Deathlands - Dectra Chain Part 1

Dectra Chain.

James Axler.

They that go down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps and occupy their business in great waters; These men see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.

-The Book of Common Prayer, Psalm

Chapter One.

RYAN CAWDOR OPENED HIS EYE, then closed it again, feeling the certainty that to try to move would make him throw up. He took several rapid, shallow breaths, fighting the nausea, swallowing hard. Sweat beaded his forehead, and his stomach was cramping. A mat-trans jump through one of the gateways always resulted in unconsciousness and a gut-churning sickness as every molecule was sucked into infinity and then rea.s.sembled in another gateway.

Ryan had never made an attempt to understand the technology of the hidden mat-trans chambers. Indeed, virtually all knowledge of anything technical or scientific had vanished on that January morning when the world disappeared under a nuclear haze, about a hundred years ago.

He could hear someone moaning and retching on the far side of the hexagonal room, which was protected with thick walls of colored, armored gla.s.s. Ryan still didn't feel confident enough to risk opening his eye again. All but one of the six people with him had made several jumps before and they knew what to expect.

But for one it was the first time.

Man Whose Eyes See More had been until very recently the wise man, or shaman, to a subtribe of the Mescalero Apaches, who lived among the jagged red canyons of the land that had once been called New Mexico. He'd never been more than fifty miles from his birthplace in Drowned Squaw Canyon, but now he didn't know where he was. All he knew was that his head was spinning, as though Ysun, giver of all life, had scooped out the pink-gray mush that filled his skull and taken it into its mouth only to spit it out again.

His mirrored sungla.s.ses had fallen from his face, and he fumbled for them, not wanting to risk opening his eyes in case he saw... What? Nothing? Death? An endless darkness beyond all time? The shaman didn't know.

Very, very cautiously, he eased open his dark brown eyes.

"Nothing," he said to himself, conscious of how harsh and dry his voice sounded, as though it hadn't been used for several days. "Nothing has happened here at all."

They were exactly where they'd been when Ryan Cawdor, known to the Indian's people as One Eye Chills, had closed the ponderous door. His new companions sat or lay just where they'd been before the swooping raven of blackness had come and plucked away his mind for a while.

The metal disks in the floor and the ceiling were no longer glowing, and the tendrils of pale mist had long evaporated. The shaman recalled a distant humming that had seemed to come simultaneously from inside and outside the chamber and had hurt the head.

He sighed, swallowing to clear the pressure on his ears. Then he noticed that something was different. Even though the six-sided room looked precisely the same, the walls had changed color. When they'd entered the gateway in New Mexico, the gla.s.s walls had been a rich golden hue. Now they were a deep turquoise, tinted like old Navaho jewelry.

"All right?" someone asked from his left. Man Whose Eyes See More nodded, regretting the sharp movement and the pain it caused him.

"I am not yet dead," he said carefully.

"Good."

The Apache knew that the speaker, John Barrymore Dix, was a man of very few words, never using two when one would be enough. Short and wiry, J.B. was the Armorer of the traveling group of friends that the shaman had joined. His sallow face rarely showed any emotion unless he was talking about blasters- about weapons of any sort. His blue eyes would glitter behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, and he would push back the brim of the battered fedora he habitually wore. He could tell you all there was to know about rifles, carbines, automatics, revolvers and muskets.

Next to J.B., whom the Indians had christened Weapons Strike Fear, was the slumped and unconscious figure of a boy. Eyes of Wolf had been his name, but the Mescalero knew his proper name was Jak Lauren. He was only three inches over five feet in height, nearly two feet below Man Whose Eyes See More's towering seven feet, and weighed in at 105 pounds.

The boy's eyes were ruby red, and his hair was as pure white as the snow that dappled the high peaks of the distant Sierras. In his lap, Jak was clenching a ma.s.sive .357 Magnum with a six-inch barrel. He was a brilliant hand-to-hand fighter who the Indian knew had killed an amazing number of men.

He also knew that Jak Lauren was just fourteen years old.

Feeling a little better, the shaman stretched out his long legs, bare feet sc.r.a.ping on the floor of the chamber. He was wearing his favorite pair of pants-seersucker, with one leg missing. His brocade vest had a cherry-red kerchief dangling from it, and he sported a silver stickpin in a scarlet cravat, its claw setting empty of a stone. The shaman's own decorated .50-caliber Sharps buffalo rifle lay at his side.

Next around the chamber, lying together, both showing the first signs of recovery, were the two women in the group. Man Whose Eyes See More came from a warrior society where women came third- or fourth-best-if they came anywhere at all.

One of the women moaned, clenching her fingers. Her name was Krysty Wroth, called Fire Hair Woman by the Mescalero. Man Whose Eyes See More was a priest of the Apache, with a mutie power of seeing a little into the future, of sensing things that others couldn't see. He knew that this woman with the bizarre, fiery crimson hair also had something of that doomie power.

