Zero City Read online

  [Scanned by Highroller.]

  [Proofed by Yours Truly.]

  ...no sane man who has ever fought in a war ever wishes to do so again. It is madness and chaos and nightmare combined. Yet most will do so again and again for the most ordinary of reasons: honor, duty, a solemn promise, and of course, to protect or avenge their kith and kin. Black powder may charge our guns, sir, but it is red blood that charges the common soldier...

  General John Gibbon, 1862 Army of the Potomac

  Chapter One

  As the swirling mists of the trans-mat chamber faded away, the seven people inside the unit tumbled to the cold floor, gasping for breath.

  In silent agony, the companions lay where they fell, waiting for their tortured bodies to finally overcome the horrid sickness that always accompanied a jump. Almost an hour passed before the first of them was able to stir.

  “N-no m-more,” J. B. Dix whispered, a string of drool hanging from his mouth. His wire-rimmed glasses slid from his shirt pocket and fell to the floor as a tremor shook the man. “D-dark night, I can’t take...another bastard jump.”

  Panting for breath, Ryan Cawdor swallowed before being able to answer. Fireblast! He had known they were pushing the envelope with three jumps in a single day, and now they were paying the price. It felt as if fire ants were eating his guts.

  “A-agreed,” the man croaked. “Don’t...give a motherless damn if we find any food in this redoubt or not. No more jumps for a while. Win, lose or draw, this is it.”

  Mumbled agreements from the others answered his decision.

  “About time,” drawled Jak Lauren. The albino teenager was lying on his side, fighting to control his rebellious stomach. His pale skin looked even whiter than usual, almost the same color as his long snowy hair. The armpits of his shirt were stained dark with sweat. “N-not done six before.”

  “Won’t ever again, either,” gasped Krysty Wroth, unbuttoning the front of her khaki overalls to expose a wealth of creamy cleavage. Rivulets of sweat streamed off her lovely face, the woman’s fiery red hair flexing and moving as if stirred by secret winds.

  “Don’t exaggerate. It was six in a week,” corrected Dr. Mildred Wyeth, leaning against the chamber wall. She rubbed the back of a hand across her mouth as if trying to remove an unpleasant taste. “Only did three in the same day.”

  “More than enough.”

  “Agreed.”

  Resembling a Civil War college professor with his silvery hair and old-fashioned clothing, Dr. Theophilus Tanner lay on the cold floor, savoring the coolness against his cheek, his hands white-knuckled about his ebony walking stick. Patiently, he waited for the world around him to stop spinning and settle down. For some reason, the jumps hit him harder than the others. Perhaps it was a legacy from the time-travel experiments done to him by the whitecoats of Operation Chronos. Doc didn’t know, and for the moment, he didn’t care. Every peaceful second brought him away from the debilitating jump sickness and put strength into his body.

  Grimacing in determination, Dean Cawdor forced himself to stand upright, then crashed back down on his ass. The eleven-year-old blinked away the hurt pride, and began the struggle to rise again.

  “Stay still, son,” Ryan ordered brusquely. “Rushing only makes the aftereffects last longer.”

  “Okay,” the boy agreed, relaxing into a heap.

  Disregarding his own advice, Ryan struggled to his hands and knees, concentrating on every move as he struggled upright. His vision was clearing, and he was feeling stronger by the second. Briefly, he wondered if he was acclimatizing to the shock of disintegration. Doc had once theorized that the sickness was actually a person’s soul searching for the body so rudely taken away. Foolishness, of course. But the time traveler often talked utter nonsense.

  Adjusting the patch over his left eye and squinting to focus the right, Ryan glanced about the chamber. The walls and floor were made of a smooth blue material speckled with flecks of gold. He didn’t recognize the color combination, so they had never been in this redoubt before. For the millionth time, he wondered why the predark scientists had decided to color code the redoubts instead of just putting up signs listing the locations. Just another of the endless ancient mysteries they would probably never solve.

  Drawing in a lungful of air, Cawdor noted the atmosphere tasted flat and smelled antiseptically clean, as if every possible sign of life were missing. On the rare occasions they found an inhabited redoubt, there were faint odors of sweat, sex, blasters and food, hot oil in machines, the sharp stink of ozone from the nuclear reactor. Both life and death carried a perfume easily recognizable. This one smelled deserted.

