Crater Lake

They opened five cases altogether, but they were all the same. Ryan couldn't stop laughing at the look on J.B.'s face. There they were, all in rows, all in a thin coat of grease to protect them through eternity and beyond.

Something like three hundred thousand black plastic zippers.

Chapter Five

Ryan whistled softly between his teeth, considering all the options, failing to find one that looked even remotely worth trying.

The right fork of the corridor had finished in a blank dead end only fifty yards or so from the sliding entrance to the stores. Retracing their steps, they rounded the first bend to the left and found themselves faced with a dark section of the passage completely blocked by a massive earthslide.

That seemed to limit which direction they could go. The section of the stores where they'd found the fur coats led only to the totally wrecked sec door; Ryan knew they didn't have enough explosives to shift it. There was no other way out, and they could go neither forward or back.

It didn't look good.

"Figure there's enough stuff to eat an' drink to keep us alive for a week. Mebbe ten to twelve days if we're real careful," J.B. said.

"If we get through the slip, we should be somewheres round the place where the corridor passes the broken door. Should loop around," Ryan said.

"That looks like it's about a mile wide," Fi

Jak suddenly dropped to his hands and knees, staring intently at the floor where Fi

The others looked at him, puzzled, until Ryan also noticed what the boy had spotted.

"Fireblast! Look. Footprints. Those muties have been along here. Means there's some way in or out."

"And the air's fresh," Lori exclaimed, clapping her hands in delight.

"Let me," Jak said, not waiting for a reply as he scampered up the shadowed pile of gray-orange dirt and picked his way through the tumbled heaps of concrete and twisted steel. His newly acquired sectioned spear rattled on the stones as he went. When he reached the top, it was hard to see him, but his snow-white hair flared like a magnesium beacon.

"Yeah. Like other. Narrow, but dark. Can't see through." His voice was muted and they watched him disappear.

"Jak!" Ryan shouted. "Come back. We'll all go if'n it's safe."

The boy reappeared, his red eyes seeming to glow like rubies. "Yeah. Be tight for some." He stared pointedly at Fi

Ryan looked at J.B., seeing from his expression that he was thinking the same thing. "That mutie..."

"Yeah, Ryan. Small bastard. Dirt on his clothes. Spear like that... useful in a tu

"You reckon they're up there?"

J.B. nodded. "Could be. Waiting for us."

"One way to find out."

The Armorer gri

It was the begi

At their highest the tu

Most of the way, the tu

By mutual agreement, Jak went first, his lithe, ski

The only sound was panting and scrabbling, with an occasional curse or groan of discomfort.

It was agreed that Jak would stop every four minutes and that everyone would remain silent and still while Krysty listened for any warning of the muties.

At the third stop, at a point where the tu

"I fear that we are in the land of no return, my dearest dove," he said gently, patting her on the arm in the way that one would try to gentle a frightened foal. "It is ever onward and upward for us all."

"Don't like dark, Theo, lover," she said.

"Get her to keep her voice down, Doc," Ryan warned. "If there's muties down here, they'll just have to sit quiet and tight and pick us off. Must keep as quiet as we can."

"Watch out for boobies, Whitey," J.B. urged the albino. "Sharp sticks, trailing wires, a deadfall in the tu

"How come you know so much 'bout tu

"Read a book once. Found it in a ruined house, somewheres round North Platte, up in 'braska. Remember it, Ryan?"

It rang a distant bell for Ryan. "Sure. Tu

"And you lost it, you son of a bitch."

"Yeah, I remember that, too."

J.B. turned back to whisper to Jak. "There were tu

"Guess blasters no use in tu

J.B. sniffed, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Despite the intensely cold clamminess in the tu

"Read of one. Smith an' Wesson .44 Magnum. Six-shot, cylinder load. Weighed in around two pounds. Exposed hammer on it. Fired fifteen-pellet round, starred like a shotgun. But they cut out most of the noise and the flash."

"Sounds good t'me," Jak said, smiling. "Could do with one of them here, case we run into muties."

"Keep that spear handy, son," Ryan warned.

"He's right," Krysty added. "Got me a feeling that we'll have some company real soon."

They moved on.

At one point the tu

When he was free, he hissed back to Ryan that they ought to abandon their bulky cold-weather coats. "Be best, after a fucking tight spot like that. Can't do that again, Ryan."

Despite Fi

"Keep the coats as long as we can. When we get out, we'll need them, Fi

"Sure, Ryan. Whenwe get out. Or maybe it's if we fucking get out."

"We'll get out, Fi

A hundred feet farther along, they came to a dead halt. The tu

"If it rains up top, then it's coming this way," he whispered back.