he forgot them in the bewildering sights all about them.

"I'll fuck a dead stickie," said Hunaker in amazement.

"The Keeper will allow you to reconnoiter the parameters of the redoubt once you have eaten."

"This must take an army," said Hennings.

The old man cackled. "You think so, black man?"

"We told you our names," said Ryan. "How 'bout yours?"

"This my wife, Rachel," said the old man, pointing to the old woman, who curtsied. "And this is my other wife, Lori. She don't say much. Bein' a dummy, that's why."

"And where are the others?" asked Krysty.

"Others? Ain't none. We're everybody." He and the old woman giggled.

"Then, where's... who?.." Ryan was lost for words.

The old man had a coughing fit, and it was some seconds before he could speak clearly. He wiped some drooling spittle from his beard. "Me? I'm Quint the Keeper, young man. The Keeper of the redoubt, and my word is law, and the law is death."