Jak was just in front of the Armorer, who was plucking the huge insects from the tangled skein of snowy hair, dropping them and splitting them under his boot heels.
They reached the bottom of the slope, moving at a brisk walk. There seemed fewer of the massive roaches as they climbed upward.
Ryan made the mistake of glancing at the dimly visible ceiling. At that precise moment two of the revolting creatures came flopping onto his face.
He distinctly felt the saw-edged mandibles snap shut on the patch over his blinded left eye, while the other clawed at his lips, trying to wriggle into his half-open mouth. He dropped the G-12, letting it dangle from its sling, and tore at the glittering, hard carapaces of the roaches. The light was less faint, and he could see the eyes on their wobbling stalks, rolling at him on the elongated skulls.
The one on the upper part of his face was easily dislodged, and Ryan heaved it against the wall, seeing it split open, the two halves trailing slime down the pale concrete. But the insect by his mouth was stronger and more persistent, and he feared it might pull off a chunk of his flesh if he tried to rip it from his face.
On an impulse, Ryan opened his mouth wider, luring the roach to scrabble with its feelers, jutting its teeth toward the tempting target of the man's fleshy tongue.
Snapping his teeth shut, Ryan felt the brittle crispness of the cockroach's neck yield between his jaws. Somewhere down in what used to be Alabama, Ryan had once rested in a field containing fresh, morning-cold celery. Now that same sensation came back to him.
He spit out the severed head, feeling the body fall away, its legs twitching in a residual and belated state of panic.
An acidic fluid burned Ryan's palate, and he spit several times to try to clear the bitter taste. He longed for a goblet of crystal water to rinse away the flavor.
Krysty shook her head at what he'd done, whistling softly between her teeth in admiration. Doc was the only other one in the group to have witnessed the mutie insect's death throes. His lined face grew pale, and his eyes narrowed in revolted horror.
"By the three Kennedys! I think that I have never been so close to giving the notorious rainbow yawn."
The attacks eased, and they all managed to reach the top of the steepening slope free of the scuttling creatures. One clung tenaciously to the back of J.B.'s jacket, but Jak knocked it away and stamped on it, bursting the shiny body, leaving a smear of stinking slime.
The evidence of earth-shifting was less obvious in this section of the redoubt. There were more lights, and the walls and ceiling were solid and unmarked. They opened and closed the next steel-shuttered door and passed through into a place where several passages came together. Krysty operated the control level, dropping the door shut behind them.
"Looks like none of our insect friends have found their way into this section."
"I'm hungry," Lori said, dropping again into her little-girl-lost voice.
"Me too," Doc added. "And Ryan there looks like he's about ready to devour another tender young roach."
One of the genuine dangers in a building complex the size of most redoubts was of becoming lost. And possibly even starving to death. Many of the secret military bases had corridors that rambled, twined and interconnected for miles. Fortunately, in the redoubts that had been hastily evacuated, there were generally plenty of colored maps of the "You Are Here" variety.
Once they'd found the first of these locators it was easy to work out their orientation and to seek out which sections of the great fortress had been damaged by the nukings.
"Main food stores were down where the roaches had taken over," J.B. said, pointing at the section colored dark blue. "And the mat-trans gateway is down that long spur, marked off Restricted. There. Looks like it's the lower, western sections that slipped. By the main exits. Getting out of here could be kind of tough."
"What's that?" Krysty asked, pointing at a section tinted light blue. It was marked Cryo Restricted and lay at the northern edge of the complex, close to a set of emergency exits.
"Cryo?" Ryan repeated. "Can't remember ever coming across that in any other redoubt. You seen it before, J.B.?"
"Nope."
"Means freezing," Doc told them.
"Freezing cold?" Lori shuddered theatrically, hanging on to the old man's arm.
"Freezing what?" Jak asked, still struggling to free the tangles from his hair.
"Not what," Doc replied. "More like who. Around the time I was given the big time-push forward, there was a team trying to freeze folks just before or just after they died. The idea was that the future might have advanced medical methods that could cure whatever it was killing them. Advanced! Hah!"
"Who'd they freeze, Doc?" Ryan asked.
"The good, the bad and the... can't remember the last bit. The rich and the famous and the important. Mostly the rich and important. Politicians were tops, because... Which reminds me. Ugly. That was it. The freezing units and the good, the bad and the downright ugly."
"Like to go see that cryo place," J.B. said thoughtfully.
Ryan agreed with the Armorer. "Sure. But first we go eat, and I could do with catching up on my sleep for a few hours."
"Days," Jak added.
"Let's head for the living quarters, then," Krysty suggested.
"Carried unanimously," Doc said, grinning with a wolfish good humor. "And we'll go on the morrow and see if any icemen cometh. Not that they will. Not after all these years."
Chapter Four
When they reached one of the four sections of living quarters, they found more evidence of the haste of the final evacuation of the huge redoubt.
The long tables in the refectories had been cleared of all the residue of whatever had been the last-ever meal. But there were several dropped knives and spoons on the floor, broken glass and plates telling their own tale of necessary haste.
The dormitories were even more revealing.
Beds were unmade, sheets and blankets piled in untidy heaps. Made of rot-proof poly plastics, they had already lasted a hundred years and would probably last another thousand. Each dormitory held around two hundred beds, with partitions that ran from the floor to within eight inches of the ceiling. Each living space had a locker and small folding table.
Ryan had no doubt these long, hangarlike rooms would normally have been kept immaculate, inspected at least twice a day by pernickety noncoms eager to seek out and punish any deviation from a perfect norm. But the events of those dark winter days in 2001 must have meant anything normal going by the board.
"Lotsa mags," Jak said, flicking through a crumbling heap of brightly colored comics and periodicals. Most of them had names such as Small Arms Digest, Close Killing and New War. It was no surprise to Ryan that J.B. immediately perched himself on the edge of one of the beds and began to flick through the weapon magazines.
In Deathlands it was unusual to find very much printed matter. It had been Ryan's observation that as many as ninety percent of the entire population — not counting muties — were functionally illiterate. Many villes had their own little news sheets, run off on antique presses, while one or two of the wealthiest barons might have working hot-metal presses. It was rare to find anything illustrated that had been printed since the long winters.
"Look, lover," Krysty said, laughing. She held out a frail tabloid, rejoicing in the name of The Weekly Probe. Its front pages carried several headlines of varying size: King Charles Starlet Bribe Divorce Scandal, said one. Sadly, someone had cut out the photo from the back page, which had run beneath a screaming headline: My Breasts Are Like Dried Cantaloupes, But My Hubby Adores Them.