Thunder Road (12 page)

None of these things had been of any great duration in its own right, but cumulatively, had taken one hell of a chunk out of the day. By the sun, he could see that it was now edging toward late afternoon. Soon, the darkness would begin to descend. If the exterior lights on the wag were working, then maybe they could travel all night and make up some time. He didn’t hold out much hope for that, seeing as the dim glow of the instrument panel was all that lit the interior.

The mystery rider and Krysty had been given a major head start. The rider’s speed would have been consistent, and he would not have been held up on his way.

Ryan chewed on his lip, cursed to himself. They didn’t know how far this bastard had gone, and he had an advantage over them when it came to speed. At least until now.

Even if they rode this bastard all night, pushing it to the limit, there was no way of knowing whether they could find him before it was too late for Krysty.

It was the helplessness that chilled Ryan to the core. He wasn’t in control. There was nothing he could do.

That was the bastard feeling he hated.

Some fucker was going to pay.

“Good morning, Krysty Wroth. We hope you slept well.”

The voice was calm, assured, sibilant and not the rider’s. The lights, which had dimmed almost to blackness when the door had shut on her the night before, were now raised to a level where they penetrated almost painfully through her eyelids. She opened her eyes, squinting blearily at the surrounding room, ready to hit out blindly if the voice came too close.

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She’d wanted to keep awake, ready to meet any challenge. But the fatigue of the journey, the toll that the gas had taken on her body, had made her unable to resist the weariness that seeped through her bones. At some point, lulled by darkness, she had drifted off. A dreamless sleep, so deep that she wouldn’t have known if someone had crept in and chilled her. She hated to be so vulnerable at the best of times, let alone in a situation such as this.

And the voice. It had seemed so close. She could have…Ah, there was no reason to worry about that now. If it had been her time, it would be too late for regrets by now.

She sat up, shaking her head, using the seemingly half-awake, still-bleary motion to take a surreptitious look around. Perhaps the cameras and speakers were visible, and she had just missed them in her tiredness of the previous night. But no. The room just looked like a garishly decorated bedroom. What had he said to her? It had been his sister’s. Presumably the woman had bought the farm.

So how many people lived down here? She needed to find out as soon as possible.

“You may speak, and your voice will be picked up by our monitors,” the voice prompted.

“That’s sure nice to know,” she muttered to herself, then added in a louder tone, “Breakfast would be good. And mebbe seeing who you are.”

“Food will be provided. I shall not be able to attend to your request personally, but I am sure Howard will be with you soon.”

She had to hand it to whoever the voice was: equable, even, and not showing the slightest sign of being riled. And keeping well out of the way. So it was only the rider she was being allowed to have contact with right now. She wondered why that was. Could they be worried about her carrying disease from the outside? Perhaps they figured she could be dangerous, and they were paring down the risk? After all, they knew her name, so they had to know a whole lot more. Hadn’t Howard the rider said something about that last night? The Thunder Rider project? What the hell was that?

Whatever, it didn’t sound good.

She sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. The good thing about her sleep was that, now she had adjusted to the lights, she felt better than she had for what seemed like forever. She sat, head down, seemingly still in a state of fatigue. In truth, as her hair hung down over her face like a curtain, she was peering from beneath it, using it as a mask, marking all the points of the room, anything that she may be able to use as a weapon.

Not that she intended to do any such thing until she had seen what the coldheart Howard had to offer. She wanted to know more about this place, if possible.

She didn’t have long to wait. Within a few minutes of the anonymous voice, the door to the bedroom opened automatically and Howard came through bearing a tray. It had a plate piled high with food she didn’t recognize, and a steaming cup of what smelled like coffee, but somehow richer than the freeze-dried granules she knew from redoubts. Richer than the odd brews passed off as coffee she had tasted on the outside, too.

“I didn’t know what you’d like, so I’ve guessed,” Howard said with a smile. He was dressed today in a one-piece worksuit covered in oil stains, and looked slighter than in his “Thunder Rider” costume. She could see that he was still wiry and tough, though perhaps not as muscle-bound as she had at first thought. He wasn’t much bigger than her.

