Prodigal's Return. James Axler
the stairs down to the third level, pausing several times along the way to try to hear if anybody else was moving around in the redoubt. But aside from the gentle murmur of the air vents, the base was quite literally as quiet as a grave.
On the third floor, the main corridor was lined with doors. Each office was full of furniture and not much else, aside from stacks of government forms, the ancient paper much too scratchy to even use in the bathroom. Then Krysty smiled, remembering how once a desperate Dean had tried using carbon paper as toilet paper, the results of which had been with him for almost a full week.
At the end of the corridor, the hulking steel door to the base arsenal was ajar, which was almost always a bad sign. Sure enough, the cavernous room proved to be empty, the shelves and gun racks containing nothing but a thin layer of dust, the scuffed floor littered with empty mylar bags and mounds of excelsior stuffing.
“Okay, five minute recce, then we move on,” Ryan said, pulling out the SIG-Sauer and taking a guard position near the open door.
As the rest of the companions spread out, J.B. headed straight for a repair station in the corner. There was nothing usable in sight, all of the reloading machinery empty of anything being processed. Then he spied a plastic box marked R&R. Inside the “repair or reject” container, he found a pile of ammunition magazines with busted springs. Sure enough, several of them had a round jammed inside. Using a screwdriver, he gently forced out the live brass, and soon had a small pile of 9 mm rounds. Sorting out the bullets too badly corroded with age to risk using left him ten good brass. Since the SIG-Sauer and the Uzi took the same caliber, J.B. split the find with Ryan, both men dutifully reloading their weapons with the meager supply.
Probing with his sword into the mounds of foam peanuts, Doc located an unopened crate of M-60 machine guns. The weapons were thickly coated with Cosmoline protective gel and in perfect condition. Unfortunately, there were no belts or ammo boxes or even loose brass, so Doc turned his back on the stash of deadly man-portable rapidfires. A blaster without brass was only deadweight.
Sighing in disappointment, Mildred closed the door on a first-aid cabinet. Aside from a box of elastic bandages, which she took, everything else on the shelves was over a century old and couldn’t be safely used, even in an emergency.
J.B. opened a cupboard and removed a couple glass bottles of vinegar from a shelf. “These will do fine for Molotovs!”
“Why do they store that in here?” Mildred asked, clearly puzzled.
“Nothing cleans off Cosmoline better than vinegar,” J.B. stated, already turning away to continue the search.
Deciding to check the drawers of the wooden desk, Krysty found a metal box bolted into place inside. Now, that was curious. The box was locked, but as a small child she had learned how to open such things with only a knife and a slim piece of wire. The trick didn’t always work, but this time it did, and inside the lockbox were a pile of laminated security passes, a dusty S&W .38 revolver and a plastic-wrapped cardboard box marked Remington.
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