Chapter Ten

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BRITVA HAD AMPUTATED three toes from his right foot, using the open cutthroat razor that had given him his nickname. After his fall into a pool a few days earlier it hadn’t been possible to stop and light a pyrotab to dry out his socks and boots—not without running the risk of being abandoned as the unlamented Nul had been. So he’d waited and hoped. But eventually the blackness had come and the swelling. The toes had bled very little.

Uchitel had watched him closely for any sign of weakness, but the little man with the trimmed beard had kept up well.

The invasion was going better than he’d hoped. The one disappointment was that Alaska was just as poor as Russia.

The two communities they’d found and destroyed so far were even smaller than those across the ice river. One had consisted of only three wretched hovels containing seven human beings, four of them with strong mutie traits. Three of the locals had killed themselves as soon as they saw the invaders looming out of the driven snow.

Bet one of them had been kept alive: a lad of around eighteen in surprisingly good health, despite being riddled with lice.

Uchitel prodded his stallion to move faster. The temperature was dropping fast as night approached, and shelter was yet another couple of miles away, in the lee of a low ridge. Since arriving in America, Uchitel no longer felt the need to keep checking behind him. Those horseback soldiers, if they really did exist, would have given up days back, not daring to leave their own terrain,

The American boy had given them hope of better days to come.

Pechal had taken the lad, helped by Urach, watched carefully by Uchitel, who had held his phrase book open on his lap. The boy was stripped and tied to a skinning frame outside the hut where his mother lay raped, sodomized and dead.

After his failure with the trapper, the leader of the Narodniki had spent time studying the book, gradually learning how to choose his words with greater care. Now, he felt ready.

“Where are big house and store?” he asked, trying to pronounce each word the way the book said.

“What?”

Pechal laid a thumb on the boy’s right eye and pressed; the boy screamed and tensed his skinny white body against the cords. Blood trickled from his burst nails, and his ribs stood out like a line of picket fencing. The pain was so severe that the boy lost control of both bladder and bowels simultaneously, making Pechal curse and step hastily away from him.

“Don’t hurt him, Pechal. Not yet. I have read how America was a place of great riches. Everyone owned several houses and trucks and guns. It cannot be far to such places. I will ask him again.”

Bizabraznia, the Ugly One, came swaggering by, clutching an earthenware beaker of zubrovka. From her walk, it was obvious she had drunk several mugs of the spirit already. She looked at the naked boy, reaching out and grabbing him by the genitals.

“If he won’t fucking talk, Uchitel, then I’ll fucking rip off his fucking balls. Hear him sing then.”

“Leave him be.”

All three of Uchitel’s followers looked at him, hearing the familiar crack of command. The woman staggered unsteadily off toward the others, who were cooking a stew of root vegetables. Urach backed away from the helpless boy, resheathing one of his surgical-steel knives. Pechal pulled the gray hood of his long cloak over his head, bowing slightly. But Uchitel noticed how Sorrow’s long curved nails were driven so hard against the palms of his hands that crescents of blood showed brightly.

“We would like to visit some reputable stores. Which do you recommend?” asked Uchitel, moving closer to the helpless youth, careful to avoid the fouled snow.

“Stores, mister?” gasped the boy. “I heard tell of ‘em. Where Traders go. Ain’t none. Not for a month’s march there ain’t.”

Though most of the boy’s words were incomprehensible to Uchitel, the negativity was clear. There was a long silence while he thumbed through the book.

“Can you direct me to the best place to buy a real bargain, if you please? Thank you.”

“I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout nothin’, mister. Swear to the blessed savior, Jesus Christ crucified, I know fuckin’ nothin’. I can’t help you.”

Uchitel blinked, fighting to control his temper. His translation book wasn’t getting him anywhere. At the last hamlet he made the mistake of speaking to an old man only to find the dotard was deaf as granite. It had been a mercy to slit his throat for him. But now he was still failing. Failing was something that Uchitel didn’t like.

“I will try again. I think his head is filled with ice,” he said to the other two.

The boy stared from one to the other, his face twitching with nerves, the cold making his whole body tremble. Already the yellow snow around his bare feet was turning to ice. These barbarians with such awesome blasters had come from the west. But everyone knew there was nothing to the west, just a land where chaos ruled and muties lived. The gross woman who had tugged at his penis with her rough hands had been frightening, but the one who was their leader and who was trying to speak to him in a crooked and halting tongue was the worst.

He had eyes of gold, like the ferocious mutie wolves that ravaged the land and were hunted for their furs. Never had the boy seen a man with such eyes. The face was kindly, the mouth full lipped and generous. Yet the young lad could hardly breathe for the fear the man inspired.

If only he knew what the man wanted, he would tell him. Tell him anything. If his family hadn’t already been butchered, the lad would betray them now for his own life.

“I request you direct me to where I can find food and clothes.”

It was Uchitel’s last try. If this didn’t work.

Suddenly an idea came to the boy. They wanted to find some place where there were clothes and food in abundance.

“Yes,” he said.

“Da?” queried Uchitel.

“I know what you want. I heard tell of it. Ain’t here. Ain’t never seen it. Don’t know anyone who has, but I heard tell of—” The boy stopped as Uchitel waved a warning hand, frantically turned pages of his tattered little book and finally found what he wanted. “Slowly, if you please, madam. I am a stranger and a visitor to your land.”

“Slowly? Sure. You want the stoppile. Word is it’s filled with stuff like you want. But my Dad said it was all bear shit. Doesn’t exist. Anyways, folks go there and they die there. That’s what they say.”

“Stoppile?” repeated Uchitel. “Clothes and food?”

“Sure, mister. Stoppile. Near where Ank Ridge used to be.”

Uchitel shook his head. “Where?” he asked, smiling to himself at the obvious wonderment he could read on the faces of Urach and Pechal.

“Near Ank Ridge. That way,” he said, gesturing with his head to the southeast.

Uchitel tweaked the lad’s cheek, much as a kindly uncle would after his favorite nephew had answered some arcane riddle.

“He tells me that there is a place of great wealth southeast of here, called stoppile, near a place called Ank Ridge.” Uchitel consulted the book again to make sure he’d understood the boy. “Yes, the boy is right. Tell the others we will go at dawn.”

“And what of him?”

“The boy?”

“Da,” replied Pechal in his gentle voice. “What of him?”

“Kill him.” It was a matter of supreme indifference to Uchitel now.

The boy died in appalling agony at the hands of Pyeka, the Baker, their incendiary expert. Pyeka found a novel way of introducing elongated pyro-tabs into the youth’s body, then lighting them. Pyeka had always thrived on the laughter and praise of his comrades for his cleverness with fire.

The next morning, having forgotten the threat of the cavalry at his back, Uchitel led his group toward Stoppile near Ank Ridge.

South and east toward the stockpile not far from where Anchorage had once stood.

 

Chapter Eleven

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LEAD STREAMED OUT of the silenced MP-5 SD-2s held by Quint and Rachel. The silenced Heckler & Koch blasters fired subsonic rounds, with little more noise than a man coughing. But their effect was devastating in the long, forty-bed dormitory.

When Lori made her move, screaming out a warning, the room became a bedlam of noise and movement. For an instant, Ryan was frozen by the cry from a girl everyone had thought totally dumb. Then he dived for cover, hitting the floor and crawling toward his bed and weaponry; knowing, as he did, that he was likely to be too slow.

He glimpsed feet. They were scrabbling and running everywhere. As he rose, squinting around the bottom of his bed, he took in at a glance what was happening.

Quint and Rachel still stood near the doorway, firing their blasters from the hip. Quint was cackling with maniacal laughter, and Rachel’s face was frozen in a rictus of savage hatred. Bullets skittered off the wall, striking sparks from the row of lockers.

“Ice ‘em!” J.B. Dix shouted from across the room.

“Talk’s fuckin’ cheap,” muttered Ryan, trying to reach the hem of his long coat; he wanted to drag it from his bed and get at the SIG-Sauer P-226. Another burst of fire exploded along the floor, only inches from his outstretched hand, making him retreat. Then he had the coat and then the pistol, knowing immediately from its weight that it held the full complement of fifteen 9-mm rounds in the mag.

As he maneuvered into position for a clear shot, he heard a piercing scream and saw Lori fall in a tangle of flying red clothes, crimson smearing her face.

“Fireblast!” he cursed, seeing that Quint had moved behind the lockers, only the heavy muzzle of the submachine gun protruding. Rachel had also taken cover behind a bed, cackling her delight at having shot her own great-niece.

He could see only a couple of his own group. Finnegan was crawling toward his bed, after his new model 92 Beretta, hanging in its holster from the bedframe.

And Hunaker.

Her cropped green stubble of hair gleamed in the overhead lights. Hun was marvelously athletic, with exceptional strength and agility. Her own Ingram 9 mm was on the floor, resting against the television. Ryan’s eye was caught for a moment by the picture on the screen of a naked couple in bed—a thin-faced man and a beautiful woman with long dark hair.

Making her move, Hun dived into a forward roll, then reached for the blaster. She was straightening when Rachel saw her. The crone hobbled a step sideways, screeched a warning to her husband-brother, then opened up with a burst of continuous fire that ripped into the crouching girl.

Hunaker was hit across the chest, the bullets unzipping her clothes and skin and flesh. She was thrown sideways onto her back. The gun fell from her fingers. She tried to get up again but fell forward in a crouch, her head between her knees, coughing up blood.

“Fuckin’ bastard!” screamed Okie, moving toward the dying woman.

“Get back!” ordered Ryan, seeing that Okie would be cold meat for Rachel. But the harridan was too busy laughing at her success. She shouted to Quint, “Done the green bitch, Keeper! Done the…”

Ryan held the stamped steel pistol in his right hand, steadying his aim with his left. Engraved along the top of the barrel in tiny italic script were the words, Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft, J.P. Sauer & Sohn, Eckenforde.

He aligned the leaf front sight with the vee of the back, centering it on the crowing old woman. He squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession.

Blood appeared among the tatters of leather that hung about Rachel’s body. Her cap with its tawdry glass beads went flying from her matted gray hair, rattling in a corner of the room. Her arms flung out as though she was trying to stop a runaway horse, and she took three tottering steps backward. She sat on a bed behind her, then rolled onto her side and remained still.

Kicking on the floor, hands to her face, Lori was screaming on a single monotonous note that grated at the nerves. J.B. and Hennings had both got hold of their guns and were opening up on Quint, keeping the malevolent old man cowering behind his makeshift metal barricade. Finnegan had also got hold of his blaster, and Okie had managed to reach her own bed, taking up the M-16A1 carbine.

There was no sign of Doc at all.

Hunaker was moaning only five paces from where Ryan crouched, his warm pistol in his hand, awaiting a chance to waste the Keeper. A lake of blood was spreading slowly from beneath the girl, seeping over the floor.

There was a momentary lull in the fighting. On the television, a kitten appeared for a moment, in a surreal flash from a century back. Hun’s headphones still poured out the thin sound of a song about a dock on a bay.

“Ryan.” Her voice was the faintest whisper.

“What is it?”

“I’m done, Ryan.”

At least four bullets had hit her, dead center in her chest, and Ryan knew it. It would be absurd and dishonest to pretend she would be okay.

“Are you in pain?”

“Not bad. Numb. Mebbe I’ll be gone ‘fore it fuckin’ starts.”

“Could be.”

Another burst of fire from the others ripped into the lockers and walls around Quint. There was no reply at all.

“Ryan, think you’ll ever get to see Sukie again?” asked Hun.

It was a moment before he figured out who she was talking about. Then he remembered. Sukie was the pretty little girl who’d joined War Wag One from War Wag Three just before the shambles of Mocsin. He recalled that Hun had been paying some attention to her.

“If I see her, Hun, I’ll tell her. Take it easy, now.”

Hunaker was wearing her new black satin blouse with green leaves embroidered on it. The blood didn’t show on it at all.

“Don’t shoot no more. Keeper says to put up the blasters. Keeper says he’ll yield.”

Ryan Cawdor stayed where he was, shouting to the old man, “Gun first, Quint. Then you, hands high as you can get ‘em.”

Nothing happened for some seconds. Then: “Keeper says how can he trust you?”

“Do it. You have my word nobody’ll ice you. But throw out the gun first.”

There was a tiny sound from Hunaker, and Ryan looked back to where she was huddled.

“Hun? Hun, can you hear me?”

There was an unmistakable stillness to the green-headed girl, and Ryan knew she was gone.

Krysty was close behind him. “Dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t like to think of her dyin’ like that, kind of on her own.”

Ryan looked around and saw there were tears glistening at the corners of the girl’s eyes. “We all have to, you know.”

“You swear you won’t hurt Keeper? You done for poor, sweet Rachel and little Lori.”

“That murderous old slut blasted the kid,” shouted Henn.

“Didn’t have to chill Rachel.”

“Come out, old man,” yelled Ryan, the pistol rock steady in his right fist.

“Swear I’m safe.”

“You’re safe, Quint. Come on, before we come and gun you out of there.”

Now they were all standing, all pointing their blasters at where Quint was cowering. Even Doc had finally appeared, clutching the Le Mat cannon in both hands.

“Here’s the gun,” yelped Quint, tossing the Heckler & Koch on the floor. It skidded and bounced, finishing up a yard or two from Ryan’s feet.

“Watch the bastard,” warned J.B., who was right behind Ryan. “Could have a hider up his sleeve.”

“Yeah. Watch him.”

“Keeper’s comin’ out. Ally, ally oxen free. Don’t shoot poor old Keeper. He had to do it. Rules is rules and the law’s the fuckin’ law, ain’t it? You understand, don’t ya?”

“Move it!” shouted Ryan, feeling his anger rising. He’d liked Hunaker. She’d been a friend for about three years.

“You promised the Keeper,” mumbled Quint, cringing as he left his cover.

His sequinned jacket flashed, gaudy and cheap. The heel had broken on the woman’s boot he wore, and he limped, his hands trembling in the air. A thread of spittle dangled from his thin lips, and he was shaking like an aspen in a hurricane.