She was tall, close to six feet, and was dressed in khaki coveralls. Her feet, pointed toward the shaman, were shod in dark blue leather cowboy boots that had chiseled heels and were ornamented with silver spread-wing falcons. The sharp toes were also silver. Her pistol was plated and polished-a Heckler & Koch P7A13 9 mm blaster that fired thirteen rounds. And the Apache had firsthand knowledge that the girl knew how to use her gun.

He was a little scared of Krysty Wroth.

As he looked at her she blinked, opening the startling green eyes, managing a smile.

"Hey," she said quietly. "Enjoy your first jump with us?"

"No," he replied honestly.

"Mebbe you should have stayed where you were, shaman," she whispered.

Jak sat up, coughing, a thin string of bile dribbling from his slack lips, and dripping onto the front of his canvas camouflage jacket.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d jump makes feel ill every time," he said, shaking his head, the long white hair floating around his narrow skull like winter smoke.

The other girl also sat up, burying her face in her hands. She was one of the most beautiful women the Apache had ever seen. Indeed, on the strength of that she had been gifted by the Apache with the name of Keeps Night Warm. Her Anglo name was Lori Quint, and she was in her sixteenth year of life. She was even taller than Krysty Wroth, topping the six-foot mark by close to an inch. Lori was a startling blonde with blue eyes.

"I want to feel best, but I always feel badder than best," she said, smoothing her dark navy cotton skirt over her long thighs. As she s.h.i.+fted her position the shaman heard the silvery tinkling of the tiny spurs on her crimson high-heeled boots.

"How you feeling?" came a voice from the shaman's right. It was the leader of the small group, Ryan Cawdor. He was an imposing sight, built like the killing machine that he was. The man stretched two inches above six feet, weighing just on two hundred pounds. His right eye was a deathly, melt-ice blue, the left hidden beneath a patch of black leather. A savage scar furrowed his face from his right eye to the corner of his mouth. Both injuries, the Indian knew, were the result of a deadly fight between Ryan and an older brother.

"My head is still in s.p.a.ce," replied Man Whose Eyes See More. "I will be pleased when it catches up with the other parts of me."

"Doc's still out cold," Krysty put in. "He takes it harder than the rest of us."

Doc Tanner was the last member of the group, someone whom the shaman found disturbing. Normally his seeing power enabled him to weigh up strangers, but not the gray-haired, skinny old man in the green-mottled frock coat and cracked knee boots. When Man Whose Eyes See More talked with Doc, he had the feeling that he was seeing a misty, unreal person. He had refused to allow Doc to carry an Indian name, and the old man hadn't seemed unduly surprised. From hints dropped by the others, the shaman suspected that Doc Tanner had come, somehow, from another time.

And, of course, the Apache was right.

Dr. Theophihis Algernon Tanner had been born in South Strafford, Vermont, on the fourteenth day of February in the year of our Lord 1868. Married, the father of two young children, a leading scientist of his time, Doc had been "trawled" forward to the year 1998. He was the first and, as far as he knew, the only successful subject of a time-travel experiment, which was a part of the infamous Cerberus Project.

Because he had caused the twentieth-century scientists such trouble, they used him once more as the unwilling subject for an experiment. This time they sent him forward to the bleak scenario of Deathlands, nearly a hundred years in the future. By a fluke of good or bad luck Doc was chron-jumped only a couple of weeks before the fire and light that swept so much of the United States clean of life and living. He had been rescued by Ryan Cawdor from the ville of Mocsin, up in the Darks, saved from Baron Jordan Teague and his supremely evil sec boss, Cort Stra.s.ser.

In recent b.l.o.o.d.y fighting, with Ryan and his companions siding with Man Whose Eyes See More and the Mescalero against killers in cavalry uniforms, the wheel had come full circle. The gang of butchers had been led by Cort Stra.s.ser.

Gradually all seven within the gla.s.s-walled chamber managed to struggle to their feet. Doc was the last to come around, helped up by Lori on one side and young Jak on the other. He was coughing and gasping, doubled over.

"By the three Kennedys! I fear that I am too far I gone in years to relish this mat-trans jumping. The blackness grows ever deeper, and my heart sinks when I think of all the jumps to come."

"Mebbe there won't be any more jumps, Doc," Ryan suggested, running a finger around the collar of his long, fur-trimmed coat.

"Sure," Krysty added. "And this might be the very place in all the Deathlands where we can find what we're looking for, a place, mebbe, with a future."

"Maybe pigs fly, was what Father said." Jak grinned.

"How d'you feel, Man Whose Eyes See More?" J.B. asked, automatically checking the action on his mini-Uzi, c.o.c.king the Steyr AUG handblaster that he wore in a holster on his hip.

The shaman noticed that each member of the group was taking out their armory of weapons, doing so with a casual, professional ease that told much of how they had all survived so long.

The albino boy hefted his cannon, which looked too big for him to even hold. Lori, on the other hand, was reloading a delicate little Walther PPK .22 with polished pearl handles.

Ryan favored a SIG-Sauer P-226 9 mm pistol with a built-in baffle silencer that fired fifteen rounds.

