The young albino flicked a finger at the door of the cabinet, as if he feared an electric shock. His fingers made the faintest pinging sound as it brushed the metal. He hesitated only a second, then grasped the handle and swung the door open.
It was full of paper.
There were six shelves on the left and five on the right, each filled with neat stacks of paper in different colors and sizes, along with folders and envelopes in cream and white and light brown.
All blank.
Jak pulled sheets off here and there, holding them up to show the others the smooth, untouched blankness. "Must be a store," he said. "Nothing used."
It was a disappointment to Ryan. As he moved through the Deathlands, he was always hoping to come across more information about the times before the great fighting. He'd seen books, films, vids, tapes, papers... but all of that gave only a glimpse through a tiny crack in time. He dreamed sometimes of finding some key to the past, some way of learning what madness had raced through the planet nearly a century back. Like a blinding virus, it had been an insanity that had torn apart the world, wrecking it beyond any hope of redemption. Too much had been lost for it ever to be put back together as it had been. The population had been decimated once and then again and again. Most science had been lost forever, and that, Ryan believed, was no bad thing. From what little he'd learned about the years before 2001, it seemed that the scientists should carry almost as heavy a burden of responsibility for Deathlands as the rabid politicians.
Now the best that he could hope for was that he and his friends would be like a single wave, beating upon a polluted shore, washing over it and withdrawing, leaving the shingled beach a little cleaner.
"Look at this newspaper," Krysty said, picking it up carefully. "It's like dried ashes." She laid it down again on the table, moving the drink can out of the way.
Ryan leaned over to read the faint newsprint. It was called the Ginnsburg Falls Courier, and was apparently registered at Ginnsburg Falls, Oregon. It was dated January 19, 2001.
"Day before Armageddon," Krysty said.
"What is it?" Lori asked.
"Newspaper from the last day of the old world," replied Krysty.
"Where's Oregon?" Ryan asked J.B. "Up north and west, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Lay 'tween California and Washington. Lot of mountains. Not much else."
"Never got there with the Trader."
"Nor me."
The two men had known each other for nearly ten years. Both of them had joined the wagon trains run by the man called the Trader. Ryan had become the right-hand man on the wags and J.B. had been Armorer. They'd roamed most of the central part of Deathlands, buying cheap and selling expensive. It was a profession with a high risk factor. Times you met folks wanted to pay less than your price. Times you even met folks didn't want to pay at all. That was why the ordinary trucks were guarded by war wags. That was why you saw a heap of dying when you rode with the Trader.
"What's it say?" Ryan asked.
Krysty stooped lower, her shadow almost obscuring the delicate newspaper. As she moved it with one hand, parts of the edge flaked away, turning instantly into dust. "Don't breathe on it, or it's going to fall apart," she said.
Everyone moved back a little, except Doc Tanner, who seemed almost hypnotized by the crumbling artifact from before the Big Chill. "What was concerning the good people of Ginnsburg Falls on the very day before most of them went grinning to meet their Maker?" he asked. "Or was this just for the mindless robots who ran these redoubts?"
"Front page says in big letters, 'Zoning Row Splits Council.' Doesn't say anything about there going to be a war or anything like that," Krysty told them.
"It must," Ryan said.
"No. Next story's about women picketing a porn-vid store on Red Maple Street."
Ryan shook his head and read more items from the front page. " 'Councilman Hewer Promises Ped Xing Review.' And what's this? 'Shock Scam Threatens Thrift Store.' There's not a word. It can't be right. Doc? You know most 'bout the past. It can't be from the day before it started."
"Before the missiles darkened the skies and night eternal fell upon this land of the free?" the old man muttered. "Oh, yes. If one saw a bigger paper... the Los Angeles sheets, or the Timesor the Post, they would have carried it for months. Building international tension. Threats and promises. Folks up here in rural Oregon wouldn't have been that worried. There'd been the talk before. There was Cuba. Sweet Jesus, but that was... Oh, such a yearning for small-town trivia that stirs my bosom, my dear friends."
"I can read," interrupted Jak. "This here is 'bout librarian... to do with books. Says got ban some foreign writers. Can't make out names."
Doc Tanner peered at where the young boy was pointing. "Tolstoy. Chekhov. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Dostoyevski. Fyodor Mikhailovich. Russian writers. She was banning them, was she? A short step from burning them." He gave a cackling laugh, muted in the small, low-ceilinged room. "Too late, she was. Oh, yes, I guess I was wrong. It had reached Ginnsburg Falls, after all."
Finnegan had been looking through the notices pinned to the board. The first one he touched disintegrated in a shower of fine dust, mingling with the pale gray powder that covered everything.
"Just rosters. Names and times for duties. Lotsa letters and numbers. Nothing fucking means a thing now. Lists watch times right through to the end of the month."
"No warnings? No clue that the world was going t'fall out of their bottoms?" the chubby gunman said, grinning.
"There," Lori said, pointing to a piece of paper that lay on the floor under the table. Even through the layer of dirt, the red writing, faded to a dull pink, was visible.
"Evac Nine Hundred," Finn read. "What the fuck's that mean?"
Ryan answered him. "Evacuate at nine in the morning. Story is that the last whistle got blown around noon that day. Where would they have gone?"
Nobody replied. Not one of the other redoubts had shown signs of life like this. For some reason that nobody would ever know, this mountain hideaway in Oregon had been left longer than most.
Most of the gateways had a small anteroom like this one. If this one was like the others then the master control room would be beyond the locked door, with its banks of electrical equipment, powered by either a solar or nuke generator, still ticking more than four generations after the last human had been there.
Ryan opened the door, flattening himself against the wall, ready for trouble. Trader used to say that if you kept ready for trouble, then it would never happen. Relax for a moment and you might get to be dead.
The air tasted less flat. Ryan exhaled, watching his breath as it misted in front of him. His guess was that the temperature throughout the complex must be close to freezing. Maybe well below in parts. The computers and control equipment wouldn't function once it dropped below zero.
Apart from a few sheets of paper and a pen, which had evidently been dropped on the floor during the evacuation, everything looked normal. He glanced across at Krysty, raising an eyebrow. "Empty, you guess?"
"Yeah. Think I can hear... No, it's gone. If it was there at all."
A piece of paper crinkled next to his boot, and Ryan stooped to peer at it. It was torn, showing only the words, "Host... Twin..."
It looked as if it had been some kind of food tab.
There was the background whirring and humming of the electrics. One of the overhead lights had shorted out, and it was spitting erratically, tiny sparks showering from the broken fitting. Wheels moved and lights of different color blinked.