“Promised Keeper,” he repeated.

Ryan put a 9-mm bullet between the deep-set eyes, sending the old man crashing backward, arms flailing, mouth dropping open in shock.

Ryan holstered his pistol, not even bothering to watch the death throes of the last Keeper of the Anchorage Redoubt. A man didn’t get up when he’d been rained on with a 9 mm through the forehead at twenty paces.

“Turn off the vid and Hun’s music,” he ordered. “Drag those two stiffs out of here. J.B.?”

“Yeah?”

“We’ll move out tomorrow. First light. Get all the maps you can. Take Finn and Okie and get some buggies serviced and fueled up. Henn, you and Krysty take charge of stocks of food, pyrotabs, spare snospex, ammo, grens, thermals,” he said, ticking off items on his fingers as they occurred to him.

“What may I do to be of service, Mr. Cawdor?” asked Doc, struggling to force the big pistol into its holster.

“Check the gateway’s exit and entrance codes. Might come back here for another jump if there’s nothing much around. Look out for muties about the stockpile.”

“What about her?” asked Okie, pointing contemptuously to where Lori was weeping on the floor, holding bloodied fingers to her face. “Shall I ice her?”

“We’d all be iced if she hadn’t shouted,” suggested J.B. “How bad is she hurt?”

The girl sat up then, looking around at the angry, tense faces. “Got bullet across head from Keeper.” She showed the wound, a livid crease on her head among the blond hair. The wound was clotted with blood that was already drying. It didn’t look too bad. “What should I do with the gateway, Mr. Cawdor?” asked Doc, oblivious of the fact that the conversation had moved on.

“Just look it over. Make sure there’s nothin’ wrong with it. You know more about them than we fuckin’ do, Doc, don’t you?”

The old man shook his head in bewilderment. “I fear that my memory is rather like a train, Mr. Cawdor. The farther it pulls away, the smaller it gets.”

“What about her?” asked Finn. “She saved us, but she’s kin to those dirty bastards.”

“Take me,” begged the girl. “Take Lori or Lori die here.”

“Anybody else for wastin’ her?” Ryan asked. Nobody replied. “We take her, then. Okie. Get her bandaged if she needs it.”

“What about Hun?” asked the girl blaster.

“Can’t bury her. Anyone seen any crems? Lori? Anyplace bodies can be burned or whatever?”

“I show you room where they put some.”

“Sure. Doc, you can help. After Lori’s cleaned up, go with her, and take Hun down to where she shows you. Some kind of freezin’ place, I guess. Use one of the plug-in buggies around. Take those two—” he indicated the corpses of Rachel and Quint “—and dump them out the door near the freezin’ place. Check the return code.”

“Triple number followed by a letter was common in these places, as I recall,” said Doc. “Sure. Come on, people. Let’s all get movin’.”

 

SUPPER WAS A DOLEFUL MEAL. More of the microwaves had gone on the blink, and the long room stank of burned food. At least it helped to drown out the sour-sweet scent of death. Finn suggested that they move to another of the linked dormitories for the last night, but everyone felt too tired to bother.

Ryan and J.B. had agreed on what they’d do. The maps showed a large town called Anchorage on the coast. Seemed worth a careful recon to see what remained.

All the maps were loaded; also food, heating supplies, ammo and all the blasters they wanted. Lori’s cut had been wiped and disinfected, and she was in good shape, talking excitedly about leaving the stockpile for the first time. Okie was the only one who made her dislike felt. The others simply accepted Lori as one of their own.

The buggies were juiced and ready to roll.

Doc had been unable to open the door to the chambers where they thought bodies might be frozen and stored, so the corpses of Hunaker, Quint and Rachel had been placed outside the door. “Won’t hurt Hun now,” Ryan had said. Doc had also carefully noted the current reentry code and each of them had it written down and memorized. It was the numbers one, zero, eight, followed by the letter J.

Each ice buggy held three or four people, with plenty of storage room for extra gas and supplies. Ryan was to drive the lead vehicle with Krysty; J.B. would take the second with Lori and Finnegan; Hennings would share the third with Okie and Doc.

The vehicles were already heavily armed with mortars and machine guns. Judging from his encounter with the local muties, Ryan figured they should be more than able to wipe out any opposition.

At the suggestion of J.B. Dix, everyone went to bed early that night to be ready for a dawn start.

Krysty came to Ryan, in the night, whispering that they should go to the next dormitory, where the beds were clean and the smell of death was missing, and where they could make love without being overheard.

They found a bed in the other dorm, and she held him tight, her long hair brushing against his shoulders. “How do you feel about Hun?” she asked.

“Like I lost my blaster,” he replied.

“No feeling?”

He shook his head. “No. Hun was good. But she got iced. Maybe you tomorrow, me the next day. Start feelin’ sorry and it doesn’t never stop.”

“Doesn’t ever stop,” she corrected him, feeling a tremor from his chest as he laughed at her.

“Sure.”

“If it had been me?”

He leaned over her, his single eye glittering in the dim light. “You’re different, Krysty. You know that.”

“You’re sort of special, too.”

Before dawn they fell asleep, tangled in each other’s arms, having made love three times.

 

AFTER THEY’D DRIVEN the buggies onto the small gale-swept plateau beside the redoubt, they gathered for a last word from Ryan.

“We’ve got radios, so let’s keep in touch. We’re Buggy One. J.B.’s Two and Henn’s Three. Use the radio only if you have to. Should be able to keep in visual touch. J.B.’s got the maps. We’re heading toward where the town of Anchorage was. Should get close by evening.”

As he spoke, the ground trembled under their feet and some powdery snow came cascading from the cliff above the redoubt’s entrance. “Only a little quake,” said J.B. “Plenty of those mothers where you’ve got volcanoes. Taste the sulfur on your tongue.”

The gale was gathering force, and Doc nearly lost his tall stovepipe hat; he secured it with an elastic beneath his chin. “This hurricane puts me in mind of a jest I was once told,” he said, half-shouting to be heard above the wind.

“A jest? You mean a joke?” asked Krysty. “I recall Peter Maritza back in Harmony using that word for somethin’ funny. Said it was a word his grandfather used and he kind of remembered it.”

Doc nodded, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “This damned wind! It appears that many, many years ago, back in Kansas, there was a herd of longhorn cattle.”

“Was longhorns some sort of muties?” asked Finnegan, curiously.

“Not really, young man. They were grazing out on the open grasslands when a dreadful gale arose. A positive typhoon, it was. And it began to blow ever more strongly toward these cattle.”

“Get to the fuckin’ point, Doc. I’m freezin’ my fuckin’ tits off,” moaned Okie, huddling against the chill.

“My apologies, madam, though I hardly feel that my style of discourse merits such foul language from such pretty lips. I will proceed. The wind eventually blew with such ferocity that the entire group of cows were lifted from their feet and whisked away over the horizon. They became known forever after as the herd shot round the world.”

It was obviously the punchline, so everyone laughed appreciatively. As they climbed into their buggies, Krysty tugged at Ryan’s sleeve. “You get that joke of Doc’s, lover?”

He grinned at her. “No. Couldn’t understand it.” Once everyone was aboard, they set off toward the city of Anchorage.

 

Chapter Twelve

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THE NARODNIKI WERE on the right road. They knew that because the mutie woman had told them before they used and abused her, finally spilling her tripe in the snow with the curved blade of the bayonet of a Kalashnikov.

“Ank Ridge?” had been the question from Uchitel. “Stoppile and Ank Ridge.”

She’d responded to the latter name, gesturing to the south. Her mouth was so misshapen, with only a residual tongue, that she could do no more than nod and point.

So they moved on: a long line of people, heavily furred against the bitter nuclear winter, heeling their ponies and horses toward the rising sun, rifles slung across shoulders, food and ammo weighing down the pack animals. Their eyes were cold as ice, and many of them wore clothes splattered with dried blood.

So far they had seen no signs of the legendary dangers that had for so long prevented anyone from the Russian side crossing the frozen strait. There had been no sign of flaming hot spots or of giant muties fifty feet tall with eyes of fire and claws of steel. Nor was the land utterly barren. Here and there were patches of earth free of snow, pocked and dappled with dark green mosses and stubbly grass.

They had met little opposition to their plans to drive inland. Apart from the loss of Nul, and Stena’s unfortunate shoulder wound, there had been few casualties on this trip, and they had lost only two men, both to a single rifleman a day back. The sniper had ridden on a slope overlooking the hamlet they were ravaging and had shot down both men from cover. Then, as the angry guerrillas charged him, he had put a bullet through his own skull.

Two dead, three if he counted the absent Nul, Uchitel thought. Only one injured, two if he allowed for the three toes that Britva had self-amputated.

Their journey to Stoppile was taking much longer than Uchitel had been led to expect. After a two-week southeasterly trek across the Alaskan interior, they’d encountered an impossible mountain range. Changing their course to the northeast, they’d eventually found a trail that led south through the mountains. Unknown to the Narodniki, they were traveling along the earthquake-riven remains of what had once been the main highway linking Anchorage and Fairbanks.

Now that they were finally drawing close to Ank Ridge and Stoppile, Uchitel was well pleased with himself, and as they rode along, he sang an old, old ballad about the stars being the sentinels for mankind. He liked the verse about the importance of order over chaos. It appealed to his sense of the rightness of things.

Far off to the left he glimpsed the skulking shapes of a pack of mutie wolves, their bellies flat to the tundra, shadowing the party. They must be disappointed, thought Uchitel, that there were no weak stragglers in his band as there might be in a herd of caribou—stragglers that they could drag down and rend apart.

There were no weak stragglers in the Narodniki.

Toward evening the ground shook with one of the worst quakes since they’d crossed into Alaska. Rocks on a slope of ice-bound boulders ahead of them broke free and cascaded down noisily, nearly blocking the trail. The horses were frightened, and several riders, including the massive Bizabraznia, were unseated. Angered by the mocking laughter, she grabbed her animal’s bridle and delivered a fearsome punch to the horse’s head, knocking it to its knees. Then she kicked and lashed it with her whip until it returned to its feet. As she remounted, she was rewarded with cheers from her fellows.

Uchitel touched the cold hilt of his saber, remembering the good feeling of decapitating an enemy. He wanted to capture more enemies so that he could use the sword once more. Perhaps in the town of Ank Ridge there would be plenty of chances.

When the wind shifted to the south he caught the bitter taste of salt on his tongue, in addition to the ever-present sulfur from the surrounding volcanoes. The salt meant the sea could not be far away, which meant that Ank Ridge must also be close.

Grom, their explosives expert, reined in his horse alongside Uchitel. “That would make a fine show for my toys,” he shouted. Grom was almost stone deaf and shouted all the time.

Grom pointed to a large dam with towers, set across a valley to their left. It dominated the valley where they rode, silhouetted against the amber sky, which was splashed with streaks of vivid green lightning.

“The water will be frozen, Grom,” he called, facing him so Grom could read his lips.

“No, Uchitel! See ahead, there is a river that flows and there is green to its sides. Away beyond that dam you see the smoking cone of a volcano. It heats the water so that it flows. Let me burst it and wash all away down here. It would be a fine sight, I swear.”

“Not now, brother. Perhaps another day, but not yet. Not now!”

 

“WHAT IS THAT, UCHITEL?”

Evening was dragging its murky cloak across the wasteland, the yellow clouds turning a sullen maroon. It had snowed a little during the late part of the afternoon, dusting the trail ahead. The dam was still visible behind them. This time it was Barkhat, with the smooth, velvet voice, who spoke; as he did so, the puckered scar at the corner of his mouth twitched and danced.

“Where?”

“Yonder. Like a large ball.”

Uchitel strained his eyes into the gloom. He saw several squat buildings and a large saucer-shaped object, which was cracked along one side and mounted on a tripod. It was difficult to judge its size, but it looked to be about a hundred feet in height. There was also a huge ball, half as high again, that seemed to be made from a complicated pattern of interwoven triangles. Uchitel had never seen anything like it, but it nagged at his memory. There had been something like it in one of the old history books in Yakutsk.

“I think it was a defense against firefights.”

“What?”

Uchitel nodded, the facts trickling back into his mind. “It was called radar, Barkhat. It was a way of seeing great distances and watching for enemies. There were many such installations along the coasts. I have read that such buildings stood where the Sakhalin and Kamchatka lands were. But they were—” he hesitated, seeking the expression that he’d read “—Da, they were ‘primary objectives’ for the nukes. This one must have been missed.”

“Should we go look, Uchitel? Might there not be much gold?”

“Imbecile! Would there be gold after a hundred years? They were not places of wealth. No. Let us ride on by.”

“Perhaps we could camp there if the buildings are safe.”

Uchitel considered it. “Perhaps, brother. Perhaps we can.”

“And watch for enemies,” added Urach, who’d come in time to hear the latter part of the conversation.

“Our enemies are all ahead of us. We need no radar to tell us that.”

“None behind?” asked Urach.

“Nyet,” replied Uchitel, forcefully. “If there were, then they stayed back in Russia. They will never be a threat to the Narodniki.”

 

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES behind the Narodniki, Major Gregori Zimyanin was leading his group of one hundred mounted militia. They were at the foothills of the Alaskan Range, spread well out, the horses picking their way carefully through the torturous mountain terrain.

Aliev, the Tracker, was a little ahead of them, waving them forward. Zimyanin had deliberately held up the crossing of the Bering Strait, hesitant at the enormousness of what he was doing, and uncertain whether the party would approve.

But now that he was closing in on his prey, some three or four days behind, it was time to press forward at all speed. As his horse crested a rise, the officer’s heart filled with pride.

This might be just the beginning.

 

Chapter Thirteen

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THE CRUCIFIX WAS BLACKENED and seared by the fires from the heavens. Icicles hung in the crevices around the twisted, tortured form nailed to the metal cross. The fingers were gone, so were the tips of the thorned crown, melted away a century back. The flesh of the crucified Christ was satin black, like the wing of a crow, polished by the ceaseless wind to a velvet consistency.

