"What the!.." exclaimed Ryan.
"It's a cannon!" gasped Doc. "The sort they used in the war between North and South, about two hundred and fifty years ago. Must have come from some museum."
"Will it shoot?" asked Okie, taking a professional interest in it. "And what does it shoot?"
"Probably shoots a metal ball that might be filled with explosive. If it works, then we're over the falls without a boat, folks."
It worked. There was a vast plume of smoke from the bell-like mouth of the ancient piece, and they all ducked at the whistling sound as the shell came toward them. It struck the cliff about fifty paces to their left and twenty paces high, showering them with splinters of white rock.
"Let us get within," yelled Doc.
"Sure. You open her up, Doc, and we'll hold 'em off with blasters."
"Gettin' ready again, Ryan," said J.B., calm as ever.
"Let 'em have it. Try and pick 'em off around that gun," ordered Ryan.
"They got the cover. We got nukeshit nothin'," swore Okie as she fired her M-16 with rhythmic ease, the bullets skittering and ricocheting all around the heavy metal shield of the artillery piece. Two of the attackers threw up their arms and toppled over, but the rest withdrew around the bend in the trail to safety.
It was a standoff. But the odds were greatly against Ryan Cawdor and his friends. They had no cover at all. Nowhere to go. If the Indians could control the aim of their cannon they could blow them away. As he poured lead toward the big gun, it occurred to Ryan that their only hope was going to be a charge across the flat ground, under fire from the arrows. It was close to suicide, but it was all there was.
He felt a finger tap his shoulder. He spun around, nearly knocking Doc over with the barrel of his LAPA.
"Do you wish me to open the door?"
Grinning with his peculiarly perfect teeth, Doc stepped with a long, mincing stride to the side of the door and reached inside a small square panel set at shoulder height. "Shall we go in?"
Ryan's reply was drowned by the boom of the field gun. This time the gunners had overcompensated and the massive ball, pitching low and bouncing, narrowly missed the far end of the great door.
"Next time they'll get it right, Ryan," said J.B.
He stopped at the sonorous grating that came from the top and bottom of the huge gateway into the Redoubt. For a second of frozen time nothing happened, then a dark slit appeared at the right edge, near where Doc was still pulling a lever inside the panel.
"Inside!" yelled Ryan, as soon as the crack was wide enough for them to slip through.
Henn went first, then Finnegan, struggling to squeeze into the darkness. Okie and Krysty were next. Hun waved at Ryan to go, but he gestured angrily with the stubby barrel of his gun and she ran in.
"Now us, Doc. You done real good."
As soon as the old man released the control, the door stopped its movement. Behind them Ryan was aware of angry screams and shouts as the Indians saw their prey disappearing into the mountain. Doc vanished through the gap and Ryan followed him in, pausing to look back. He was shocked to see how many attackers there were now. Better than a hundred men, all racing toward them. He gave a quick burst that sent six or seven tumbling like disjointed dolls, blood bursting into the cold air and smoking on the ground from the scattered corpses.
"You can close it up, Doc, right?"
The yellowed eyes turned incuriously to him, veiled as though beeswax lay across them, and Ryan glimpsed the closeness of Doc's insanity. But the threads held together a while longer.
"Indeed. There's the panel."
"How come them bastard mongrels didn't get this open?" asked Krysty.
"Code, my dear titian girl. A simple three five two to enter and a two five three to shut her up tight again. Like so." He waved his hand like a magician pulling off a particularly clever trick, although this particular audience did not know what a magician was.
Doc's answer raised a whole mass of questions, but now was not the time. Ryan, with the door grinding tight shut behind him, had a chance to take in their surroundings. Of all the Stockpiles he had seen, this one was the largest and the strangest. Others had been what the name suggested: places where enormous, even staggering, quantities of food and supplies were stored. Like mighty warehouses, packed with... who knew what?
But this was different.
Dim lights came into hesitant flickering life and Ryan figured they had tripped some kind of beam, still active, perhaps of uranium, that switched on the electrics of the place.
Sometimes you found corpses. Mummified and dried, like the husks of cocoons after the butterfly's gone. The air tasted familiar to him from breaking into similar establishments, sealed for a century. Dry and flat, with a hint of iron.
"There another way out of here, Doc?" asked J.B., reloading the Steyr.
"No." There came a cackle of laughter that often signaled one of Doc's period of craziness. "Not like you mean, Mr. Dix. Oh, dear me, no."
"This ain't like no Stockpile I ever seen," muttered Hunaker, glancing around at the huge curved roof. The room was in fact an immense tunnel, the ribbed metal ceiling like a cylinder above them that curved away into a dense mass of largely empty shelving.
"That, ma'am, is because it is not a Stockpile. Oh, there were many of those, most still hidden beneath swamps or earth slips or hot spots. But this is a Redoubt. There are many of these also, but I do not believe many have ever been discovered. They would appear valueless to those who do not know." He shook his head, the stringy hair bobbing about his scrawny shoulders. "And those who did know are so long gone."
"Make sense, Doc. We're trapped in here. If that's the only door and those sons of bitches are waiting for us... then how do we get out? Are there food and arms in here?"
"No. Perhaps some water, but it will be brackish and foul. Perhaps some eater tablets. No arms. That is not the purpose of the Redoubt."
"Then what is, Doc?" asked Ryan, hunching his shoulders against the oppressive feel of the place. Buried underground with nowhere to run was a bad feeling.
"This is the gateway to Hades, Mr. Cawdor. Look upon the wall where Cerberus himself stands watch. The gateway to the river to the deeps to the darks to the high mountain. All is dust..." And he turned away, tears streaming down his lined cheeks.
J.B. caught Ryan's eye and shook his head. "Let it lie, friend. No more help there for a while."
"We can't go out," Ryan said, "so we best go in."
Hun took Doc's arm, leading him along in the middle of the shrunken party. First Ryan, then Okie and Henn. The green-haired girl and the old man. Krysty and Finnegan. And J. B. Dix at the rear.
Eight of them, bearing the faint torch of the future, into the past.
Ryan led them past the picture that had caught Doc's gaze. Garishly painted with a crude skill like a comic book illustration, it showed a slavering black hound. Three heads grew out of a single corded neck, their jaws wide open, fire and blood gushing between yellow teeth. The eyes were crimson, the colors bright despite the creature's age. Underneath, in an ornate Gothic script, was written the single word: "Cerberus."
Apart from that one picture, the place was bare. Ryan had seen Stockpiles that had been ravaged, but they were always a total shambles with rotting food and torn containers everywhere. This was different. It was as if a team of men had carefully gone through the entire place, stripping everything off walls, removing every stick of furniture. Nothing remained.