But despite her best intentions, she was distracted by the food. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until the smell of the food and the coffee had made the hunger begin to gnaw at her stomach.

He placed the tray across her knees, and in leaning in so close would have made it easy for her to take him out. Now was not the time. Especially when her hunger was overwhelming her.

She began to eat greedily. The flavors were rich and full, suggesting to that part of her mind not occupied with the task in hand that this base had one hell of a stockpile, and one hell of a way of maintaining that pile. The coffee, when she took a mouthful, hit her tastebuds like an explosion. For a second, it was easy to forget exactly how she had got here and what her intention of only a few moments ago had been.

Then the caffeine buzz hit her, and her head cleared. She could see him standing just a few yards from her, watching her with a smile playing about his lips that didn’t touch those dead eyes.

And she remembered.

When she swallowed again, it was as though she had to force it down past the lump of bile in her craw.

“Good?” he prompted.

“Sure is,” she said as sincerely as she could. It sounded false to her ears, hollow and ringing, but Howard didn’t seem to notice.

“Excellent,” he said happily, clapping his hands. “Then when you have freshened up, I will give you a brief tour to familiarize yourself with the complex. It won’t be the full tour, as I have work to do—as you can no doubt tell,” he added with a grin, indicating his clothing. “However, I shall leave you in Sid’s capable hands while I proceed with my task. Now then, I shall leave you to your repast, and the bathroom is over there—” he waved to his left “—and I shall see you in about half an hour.”

He turned and left, leaving Krysty more than a little confused. There she was, thinking that it was going to be a struggle to find out what was going on here, and he was offering it to her on a plate, same as the food in front of her. Well, one way or another she would soon be able to size up her enemy. She shrugged, and returned to the breakfast—the repast?—he had given her. Still slipping those odd words into the conversation, which suggested to her that the people here hadn’t been out since skydark. That was if you could call it a conversation. There was something about the way he spoke to her that suggested social interaction beyond the level of blasting the shit out of people was an unfamiliar concept, too.

What the hell. The food warmed her belly, filled the gnawing hunger. The coffee buzzed, made her feel alive again. Unwittingly, he was giving her just the boost she needed to face him, and whomever he had with him. She could feel her old self returning, the Krysty drained by the nerve gas and the misfiring Gaia power being replenished.

She placed the tray on the floor and stood, surreptitiously testing herself in case of residual weakness from the gas. But no, her legs felt strong, her steps firm as she moved across the room to the door he had indicated. She cast a glance at the door to the corridor as she passed it, wondering if she should try it, see if it was locked. Mebbe not. She was sure she had heard the soft click of the locking mechanism as it closed behind Howard, and she was aware of the hidden cameras monitoring her every move.

She felt uncomfortable as she entered the bathroom. Was there a camera here, too? The idea of stripping naked for some hidden guard to get his jollies watching her wasn’t something she relished. On the other hand, a spell under the hot jets of the shower would do her a lot of good. She still felt dirty and sticky from the journey, and the shower almost called out to her, it looked so good.

Trying not to be too obvious as she tried to scan for cameras, she opened the mirrored cabinet on the wall. Whoever Howard’s sister had been, she had used a hell of a lot of creams and lotions. The cabinet was rammed full of bottles and jars, most with odd-sounding names and no obvious function. She took a few out at random, examining the writing on the labels. Some of it she could read, and some of it she wasn’t sure about, strange words she couldn’t get her tongue around, which she guessed had to be chem names that Mildred or Doc might know. The idea of putting chem stuff on her body without any worry was an odd one for Krysty. Still, whatever Howard’s sister had been like, she had obviously not bought the farm too far back. Opening those jars at random, she could see that the stuff inside was still fresh.

She found toothpaste and a brush, and swilled out her mouth. It was odd to have such sharp flavors back in her mouth, and again it reminded her of the things they found in deserted redoubts. Again, it was still fresh.

She turned to the shower, fiddling with the faucets until the water was hot but not scalding. Steam filled the small bathroom, and as she stripped she was consoled with the thought it might obscure the camera as it had the cabinet mirror. Krysty had no problems with being naked, except that it had to be when she wanted, and for who she wanted.