It stood bolted firmly to the tottering remnants of what had once been the side of a small brick church almost under the haunting shadow of a mountain. Its twenty-thousand-foot summit was permanently obscured by snow spume and chem clouds.

Around the crucifix, kneeling on the sharp stones, were about twenty people, most of them women. They wore dark clothes wrapped around them in layers, giving them a funereal appearance. Their leader, a tall skeletal figure with wild eyes and long black hair, was standing in front of them, facing the crucifix.

“Blessed are the nukes,” he called.

His congregation responded, “And blessed shall be the fallout.”

“Blessed is the punishment of the Dark Lord.”

“And blessed are the nails of his hands and his feet.”

“Blessed are the long chill and the many rads.”

“Blessed be both the short heat and the long cold,” came the response.

“We wait thy coming, Lord.”

“Aye, we await thy black visage.”

“Then shall we be released from bondage and into eternal life among those in the bunkers below.”

The man turned then to gaze out at them. “In this place, tainted by the blood of many, shall we stay until He cometh to lead us to salvation. Amen, amen, amen.”

“Amen,” pattered the others, rising one by one.

At that moment they heard the distant sound of engines, throbbing and whining off to the south.

 

ANCHORAGE WAS GONE.

They stopped the three buggies and got out on a bluff overlooking the sullen expanse of gray-green ocean. J.B. and Ryan checked their maps, glancing at the compass for bearings. There wasn’t any doubt.

What had once been a sizable city had totally disappeared.

“Nukes,” said J.B. tersely, his sallow face showing no emotion.

“Yeah,” agreed Ryan Cawdor. “Nukes. Must have wasted all round here, hot-spotted it, triggering quakes, or mebbe volcanoes. That’s a big crater out there.” He pointed to the east, where a smudge of smoke showed against the pale sky.

“Crater,” said Doc Tanner. “Why should that ring a distant bell? I fear me I do not remember.”

“Quakes dropped the cliffs in the sea. Up came the sea, and there Anchorage went.”

The wind was so strong that it was blowing a waterfall that flowed over the cliffs back into a rainbow arch over their heads, drenching them. It wasn’t a place to hang around, with some particularly vicious gulls gathering and swooping.

“You could throw out those fuckin’ maps,” said Okie. “The whole fuckin’ place is changed.”

“Mebbe not away from the coast. There’s another big town shown, Fairbanks. We’ll make for that.”

After only six or seven miles of uneven driving, Ryan slowed, waiting for the others to come alongside. Not bothering with the radio, he stuck his head through a side ob slit and shouted, “Somethin’ ahead. See ‘em?”

In a shallow valley almost on the flanks of the high mountain was a huddle of buildings. Some of them looked desolate and ruined. Among the buildings stood a small group of about a dozen people, shrouded in dark clothing.

“They seen us,” shouted Hennings, his black face almost invisible within the wrappings of clothing he wore against the bitter cold.

“Fingers on triggers,” warned J.B. “Remember the Keeper. Let’s go.”

Oddly, none of the waiting group moved as the buggies came grinding closer, kicking up a spray of snow and ice behind them. In each buggy someone in the top bubble was manning the light machine gun, covering the strangers. At a signal from Ryan, the vehicles stopped about thirty paces from the watchers.

An extremely tall man, his face exposed to the elements, strode toward them, his hand raised in the universal sign of peace.

Ryan noticed the dark crucifix on the wall behind the man, recognizing it as a symbol of the old religion. Over years of traveling with the Trader they’d come across a few ruined churches, but they’d never been of any interest and obviously held nothing of real value, like food or blasters.

“Cut the engines down to idle,” he ordered, using the radio. “These people don’t look dangerous—they’re mainly women, and I can’t see anyone in the huts—but keep alert.”

“Welcome,” called the emaciated man. “Welcome in the name of the Dark Lord.”

“Is that a baron?” asked Krysty. Ryan shook his head.

“If you come in peace, we will share with you what little we have. As we are all gathered here at the river by the throne of our Lord, we welcome you. Step down from your wagons.”

Ryan flicked the switch on the speaker. “You got blasters?”

“Weapons are an abomination against our beliefs. We carry clean steel and that is all.”

Ryan looked at Krysty, who shrugged. “I don’t know, lover. We need some local knowledge. Do you think mebbe they can help?”

He nodded. “I’m goin’ out. If there’s no trouble, then you come. Tell J.B. and his team to follow, then Henn and his team last of all. All right?”

“Sure.”

Ryan opened the hydraulic door, stepping out on the snow, holding his new G-12 caseless automatic rifle casually at the ready. “My name is Ryan Cawdor,” he said. “These are my friends.” The sweep of his arm took in the buggies and their occupants.

“My name is Apostle Ezekiel Herne, and these are the sisters and brothers of the Church of the Dark Lord Waiting. We have dwelled here in this field of blood for many years now, coming together from all over Laska.”

Ryan looked around, beckoning Krysty to follow him. The sight of the tall girl with her tumbling mane of brilliant red hair brought chattering from the women. Their talk was quelled by an angry glare from their skinny priest.

“This is Krysty Wroth,” he said. Then, as the occupants of the second buggy emerged, he continued, “The guy in the battered hat there is J.B. Dix, and the fat man’s Finnegan. The lady with hair like straw is called Lori.”

“What is straw, Brother Cawdor?” asked Herne.

“Let us pass, friend,” replied Ryan, waving to the occupants of the third buggy to come out. They followed his lead, all of them hefting blasters ostentatiously, ready for action.

“The old-timer is called Doctor Theophilus Tanner, and the lady’s name is Okie.”

The black man was last out, holding his gray Heckler & Koch 54A submachine gun with its built-in silencer. As he stepped down he threw off his thermal hood, showing his face and his mass of cropped, curly hair.

The effect of Hennings’s appearance was amazing. Everyone except for Herne gave a great cry of terror and exultation and fell immediately to their knees, prostrating themselves on the barren stones, moaning and shouting. Ryan and his party dropped into defensive positions, fingers tight on triggers, eyes flicking nervously. A single wrong move, and all of Herne’s group would be iced.

The priest himself stood still, trembling and shaking, hands clutched together in front of him, his long bony fingers tangling like a nest of worms. His voice shook when he finally spoke.

“Lord, Lord, you have come. As it was foretold in the great books of defense and survival, you walk again among us.”

“Lead us to salvation, Dark Lord,” screamed one of the women, scrabbling forward on hands and knees toward the black man, who nervously backed away from her. But she seized him by the ankles and pressed her chapped lips to the steel toe cap of one of his polished black combat boots. Licking the gleaming leather, she writhed in ecstasy.

“Get this fuckin’ gaudy slut away from me, Ryan,” said Hennings, raising his blaster as if to crack it into the woman’s skull.

“Oh, Lord,” called Herne. “It is said that a man such as you would one day come to us. All our prayers and teachin’ is for that.”

“What does he mean, a man like me?” asked Henn.

The priest answered, pointing to the nuke-blackened Christ upon the tumbled wall. “There is our tortured messiah. Never in our lives has such a man been seen.”

“I knew it, Henn,” cackled Finn.

“What, stupe?”

“One day it’d be good news havin’ a black man ridin’ as my shotgun. Now it’s come. These sons of bitches fuckin’ worship you, Henn.”

 

“IT’S TRUE, J.B.,” said Ryan, as they ate the last of the turnip stew and meat. None of them knew what the meat was, and nobody wanted to ask.

“Henn a god, just ‘cos he’s black. I don’t believe it, Ryan.”

Ezekiel Herne had led them to the largest hut, and had ordered two women to feed them and arrange their bedding. Ryan had made sure that the three buggies were locked and that small contact mines were placed and primed. He also made sure that the community knew it, so no one would tamper with the vehicles.

Hennings had been taken into another room and fed on his own. He’d protested strongly until Ryan pointed out that these people were ready to worship him, and if that meant free food and some guidance around the country, then being a god for a few hours wasn’t such a bad thing.

After they’d eaten, the cadaverous priest came to them, sat crosslegged on the floor beside Ryan and grinned at him with the worst set of rotten teeth that Ryan had ever seen.

“You have brought such happiness to us here, my friend. You are blessed to be the brothers and sisters of the Dark Lord. Is there anything we can do for you?”

“Sure,” said J.B. “Tell us, what happened to Anchorage? And tell us also, are there any sizable towns round here?”

Herne’s brow furrowed. “Towns are the abomination of the blessed, my friend. Ank Ridge, as we call it, was the Sodom of this barren desert. The seas rose and those monsters that dwell in the deeps came and washed away all evil. There are no towns left in all the world, friend. It is better so.”

“No other villes? No small villages?”

“Nothin’, my friend. There is the snow and the ice, both good things. A wind upon the mount. Who would wish to die, my friend? Not while the Dark Lord is here.”

“What do you think Henn is goin’ to do for you?” asked Okie.

“Henn, as you call him, is the chosen one, the awaited one, the one whose comin’ will make all right. As the books say, the sheaves shall be harvested and bound, the chaff shall be winnowed, the blood shall give life.”

“Blood, Reverend?” asked Doc quickly. “What blood?”

Herne stood up, knee joints cracking. “All will be seen, friends, tomorrow at dawn, when we gather to worship him as he shall be ordained.”

“Is Henn goin’ to be sleepin’ in here?” asked Finn.

“No.” Herne’s gentle smile sent shivers up Ryan’s spine. “The sisters wish the honor of fucking the Dark Lord. He will sleep little, as the plow sleeps not in the furrow.”

Okie sniffed and spat, then went to one of the low truckle beds and sat down. The priest watched her, then moved to the door.

“We shall see you all on the morrow. One of the sisters will bring in a bowl of punch for you to drink your fill. It will aid you at sleeping.”

He left, banging the heavy door shut behind him. Finn giggled. “That lucky son of a bitch bastard, Henn. Gettin’ all that for free.”

A great crock of drink was brought in and set on a table by one of the younger women. She was wrapped in black cloth from head to toe, and her face was veiled so that only her brown eyes shone from under the cowl. Finn tried to get her to talk, but she lowered her head and ignored him, leaving quickly.

“Can’t wait to get back to her Dark Lord,” Finn said, ruefully.

They tried the punch. Ryan wrinkled his mouth at the taste. It was flavored with herbs and obviously was strongly alcoholic. But as he rolled it cautiously around his mouth, he detected a strange, bitter aftertaste. He spat it out on the earthen floor.

“Fireblast! That’s evil stuff.”

J.B. put his mug down on the table. “Don’t care for it. Tastes like wolfbane.”

Lori had taken more than a bit of it before her face showed her dislike. “Not like,” she said.

“Seems drinkable,” belched Finnegan. “Bit of… yeah, not so good.”

Okie, Krysty and Doc put down their beakers, untasted. Ryan looked across at J.B. biting his lip, knowing that the Armorer shared his doubts. But neither of them said anything. After all their years together, they didn’t need to.

Ryan tipped the bowl in a dark corner of the room. The punch flowed into the dirt and left only a faint damp patch. When Herne returned, he seemed pleased to find that the punch was gone.

“I shall leave you now to sleep. Our celebrations begin at dawn. I doubt they will disturb you.”

 

TOWARD MIDNIGHT Finnegan fell asleep, snoring loudly. J.B. checked him, the light of the dying fire reflecting redly off his glasses. “Seems well out. Can’t wake him easily. Heart’s all right. Breathin’s deep but steady. Best take turns to watch him.”

The hut shook as a momentary earthquake vibrated across the land. Tremors had become so common that nobody even noticed them.

They quickly arranged a roster to sleep so that one of them would always be awake, checking that Finn wasn’t ill. Ryan guessed Finn couldn’t have drunk enough of the punch to do him any permanent harm. But the mere idea of it was enough to make them more cautious overall. Okie agreed to sleep across the doorway, and all of them kept their blasters ready and primed. J.B. suggested breaking out, there and then, taking Henn with them, but Ryan was for patience.

“The food was fine and it doesn’t seem dangerous here. Plus we’re warm. It might not have been a sleeper in the drink—could be just strong liquor. Finn hasn’t had any for weeks now. We’ll watch ‘em.”

 

RYAN CAWDOR AND KRYSTY WROTH were now accepted by the others as a couple. They went together, drove together and slept together. Once in the redoubt, Okie had made a play for Ryan in front of Krysty, putting her hand directly on the front of his trousers, smiling at his instant reaction, glancing at Krysty.

“Looks like he’s ready for a fuckin’ change,” she had said.

Ryan had tensed, ready to deck her with a roundhouse right, pulling himself away from her grasp.

Krysty moved toward Okie, smiling at her with even white teeth. “Ever try anythin’ like that again, slut, and I’ll put two holes through the back of your head.”

Ryan had rarely heard such menace in a human voice. Okie backed off, her eyes flicking nervously from Krysty to Ryan. “Only a joke, Krysty. Can’t you take a fuckin’ joke?”

“Yeah. See me laughin’? Make sure, Okie, you know the difference between a threat and a promise. Then you’ll know what that was.”

Okie never tried it again.

Now Krysty and Ryan were pressed together in a single bed, like spoons in a box. She faced away from him, her hair brushing against his chest, making his nipples feel tender. He almost immediately became erect, but both of them were sleeping fully dressed, even down to their boots. But she could still feel his need for her.

“Have to be a quickie, lover,” she whispered.

“Better than nothin’. Want a hand?”

“No. You handle your part and I’ll do the rest.”

While he unzipped his trousers, she wriggled out of hers, pulling them down to her knees. She kept her panties on, moving them to one side to accommodate him. He felt the warmth of her muscular buttocks cupping him and he slid easily into her warm waiting depths. She moaned softly at the size that slowly filled her. He moved in faster and deeper, keeping the rhythm even so that she could share his pleasure.

“Yes, lover,” Krysty whispered. “Keep it for… yeah, that’s good. Hold me tight.”

As he came, Ryan threw his head back, arching his spine so that he could thrust against her as hard as possible. The girl moaned again, and he could feel her internal muscles fluttering and tightening as she reached her own driving climax.

They slept until near dawn, when J.B. came and shook Ryan by the shoulder.

