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have probably been buried in the back of Ryan's skull.
The Smith amp; Wesson scattergun fired eight rounds of Remington flechettes,
twenty inch-long darts in each shot. At any range over fifty yards the spread
was so great that they were of little lethal value.
But the mutie had been only a dozen paces from J.B., and the flechettes had,
literally, ripped its heart apart.
As Ryan got to his feet, still holding his blaster, he noticed what lay on the
floor a few steps behind the most recent mutie corpsea severed human arm, so
slender that it must have belonged to a dead child, with
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Deathlands - Cold Asylum three fingers missing, gnawed off at the splintered
knuckles.
J.B. was checking the bodies of the ghouls, whistling between his teeth as he
realized what they'd stumbled on. "I caught the smell. Thought it was a
hospital."
Ryan nodded, joining him in the main passage. "Same here. But the body parts
have been emptied of blood. Preserved in some way. Frozen or pumped with
chemicals."
"This redoubt must have been used as a graveyard."
"The word is 'morgue,' John." A pause. "Or, perhaps 'mortuary' would be more
accurate. But certainly not a graveyard."
They both turned and saw Mildred watching them from way down the tunnel, her
voice carried by the excellent acoustics.
"The others with you?" Ryan asked, walking toward the woman, his eye
constantly on the watch for more danger.
"Haven't seen them." She looked past him to J.B.
"Hello, John. Thought I might not ever see you again."
"Me, too, Mildred."
Ryan moved aside as they embraced, hugging each other, the woman burying her
face in the man's shoulder. For several long seconds none of them spoke. When
Mildred finally broke away she was sniffing, wiping her nose.
"Must be those bastard stinking chemicals. They made my eyes water."
Ryan glanced at his chron. "Nearly ten o'clock. I came out of the jump just
after eight. There was a repeater on the wall in the control room."
J.B. was industriously polishing his glasses. "Eight-twenty for me."
Mildred's jaw dropped. "Eight-forty. Intervals of twenty minutes between each
of us. You think"
Ryan was trying to work it out, and he didn't answer for a moment. "If there's
a twenty minute gap, then there's three possibilities. Everyone's ahead of us.
Or everyone's behind us. Or they're split up."
"They could have wandered off down any of the other passages," Mildred
observed.
"And run into these cannibal muties. Haven't heard any noise of a fight."
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"Nor me," Ryan agreed.
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Deathlands - Cold Asylum
"You didn't hear anyone behind you?" The Armorer was slipping another round
into the shotgun.
Mildred shook her head. "No. Found the code for the elevator on the wall and
came on up."
"Mebbe we should go back, Ryan. See if it's been used again by Doc or Krysty
or someone."
"I don't understand why the shooting hasn't brought some more of the muties.
Noise must've carried right through this part of the redoubt." Ryan looked at
the four bodies and the sad, scattered remnants of human flesh.
J.B. repeated his question. "How about going to check the elevator, Ryan?"
"Why not?"
Mildred had stooped to examine the corpses, straightening, shuddering. "Bad
sight of the week, friends.
Sickest specimens I ever saw outside the covers of Japanese horror comics. If
that's what eating human flesh does for you, then I think I might turn
vegetarian."
Ryan looked down the gentle slope that would bring them back to the top of the
deep shaft. "All right,"
he said. "Close together and on triple-red."
"I'M WANDERING as lonely as a Perdition! I seem to have mislaid what I
wandered lonely as. A
flower? A cloud? No, I think that it wasn't that, either. But I certainly seem
most damnably lonely here."
Doc had stepped out, past the surgical gloves and gowns, hardly noticing them.
He walked around the control room, passing the screen that carried Mildred's
message without it registering on his consciousness. He was humming to
himself.
The wall clock was now showing just one minute shy of ten o'clock.
"You're a trained scientist, Theophilus. Exercise that rapier-keen intellect
and work out just what the devil, what the Satan, what the Beelzebub, what the
Hades, what" He jerked his head to snap himself out of the pattern. "What has
happened to the others? Where are they? What went wrong?"
He sat at a desk, close to the sec doors, and looked vaguely around him.
"Redoubt in Florida was about to be drowned. Something went wrong and got
separated in the jump." He ticked off the points on his bony fingers. "All
ended up in different places. Damn it, I'm starting to speak in some infernal
telegraphese. Now, if everyone went elsewhere, then the probability is that
they all tried again. I have ended here, wherever 'here' happens to be. Why
should they not also have ended up in this redoubt? The answer is that they
might." Doc laughed. "And then again, my dear old duffer, perhaps they
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Deathlands - Cold Asylum might not."
He stood. "If you wish to make a practical test of the hypothesis, then that
is what you shall do. I shall boldly go where somebody else might have gone
before."
Doc walked to the door and moved the green lever to the "up" position.
KRYSTY, FEELING an overwhelming fear of disaster, was close to the ragged edge
of panic. She arrived with Michael and Dean at the closed door of the
elevator, seeing a light showing that the cage was at the top of the shaft.
"Gaia!" She banged a fist on the cold metal.
"There's a coded sec lock," Dean said, "but it looks real triple-grunge
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difficult."
"We'll never get it." Her keen mind felt as though it were trying to operate
under water. "There have to be millions of combinations."
"If the others are ahead, they must've gone that way." Michael scratched his
nose. "Unless they somehow got one of the side doors open."
"No. They're up on top. I can feel that. But I How the fuck can we open it?"
"Krysty!"
"What, Dean?"
"I don't think I ever heard you say 'fuck' before. Wait till I see Dad."
She managed a part smile that didn't get within a country mile of her narrowed
emerald eyes. "You do that, Dean. When we meet him, you tell him."
"What's this written here?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]