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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_40_-_Nightmare_Passage
Dean cocked his head quizzically. "Say what, Dad?"
Ryan rose swiftly from the table. "Let's get the fuck out of here."
IT TOOK THE FRIENDS only a few minutes to collect their belongings and troop
down the corridor to the mat-trans chamber. Dean had stowed a few of the
sealed ration packs in his duffel, and Jak carried freshly filled canteens.
Mildred ducked into the lab-oratory to retrieve the bottles of antibiotics.
After a quick search, she also found a sealed package of disposable syringes.
J.B. uneasily mentioned that they might want to visit the Medisterile unit
before they went on their way.
"O'Brien made no reference to any infectious organisms," Mildred assured him.
"I
think we're safe. Besides, we've got the medicines, right?"
"Right," he replied, but his tone was dubious.
Inside the mat-trans unit, the seven people found places on the interlocking
pattern of raised floor disks. Ryan stood by the door, waiting for his friends
to position themselves before he pulled it shut to initiate the automatic jump
mechanism.
"Ready?"
His party responded in affirmatives, and Ryan swung the door to. He quickly
crossed the chamber and sat down between Dean and Krysty. He waited for the
subsonic hum to begin, for the hexagonal disks to exude their familiar glow.
He waited. And waited. And nothing happened.
Everyone's eyes darted back and forth, first in puzzlement, then in a growing
fear.
Ryan returned to the armaglass door, opened it and pulled it firmly shut.
Nothing happened no whine, no glow, no spark-shot mist.
He pushed open the door again, carefully inspect-ing the circuitry actuator on
the
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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_40_-_Nightmare_Passage lock, making certain full
contact was achieved. He slammed it closed and stood silently in baffled
anger.
With a sigh, Mildred pushed herself to her feet. "I think we get the idea. We
can't leave this place by the gateway."
"Thing worked before," J.B. grunted, moving to the door and shouldering it
open.
He examined the circuitry carefully, running his fingers over it. "Damned if I
can find anything wrong."
"Hell Eyes," Krysty said, a strange calm in her voice. "He's interfering with
the machinery."
Ryan turned toward her. Despite her tone of placid acceptance, her eyes were
green pools of dread. He felt that dread, too, and the vision of a
crimson-eyed skull flashed into his mind. He fought it back.
"Hell Eyes, my ass," he rasped fiercely. "How-ever the bastard was made, he's
just another mutie."
Swinging the door wide, Ryan stamped out of the chamber. "It's probably
daylight by now. Let's take a look-see outside."
He stalked through the anteroom, the control room, past the hatches and down
the corridor in a fast, angry stride. Reaching the sec door before the others,
he threw up the lever, his emotions making him reckless.
The door creaked and squeaked upward. Ryan fisted his SIG-Sauer, ready to
trigger it at anything with legs, no matter how few or how many. A flood of
brilliant sunlight all but blinded him.
Shielding his eye from the sun's assault, he stepped cautiously out of the
recessed doorway. As his vision adjusted to the glare, he saw a dead land
stretching away in drifting dunes of ocher and saf-fron. Judging by the
position of the sun, he figured it was only a few hours after dawn. The air
was already parched and hot.
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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_40_-_Nightmare_Passage
The heat was deceptive, almost comfortable at first. Then Ryan began to sweat
profusely, globes of perspiration springing to his brow and body. Within
moments, he felt like a walking swamp.
His companions joined him, blinking and gri-macing at the high temperature.
Ryan turned around to study the exterior of the redoubt. It was a gray half
dome, nearly buried on all sides by sand drifts.
"Where is this place?" Krysty asked.
J.B. took the compact sextant from the pocket of his coat. Pushing back the
brim of his hat, he squinted into the eyepiece and took the necessary
sighting. Then, from another pocket, he withdrew a crumpled chart and
consulted it.
"Near as I can figure," he said, "we're in Cali-fornia, near Guadalupe, a town
a good ways inland and about 150 miles north of what used to be Los Angeles."
"I thought California sank into the sea," Dean said.
"Most of it did," Ryan said. "At least, a lot of it to the south of the San
Andreas
Fault took a per-manent dip. What was left became the Western Is-lands,
remember?"
Dean nodded. "Yeah. Place stunk of sulfur, like rotten eggs. Place where we
last saw Trader."
J.B. stowed the sextant and chart back into his coat. "If it's any
consolation, we're not on one of those bastard islands. Best as I recollect,
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folks call this region the
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