“What?”

“Turn out. It’s close to first light. Your duty now. I’ve seen nothin’ and heard nothin’.”

Ryan swung out of bed, hastily doing up his trousers.

“One other thing, Ryan,” said J.B.

“What’s that?”

“Sometime last night they locked the door on us, bolted it on the outside. Oh, and Finn’s out colder than an iced mutie. But I figure he’s goin’ to pull through. His pulse is still regular and steady. I’ll stay awake.”

“Mebbe wake everyone else,” suggested Ryan, standing up and stretching like a great cat.

“Yeah,” agreed J.B.

Silently they got ready, leaving their chubby companion snoring quietly on his bed, his mouth sagging open. As they checked their weapons, Ryan saw that Lori was looking terrified.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Just takin’ care.”

She nodded to him, her lips trembling.

Attractive though her gear had been, Ryan had insisted that Lori change before they’d left the redoubt. The tall blonde now wore dark green combat coveralls tucked into steel-capped boots of the type that Finnegan and Hennings wore. She’d kept her little pearl-handled Walther PPK .22 pistol and also the Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD-2 silenced submachine gun that she’d toted around the stockpile.

“All ready?” he asked.

“Someone movin’ out there,” said Krysty, her ear pressed against the locked door. “Several people.”

Ryan, who had known Krysty long enough to trust her amazingly acute hearing, moved to stand by her and saw the dawn’s faint light around the edges of the door. There was also a crack of light near the center panel, where the thick wood had split. He put his eye to the crack but couldn’t make out anything. Quietly he drew his panga and probed at the gap with the long blade, widening the split a little.

He squinted through it with his right eye.

Someone was standing near the other side of the door, blocking the view. Then the person moved and Ryan blinked at the sudden brightness. The sun had broken through the heavy cloud, giving a rare vision of a full dawn. He saw a space of trampled earth and snow immediately in front of the building; the broken wall, with its sinister, fire-blackened crucifix, faced him.

In front of the wall a low platform had been contrived from old wooden boxes. Resembling a rough table, the platform was about six feet by four feet. Several women, all hooded, were ranged around it, along with their leader, Ezekiel Herne. The rest of the community stood nearby in a half-circle, hands folded into their long sleeves.

“What’s goin’ on?” asked J.B.

“Can’t tell. Some sort of ritual. Worshipin’ the dawn or—”

Herne’s ringing voice stopped Ryan’s words. His breath pluming in the bitter cold, the priest said, “Accept this our sacrifice…the greatest we can offer. Take our Dark Lord.”

He lifted his hand: Ryan saw that it contained a broad-bladed dagger of glittering obsidian. The women around the table parted, and at last he could see the object of their attention.

Bound with black ropes, naked and seemingly unconscious, lay Hennings.

The knife began to descend.

 

Chapter Fourteen

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Noooooo!”

Ryan’s yell of rage was probably the only thing that could have checked the falling blade.

There was no time to fire a gun to save Henn, no time to blast open the door and ice the crazed priest. But the shout made Herne hesitate, and the blade slid past Henn’s naked chest.

“Krysty, quick!” said Ryan.

The girl didn’t need encouragement. Ryan’s response had been so electric that it meant instant action.

With long, slender fingers, she gripped the edge of the door where the frame was warped by the cold. Her eyes closed and her lips tightened. Through gritted teeth she whispered the incantation to enable her to draw on her hidden power.

“Mother, Earth Mother, help me. Help me… now!” The last word sounded as if it were torn from her heart.

Metal screeched and wood splintered and daylight burst into their room around the shattered door. Ryan was first out, followed immediately by Okie, then J.B., all of them opening fire on the murderous group.

Ryan’s new G-12 was set on three-round bursts, giving him a lethal firing rate. The caseless bullets tore through the black-robed women standing around Hennings. Herne dropped to his hands and knees behind the altar, scuttling toward cover like an insect uncovered beneath a rock.

J.B. and Okie both fired their Mini-Uzis, handling the small guns almost as easily as if they were just pistols. Bodies spun and danced, carried by the streams of lead, tumbling to the chill stone tangled in frozen embraces.

During the firefight, time disappeared. Hours became minutes and minutes became seconds; seconds became shards of broken time. And one of those tiny shards stretched to a hundred lifetimes.

Ryan took his finger off the trigger, and looked around the open area between the buildings. Apart from four or five of the crazies who were moaning and crying for help, it was over.

“I’ll take them,” said Okie, stalking among the corpses, her boots splashing in blood. She set her blaster on single shot and, stooping and firing, put a round through the necks of all the wounded.

“Lori,” ordered Ryan, “get Hennings untied and dressed. His clothes must be over there. Doc, go with her and keep watch. Might still be some of them around, and—That tall bastard, Herne, he’s gone!”

“That way,” said Krysty, her voice weak and strained. He spun around to see her leaning on the frame of the ruined door, her face as pale as parchment, a tiny thread of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

“Where? You all right?”

“Sure. Just…I heard him run. Like a rat in a cellar. That way, behind the cross on the wall.”

A burst of fire made Ryan duck, but it was only J.B., wasting an elderly man who’d come tottering out of a hut, waving a great cleaver with a chipped edge.

“I will not stay here. This place is now soiled with blood. I shall lead my children from this valley of dark abomination into the plain of lightness.”

The apostle, Ezekiel Herne, had appeared from behind a tumbledown wall, his hands stretched out, one of them gripping the obsidian knife. His eyes were blank and staring. A hideous parody of a smile hung on his lips.

Doc was on the far side of the altar, getting ready to cut Henn loose, and was directly in the line of fire, blocking Okie, J.B. and Ryan from shooting down the madman.

“Hit him, Doc,” called Ryan.

“Use your cannon,” added J.B.

“As I go, surely shall I not go alone,” said Herne, drawing nearer to the old-timer. “This sacrifice shall be not maimed nor worthless.”

“Do it, now,” urged Okie.

“Bust him!” said Ryan quietly.

Like someone waking from a long dream, Doc Tanner began to fumble with the flap of the holster attached to his broad leather belt. But his fingers were cold, and it seemed to take an eternity.

Herne was so close in line that none of the others could take him out without risking Doc’s life. Had the skeletal man been holding a blaster, none of them would have hesitated, even if it meant wiping Doc out at the same time. But a knife was a close-range threat.

The antique Le Mat was so heavy that Doc nearly dropped it as he clumsily thumbed the hammer back.

Herne was almost on top of him, already raising the gleaming midnight blade just as he had when he’d been about to rip the living heart from Henn’s body.

The pistol was adjusted to fire its .63-caliber shotgun round. Holding the pistol in both hands, Doc squeezed the trigger. There was a great burst of powder smoke and a boom like a stun gren exploding, Ryan saw the way that the Le Mat kicked high in the old man’s grip, but at that range, with that sort of charge, he really couldn’t miss.

The skinny preacher was thrown back by the impact. His black coat disappeared into tatters and rags, and a great fountain of blood sprayed out from him. He landed flat on his back, his knife flying high in the bright morning air. The shot had hit him in the center of the chest, pulping ribs, driving the razored splinters of bone into his heart and lungs, killing him instantly.

Some of his blood splashed onto the broken wall behind him. Ryan looked up at the tortured figure of the Christ on the cross. Its midnight sheen was now dappled with fresh crimson that ran down the anguished face, the thighs, the ankle stumps.

“Got the ace on the fuckin’ line with that one, Doc,” said Okie, grinning appreciatively.

The old man bolstered the smoking pistol and turned away without saying a word.

Henn was almost gray with exposure, and it took a great blazing fire and much effort to bring some life back into his limbs. The shooting had awakened Finnegan, who came lurching outside just after Doc iced the leader of the crazies. Wiping the sleep from his bleary eyes, he asked, “What the fuck is goin’ on?”

Henn eventually recovered, though there were numerous scratches and bites on his body, particularly around his thighs and the lower part of his belly. And his penis was scabbed and bloody from what looked like severe friction burns on it.

As soon as he was coherent and dressed, Ryan ordered everyone back to the buggies, ready to move.

Doc had walked off on his own and returned only now, when he heard the roar of the engines. He looked pale. Ryan took him to one side.

“Yon feelin’…you know, Doc? You did what you had to. That bastard would have opened you from…?”

“Thorax to pubis, Ryan. Yes, I know, but killing does not come easy to me.”

“It’s a craft you have to learn, Doc. Just like any other.”

“Then I confess I will do my best. Ah…”

“What?”

“While walking there alone with my contemplations, I recalled something I had forgotten. I mentioned the word crater brought back memories. I have now managed to remember it.”

“Go on.”

“Chron-jumps.”

“What the…?”

Doc looked around to make sure the others were not within hearing distance. “The gateways. You know they’re mat-trans ports. You get in and instantly you’re carried somewhere else.”

“Yeah. Look, I’m fuckin’ freezin’ to the bone out here, Doc. Can’t we…?”

“It won’t take much longer, sir. I said that there had been some dreadful accidents. I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t remember it, but the gateways have also been used for other experiments. Chron-jumps. Time travel. It does work.”

“Never. Come on, Doc. You know you get confused sometimes.”

“Most of the time, my dear Mr. Cawdor. But here is a moment of crystal clarity. I know that time travel is a reality—I know better than any living soul, believe me. But they tried other times. Once, and once only it nearly worked.”

Either Doc Tanner had completely lost all his creds, or he was telling the truth. Ryan shook his head, resisting the temptation to slap himself to see if he was dreaming all this.

“It is passing strange how I can fail to know even my right hand from my left and still recall some fragments of the past in such clarity. It was the sixth day of August in the year 1930. Seventy-one years before Armageddon. A man of great distinction got into a cab in what was called Manhattan, in old New York. He waved to a friend and disappeared forever.”

“What’s this got to do with talkin’ about volcanoes and craters?”

“Wait. The men who ran the Gateway and the Cerberus projects were evil. Oh, such wickedness and misery! My dear, dear Emily! They were trawling and they picked up this man. I was there when he came through, or when what was left of him came through.”

Ryan had enough sense not to interrupt Doc to ask who Emily was. That might have been enough to throw his memory off the subject forever.

“It nearly, so nearly proved a success. A justice of the supreme court. It would have… I can still see what came.”

“Go on, Doc.” Behind Ryan, the rest of the group had boarded the ice buggies and were watching curiously from the ob slits.

“A shirt with a high collar. I remember the shoes were very sharply pointed, which was the fashion of the time, and were polished like twin mirrors. The suit was double-breasted, a brown pinstripe. That was the expression, pinstripe. That torn suit—with the label of the tailor still neatly sewn within it.”

Doc’s voice was becoming quieter. The early sun had long gone and the day was turning colder and bleaker. Gray clouds streaked with a dull purple were gathering over the giant mountain behind them, and already the first flakes of threatening snow were blowing.

“Those clothes. And… most of his trousers were missing. All but the lower jaw of the head was gone. That row of white teeth, everything sliced clean as a razor, and very little blood. The right hand was there, perfect, the fingers still curling, but the left was hewn away by some unknown and unimagined power. The voice mewed like a kitten. I think that was the worst of it—that little, little mewing voice. Lord forgive us for what was done in the name of science and progress! Progress! That poor relic of a man, plucked from the past to end… who knows where? Or when?

“But what’s this got to do with craters, Doc? I don’t see the connection.”

Doc’s veiled eyes turned to him, unblinking. “The name of…”

J.B.’s shout interrupted them. “It’s droppin’ fast, Ryan. If we’re goin’, we should move. Goin’ to be bad weather soon.”

“Sure, sure. Go on, Doc.”

“For…what? Go on? Ah, I comprehend you, Mr. Cawdor, indeed I do. Go on and get into those infernal internal combustion machines. Of course.”

It had gone. The call from the Armorer had been enough to tip Doc’s mind back over the edge, from sanity into utter confusion. But even the few coherent sentences that Doc had managed gave Ryan plenty to think about. Time travel! Maybe the gateways could be used for time travel. That was something else.

 

THE SMALL BAROMETER in the cab of Buggy One told its own tale. The pointer moved down and down as they drove, roughly maintaining a heading that would take them toward Fairbanks. But the land had undergone massive upheavals and distortions. Also, they were driving in one of the worst blizzards that Ryan had ever seen: worse than anything he’d ever experienced in the Deathlands. Visibility was falling toward zero, and winds rocked the heavy vehicles.

In the end there was nothing to do but halt. In Buggy Two, J.B. was having problems with the ignition system, which was coughing and cutting out. With a wind-chill factor that lowered the temperature outside to around minus one hundred and thirty, there was no hope of getting out to do repairs.

During a brief lull in the blizzard, Ryan saw a geodesic dome to the left, with buildings and an old radar dish scattered around it. “Part of what they called the DEW line,” he said to Krysty, pointing it out. “Early defense system.”

“Did ‘em a lot of good, lover.”

“Yeah. And it looks like a dam up at the head of that valley.” But the storm came screaming back again and visibility fell to zero.

 

IN MIDAFTERNOON the storm began to ease, with the wind fading away to a mere fifty miles an hour, and the snow stopping altogether. The barometer rose from the depths and the watery sun peeked through the chem clouds.

“Buggy One to Two and Three. You read?”

Both came back affirmative.

“Map shows steep valley a few miles ahead. We’ll go on and check it out. Keep in contact. If you can’t fix the ignition, J.B., then call us, and we’ll return, or you can all pack into Buggy Three. Is there room?”

“Sure, Ryan. No sweat. We’ll meet up in the opening to that canyon. Keep in touch.”

As he was about to press the gas pedal, Ryan had a second thought and switched the radio back on. “Mebbe better if you come with us, J.B. Henn’s the engine expert, and he’s got Finn to help him out. Six in one of these babies could be too much. You come with us.”

“How about taking Lori?”

“No. If we meet trouble ahead, I’d rather have you along, providin’ you don’t smoke one of your bastard cheroots in here.”

So the transfer was made, and the ailing buggy was left in the charge of Henn and Finnegan, who were both now recovered from the effects of the drugged punch. Despite intermittent snow flurries, visibility was generally fair.