The thoughts were banished from her mind as she stepped beneath the jets and felt the water wash the sweat and dirt from her. She turned her face to it, eyes closed, and felt each individual jet as its constant pressure cleaned and stimulated her skin, the pummeling of the high-pressure jets seeming to massage through to her brain. Her hair was plastered to her skull, clinging to her neck not through fear but through the weight of water it held.

She stepped out of the shower, the steam now dissipated, but making no attempt to hide herself. So what if some stupe guard got a hard-on looking at her? It was the closest he would get to the real thing without being chilled. She toweled her hair, dried herself on the towels that were on a wall-mounted rack. They were softer than anything she had used before, seeming to soak up the excess liquid rather than rub it away. If these bastards lived like this, then chances were they were as soft if you rubbed at them.

She dressed rapidly, her only regret being the lack of a change of clothes. No matter. Her annoyance at the filthy clothing on her newly clean skin was something she could channel and use to make herself sharper.

She was sitting on the bed, waiting with the outward appearance of patience, when Howard returned.

“You’re ready. Good. I would have offered you some of my late sister’s clothing in exchange for your own dirty apparel, but I fear that the styles would not impress—she was something of a very ‘girlie’ sort of woman—and also she was very petite. She was neither tall nor muscular enough for her things to fit you. But no matter, I’m sure we can get something appropriate for you from the stores. Over the years, we have been collecting a variety of sizes, so it should not be too hard.” He held out his hand.

“Over the years?” Krysty repeated as she rose to her feet, making light of ignoring his outstretched hand. “That kind of implies that you’ve been down here a long time.”

“Ah, such impatience and yet such a desire to know more. Both, in their way, admirable traits, but not perhaps well-timed. Follow me,” he continued. He then realized his hand was still outstretched and being ignored. Withdrawing it with barely concealed embarrassment, he said, “Your tour begins.”

And it did, though it was not, in truth, exactly what Krysty was hoping for. Howard instructed the hidden Sid to open the door and to prepare a clear path through Sector Two. Immediately, the Titian-haired woman knew that she was getting the safe and trusted route. She would only see what Howard wanted her to see.

And in truth, it wasn’t much. Sector Two seemed to consist mostly of the living quarters for the compound. There were a number of bedrooms that she was shown, none of which showed much sign of habitation. They passed rooms that Howard dismissed as “not interesting,” which she took to mean that they were inhabited and therefore out of bounds in case they gave too much away. She noted the locations of these rooms for when she was able to explore alone and unnoticed.

They reached a general quarters area. As with the bedrooms she had seen, this showed signs of being originally decorated by an individual or organization with a possibly endless amount of predark jack. The carpets were thick and plush, as were the furnishings, in rich, dark colors that had not faded or frayed with age. The temperature control from the air-conditioning, which seemed to be set at a cool constant, probably helped. There was a large vid screen here, and a wall of old vid cases, some covered with dust, others obviously much fingered. Some of these were piled on the floor, gaps in the wall announcing their original home.

One was playing as they entered.

“I love this—one of my favorites. A real influence on me,” Howard murmured. He watched the screen. On it, an old black-and-white movie from way before skydark played. It was hokey and cheap—even Krysty, with her extremely limited knowledge of old predark vids could tell this. In truth, the way the people on the screen were acting reminded her of children back in Harmony, playing in the dirt, chasing one another and yelling as they play-fought. Men in really old wags were chasing one another, firing blasters that were heavy antiques, revolvers for the most part. One of them was dressed in a just-as-heavy black coat, his face shrouded by a wide-brimmed hat, the lower half covered by a scarf. In between bouts of firing that looked to her, frankly, to be really poor examples of marksmanship, he made pronouncements about justice and crime that sounded all too familiar.

Some of it could have been said by the man who stared, openmouthed, at the screen, lost in a world that was a million miles away from the woman standing next to him.

Krysty reached out and touched him. He looked around, his blank eyes seeming even more distant, and then gradually seemed to become aware of his surroundings. His face broke into a grin that was almost bashful, and for the first time she saw it reach his eyes.