  “Terra incognita,” Doc said, sitting upright. “Albeit, an aesthetically pleasing locale.”

  “Talk English, you old coot,” Mildred muttered, brushing the long beaded hair off her face. Automatically, the healer started to reach for the canteen at her belt, then stopped. Damn, she had forgotten that they ran out of juice two jumps ago. Although, to be honest, none of her herbal concoctions ever seemed to ease their jump sickness much. But the physician was grimly determined to keep searching until she found a combination that worked.

  “We’ve never been here before,” Doc explained.

  “I know that.”

  “Company,” Jak barked, pointing at the floor.

  That jarred everybody awake. Stumbling closer to the teenager, Ryan saw a series of boots scuffs marring the floor, which had gone unnoticed in the aftermath of the multiple jump.

  “Those are Army boots,” Ryan snapped, drawing the 9 mm SIG-Sauer pistol from his belt. “Triple red, people!” Metallic clicks and clacks filled the room as the companions drew their assorted weapons.

  “Are they going in or coming out?” Krysty asked, easing back the hammer on her S&W .38 revolver. Her bearskin coat billowed about the redhead’s legs as she walked closer to the door, carefully keeping to one side. Only a fool approached an unknown door straight on.

  “Seem to be both,” J.B. said, retrieving his spectacles and setting them onto his bony nose. Unfolding the wire stock of his 9 mm Uzi submachine gun, he eased off the safety and slid the selector switch to burst. Now every time he pulled the trigger, the blaster would fire three times in less than a second. More than enough firepower for any conceivable danger.

  “New or old?” Doc asked, laying his swordstick against the wall to free his hands. With oft practiced ease, Doc emptied a few pockets and began the laborious process of loading his huge .44 LeMat. The Civil War handgun was a percussion piece and each chamber in the rotating cylinder had to be purged and hand charged with black powder, cloth wad and lead ball, and then a copper nipple of fulminating mercury slid into the notch at the base of each individual chamber before it was ready to fire. Although old and slow, under the control of the gentleman from Vermont, the LeMat was a weapon of mass destruction fully capable of blowing a man in half. It was cumbersome to reload, but the 9-shot capacity more than made up for that small flaw.

  Blaster in hand, Jak dropped to a knee and rubbed a finger across the scuff marks. “Not tell,” he announced. The bright fluorescent lights overhead glinted off the six-inch blue-steel barrel of his .357 Colt Python. The handcannon was almost the rival of Doc’s monstrous LeMat.

  “Maybe old and new on top each other,” Dean offered. Drawing his Browning Hi-Power pistol, the boy dropped the clip to check the load, then slammed it back and jacked the slide.

  “Only one way to find out,” Mildred stated, holding the strap of her med kit with one hand, the other full of a Czech-made .38-caliber ZKR target pistol. The precision revolver was amazingly accurate over long distances, as many enemies and muties had found out the hard way.

  “I’ll take point,” Ryan said, holstering his handblaster and sliding
a Steyr SSG-70 rifle off his shoulder. He worked the bolt to check the magazine inside. Satisfied, he slammed it back, chambering a long 7.62 mm round for immediate use. “J.B., cover the rear, Dean and Jak with Mildred and Krysty.”

  Listening for a while, Ryan eased open the door and stepped quickly into the next area, automatically moving to the side to clear the field of fire for the people behind him. The precautions proved unnecessary, as this was merely the standard antechamber to the mat-trans room, little more than a ready room for the personnel using the mat-trans chamber to check their equipment before a jump. Across the antechamber was a plain door that led to the main corridor of the redoubt, and another to the side made of burnished steel. That caught their attention.

  Krysty covered the men as Ryan checked for booby traps and J.B. picked the lock. Going through first, Ryan glanced around the office and gave a sharp whistle, announcing that the room was clear. The others followed close behind. It was a standard military office with an American flag covering one wall. A large steel desk stood beneath it, the top covered with an elaborate communications console. There were a few chairs scattered about for visitors, and a sofa in the corner. This was probably the base commander’s office.