“We should be near that valley,” said J.B., holding a handgrip to steady himself against the rocking and lurching of the buggy.

“How far’ll we go?” asked Krysty.

“Far as it takes. Looks like what’s left up here is a big round zero,” said Ryan. “Mebbe go back to the redoubt in a day or so and try movin’ to warmer places. That the way you figure it, J.B.?”

“Sure.”

The bazooka shell exploded near enough to the vehicle that it stopped dead, tipping up and over. The concussion was shocking, sending the three occupants toppling into instant darkness.

 

RYAN CAWDOR WAS FIRST to recover. He blinked and opened his eye, aware of a shattering ache in his head. He could feel blood crusted around his ears from the force of the shell.

Someone was looming over him; a man, well built. He wore some sort of silver band around his forehead, with a large red stone at its center. And his eyes were a peculiar golden color.

“Has the agony somewhat abated?” asked Uchitel, pronouncing the words carefully.

 

Chapter Fifteen

« ^ »

THE TRADER’S RULES had been simple. If you got caught by hostiles, you played it close and careful. That meant saying nothing and acting dumb.

The Narodniki hadn’t bothered to tie Ryan, J.B. and Krysty. While the trio were unconscious, the Narodniki had taken their weapons, leaving them helpless in the camp of heavily armed guerrillas.

 

Uchitel still believed that this desolate land must have its legendary wealth somewhere. It couldn’t possibly be this poor. Not after all he’d read and seen in the old books. Somewhere, there were towering buildings that scraped the sky; beautiful women who offered themselves to every man. All of that and more, was here in America.

Uchitel’s more robust approach to questioning prisoners hadn’t worked, so—fortunately for Ryan, J.B. and Krysty—this time, he was trying a more friendly approach, for a while. And this trio was utterly different from any of the shit-eating peasants he’d seen so far in America.

They wore clean clothes that were almost like uniforms and were made of excellent material, Uchitel observed; and they were physically in good condition, particularly the tall man who’d lost an eye. He was honed like a fine blade. The woman with the scarlet hair was also in marvelous condition: it had taken all of Uchitel’s persuasiveness to prevent some of his followers from immediately raping her. The short skinny man with the spectacles didn’t seem so powerful, but when they’d searched him they’d found he was a walking arsenal, carrying concealed guns, knives and explosives.

Their guns—modern, well greased, with no shortage of ammo for them—were better than anything that the Narodniki had ever seen. Most of the blasters looked as if they’d just come from an armaments factory.

While the trio was unconscious, the band had gathered around them,

“Did I not tell you?” Uchitel had said to his followers. “Here is wealth beyond reckoning! They drive a truck that can move over ice and snow! They must have fuel for it! Who has seen such, things?” Nobody answered. “And where there are three, then must there not be more? Da there must. And their guns… their clothes… We are close, brothers and sisters, so close to more power and wealth than we have ever dreamed of.”

“What if they are too powerful for us?” Urach had asked.

“We have seen these Americans—need the Narodniki fear such folk? Here are three of their best, at our mercy!”

And the Narodniki roared their approval of Uchitel’s words.

 

Had his agony abated somewhat? The question confounded Ryan Cawdor… as did this stranger with the ornate headband and the golden eyes. Had that bang on the head made him delirious? Ryan remembered that O’Mara, the machine gunner from War Wag One, had once suffered a fearful crack to the skull and had thereafter boasted for days that he was the Trader’s grandfather—and his grandmother, too.

Blinking his eye, Ryan realized that it was no blurred vision from a dream or nightmare before him, but something all too real.

It was night, and they were in a hollow protected from the biting wind by the slope of the land. Several fires, fuelled by pyrotabs, burned all around. To one side was the indistinct white shape of the buggy. It was tipped over. Ryan blinked and turned, and was relieved to see Krysty and J.B., both seemingly unhurt, though the Armorer was as white as the snow and had a bloody nose. But his chest was rising and falling steadily. Then Krysty moaned and, even as Ryan watched, put her hand to her head, opening her eyes.

“Where…? ”she began.

“Don’t talk,” said Ryan, quickly. “We’re prisoners.”

“Silence!” ordered Uchitel, grinning at his success in finding the right word from his tattered phrase book.

The girl sat up, burying her head in her hands. “I feel sick,” she said.

J.B. Dix now also recovered consciousness and sat up and looked around. He said nothing at first. Taking off his glasses, he polished them on his sleeve, then replaced them. Finally he retrieved his beloved fedora and placed it on his head.

He looked at Ryan without expression. “They say anything?”

“Not well—I think they’re foreign. Have you seen their blasters?”

Uchitel was watching them, trying to catch what they were saying. He did not want to appear foolish before his fellows.

“Yeah. They all got the old Makarov nine-mil pistols with double-action triggers. A few of ‘em are carryin’ Dragunova sniper’s rifles. Lot of Kalashnikovs and seven-point six two sub-MGs, all Russian. Never seen any in the Deathlands, only in the old manuals. You heard ‘em talk?”

“Not really. They don’t look like us.”

Many of the faces were Oriental: slanted eyes, sallow complexions, straggly beards and long, black moustaches. The four or five women visible had coarse features and large hands. Not one of them looked at all like a mutie.

Almost all of them looked like vicious murderers.

“Can you offer us service?” asked Uchitel, looking from face to face.

“What?” said Ryan.

“We are lost and desire directions.”

“Who are you?” he asked the tall Russian.

Uchitel turned the pages of his book with laborious slowness.

“Ah. Who are you?” he repeated. Pointing to his chest, he said, “Uchitel.” Then, widening the gesture to include the rest of the band, he added, “We are Narodniki.”

“I’m Ryan Cawdor. This is Krysty Wroth. And this is J.B. Dix.”

Beneath him, Ryan felt the earth tremble, as though some immeasurably huge animal had stirred in its sleep. The guerrillas wore thick furs, with hoods of leather and gauntlets of fur-trimmed hide. From the maps that they’d seen in the redoubt, Ryan knew that Russia had been very close to the old United States in this region, being almost within sight of the coast of Alaska. But there had been no sign that the Russians had ever crossed the ice as invaders.

“It is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Uchitel, stumbling over the last word.

“Talks like Doc, doesn’t he?” said Krysty. “Like from the old times. Back in Harmony, I read books and that’s how they talked. Mebbe that’s what that book is. It helps him talk to us.”

Ryan nodded. “Must be, since it seems none of them speak our language. But watch it, it could be a trick.”

There was another minor tremor, this time accompanied by a faint rumbling of the earth. The flames in the fires danced as if some invisible giant had blown on them. Some of the horses whinnied in alarm, and several of the Russians looked uneasily at one another. It was fast growing dark, and the wind was carrying sharp flakes of ice in its teeth.

 

Stamping his booted feet on the ground, Bochka, the Barrel, muttered something to Britva, who was at his side. Uchitel looked angrily toward him. “You fear a small shake of the earth, Bochka? It would take a large crack to swallow you up.”

The others laughed, but not with conviction. The leader turned again to the three prisoners. Their weapons were piled by his feet, and he pointed down at them. “Good,” he said. “I wish a further supply, if you please. Or I shall be forced to complain to your superior or manager or floor walker.”

 

It was one of the most bizarre episodes in Ryan Cawdor’s life—a life that was well studded with bizarre experiences.

He considered whether to say that they had many powerful friends in the area. But if he did that, the Russians might ambush the others, and they would all end up being wiped out. He decided it was safer to pretend they were alone and take the consequences of such admitted weakness.

“We have no more guns.”

There was a delay while Uchitel translated and digested that. “Nyet,” he said, shaking his head. “Where are guns?”

“No,” replied Ryan, standing up, stretching his legs. Krysty and J.B. also rose. All around them was a general movement of guns, muzzles edging in their direction. Putting up any kind of fight would be utterly suicidal.

“Give gun. Not gun, I give—” he found what he wanted on a page headed At The Hospital “—bad pain.”

“No guns. These are all we have. No more.”

 

Uchitel was becoming angry. Yet again, his careful plan was falling apart. These Americans were either poor and stupid or wealthy and stupid. At least these three had good clothes and guns, and the truck held all manner of treasures. He beckoned for Pechal to come to him.

“I want—” he began.

But Sorrow interrupted him. “The girl, Uchitel. Let me do the girl! Her hair is so—”

“Nyet. Not her. The man with the glasses. The others will watch.”

Ryan and the others watched the exchange, guessing from the expressions on the men’s faces what was going down. The gray-clad Russian with the soft voice had been licking his lips and staring at Krysty, rubbing his fingers together—long, strong fingers with long, hooked nails.

“Bad news time,” said Ryan.

“Yeah,” agreed J.B.

“He tell us guns where.” Uchitel pointed at the Armorer and rattled off orders to his men to bind him. In moments J.B.’s hands were tied tightly behind his back, and he was brought to his knees and held there. Two dozen guns covered Ryan and Krysty.

“Are they going to torture him?” asked the girl.

“Seems they want guns like these. Must have come over as a raidin’ party.”

“Take my glasses off for me, Ryan,” called J.B. “Don’t want these stupes to break ‘em. Had ‘em for eight years. Don’t know how I’d get on without ‘em.”

Watched by the Russians, Ryan did as J.B. asked, folding the glasses and putting them in his top pocket. The beardless Pechal moved in close to the kneeling man, looking down into his eyes. He touched J.B. on the side of the cheek with a forefinger, and the little man winced despite himself.

“Tell guns,” said Uchitel.

“There aren’t any more fuckin’ guns you stupe bastard killer,” shouted Ryan.

Uchitel nodded to Pechal.

Ryan watched, his face set like stone; the girl looked away. Pechal began gently, almost caressing the helpless J.B. He touched and pinched, twisting the soft, tender skin behind the ears and along the inside of the upper thigh. His nails dug into the Armorer’s lips, pulling them until blood filled J.B.’s mouth and he spat it out in a fine spray over the Russian.

“Where guns?” asked Uchitel.

Ryan looked at him, his face showing none of the hatred and anger he felt. “I’ll tell you this, you blood-eyed dog. You’re fuckin’ dead, friend. You’re walkin’ around, but you are dead as a spent bullet.”

“What?”

Ryan shook his head in disgust. Krysty shuffled closer to him. “What can we do?”

“Nothin’, lover. They got all the blasters. Man has the firepower, he gets to call the game. We watch and wait. Any half chance, take it and get the fuck out. Henn and the others must be comin’ close. Head for ‘em. That’s all I can say.”

Uchitel stepped in and swung an open palm across Ryan’s face, knocking him on his back. Ryan sat there a moment, his head spinning from the blow, which had loosened one of his teeth. As Ryan got up, a lopsided smile came to his angular face.

“Do the same for you one day, cocksuckin’ double-scarred bastard.”

“Not talk. Talk guns. No pain.”

The third earth tremor was vastly more powerful than the two minor quakes they’d felt earlier.

Ryan staggered sideways, retaining his balance only with effort. Nearly everyone was thrown off their feet. All the fires were shaken out, buried under a mist of ice and snow.

The air filled with a dreadful thundering roar and with so much dirt that it was difficult to breathe or see.

Ryan grabbed the girl by the arm. “Got to get J.B. Now.”

There was a second quake, more violent than the first. It knocked both Ryan and Krysty off their feet. But Ryan’s sense of direction and ice-cold nerve kept them going. Stumbling over bodies lying on the earth, they reached J.B., and Ryan knelt, still holding Krysty by her right hand.

“Took your fuckin’ time, partner,” said J.B., his voice as calm as if they were strolling across a summer meadow.

“Knife?”

“Right boot. They didn’t find it.”

Ryan slid his fingers inside the high combat boot, feeling the taped hilt of a small knife. Pulling it from the sheath, he used it to slice through the ropes that bound J.B.

As the last cord fell away, J.B. rose to his feet, leaning on Ryan. “Thanks. That bastard, that swift and evil fucker had hard hands.”

The ground still moved. It was like being on War Wag One when it drove at speed along an old concrete highway in the Deathlands. A steady vibration.

“Get the blasters,” said J.B. “That way.”

Despite the darkness and confusion, they moved straight to the pile of guns and knives. Each of them grabbed what they could, holstering and sheathing their weapons. Ryan was still holding the long steel panga when someone grabbed him from behind.

“Fireblast!” he cursed, struggling to free his arms from the bearlike grip. But the man was strong, and it took all of Ryan’s agility and cunning to free his right hand so that he could jab behind him with the point of the blade. Despite all the layers of fur that the Russian was wearing, the panga penetrated. There was a grunt of pain, the hold was loosened, and Ryan twisted his body clear. Then he turned and swung the blade as hard as he could, feeling it jar and crunch as it hit the man’s ribs. In the cold he was aware of the flood of heat across his hand from the wound.

As the staggering figure screamed something in Russian—it had to be a call for aid—Ryan pushed the man away and turned to where he’d last seen Krysty and J.B.

“You there?”

“Yeah,” said J.B.

“Here,” said Krysty, unable to keep her voice from trembling. All around them, the guerrillas were running and yelling. Across the camp someone fired a pistol four times. They heard a yelp of pain.

“South,” said Ryan. “Keep close. Kill anythin’ that moves if it’s not us.”

“Why not get the radio from the buggy?” asked the girl.

“No time. Got to move. There’s thirty or more of ‘em. We know where Henn and the others are headed. We’ll meet up with ‘em.”

The earthquake was continuing with waves of varying power that made the ice-bound pebbles shift and rattle.

Ryan Cawdor was in the lead, Krysty slipped and stumbled behind him, and J.B. brought up the rear. Something loomed in front of him, and he slashed at it with the panga, then realized too late it was one of the terrified ponies, rearing and kicking. The steel opened a deep gash along its shoulder, but one of its front hooves caught Ryan a glancing blow on the arm. At that moment, the earth gave its strongest convulsion yet, and the ground beneath him rose eighteen inches or more.

He slipped and rolled forward, feeling snow all around him. A boulder hit him on the knee, making him yell with sudden pain. As he whirled down the slope he heard screams from behind, and men calling in Russian.