Slung across his shoulders was a gun like nothing Man Whose Eyes See More had ever seen before. It was a pale gray rectangular automatic rifle. Jak had told him that it was a Heckler & Koch G-12.

Doc was the only one of the group who carried a gun that most of the Apaches would have recognized. It was a monstrously heavy and outdated blaster, called a Le Mat, a conventional revolver that fired nine rounds of .36 ammo. But there was also a second barrel that could be used to fire a single round of .63-caliber scattergun ball, like a sawed-off shotgun. Doc told the shaman that the gun was "just about as old as me, son. About as old as me."

Man Whose Eyes See More realized that he had allowed his thoughts to drift as he stared around at the weaponry of his six new friends.

"Sorry, J.B., what did you ask me? My mind was elsewhere."

The Armorer adjusted his fedora. "Asked how you were feeling, Man Whose Eyes See More."

Ryan stepped toward the door to the mat-trans chamber, then paused. "Man Whose Eyes See More?"

"Yes, Ryan?"

"Your name."

"It is the one given me because I have the power that-"

"I know, I know. Just that it's too long to say. If we're in a firefight, and I want you to cover me, by the time I shout your name, I'm likely dead meat."

"I don't-" "We've all got short names. Ryan, Jak, J.B., Doc, Lori, Krysty and... Man Whose Eyes See More. We can't call you 'Man'... it'd be confusing."

"Don't have other name?" Jak asked, rubbing his finger across the side of his nose.

"No," the tall Indian replied.

"Must be a name you'd like to be called," Krysty suggested, "Some special reason for a name. Know what I mean?"

"I know what you... There is a name, but you would think me foolish." He shuffled his bare feet on the cool metal disks, looking down in embarra.s.sment.

Ryan laughed. "You want to ride with us, brother, then you learn not to feel bad about anything. Tell us. If we laugh, then we laugh. That's all."

"It won't signify," Doc said kindly, baring his excellent front teeth in a rather frightening smile.

"Well... We had an antique ceedee player in the rancheria. I don't know where it came from but it was old, years before my time. And there was music. One that was my favorite."

"Go on," Lori prompted. "We gotten lotsa cee-dees in our redoubt. Keeper's favorite was Barry someone. I doesn't remember. I liked Sc.u.m Legion and old Brucey. What did you like?"

"They were very old, I think. Brothers. I played their disk over and over until I knew all their songs. Such harmonies that even White Painted Woman could not imagine."

Doc pointed a gnarled finger at the Apache. "I know them. Two brothers from Kentucky. Can't rightly recall..."

"The Everly Brothers," the shaman said, with an almost reverential awe.

"You want to be called 'Everly,' do you?" Ryan asked. "That's almost as long as your real name."

"No. I have always loved their given first names. They were called Don and Phil. But it runs together as one name. Donfil. Like that. If you don't think it's too foolish then..."

"Fine with me," Ryan said, looking around at the other six. "No objections, I guess?"

Jak walked over to the Indian and reached up to shake his hand. "Welcome to Deathlands Six, Donfil More."

Krysty laughed. "Course. He has to have a second name. Man Whose Eyes See More. More. Donfil More."

So it was.

RYAN SOMETIMES WONDERED how many gateways were scattered throughout what remained of the old United States of America. He knew from his travels with the Trader that some regions were gone forever, mainly along the earthquake-flawed West Coast, with the whole of Baja California sliding into the lapping Pacific. Over the years their explorations had revealed many of the redoubts, some of which held the secret chambers locked within them. But without the uniquely specialized knowledge of Doc Tanner, their mysteries would never have been solved.

Even now, to use them for making a journey along the invisible waves of the mat-trans chain was to risk life. Even Doc didn't know the codes that were needed to control destinations. All that could be done was to enter the chamber and trigger the mechanism by closing the door.

A number of the gateways had to have been totally destroyed or vandalized over the past century, and Ryan's first fears had been that the group might materialize in the suffocating center of some fallen mountain, or a mile beneath the unforgiving sea. Now he had come to hope that the devices somehow resisted sending a person to any gateway that wasn't still functioning adequately.

But that didn't mean it was possible to escape from the redoubt that contained the gateway, nor even to use the gateway to escape again.

And when the gateway door was opened, no one had any idea of what dangers or horrors might be waiting on the other side.

Ryan set his finger on the curved trigger of the G-12 and reached for the handle of the chamber door. "Ready? Then let's go."

Chapter Two.

THE LIGHT that had filtered through the turquoise walls had been dimmed, like a far-off lamp glimpsed underwater. As soon as the door began to ease silently open, the light flooded in, dazzlingly bright.

"Fireblast!" Ryan cursed, shading his eye. "There's some special kind of power source working here, Doc, giving out this much energy."

Like the others, Doc had at first also turned his head away, then squinted through watering eyes into the room beyond the gateway chamber. "Upon my soul, friends! The power of many a candle here. I have not seen... nor can I imagine why. Unless this gateway had some special function."