  Taking a position near the sofa, Ryan motioned Krysty forward with his rifle, and she opened the door leading to the corridor outside. When nothing happened, she knelt low and took a quick look outside in both directions.

  “Clear,” the redhead announced, standing. “No sign of anybody.”

  “Leave it open,” Ryan decided with caution. “Doc, go stand guard.” The old man saluted with his sword-stick and moved into the corridor, his LeMat resting comfortably in the crook of an arm. Longblaster in hand, Ryan stood guard while Mildred glanced under the furniture and J.B. peeked into a corner. Checking behind the door leading into the trans-mat chamber, Dean saw the usual sign posted there: Entry Absolutely Forbidden To All But B12-Cleared Personnel. It was the same in every redoubt they had ever visited.

  Suddenly, Ryan glanced about. Had he just heard music? The man held his breath and listened hard, but heard nothing.

  “Anything in the desk?” Mildred asked, rifling through a file cabinet. Officers often hid things inside the locked cabinets they didn’t want to share, but not this time. Nothing but status reports, correspondence and shipping-receiving manifests, the endless effluvia of the predark military. In triplicate.

  “Just papers and comp disks so far,” J.B. reported, checking drawer after drawer. Paper clips, rubber bands. He slammed the last one shut. “Nothing useful.”

  Walking over to the small wet bar, Jak checked over the array of bottles. Liquor was a good item for trade, and vodka could also be used for cleaning wounds and degreasing weapons. “Son bitch,” the Cajun said in surprise. “Look that!”

  The others gathered close as he turned, holding a squashed cardboard box in the palm of his hand. The lid was ripped off, exposing the neat rows of red and brass shotgun shells nestled inside.

  “Army issue,” Ryan said, scowling. “The owners of those boots must have left in a hurry.”

  “And left ammo behind?” J.B. scoffed, lifting a round. Sixteen gauge, too small for his 12-bore shotgun, but he pocketed the shell anyway. “Damn good condition. Almost perfect.”

  Jak agreed as he put the rest of the box into a pocket of his vest. “Air dry,” he offered as a possible explanation.

  “Or the armory has been recently emptied,” Krysty countered dourly. Just what they needed, another empty redoubt.

  “No signs of battle, so they weren’t attacked,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “Not directly anyway. Could have been chased out.”

  Hoisting the Uzi onto his shoulder, J.B. checked the radiation counter on his shirt collar. “No rads,” he announced. “Place is clean.”

  “It’s clean now,” Ryan said, the barrel of the Steyr steady as a rock. “Mebbe it wasn’t when they departed.”

  Feeling ill to his stomach, Dean stood firm and addressed his father. “I’m ready for another jump, Dad.”

  The elder Cawdor almost smiled, then reached out to ruffle his son’s hair. “First we recce the redoubt,” he said. “Jumping is what you do when a plan fails. It’s never the plan.”

  The boy nodded in understanding.

  “Check the barracks first?” Krysty asked.

  “Armory,” Ryan replied, wrapping the strap of his longblaster around his forearm for a better grip. “We’re almost as low on ammo as food. With any luck, we’ll find something there.”

  “Sure as hell hope so,” Mildred stated, shifting her backpack into a more comfortable position. “I’m about six shots away from throwing rocks.”

  “And me,” Dean added.

  Jak snorted. “Why got so many knives.”

  “Agreed, my friend. The one great benefit of blades,” Doc espoused, leaning on his ebony stick, the silver lion’s head peeking out from between his laced fingers, “is their complete lack of ever needing to be reloaded.”

  Heading for the stairs, the companions swept through the corridor in a standard two-on-two coverage pattern. At an intersection, Ryan and Krysty stopped, allowing Doc and Dean to move past and secure the other side.

  At the stairs, Doc and Dean stood as anchor while Jak and J.B. moved up the steps. Mildred followed grumpily along with the others. The landing was covered with trash, MRE food pack wrappings and empty cig packs. The bright yellow of an official military notice peeked out from among the refuse, and Ryan speared it with his rifle.