His mouth filled with powdery snow, and he coughed and choked as he rolled. With an effort, he managed to spread his arms and legs into a star shape, checking his slide down the hill.

The tremor passed, and he sat up, checking his blasters. His long coat was torn, his knee hurt, and there was a dull throbbing where the horse had kicked him. He could taste blood from a cut near his mouth.

But he was alive.

The patch over his missing left eye had shifted and he tugged it back in place. He stood, trying to determine where he was. He was at the bottom of a steep ravine, with water a few inches deep under his boots.

He’d fallen a couple of hundred feet and had no idea where Krysty and J.B. were. There were Russians all around, blundering in the darkness.

Ryan was alone with no food, no water and no way to keep warm in a land he didn’t know, with a night to face with temperatures that might drop to seventy or eighty below.

Survival was going to be hard.

 

Chapter Sixteen

« ^ »

ONE OF THE TRADER’S SAYINGS came to Ryan as he moved cautiously through the stygian gloom away from the camp of the Russian butchers.

“The will to live is quite simply a matter of your personal courage.”

One of the things that the Trader had always insisted on was each war wag having a number of experts: on explosives or first aid or food or armaments or driving—or survival. Finnegan had been the survival expert. Trader had spent a lot of time lecturing Finnegan, using old manuals and books, drilling into him what should be done in heat or cold or a nuke attack or an ambush, a flood or a fire or a fall. In turn, every few weeks, Finnegan would give a talk to the rest of the crew—as would the other experts, checking that everyone knew what to do.

Now, kneeling in the slush, feeling it soaking through his trousers, Ryan recalled some of the things that Finn had told them.

Panic was the biggest threat. Fear made a man move too fast in the wrong direction. He should stop if he could and draw a breath.

Ryan stood, fighting to control his breathing, still hearing the ground rumbling miles below his feet. Also catching the sound of the Russians, running and calling. Now he saw a couple of flaming torches as they started to search for their lost prisoners. He guessed that J.B. and Krysty, if they’d stayed together, would be making for the south to meet with the others. But his fall had put him on the wrong side of the enemy. Now he’d have to try and loop around.

Ryan took stock. Guns and ammo, check. Clothes and knives, check. Health, bruises here and there but nothing too threatening: check. Compass, check. Food and drink.

“No,” he said to himself.

Nor heat.

The land was so barren that his chances of finding food were remote. But he knew from experience that he could exist for several days without food, even in the bitter cold. But he had to drink. He stooped and cupped some of the water around his feet, tasting it cautiously. The fact that it was flowing and not frozen was a sign that it originated higher up—probably near the dam that he’d spotted earlier—and had been melted by heat from a volcano. The taste was bitter, iron with a dash of sulfur. If he could drink now and fill his belly, it would last him a couple of days.

If he didn’t find the others after a couple of days in the lingering nuclear winter, then he was going to be dead anyway.

He knelt and lapped like a dog, lifting his head every now and again to peer into the gloom. At the bottom of the steep valley he was sheltered from the bitter wind, but he knew that he couldn’t stay there long. The Russians would be searching. Judging from what he’d seen of him, their amber-eyed leader wasn’t the sort of man who gave up easily.

Far above Ryan, there was a burst of automatic fire that raked the far side of the ravine, bullets ricocheting and whining into the darkness. Someone shouted and Ryan ducked, huddling against the cold rock, wearing his hood so that his face wouldn’t show white.

But the shooting wasn’t repeated, and the voices moved toward the south. The earth finally ceased shaking, and all he could hear was the faint whistling of the wind.

“Time to move,” he said.

 

BACK IN THE DEATHLANDS, winter had been a time of bitter hardship, with blizzards and fiercely low temperatures. But here in Alaska the long nuclear winter still had the land in its thrall. In places there were deep snowbanks that had been piled up by the endless winds, and in other places, just bare rock, scoured and shattered by permafrost. Gray and dull green lichens clung precariously to the more sheltered places, but life was almost extinct, clinging to the edges of an abyss.

Either a man found protection or he tried to keep moving. After an hour of walking steadily west and then curving cautiously back toward the south, Ryan was feeling exhausted. Much of the time he was battling against a shrieking gale that plucked at his hood, blasting splinters of ice into his eye. Such a buffeting soon cuts away at the senses of even the strongest man. It becomes difficult to think rationally, and all a man wants is to lie down and rest a little, just sleep for a few minutes.

A few long, long, long minutes.

Ryan tried to keep moving, without going too fast. He remembered that Finn had urged care. To sweat was to lose body heat; to lose body heat was, eventually, to die. He knew the signs of frostbite: small, gray-yellow patches on the skin, accompanied by numbness, later leading to the blackening of gangrene and finally to death. That was something he didn’t need to fear. Either he’d find the others in the next day or so, or he’d be dead anyway.

To counter the cold on his face, Ryan exercised his muscles, alternately scowling and smiling, so that his cheeks wouldn’t freeze and lose all sensation. He checked the small chron on his wrist, finding that he’d been away from the Russians for nearly three hours. Unless they scattered, he figured he was safe from stumbling back into their arms. Once, he heard the distant sound of gunfire. It lasted only a few seconds and wasn’t repeated.

With little light, it was hard going. He was constantly slipping and falling, slogging on, pausing now and again to listen. Once there was the sound of running water, but it seemed to come from his left, away from the direction he’d taken.

Ryan knew all the survival tricks of lighting a life-saving blaze using a lens, or even by taking apart a couple of bullets to ignite tinder or paper. But in that desert of ice and stone there was nothing he could burn. No wood at all.

“Shelter,” he said, panting hard. A pale sliver of moon danced above him, occasionally visible through the shreds of high, gray clouds. It gave enough light for him to see a big drift of snow banked against the overhanging lip of a ridge of rough stones a hundred paces ahead of him.

With his panga, he began to carve the white bank, cutting eighteen-inch cubes, stacking them to make a wall to break the wind. He worked steadily, creating a tunnel, gradually expanding it until it was large enough for him to climb into. The wall of snow bricks, which had grown higher and higher as he’d carved out the tunnel, was arranged around the entrance. If he’d had better tools, he could have tried to make a full house of snow, or “igloo,” as Finn had called it. But he also remembered that there was a danger of such places melting and caving in, trapping the occupants.

Ryan sat down, making sure his coat was tucked beneath him. Immediately he was aware of the shelter that his snow cave provided against the weather. Out of the gale, there was no longer the bitter numbness in his face. Every few minutes he stood up and shuffled his feet, swinging his arms to keep his circulation going.

Around five in the morning, he dozed for a while, waking when the first light of dawn came sliding over the eastern mountains.

 

“FEELS LIKE A STONE buried in your flesh,” Ryan muttered. He was again slogging relentlessly onward in a great loop south, hoping to meet the others.

His toes hurt and he could feel a faint prickling on his exposed face. His hands were also becoming swollen and tender.

“Stone in your flesh,” he repeated. That was how Finnegan had described what the early symptoms of frostbite felt like.

It was nearly midday, but the temperature seemed to be dropping. Off to the north, he could see a great smear of yellow across the sullen sky, where a volcano was erupting. At the top of a ridge, he stared out through the swirling wall of snow, looking for any sign of life, friendly or otherwise. He thought he saw the great dish of the radar installation many miles ahead, but it seemed impossible to reach before evening. And he was beginning to doubt his ability to survive another night without proper shelter and some food.

 

THE MUTIE POLAR BEAR came blundering out of the mists of evening, padding on huge, shaggy paws. Ryan was close to the limits of exhaustion and hunger. His concentration was slipping. Still, he plodded onward, trying to make as much ground as he could before hacking another shelter from the unyielding snow.

“Fuckin’ fireblast!” he cursed, stumbling back a few paces, leveling the Heckler & Koch G12 at the hulking beast that stood less than twenty paces away. Its red eyes glared at him; breath plumed from its jaws. For a few moments, man and beast stared at each other, neither sure of the other’s intentions.

“Just fuck off out of my way,” said Ryan, finger on the trigger of the automatic rifle.

The creature moved its head back and forth, almost as if trying to hypnotize its intended prey with the regular pendulum swinging.

Saliva dripped from the long, tusked teeth. The head moved faster and still faster. Ryan blinked, fighting against tiredness to hold the gun steady, knowing that one lapse of concentration would be fatal.

Noticing a sudden tensing of the hump of muscle across the bear’s shoulders and guessing it presaged a charge, he didn’t hesitate any longer. The gun set on continuous fire, he squeezed the trigger, bracing his hip against the recoil. In a crosswind the 4.7 mm bullet was liable to a degree of drift, though the trajectory drop was excellent.

At twenty paces, the stream of bullets tore into the polar bear, bursting its heavy skull apart. Ryan kept firing into the animal’s broad chest, sending it staggering to its knees, then onto its side. Its feet kicked and flailed in the bloodied snow. Ryan used the entire fifty-round magazine, knowing that a beast of that size needed to be terminated with utmost prejudice and speed. There wouldn’t have been a second chance.

He reloaded, looking into the gloom of the on-rushing night. The sound of the gun would have been so brief that he doubted there was any danger from the Russians.

Its head blasted to pulp, the bear was undeniably dead. But as Ryan bent to touch it, feeling the warmth of the carcass, he was startled to feel the heart still pumping, even though there was virtually no blood left in the whole monstrous body.

He took off his gauntlets, pushing his hands inside the gaping chest cavity, careful to avoid scratches from the jagged ribs and breastbone. The scarlet pool around his feet was steaming. Finn had come off once with a horror story of some trader up in the north, dying of the cold, who’d shot a buffalo on the high plains, hacked its belly open, ripped out the guts and crawled into the carcass and huddled there in the glorious warmth. But during the night, the cold had frozen the soft flesh to an immovable stiffness, and he wasn’t able to get out.

And so perished.

Ryan was content to have his hands and arms warmed, feeling inside for the rhythmic pounding of the bear’s heart. He brought his smoking fingers to his mouth and licked the salty blood. His stomach heaved with revulsion for a few moments, but he fought against the sickness, lapping at the clotting crimson liquid, taking as much nourishment as he was able.

He sliced away a few thin pieces of the meat, chewing with a grim determination, forcing himself to swallow. Then he took more. From previous experiences of hunger, he knew that to eat too much, particularly such rich meat, would only make him throw up.

The blood dried and began to freeze on his hands, cracking and falling off in dark brown flakes. Ryan rubbed his hands together to remove as much of the blood as possible and felt his circulation reviving. Night was now very close, and it was time once more to build a shelter.

This time there was less snow, and he was forced to struggle with boulders, painstakingly chipping them free of the ice with his panga, piling them into a wall, filling in the cracks with snow.

It wasn’t solid enough.

After a couple of hours he began to feel the telltale signs of the biting cold. His feet and hands were growing numb and he was becoming drowsy. It wasn’t the usual, healthy desire for sleep after a hard day; it was an insidious, creeping sleeplessness, offering a tempting promise of warmth and relief from pain. It was overlaid with the feeling that he’d done his best and had now earned his rest.

“Fuck that!” said Ryan.

He stood, stamping his feet, pulling up the hood around his ears, then changing his mind and lowering it once more. If he was going to start walking this night, he would be virtually blind. It would be madness to make himself virtually deaf by covering his ears with the hood.

He had decided that his only genuine hope of surviving was to make for the old ruined radar station with its conspicuous geodesic dome. There might be shelter there. And it was the obvious place for Henn and the others to wait for him.

Every few minutes the moon broke through the low clouds, throwing the land into sharp relief. The track toward the tumbled buildings wandered like a drunk man, gradually coming down off the windtorn edge of the escarpment. Ryan’s guess was that his destination was about four miles off. At his best normal pace on level ground, that would take him under an hour.

After three exhausting hours he was still less than halfway there.

He began to hallucinate.

Once he saw the Trader. He stood a few yards ahead of Ryan, pointing an accusing finger. His lips moved but Ryan couldn’t hear the words. Just a little while later, he fell and slipped into the blackness. His mind told him that he had broken some teeth in the fall, and he reached inside his mouth and found splintered fragments of teeth awash in blood along with feathery pieces of crumpled blue plastic. Yet it seemed to him that this was a perfectly normal thing to find inside his mouth.

Once, on a ridge parallel to the one where he staggered onward, Ryan thought he saw a pack of lean hunting wolves, all facing him, their slavering jaws, glittering in the moonlight. The leader was a huge creature, standing as high as a man’s chest. Then the pack vanished behind some boulders. Ryan was not certain they’d been there in the first place.

Dawn brought a spectacular sky of orange and yellow streaked with fiery crimson. But Ryan Cawdor scarcely noticed it.

His snospex were in the ice buggy; without them, his sight was deteriorating. His eye felt full of grit, and everything seemed to be tinted red and was blurred with shadows. But he was closing in on the radar station. Behind him, to the left, he could make out the silhouette of the huge dam, dominating the plain and valleys beneath it.

The night’s cold had struck deep, and he kept stumbling. He lost one of his gloves on the descent from the ridge, and his left hand was bruised and swollen. His knees and ribs hurt, as did a cut along his jaw from the jagged edge of a black boulder.

He entered a shallow dip, and for several minutes the radar station was out of sight. When he emerged, it was a scant quarter mile off across level ground.

Ryan knew then that he was going to make it.

Despite his dimmed vision, he suddenly made out a group of people hurrying toward him. They were shouting and waving, but he couldn’t quite hear the words. Now, so close to safety, Ryan was able to let go. He slipped wearily to his knees. Finally, like a tired man entering deep water, he slid forward on his face, waiting for the others to come to him.

 

Chapter Seventeen

« ^ »

A LOUD CLICKING SOUND, echoing, becoming louder and loader. A threatening, insistent noise that seemed as if it were drilling into Ryan’s brain.

The sound became almost deafening.

And stopped.

“What…?” he began. “What the fuck was that poundin’ noise?”

“What noise?”

“Clicking. Metal on stone?”

“The heels of my boots in the corridor,” replied Krysty Wroth.

“Sounded like hammers in my head. How long did I sleep this time?”

