Shadow Fortress. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ in the end poured the sodden mess overboard.

      Pulling out a plastic safety razor, Jak dry shaved while standing guard duty, the scrape of the twin blades becoming fainter as he successfully removed his snowy beard.

      Hoping nobody was watching, Dean rubbed a palm along his own chin but found only smooth skin. Nothing yet. Standing guard, Ryan caught the furtive motion and held back a grin. He remembered his first shave, and the bushy mustache he sported for a while as a teen.

      Just then, something in the darkness caught Ryan’s attention. He studied the open sky until he caught the reflection of moonlight off leathery wings. The soft flapping grew steadily louder, and when Ryan was sure the creature was coming their way, he waited until the clouds parted, catching it in plain sight, and snapped off a shot with the SIG-Sauer. The blaster coughed, and the flying creature gave a piercing squeal, promptly identifying it as a bat. Gushing blood, the mutie spiraled down out of control to splash into the smooth expanse of the shimmering sea.

      The discharge of the blaster made Dean stand and draw his own weapon. “What was that?” he demanded.

      “Just a bat,” Ryan said calmly, holstering his piece. “Already aced. Everything’s green.”

      A bat? Curiously, Dean looked over the rope sides of the makeshift basket and watched the dying creature flounder in the water, sharp fins already circling the bloody carcass. Then huge white figures rose from beneath the waves and began tearing the wiggling corpse apart.

      “Those sharks?” Dean asked as the balloon drifted over the struggling creatures.

      “Great whites, yes, indeed. But not those,” Doc said, gesturing with a waggling finger. “See the difference in the dorsal fins? Those are dolphins come for the kill.”

      “Dolphins eat sharks?” Dean asked, shocked. The dolphins were so much smaller than the great whites it was hard to believe.

      “No, they eat fish,” Mildred replied, looking at the moon. There had been too much death already today; she had no interest in watching the aquatic battle. “Dolphins kill sharks on sight. The two species hate each other.”

      “Ace, no eat?” Jak said with a frown, running a whetstone along the blade of a knife in slow strokes. “Triple stupe.”

      “Not if you’re in the water with sharks coming after your ass and a bunch of dolphins show up,” Ryan said, unwrapping a foil envelope to expose cherry-nut cake. Fireblast, was this the only dessert the Army ever fed its troops? He broke off a corner with his teeth and found it dissolved easily. Okay, not bad.

      “They’re one of the few good muties that are friendly to norms,” he finished with a full mouth.

      “Not a mutation, my dear Mr. Cawdor,” Doc rumbled. “Since time immemorial, dolphins have been the friends of humanity. Although God alone knows why. We have certainly treated them poorly enough.”

      “How chill?” Jak asked, mildly interested. The dangers of the deep were important things to know.

      “A dolphin will ram a shark in the belly with its nose,” Doc explained, watching the event occur. “See? They die almost instantly.”

      “Hot pipe.” Dean sighed. “Dad, didn’t you say it’s possible to chill a man that way, too?”

      “Requires a hell of a kick,” his father said, tossing away the wrapper. “But it can be done.”

      “Smack in the belly?”

      “Just under the rib cage,” Ryan said, moving a hand to the spot on his chest. “Right here, and slightly upward.”

      The boy nodded studiously, filing away the info for future use.

      “Enough of that, land ho!” Mildred cried out, breaking into a smile. “There she is, people! Forbidden Island!”

      Majestically rising over the horizon like a green dawn was a wide island of hills, cliffs, mountains and volcanoes, everything covered with a lush growth of tropical plants. Silly thought, but to Krysty the place almost looked like two or three islands rammed together.

      The Pegasus started to accelerate toward the island as a fresh wind blew over the companions, forcing the balloon onward. The twin volcanoes rumbled softly, sounding like distant thunder, their ragged tops lit from internal fires, wisps of yellow sulfur fumes rising to the sky. The firelight actually reflected off the thick layer of storm clouds. Two volcanoes so close to each other seemed unlikely to Mildred, and she postulated they were simply the planet trying to-clean itself from deadly residue of multiple nuke hits.

      “Found them,” J.B. announced, holding the brass telescope to his face. In a valley set between the volcanoes were the ruins of a large predark metropolis sitting on top of a short mesa. The buildings were only silhouettes in the ambient light, black shadows as still and dead as the ferro-cement from which they’d been built.

      As they continued closer, details came into view, a huge waterfall rushing off a tall cliff to their left, the smashed wreckage of a Navy yard to the right, the buildings and rusted hulks of warships partly swamped in a bay full of violently swirling water. The whirlpool made more noise than the waterfall, as it raged out of control.

      Something large winged across the dark ruins, and Doc rubbed his eyes to see clearly, but the apparition was already gone. Tightening his lips, the time traveler wondered if he had just actually seen a pterodactyl, a winged lizard from the Jurassic period. No, quite impossible.

      “May I be so bold as to strongly suggest that if we encounter anything exceptionally large,” Doc said, checking the load in his LeMat, “shoot only for its head? Nowhere else.”

      “See something?” Krysty asked in concern, staring at the approaching land. Seemed rugged and wild, but ordinary enough.

      “I do not know for sure, dear lady,” Doc muttered, frowning. “And that is what quite worries me.”

      “Rad pits coming,” Ryan announced as the ebony night thinned about the island showing reddish-green glows dotting the landscape, and completely covering the Navy base. Quickly, Ryan checked his rad counter and saw the readings steadily climb toward the danger zone.

      “Fireblast! It’s hotter than Washington Hole,” he stated, shifting his arm about. The clicks of the device seemed slower to the left, toward the valley that cut through the mountain range. That was the location of the mesa. But this was no place to make a guess.

      “J.B., check my readings,” Ryan said urgently.

      “Yeah, valley seems okay,” J.B. added, his own rad counter out and sweeping for danger. The sides of the mesa were sheer vertical stone. A bitch of a climb to make, but no problem to reach from the air.

      “Okay, start wetting those blankets and try angling us toward the mesa,” Ryan directed, sliding on his backpack.

      “No need,” Mildred replied. “The wind has shifted again, and we’re heading straight for it.”

      “The volcanoes are making a current for us,” Krysty said, frowning slightly. “Taking us right there.”

      Tucking away his sharpened knives, Jak scowled. “Somethin’ wrong.”

      Mildred СКАЧАТЬ