Free Prodigal's Return by James Axler

wonderful, especially after their last few meals consumed on the run.
    The companions made their way to the service bays and checked the abandoned vehicles. They located no weapons inside the trucks, which was rather odd, since most predark soldiers kept some sort of a handgun in their vehicle. J.B. found a box holding a dozen road flares behind a front seat. Eight of them were useless, split open from internal corrosion, but the remaining four seemed in decent condition.
    “Better than nothing,” he said glumly, tucking them into his munitions bag. “But not by much.”
    Turning their attention to the workbenches, Doc stood guard with the LeMat and his sword while the rest of the companions carefully chose some of the larger wrenches and pry bars. Several acetylene welding torches still held a small amount of charge, but the tanks were prohibitively heavy, and while the flame was lethally hot, the range was pitifully short.
    “Lots of juice in the gas pumps,” Ryan said, checking a pressure gauge. “But without any glass bottles, we can’t make Molotovs.”
    Tightening the jaws on a massive Stillson wrench, Jak scowled. “This mil base. No beer in fridge?”
    “Sure, lots of it. In cans.”
    “Damn!”
    “We’ll find some whiskey bottles in the CO’s office,” J.B. stated confidently. “Never yet found a commandingofficer who didn’t have a private bar hidden somewhere.”
    “Rank doth have its little privileges,” Mildred stated.
    “Speaking of rank,” Doc said, lifting a small plastic envelope from a box on the workbench. Using his teeth, he opened it and extracted a scented pine tree, which he hung off a button of his shirt. “Until we hit the showers,” he explained unnecessarily.
    Everybody smiled at that, and even Ryan almost grinned.
    “We don’t smell that bad,” Krysty scoffed, crossing her arms.
    “Yeah, do,” Jak stated honestly, looking apologetic.
    Fed and somewhat better armed, the companions took 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 nothingbut 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.