She sat beside him on the battered metal bed, her long hair tied back with a strip of black ribbon. “I guess about an hour, lover. Altogether, today, around seven hours. It was just after dawn when I heard you comin’ and we came out to carry you in. You were near the end, Ryan.”

“I know it. Where’s J.B.?”

“Gone to visit the ghost town by the dam. You remember him tellin’ you?”

Ryan sat up, feeling bone weary but for the first time, realizing that he was safe and well. They’d given him warm soup and a light brown alcoholic liquid that tasted of burned wood and blazed in his throat as he swallowed it.

“I recall you tellin’ me how you and J.B. fought your way clear, killed three or four of them Russians, then headed here and met up with Henn. The two buggies are both runnin’ okay now, right?”

Krysty nodded. “Yeah. I wanted to stay and look for you. J.B. said no.”

“He was right. In that sort of situation, I’d have left him.”

“He’s up with Okie and Doc. They radioed they’d found a town in a valley by the dam. They’ve got a missile up there.”

Ryan swung his legs over the side of the bed, standing unsteadily, waving away the girl’s helping hand. “No, I’m—Missile? What sort?”

She shook her head. “J.B. said it was experimental. Reeled off a load of reference letters and numbers that didn’t mean anything to him.”

“Can it be…?”

“Blasted off? Yeah. There’s a launcher. Oh, an’ J.B. says there’s a dummy one, as well, without any launch motor or explosive—just a shell.”

“Is he comin’ back here today?”

“No. Said you was up. We’ve got food and heat and all. Lori’s been sniveling with a cold. I think we should have left her at the redoubt, Ryan.”

“She’d have died.. She saved us from that bloody-minded old bastard Quint. She’s not used to the outside, that’s all.”

“You figure those killers are comin’ after us, Ryan?” asked Krysty.

“That quake must have scattered their ponies. It’ll take ‘em a day or more to get together. But… yeah, I guess that yellow-eyed shitter was interested enough in us to come this way. Round about tomorrow noon, we could have us a real firefight. It’d be better if we were all together, so let’s go join the others.”

 

THE SEVERE QUAKES that had opened the earth around the camp of the Narodniki, delaying them in their southerly push, had barely been felt by the pursuing militia, who were on the far side of a range of low hills.

It had enabled them to close the gap on the guerrillas. And the closer they got, the faster they moved.

Major Zimyanin sat on his horse, peering ahead. Ice hung from the stiff points of his long moustache. He removed his fur cap with its single silver circle and wiped his bald head with a fur glove. His pockmarked face was less gloomy than usual.

All the signs indicated that they were catching up with the band of killers. They’d found the raggled, frozen corpses that Uchitel and his group had left as silent testimonials to their brutality: bodies so torn by the wolves and other scavengers that it was hard to tell the manner of their passing. But some still showed the marks of burning or of the knife or the bullet.

The cavalry patrol had seen identical marks in the hamlet Of Ozhbarchik on the other side of the frozen Bering Strait.

During a day-long blizzard, the major had felt the unhappiness of his troops, many of whom were muttering for a return to their homes in Magadan. But he had urged them on with promises of extra pay all around and hints that the best troopers might be promoted and transferred to the West. He knew from bitter experience that it was pointless to appeal either to their religion or, even worse, to their loyalty to the party.

But now they were close, anticipating an actual sighting of their prey within the next twenty-four hours.

Aliev, the Mongolian tracker with the hideously mutilated face, was excited. Jumping, green snot dripping from the raw hole where his nose should have been, he held up his right hand, showing only one finger, indicating a single day. Then he chopped at it with the edge of his left hand, showing he thought that the Narodniki were even less than a day ahead of them.

Zimyanin stood in the stirrups, using one of his most valuable possessions—a pair of scratched and battered binoculars with the name Zeiss engraved on the side. He knew of no other officer of his rank who possessed such a wonderful tool. Many had cheap telescopes or binoculars, but nothing to compare with these.

To the south, in a cleft in the mountains, he could see a great wall of concrete, with a stream of water gushing from near its top. It had to be some sort of dam, he figured, blocking a river that was kept ice free by some underground source of heat.

He moved the glasses to the right and inspected a series of sharp-edged valleys. He thought he could see a trail worming into one of the valleys. For a moment, Zimyanin thought he could even see signs of life: a plume of snow, as though men on horseback moved there, and tiny black specks against the whiteness.

Bat his hands began to tremble, and the glass blurred with his breath. By the time he wiped the lenses clear, the figures had gone.

If they’d ever been there in the first place.

 

AVALANCHES HAD DESTROYED virtually all of the little mining town that had once flourished high in the ravine near the looming dam. Now only a few roofless shacks remained.

Ryan and the others had discussed their plans, finally agreeing that the Russian guerrillas were too dangerous to ignore. In the morning they would take the buggies and return to the redoubt. Then they would use the gateway to leave the ice-bound desert of Alaska behind them.

 

Chapter Eighteen

« ^ »

OKIE WAS ON GUARD, walking cautiously around the ruined houses at the neck of the valley. From below she heard the river tumbling over the rounded stones at the foot of the dam’s spillway. To her right, she could make out the great dam, with its towers and pumping stations. The moon gave only a pale, spectral light, not enough to illuminate the trail that clung to the mountainside, dappled with patches of ice and snow. It hadn’t been easy to negotiate that trail, even with the tracked buggies, but there was no other way up or down.

Her low-heeled tan riding boots clicked on the loose stones. The Mini-Uzi was safely in its holster on her belt; the M-16 carbine cradled in her arms. Looking behind her, she saw the tiny ruby glow of the fire that smoldered at the center of their camp between the two parked buggies. Straining her eyes, the blaster could see the gravelike mounds that were her sleeping comrades. The larger one was Ryan Cawdor, and the mutie girl tangled together.

Okie spat, her sullen face showing her dislike for Krysty Wroth. Ryan had shown interest in her before the redhead had appeared. If anything happened to the mutie…?

There was always the strong possibility of a nasty accident.

She turned slowly, feeling the wind tugging at her long dark ponytail. Behind her she caught the sound of stones shifting, as if a piece of frozen earth had slithered down the hill. Okie whirled, finger on the trigger of her carbine.

For a few moments, she stood there, still as a statue, ears straining for any odd sound.

It was repeated.

It came from her right, where an old concrete sluice hung perilously over the side of the valley, stretching up into the darkness. If anything were to happen to it, then the whole tangle of stone and metal would come grinding down on the sleeping camp.

Okie moved slowly, keeping to the shadows, gun questing ahead of her. She placed each step with utmost care, as silent as a lover’s touch on velvet skin.

Her ears caught the frail scraping of metal on metal. She stopped, letting her eyes rake around the ghost town—drawing a slow breath as she saw them. Three. No, four. One stooped over by the foot of the sluice’s main support girders. The others ringed him, facing her.

Okie raised her gun to shoulder level, bracing it, squinting down the barrel. She tightened her finger on the trigger.

The explosion woke the night. The M-16 spat out death, empty cartridge cases tinkling on the stones. She saw the bursting sparks as the 5.56 mm bullets bounced off the rocks and the iron, screeching into the dark valley. Two of the four strangers went down under the first hail of lead. The third dived sideways, snapping off shots from a Kalashnikov AKM, the heavy 7.62 mm bullets whining high over Okie’s head, dashing splinters of rock around her.

The fourth figure vanished into the maze of twisted metal. Okie’s guess was that the fourth man who had been, crouched over the girders, was an explosives expert. If she was right, then he was the prime target. She waited, knowing that the third blaster was likely to try for better cover.

He did.

She bowled him over in a jumble of kicking legs and scrabbling hands.

There was no need for her to warn Ryan and the others. At the first echo of the hammering carbine, they were awake. Within seconds they were beside her, holding their weapons. Lori and Doc were the last to show.

“Cover me!” yelled Okie, making her move—a dodging, crouched run toward the spot where the fourth man had disappeared.

Ryan and J.B. both gave scattering fire, raking the hillside to right and left of the darting girl. Hennings and Finnegan were behind them, taking shelter behind an overturned water tank. The four men hadn’t come raiding alone. Already there was spasmodic fire from farther down the trail, but it was poorly aimed.

The big man who’d gone into hiding was Grom; nicknamed Thunder, he was the expert in the gang on all manner of bombs, mines and explosives. Uchitel had sent him in with a small support party to try to bring the sluice down on the sleeping Americans. Nobody had seen Okie, patrolling like a panther in the shadows.

Grom was deaf and hadn’t heard the opening burst of fire, but he’d seen his friends falling. Now he was on his own, with the long-haired woman after him. He held a parcel of plastic explosives, primed and attached to a timer. But there was a manual override on the bomb. He saw that he was trapped, but he grinned; he could still set off his bomb and take these Americans with him in death. With Uchitel as his leader, he feared failure much more than mere death.

Someone farther down the trail fired a phos gren, flooding the whole area with a stark white light. It flushed the lurking Russian from his hiding place, sending him scampering toward the blind corner of the trail. He clutched the bomb to his chest like an undelivered birthday present. Okie spotted him and fired from the hip, the bullets lancing through the dirt all round the Russian. Miraculously Grom wasn’t hit, though he stumbled and fell, nearly dropping the bomb.

Okie, lusting to kill, dropped the empty M-16. Not bothering to draw her machine pistol from its holster, she went for the cowering man with only her long-bladed Italian stiletto.

Ryan was about to shoot at the Russian, when he saw the danger of hitting the girl. Also, as clear as day in the light of the phos gren, he saw the man fumbling with the parcel.

“Fireblast!” he spat. “He’s primin’ a fuckin’ bomb.” He raised his voice to warn Okie. “Watch it! He’s got a bastard bomb!”

If the blaster heard him, she gave no sign of it. Never deviating from her attack, she launched herself at the Russian like an arrow. Grom saw her coming and held up the package of explosives as though it were some holy relic that warded off evil. “So long,” said J.B. Dix quietly, so that only Ryan heard him.

As usual, the little man was right. Grom’s intention had been to throw the bomb toward Ryan and the others, but Okie’s unexpected attack thwarted that. He was taken so much by surprise that he was still holding the ticking bomb as she landed on him.

The knife struck with practiced, lethal accuracy high at the side of the deaf man’s neck, just below his right ear, opening the carotid artery in a spouting gush of crimson. Grom was dying as he fell. His last act was to grab the girl’s green sweater, clutching her to him in his death spasm.

Before she could free herself, the bomb exploded.

The heavy sound was muffled by the two bodies. Ryan ducked, feeling the shock wave tug his dark hair. The booming noise echoed across the valley, bouncing flatly off the dam. When he stood up, his face was wet with gore, and he felt sickened at the sound of human flesh landing all around him. A thin pall of smoke blew across the plateau by the ghost town, then was gone. The rising wind carried with it all trace of the woman whose name had been Okie.

 

UCHITEL SIGNALED THE REST of the attacking party to retreat. With the element of surprise gone and his party whittled down to only nineteen men and four women, he couldn’t risk a frontal assault and an all-out firefight farther up the hillside where the massive dam loomed over them, dominating the valley. They assembled at a spot where the river ran fast and narrow, barely fifteen feet wide, with a thin veil of gray ice growing at its edges.

“What now?” asked Urach.

“They can go nowhere. There is the one road, and we control that here by the river. We have them trapped, my brother. Let us wait and they will come to us and beg us for mercy.” His comrades bellowed with laughter.

 

“SHORT AN’ CURLIES, Ryan,” said J.B.

“What?” said Finnegan.

“Those bastards got us by the short and curlies. No other road out or in. We go down, and they pick us off like flies in molasses.”

“Mebbe not,” said Ryan.

“I have never ceased to wonder at the enigmatic nature of your discourse in moments of dire stress,” Doc said, sitting against a stone wall that still carried a faded advertisement for a canned beer.

“What’s the idea, Ryan?” asked J.B.

Lori moved beside Ryan, staring wonderingly into his face. “We live?” she asked.

“Sure. We live right up to the moment that we start dyin’,” he replied. Turning to the Armorer, he said, “This missile you found…”

 

THE LAUNCHER was like a sledge. The red-and-white missile rested on the sledge, with torn strips of tarpaulin swaddling it like a baby. J.B. and Finn peeled away the covering, revealing the sleek, elegant shape. It was about the length of a tall man and had four triangular fins at the rear.

There were letters and numbers stenciled on the casing, black on white, and white on red: USAF A/T/M SD4 TRD/C 24942 1/1/00. And in a circle, with arrows pointing to it, there was the single word Active.

“There’s another one without active on it,” J.B. pointed out. “This could take out a dozen war wags in one go. Never seen a baby this size still juiced an’ ready to go.”

“But it’s not a lot of good against the scattering of Russians down by the river. It’s not antipersonnel, is it?”

They all stood around the launching cradle. Ryan noticed that someone—now long dead and turned to dust—had scrawled the girl’s name, Cathy, on the live missile in green paint. For a moment he wondered who she’d been.

 

IT WAS TEMPTING to do it in the dark. The effect would be more terrifying, the shock more total. But in the end J.B. agreed with Ryan that it would be best to wait until first light.

The party split up. J.B. stayed in the narrow valley with Doc and Lori. Ryan, Henn, Finn and Krysty moved carefully down the track, stopping about one hundred and fifty feet above where Uchitel and the Narodniki commanded the river crossing.

“Could hit their horses there,” whispered Finnegan, pointing to the shifting blur of the Russians’ animals.

“Tell ‘em we’re here? No. No fuckin’ way. We just stop here and wait and watch. We move when the time comes.”

 

MAJOR ZIMYANIN was also watching the river crossing, His cavalry unit was a scant couple of miles off on the far side of the valley. He lay on a promontory of cold rock. The sniper, Corporal Solornentsov, was beside him. The party didn’t allow muties in the fighting patrols—indeed, they were unofficially being purged—and Solonientsov’s eyesight was so good that the major suspected that he must have a mutie strain in him. However, the sniper was valuable to the militia, and Zimyanin had never mentioned his suspicions to anyone.

