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Putting his feet on the ladder rungs, Ryan replied, "Can't figure that it's much different
than climbing up into God knows what."
After a few minutes of hand-over-hand descent, the shaft terminated in another elbow,
joining with a passageway branching off to the left. They were able to walk side by side
along this one. As they did they passed several smaller openings. Judging by the icy
drafts that blew out from them, there were a number of other subsidiary shafts connected
to more circulating stations.
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Presently they detected a faint radiance ahead, and as they went farther down the shaft,
the light grew brighter and they heard a series of noises. Ryan was able to distinguish the
humming of generators and the murmur of voices. A metal-meshed grille stood in front
of them. They approached it in a crouch and peered through the screen.
They looked down on a miniature city. They saw buildings with foundations of brick and
concrete, narrow paths twisting and turning between the squat structures. None of the
buildings looked like they could comfortably fit a child, much less a full-grown adult. It
looked like a model of a predark city, shrunk in volume and reduced in scale. In the
center was an obelisk tower made of white stone, stretching upward about twenty-five
feet.
Mildred caught her breath in surprise, but she said nothing. The city, if it could be called
that, was empty and devoid of life, despite evidence to the contrary. Both of them had
heard voices. Ryan pressed his face closer to the grille, looking from the left to the right.
Almost directly below them was a metal pole, and topping the pole was a rectangular
green sign with white lettering. He read it aloud: "Pennsylvania Avenue."
Running a hand across her forehead, Mildred said, "Sweet Jesus. It's a scale model of
Washington, D.C." She pointed to a white-domed building about thirty yards away.
"That's supposed to be the Capitol Building, and that tower is the Washington
Monument."
Ryan shook his head. "A bastard weird hobby. These freezies have way too much time on
their hands."
"Crazy as shithouse rats," Mildred intoned.
After waiting a few minutes and hearing nothing, they decided to move. Feeling around
on the inside of the hatch cover, Ryan found a slide lock and he pushed the bolt aside.
The hinges were stiff, and he had to launch several kicks at the frame before it creaked
open. They were about twenty feet above the floor, but only five from the arched roof of
a strange building supported by Doric columns. There was the statue of a seated man
inside it.
"A baby-sized Lincoln Memorial," Mildred said. "Appropriate in kind of a sick way."
Both of them jumped to the roof of the miniature memorial and clambered down to the
floor. They walked carefully down Pennsylvania Avenue, looking for any movements or
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signs of life, straining their ears and eyes. The sound of their footsteps echoed unnaturally
loud. Evidently the "city" wasn't equipped with the sound-absorbent shielding of the
storage level.
"You know," Mildred whispered, "if I could have imagined a place that had become a
refuge for survivors of the nukecaust, trying to evade death and retain some semblance of
their former lives, this would be the place."
The ceiling was fairly high, perhaps fifty or more feet, tapering upward to armatures
holding electric light fixtures. Very few of the buildings were more than six feet tall, and
Ryan and Mildred felt uneasy striding among them like giants.
Ryan had only seen pictures of America's capital city, and walking through a toy version
of it disturbed him for reasons he couldn't identify. Mildred, of course, had visited D.C.
before sky dark and remembered it well.
" 'There were giants in the earth in those days,' " Mildred muttered, bending down to peer
into the windows of a building.
"Don't you start. One of the reasons I accepted this job from Hellstrom was the prospect
of getting away from Doc and his flashblasted quotes."
"Sorry," Mildred said. "It's only natural for the child of a preacher to quote scripture.
Besides, if Doc was with us, he'd be talking some obscure shit about Gulliver and
Lilliput."
The room containing the city was so long that its far end was indistinguishable in the
shadows. There didn't seem to be any doors or any way out. Suddenly Ryan felt the fine
hairs on his nape lift.
The cold, still air blazed with automatic gunfire. Bullets smacked into a building beside
them, digging white pockmarks in the brickwork, shards scattering in every direction.
Ryan and Mildred responded instantly, in lunging rushes for cover on opposite sides of
the avenue.
Men in business suits, brandishing handblasters and autorifles, bounded toward them
from all directions. Ducking behind a four-foot-high office building, Ryan fired the
Walther MPL in a stuttering spray. He heard ricochets, screams and curses, and the
snapping snarl of Mildred's MP-5.
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