Shadow Fortress. James Axler

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 shuffled around the rope basket and checked the weight bags. Each was tied firmly in place.

      “Millie?” J.B. asked.

      “We appear to be rising,” she answered slowly. “Nothing serious yet, but we better let out some helium.”

      “My job,” Doc said, pulling the sword from his stick. Reaching high, he stabbed the lowest weather balloon and it noisily deflated in a blubbery rush. But the Pegasus didn’t lose any height. Puzzled, Doc stabbed another, then another, and incredibly the airship began to rise.

      “How’s this possible?” J.B. demanded, trying to see above the makeshift craft. Did something have a hold of them and was dragging the balloons skyward?

      “Goddamn it, we’re caught in an updraft from those cross currents!” Mildred said, drawing her blaster and blowing away the largest balloon. It burst as the hot round tore through, but their speed didn’t slow.

      Steadily the Pegasus streaked for the storm clouds overhead, and Ryan briefly considered dropping all of their excess weight to get above the clouds. Unfortunately, the sheet lightning filled the sky and they would be fried rising through the wild storm—if the rads and chems didn’t ace them first. But if they shot out too many balloons, they would plummet from the sky and crash on the rocks below. They had passed the ocean several minutes ago and were now moving over bare soil studded with boulders and rusty predark junk. The companions would be torn to pieces even if they survived the brutal landing.

      As they rose still higher, Krysty cried out in pain, then the rest rubbed their arms and faces, skin prick-ling from the deadly proximity to the heavily polluted clouds. Just then, both of the rad counters began to wildly click ever faster.

      “If we enter those clouds,” Doc warned in a stentorian tone, his eyes painfully tearing, “none of us shall ever leave it alive!”

      With no other choice, Ryan drew his blaster and started firing, the spent brass kicking over the side of the basket. Fireblast, he thought, the problem with balloon wags was supposed to be keeping them afloat, not getting them to come down. Just one solution for that. The red-hot rounds from the SIG-Sauer easily punched through the tough polymer sheeting, deflating balloons far out of the sword’s reach, and the craft instantly slowed. Then it began to descend, and soon the itchy crawling feeling of radiation was fading away. Only now the island was rushing toward them with nightmare speed as the Pegasus descended out of control.

      “Too fast!” Jak stated, slashing through the ropes. The heavy bags fell, and the Pegasus continued to drop.

      “Shitfire, we’ve slipped out of the thermal!” Mildred warned. “Now we’re too heavy. Toss everything overboard!”

      The companions slid off their backpacks and heaved them away, but the reduction in weight made no real difference. Too many of the balloons had been destroyed in their efforts to avoid the death clouds. But the airship was also still moving inland. The moonlight heralding their way, the terrain became grasslands, then a forest with a stone arch extended across the valley, connecting one mountainside to the other. A natural limestone bridge flew by.

      “Get ready to jump,” Ryan ordered, climbing the ropes.

      The others copied his actions, but the Pegasus swung past the bridge moving way too fast, the bottom of the plastic pallet scraping across the limestone for the briefest instant before they were past the obstruction and over the trees again.

      “Fireblast!” Ryan spit, falling back into the rope basket.

      Incredibly, from somewhere below an alarm bell began to ring, and blasters crackled from the dark trees as cannons roared from hidden bunkers on the shadowy mountainsides, their discharges throwing tongues of flame that illuminated the valley.

      “It’s another ville!” J.B. snarled as a cannonball rushed by, buffeting them with the wind of its passing.

      “Water!”