Labyrinth. James Axler

fill of cool water. When they couldn’t drink any more, they rinsed out and refilled their canteens.

      “Somebody watching,” Jak said softly to Ryan.

      It was difficult to detect glee in those bloodred eyes of his. You had to look hard. And know what you were looking for.

      There was glee in them, now.

      At the edge of the field, a half-dozen, free-range chickens had stepped into view. Fat and sassy, they pecked at the soil for insects not thirty yards away.

      The albino had two razor-sharp knives in his hand, one ready in his fingers, the other clasped against his palm.

      Before Jak could get off a toss, the birds spooked, ducking back into the cover of the knee-high corn. He started to give chase, but Ryan stopped him. “No, Jak, let them go. Wouldn’t look real good if we showed up on these folks’ doorstep with their dead hens hanging on our belts. If nobody’s home, we can always come back and get them later.”

      Refreshed, if not fed, they slid back down into the arroyo and followed it all the way to the edge of the town square. As they climbed onto the predark street, they heard muffled singing and drumming. The noise was coming from the other side of the town square and park.

      “Somebody’s home, after all,” Ryan said. “Stay tight, now. We’re on triple red.”

      The central area of Little Pueblo stood on an isolated crown of bedrock. Most of the runoff from the breached dam had channeled through the surrounding gridwork of streets, washing away wood frame houses and trailer homes, leaving bare concrete slabs and open air basements.

      Up close, the city center wasn’t in such great shape, either.

      The street and sidewalks were all split to hell, with heaved-up cracks every few feet. Not one of the buildings that faced the little park had an intact window. The glass had been replaced by sheets of opaque plastic, pieces of scrap plywood and sheet metal. Ryan guessed that the repair materials that had been fished out of the lake, where all the loose debris would have ended up.

      Most of the structures along the street were one-story and made of cinder block. Some still had faded signs along their facades. Lupita’s Café, Little Pueblo Country Store and Bakery, Hardiman Insurance, Titterness Real Estate, Desert City Fashions.

      With the muzzle of his SIG-Sauer, Ryan eased aside the sheet plastic that covered the doorway of Lupita’s Café, and looked inside. Right off he got a whiff of freshly baked bread. It made his mouth water.

      “Hello?” he said.

      No answer.

      Ryan pushed in, waving for the others to follow, with caution.

      It was no longer a café. Lupita’s had been gutted down to the cinder-block walls and concrete slab. The ceiling rafters and conduit pipes were exposed. It figured that none of the submerged carpet, plasterboard, subflooring, ceiling tile, and interior plywood would have been salvageable. Mildew and rot would have set in long before it ever dried out.

      The main room’s furniture consisted of lawnchairs, plastic milk crates and six platform beds made of scavenged interior doors propped on pairs of fifty-five gallon drums and piers of cinder blocks. From the way the straw mattresses were flattened, the beds were at least double occupied. There were no blaster racks on the walls. No blasters leaning in corners, or tucked under the beds. No ammo or lead balls or tins of black powder, either.

      On the floor around the nonfunctional toilet in the café restroom were two mattresses; the adjoining storeroom had three more of the platform beds. Ryan figured that at least twenty people were sleeping in the three rooms.

      The kitchen was still a kitchen. It even had some of its original, predark appliances. The doors had been removed from a commercial-sized refrigerator, and its inside turned into a storage cupboard. The stove had been converted from gas to wood, its former oven now the firebox, which was giving off considerable heat.

      Cooling on a long, makeshift dining table were stacked loaves of bread-flat, round and golden brown.

      J.B. pulled a heavy crockery jar from the refrigerator pantry, flipped off the lid, and stuck his finger in. It came out gooey amber. He sniffed, then he licked. “Honey,” he said, eyes gleaming.

      Without another word, the companions tore into the pile of fresh bread, dipping great hunks of it into the honey pot. They ate every last crumb and took turns at the jar with moistened fingers until nothing sticky remained. Start to finish, the meal took four minutes.

      When they were done, Krysty said, “Traveling folks might carry corn and wheat seed with them for food, or to grow crops once they got where they were going, but bees? Chickens? No way could they survive a trip across that desert. How did they get here?”

      “Might have been mat-trans-ed in, I suppose,” J.B. said.

      “If the people here had access to mat-trans, why would they just import seed and livestock?” Ryan said. “Why wouldn’t they get the hell out if they could? What do you think, Mildred?”

      The black woman didn’t answer. She was staring at a square of chalkboard that hung from a nail on the wall. The board was a hundred-year-old artifact, and still in relatively good condition. It was the room’s only decoration. Across the top, “Lupita’s Daily Special” was painted in chipped, but legible hot pink. The dots over the i’s were in the shape of little flowers.

      There was no special today, or tomorrow, or ever again.

      “Mildred, is something wrong?” he asked.

      “Just wondering what if anything that might mean,” she said. She stepped aside so they could all see the words deeply scratched into the blackboard: “All Glory to Bob & Enid.”

      Nobody had a clue.

      It didn’t seem important at the time. Just odd.

      But when they started looking through other buildings, weapons ready in case the missing owners suddenly returned, they found more references to the pair. And on the streetfront wall of Titterness Real Estate someone had charcoaled three lines of tall, crooked letters: Our love for Bob & Enid, our love for one & other makes us strong & proud.

      “It would appear that paeans to ‘Bob and Enid’ are a recurring motif in these parts,” Doc said. “I would hazard the pair were early settlers, except for the glories and huzzahs that always accompany the inscriptions. They reflect a level of adoration normally reserved for deities.”

      “Goddess Enid sounds okay, but a god named Bob?” Krysty said.

      “That wasn’t here in 1992,” Mildred announced. She pointed across the street, through the line of mature trees, at the town square park.

      Ryan was already staring at the windowless, one-story, gray concrete monolith that rose from the middle of the park. The roof and sides of the 50-by-80-foot structure were ribbed for strength.

      Keeping low and single file, they trotted over for a closer look.

      There was only one entrance, a doorway accessed down a short flight of steps. The titanium steel and pressure-locked door was blocked by a pile of stones.

      The above ground structure was just the tip of the iceberg.

      “We’ve found Minotaur,” Ryan said.

      “Never was an island here, then,” Krysty said.

      “Map was right, though,” Dix stated. “Damn thing was smack in the middle of the reservoir—only on the bottom.”

      “Look at those reinforcing ribs,” Mildred said. “The walls are massive, designed to withstand tremendous pressure. Things are finally starting to make sense to me.”

      “Pray tell in what regard, my dear?” Doc asked.

      “The chronology,” Mildred said. “It’s all about the chronology. First came the rushed-through funding for the dam from Congress, then the town was condemned,