"Been here for years. Mebbe twenty or more. Could be plenty more."

There was a message that had apparently been scrawled with a finger, using blood that was still warm and fresh. The words misspelled and the letters clumsy, it was difficult to read, but clearly a warning:

"Kep oute for ewer ore dy." It was signed, "The Keper."

"You said Quint couldn't read or write," Ryan said to Krysty.

"Yeah. No reason to lie, was there?"

Ryan shook his head. "Guess not. So, if he's as fuckin' old as he looks, an' he's the Keeper... who was the Keeper who wrote this?"

J.B. pushed past him. "Who cares, friend? Let's go look at some guns."

And what guns they were.

Some of them were at least three hundred years old, looking frail and dusty inside cases of Plexiglas. The party split up to wander around, and the huge room echoed with their cries of amazement at the wonders. Ryan walked with Krysty and J.B.

It wasn't just a boggling array of blasters. There were all kinds of daggers and swords and axes. Many of the guns had descriptive cards under them. One card read, "Pair English flintlock night pistols, circa 1712, made in England by James Freeman. Screw-barrel guns fired buckshot instead of conventional ball, making it easier to hit a target at night, hence their name."

"What kind of range would that have, J.B.?" asked Ryan.

"I guess about twenty feet on a good day, or night," replied the Armorer, and moved on to explore on his own.

In the next case was a delicate sword with a blade that tapered to a needle point. Krysty put her arm on Ryan's, squeezing against him. "When do we go, lover?" she asked.

"Soon. Mebbe tomorrow. Day after for sure. Sword like that wouldn't be worth mutie shit in a firefight."

The card read, "English small sword, officer's. Circa 1765, steel hilt, with colichemarde blade. Grip bound in silver wire. Pierced pommel and guard. Blade length, thirty-two inches."

"Look at the length of this mother, J.B.," yelled Okie, her face pressed against a case across the hall. The long dark hair in her ponytail swung back and forth with her excitement. Dix joined her, reading slowly from the card.

"Model eighteen-forty-two rifle-musket. Fired the seven-forty grain Minie ball. Sights up to... up to nine hundred yards."

"Over a fuckin' half mile," gasped Okie. "That right, J.B.?"

"I'd back it up to about eighty yards."

"Look at the barrel on it," said Ryan, joining them. "Must be over five feet long."

"Couldn't get that inside your coat," grinned Krysty.

"Wouldn't want to."

"You goin' to change that LAPA now?" asked J.B. "On through there, under that arch, is an armory of modern stuff. Get somethin' new."

"What?"

J.B.'s sallow face warmed with a smile, and his eyes twinkled behind the thick lenses of his glasses. "Go see. I saw somethin' you might like."

Ryan walked quickly away, hearing the click of Krysty's dark blue cowboy boots following. He slowed down and waited for her, passing Finnegan and Hennings, immaculate in their matching blue jumpers.

"How's the hand, Ryan?" asked the fat man.

He inspected it. A little dried blood was crusted around the cut from the mutie's spear tip, but it looked clean. Ryan knew that out east there were villages of "dirties" who lived in mud huts and used poison on their arrows. The Trader had told him about them.

"Better, thanks, Finn."

On either side, rows of cases were stacked one above the other. He knew that J.B. Dix had a few precious booklets and pages torn from mags that showed some blasters from before the Chill. Now those blasters were in front of him and he read the names on the cards.

"Colt. Remington. Walker. Sharps, Smith & Wesson, Winchester, Le Mat, Luger, Catling, Maxim, Walther, Browning, Kalashnikov, Thompson, Mannlicher, Schmeisser, Uzi, Mauser, Tokarev, Webley, Deringer and Deringer, Tranter." His voice faded in wonder at this staggering array of arms. "J.B. could stay here all his days, Krysty. This is what his life is all about. Blasters in all shapes and sizes. Look at 'em. Just look."

He never even noticed the tiny vid camera hidden in the shadows near the ceiling, its tiny lens darting from side to side, following the movements of the group.

Just as they'd raided the clothes stores, so everyone took their pickings from the section of the museum beyond the arch, where there were rows and rows of greased and oiled blasters in all sizes and shapes and calibers; grenades and bombs and mines and rockets; bayonets and gren launchers; strangling wires and bazookas; machine guns and poison pistols.

Hunaker replaced the broad-bladed dagger that she'd broken fighting the Sioux in the Darks; barely a week earlier, it seemed like a dozen lifetimes. On J.B.'s recommendation, she took a 9 mm Ingram submachine gun that pared everything down to the minimum. Despite its small size, the light bolt action gave it a staggering rate of fire close to fifteen hundred rounds per minute. The card said it was the model 12. She also took a supply of the stick mags.

Okie kept her M-16A1 carbine with the collapsed stock, adding to it an IMI Mini-Uzi submachine gun. It weighed just over six pounds and was less than fifteen inches in length.

Krysty liked the clean, silvered finish on a Heckler & Koch P-7A 13 pistol, which fired a 9 mm bullet out of a thirteen-round magazine. Because of the large number of rounds it held, there was a special insulating block in front of the trigger to absorb heat from the gas that retarded the slide opening. J.B. nodded his approval of her choice.

Finnegan and Hennings both went for the fifteen-round model 92 Beretta pistol with frame-mounted safety, firing a 9 mm round.

They both liked a whole rack of dull gray Heckler & Koch submachine guns with built-in silencers and fifty-round drum magazines; they fired single, triple or continuous bursts of 9 mm bullets. The card said it was a development of the famous HK-54A2 model of the 1990s.

Ryan watched J.B., strolling around the rooms of new guns, hands behind his back, lips moving as though he was silently praying. But he wasn't. He was simply comparing the various qualities of the blasters ranged all around him.

"Can't do much better than what I've got," he finally said, watching the others carry armfuls of ammo down to their dormitory.

He pulled out his Steyr AUG 5.6 mm. "Nice Browning Hi-Power over there. Might take a Mini-Uzi like Okie got. Useful if we meet a mess of muties. And a new knife or two. Mebbe stock up on grens, huh?"

There was a polite cough from behind. The men spun, each dropping instinctively into a fighter's crouch.

"My apologies, gentlemen, if I caused a shimmer of nervousness to trickle through your bodies."

"Just fuck off, Doc," said J.B., relaxing, pushing back the brim of his crumpled fedora, fumbling in his pocket for one of his favored cheroots.

"I have taken the liberty of arming myself, if you have no objection, so I can be less of a weight for you to bear on our little jaunts."

"Jaunts?" exclaimed Ryan. "What kind a blasters you got?"

"An uncle of mine, a dear, sweet man, once owned a handgun of some rarity. A weapon for the connoisseur. Also, in the right hands, one to blast off the balls of a demented stickie, if I may be excused a lapse into the vernacular."

"You may, Doc. You fuckin' may," said Ryan, smiling.

"I have taken this to aid me in my striding over the difficult terrain we seem to encounter."

He held a long ebony walking stick in his right hand. As he tossed it in the air and caught it, the glittering silver pommel was revealed. It was a beautiful carving of the head of some ferocious animal with great teeth and a mane of hair.

"Handsome, Doc," said J.B. admiringly.

"More than that, my dear Mr. Dix. Voila!" With a twist of the hand he loosened the head, drawing out a snaking rapier of polished steel from within the ebony shell. "From the plant of elegance, I pluck the flower of mortality."