  “ ‘A summary notice of execution for two soldiers who tried to leave the redoubt without proper authorization,’” he read aloud. ‘”The charge is treason.’ “

  “Probably trying to get back to their families,” J.B. said. Then he saw the pained expression on Doc’s face and stopped talking. The man had been yanked away from his family in 1896 by Overproject Whisper.

  “Could have been plain old thieves,” Mildred said, quickly changing the topic. “Maybe black market runners.”

  “Don’t care,” Jak said, his stomach rumbling audibly. “Need find food.”

  Continuing up to the next level, Ryan paused before opening the door and tilted his head against a cloth-covered grille in the wall.

  “Music,” he said, sounding amazed. “Weak and off tune.”

  “Mebbe this place isn’t deserted,” J.B. said grimly.

  With a rusty creak, the door swung open on a long chemical laboratory. The tables were stacked with retorts and beakers in a wild state of disarray, and the wall shelves were stacked with countless bottles of unknown chemicals. A pile of animal cages was filled with tiny bones.

  “Germ warfare?” Dean asked nervously.

  “Wrong equipment,” Mildred stated. “Don’t know what it’s for.”

  Walking through the cold, sterile laboratory, Ryan curled a lip in disgust. “Science rules,” he muttered softly. But that had been months ago, at the redoubt filled with Kaa’s army. This one was stripped clean as a fresh corpse.

  Leaving the lab, they went past a communications room and at the end of the corridor found the heavy door to the Armory. Behind the veined portal of burnished titanium, the U.S. government had stashed away food and blasters for the troops to utilize after skydark. Unfortunately for the companions, the redoubts were usually picked clean during evacuation.

  “Mebbe we’ll find some reloading equipment,” J.B. said hopefully, tilting back his fedora. “Not many folks thought to take those, and I can make enough ammo to hold us for a good while if the tins of cordite are still good. Even make something for Doc.”

  “Smokeless gunpowder will not function in my black powder gun,” the tall man rumbled.

  “Will if I cut it enough.”

  “And the primers?”

  A shrug. “There you’re out of luck. I can’t make those.”

  Doc touched the cardboard box in the pocket of his frock coat that held the precious copper nipples for his handgun. He was down to eighteen. Maybe it was t
ime for him to switch to a modem breechloader. He savagely shook those thoughts from his mind. No, that would never happen.

  Shouldering his rifle, Ryan grabbed the release lever of the vault door and released it instantly. “Cold,” he said, sounding amazed. “The bastard door is freezing cold!”

  “Heavy armored and arctic cold,” Krysty whispered. “Gaia, you...you don’t think this might be a deep-storage locker?”

  “Naw,” Jak drawled contemptuously. “Impossible.”

  “More than likely, you are right, my young friend,” Doc rumbled thoughtfully, reaching out to touch the icy metal. “We never found one before.”

  “But if it was...” Mildred started. “My God, we could find anything in there. Enough food to feed an army for a year, clothes, medicine, anything, everything!”

  “What’s a deep storage?” Dean asked. The term puzzled the boy until suddenly he remembered his father telling him about them over a campfire one night. Or rather, his father had relayed the tales told by the Trader. Deep-storage lockers were very special vaults designed to protect food and ammo for centuries, not just for a few years like a regular armory. It was to be the predark government’s emergency reserves in case food couldn’t be grown outside, or the fighting was worse than ever imagined.

  “A DS locker,” J.B. whispered, trying to keep the excitement from his voice. “All the equipment needed to rebuild a high-tech civilization from scratch behind one door.”

  “Mebbe, mebbe not,” Ryan said, grabbing the lever and easing it downward. “Let’s find out.” The handle resisted his efforts, and it took all of the man’s prodigious strength to shift its position until the main lock disengaged.

  Silently, the massive door swung ponderously open a hairline crack, pale gases loudly streaming out from the thin opening.

  “Back,” Mildred snapped, and the companions retreated to a safe distance while the vault disgorged its contents of nonbreathable inert gases into the air system of the redoubt.

  Involuntarily, the physician shivered at the temperature drop. God, she hated the cold! Two hundred years ago she had gone into a hospital for a simple operation. There had been complications, and the doctors had been forced to put her in an experimental cryogenic freezer to try to save her life. Decades later, Ryan thawed her from the living death, her illness mysteriously cured.