“How many?”

“More than four hands and less than five, Major. They crossed the bottom of the trail.”

“And higher?”

The sniper hesitated, pressing the Zeiss binoculars to his eyes. “Not easy against the dark rock in this light, Major.”

“But?”

“But I think less than two hands. I am sorry I cannot see more.”

It was enough for the major, and he took back the glasses, smiling. It had been a long stern chase, longer than he guessed when he first received his orders. Now he was in America. It lay open before him, begging to be possessed like a complaisant whore with her legs spread wide. Tomorrow could be the best day of his life.

 

THE FIRST PINK FINGERS of light were creeping over the eastern side of the valley, touching the concrete of the dam. The wind had veered more to the south, bringing the promise of heavy snowfall. The air tasted foul from the volcanic sulfur carried from a volcano a few miles toward the sea.

Uchitel had wandered to the river, keeping in the lee of the huge boulders that dotted the valley. Soon it would be done, he thought. He could take the buggies of the Americans, and their new weapons. And perhaps learn from them the location of the secret city of power where such things resided.

And then there would be no stopping the Narodniki, the rulers of the land.

 

RYAN GLANCED AT KRYSTY who lay at his side, then turned to look up the valley toward the dam. “Soon,” said the man.

 

UCHITEL MOVED AWAY from his band and stood where the slope began to steepen. Four members of his band slept there, including Barkhat, Krisa and Zmeya, whose skinny frame was almost smothered by the porcine bulk of Bizabraznia. It was time to begin rousing them for the coming day.

 

MAJOR ZIMYANIN wiped smears of mud from the hem of his long gray coat, then peered across the valley, squinting at the unusually bright rising sun. It was rare to see it so naked and unveiled, free from chem clouds.

He clapped his hands together, trying to keep warm; it was much colder than the day before. As the officer glanced farther up the valley, he saw a pinprick of silver that trailed orange and red fringed with ragged smoke. Some moments passed before he realized what it heralded. By then the boom of the massive explosion had confirmed his guess.

 

Chapter Nineteen

« ^ »

WITHOUT THE USUAL computer-guidance system, J.B. had been forced to fire the missile on manual sighting. Fortunately the range was less than half a mile, so accuracy wasn’t too much of a problem. And the target was some thousand feet long by two hundred feet high.

The explosion came nearly dead center between the middle towers, roughly a third of the way down from the top of the dam.

To J.B. Dix, standing only a little below the level of the reservoir, the effect was spectacular.

To Ryan Cawdor, halfway down the valley, it was stunningly powerful.

To Uchitel and the rest of the Narodniki, at the bottom of the valley, the sight of the explosion was totally, lethally paralyzing.

A mighty column of foaming water ripped through the hole. Immediately great cracks appeared in the main structure of the dam as the pressure began to tell. Within ten seconds a huge hole appeared, destroying the top walkway of the concrete structure. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of frothing, surging water roared into the valley, washing away everything before it.

For a few heartbeats, Ryan thought they’d miscalculated. The reservoir emptied faster than they’d figured it would, and the flood swept by only forty feet below where they hid. The noise was deafening, like the roaring of a thousand enraged animals. At his side, Krysty held her hands over her ears.

The guerrillas’ camp vanished.

All but half a dozen of the Narodniki were buried under the avalanche of water, mangled and pulped by the stones that the dam burst carried with it. The corpses bobbed and danced across the plain, slowing as the water began to spread out.

The dead were borne along for a couple of miles until the water became more shallow, and the carcasses snagged on rocky outcrops. The river turned sluggish and gray at its edges, finally solidifying into ice, so the corpses rested, hands and heads sticking out from the hardening slush.

Pechal went farthest of all. Sorrow, the torturer, was on his back, legs broken, hip smashed, but miraculously still living. Only his face and one hand protruded from the ice, which set around him like stone, crushing his chest, slowing his breathing. To the last, his eyes remained open and staring. Uchitel survived.

Bedraggled and freezing, the leader of the killers clung to a rock as the water tore at his legs. He’d climbed away from the tumbling wall of bubbling death, as had three other survivors: Bizabraznia, weeping, naked below the waist from the plucking river; Zmeya, who had climbed highest of them all, wriggling to safety like a skinned eel; and Krisa, the Rat, his red eyes wide in shock.

All the rest were gone—all the animals, provisions, guns and ammunition, swept away to destruction. Uchitel looked around, seeing that the river was already dropping fast to its original level. But the land beneath it was scoured clean.

 

“DAMNATION TAKE YOU! Faster, you fumbling dolts! We must get there before they can escape us.”

The blowing of the dam had taken Zimyanin by surprise. Until he’d seen the silver missile sprout its fiery tail, he hadn’t known then any weapon that could wreak such devastation still existed. As the smoke and spray cleared, Zimyanin made out several of his prey still alive and clinging to the sides of the valley. But he’d also seen movement on the far side, where he believed there might be more of the poverty-stricken American peasants who inhabited the region. It would be as well if he got to his countrymen first.

But so early in the morning, the cavalry were slow and clumsy in saddling and mounting. He heard moans about the cold and about the lack of food, not even a hot drink for breakfast.

But at last they were picking their way along the ridge of the valley, heading toward the final scene of the drama.

 

“OL’ J.B. GOT THE ACE on the line,” whooped Ryan Cawdor, staring unbelievingly at the chaos below him. The main torrent had abated, and the morning was so bitingly cold that the rocks on both sides of the valley were slick with ice.

“Let’s go,” said Finnegan, hefting his gray Heckler & Koch submachine gun.

“Watch ‘em. They’ve probably got guns left,” warned Ryan.

“Not that fat sow,” grinned Henn, pointing at the huge Bizabraznia. “Unless she’s got a hider pistol tucked in her snatch.”

“Got room for a mortar up there,” cackled Finn. Descending with the utmost caution between the tumbled, wet stones, Ryan led them to the river. Each of them was carrying a blaster, ready for action: Hennings and Finnegan with their HK-54As, Krysty with the silvered H&K P-7A 13 pistol, Ryan with his caseless G-12, all covering the helpless Russians.

With the water now returned to its original level, Uchitel and the three other survivors climbed warily down and were now facing Ryan across fifteen paces of fast-flowing river. Slowly, Uchitel raised his hands above his head in the universal gesture of surrender.

Krisa and Zmeya followed. Finally, scowling, Bizabraznia lifted her hands.

“Watch ‘em,” said Ryan, crossing the jumble of stones and large boulders with care. If he slipped on the ice, the water would carry him to his death.

Once he was over, he beckoned for the others to follow. He kept his eye—and the muzzle of his blaster—pointed at the captive Russians.

“What’re we goin’ to do with the fuckers?” asked Finnegan.

“Ice ‘em,” replied Ryan. “Mebbe try an’ talk to ‘em first. You got that book?” he asked Uchitel and mimed reading and flicking pages.

Krysty watched a trickle of water flowing over the lip of the ruined dam. “I can see J.B., Lori and Doc near the ghost town,” she said.

“They’re wavin’,” added Hennings.

Ryan was still watching Uchitel, his good eye locked on the Russian’s amber gaze. “The book, you bastard,” he repeated.

“I can hear—” began Krysty.

“What?”

“Horses. Earth Mother. I can hear so many horses, comin’ this way! I couldn’t hear before with the noise of the river.”

“J.B. is pointin’ over that way,” said Hennings, gesturing to the west, where Krysty was also pointing.

Uchitel’s face was impassive. He had delivered enough death in his time to know that Ryan Cawdor’s face showed only the promise of killing. Moving carefully, the Russian reached inside his coat and produced the damp copy of the phrase book, throwing it down in the mud at Ryan’s feet.

As he stooped to pick it up, Ryan heard what the girl had detected: hooves pounding on rock, coming toward them. He glanced toward the ghost town, but J.B., Doc and Lori had disappeared.

“Let’s kill the sons of bitches and get us the fuck out of here,” said Hennings, backing toward the river.

“No,” said Ryan. “Look at this bastard’s face. Whoever’s comin’ aren’t friends of his. Must be Americans. We’ll wait and…”

The words died in his throat as he watched the ridge a quarter mile to the west.

While they’d been in the redoubt, he’d seen a couple of old vids called westerns, involving savages that attacked villes and burned them down until sec men called cavalry came to the rescue. Impressively, savages always seemed to appear in single file on the crest of a MIL “Well, I’ll be…” whispered Finn.

Bizabraznia fell to her pale knees and buried her face in her hands. The other Russians looked scared.

“There’s nearly a hundred,” said Hennings with almost religious awe.

A hundred men, well mounted, all wearing a uniform, were approaching. Even at that distance, Ryan knew that these couldn’t be friends or Americans. There wasn’t a baron in Deathlands with the power to put a regular small army into the field like this.

The rising sun glanced off badges on some of their gray caps. Most had rifles slung across their backs.

“Any move and we’re cold meat,” said Ryan. “If it comes to it, take as many as you can. Play it soft.”

They watched as the riders descended from the ridge, then cantered over the flat trail, reining in a wide semicircle at a signal from the man who seemed to be their leader. He was a pockmarked fellow with a bald head and a drooping moustache. He heeled his horse forward. Stopping a few paces from Ryan, he scrutinized them all, paying particular attention to their blasters.

Uchitel studied the officer, then barked a question at him in Russian. Zimyanin ignored him.

Ryan tried to flick through the phrase book while still keeping his gun ready. The bald man reached into his coat, pulling out a small red notebook, with some writing on the cover in a peculiar, angular script that Ryan couldn’t read.

“I am Major Gregori Zimyanin, and I bring greetings from the party.”

The accent was heavy, but Ryan found it easier to understand than Uchitel’s garbled words. He bowed slightly to the Russian.

“I take prisoner this mans,” he said, waving with the book at Uchitel and the other three.

“Let him,” hissed Finnegan.

“No,” said Ryan. “They’re my prisoners.”

Zimyanin glanced through his book as if he wasn’t sure he believed what he said. “Nyet. I take. He Russian. I take.”

“No,” repeated Ryan, conscious of the others spreading out behind him supportively.

The officer pored over his book, lips moving as he rehearsed what he wanted to say. “You are four. We are many. We kill.”

“We kill many of you,” answered Ryan, trying to show a confidence he didn’t truly feel.

“He Russian,” the major said, pointing at Uchitel again.

Ryan made his move. Taking care not to spark off a firefight, he stepped in and moved Uchitel and the woman to one side with the barrel of the Heckler & Koch. Then he pushed the other two prisoners toward the man on horseback.

“I’m a great believer in compromise,” he said, knowing that the soldier would not understand; knowing as well that the gesture was obvious.

Zimyanin hesitated. He could see that these Americans were not helpless peasants. They could only be some sort of unofficial militia, roaming the land to repel invaders. There weren’t many of them, but their guns looked more lethal than anything he’d ever seen before. And they’d blown that huge dam.

Ryan faced him, raising his eye questioningly. “Yes, my friend?”

“Da.”

The smooth, gray rifle slipped inside the long coat. Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer P-226 9 mm pistol, relishing the familiar weight in his hand. Standing three paces from Uchitel and the blubbery bulk of the woman, he fired three spaced shots.

The first two entered the woman’s chest between her sagging breasts. The impact sent Bizabraznia staggering backward, and Ryan put the third bullet carefully into the middle of her face.

The entrance hole of the final shot was lost in the pasty expanse of her round face with its layers of jowls. It hit the center of the upper lip and exited near the top of her head, removing a chunk of skull as large as a grown man’s fist.

Instantly there was some talk among the watching horsemen, but Ryan couldn’t tell whether it was from approval or anger. He stepped toward Uchitel, who faced him impassively.

“Nyet,” Zimyanin called then rattled off a string of commands in Russian. He pointed toward Zmeya and Krisa, who fell to their knees and began to babble their pleas for mercy.

The Americans watched as six soldiers swung down from their horses. One man took Zmeya’s left hand in both of his while a second cavalryman took the other hand. They tugged as hard as they could to get the kneeling guerrilla to rise. While they pulled him, a third soldier took a short length of waxed rawhide from his belt and looped it around Zmeya’s neck.

The other trio of cavalrymen treated Krisa to the same, then looked toward the commanding officer for a signal. Zimyanin favored Ryan with a thin smile, then nodded to the troops.

The nooses of thin cord tightened, vanishing into the necks of both condemned men. Zmeya tried to cry out, but the sound was strangled, caught in his throat. The soldiers holding the prisoners struggled to retain a footing on the slippery pebbles. Krisa died first, his red eyes protruding so far from their sockets that it seemed they would burst. Blood came from his mouth and nose, then from the corners of his eyes. His body went suddenly slack.

Zmeya, the Snake, fought harder, and his passing took longer. Blood was jetting from a severed artery under his ear before he finally became limp, slumping in the arms of the two men gripping his wrists.

At a gesture from Zimyanin, the corpses were dragged by the ankles to the river. One of the soldiers drew a steel knife from his belt and sliced the ears off both bodies and tucked the ears into a pocket.

Then each carcass was heaved into the river. Rolling and turning in the swift current, they were carried away across the plain, toward where the rest of Uchitel’s band had found their last resting place.

“My turn, Major,” said Ryan, ready to execute Uchitel. But the chief of the butchers was not quite done yet.

With a curse he pushed Ryan into Hennings and Finnegan, then produced a battered 9 mm Makarov PM pistol from inside his coat and levelled it at Zimyanin. Time held still, like a bubble of air in a frozen lake. The officer’s face whitened, his hands rising in a futile gesture of protection.

The crack of the handgun was almost swallowed by the rushing noise of the river.

Uchitel’s almond-shaped golden eyes opened wide in disbelief, and he looked over his shoulder at the flame-haired Krysty Wroth and at the small gleaming H & K pistol smoking in her right hand. Blood appeared on his chest as he dropped his own gun in the dirt, sank to his knees, then toppled, his silver headband with its great ruby clinking against the stones.

“Earth Mother forgive me,” whispered the girl.

“She will, lover. She will,” said Ryan.

The Americans did nothing to stop the soldiers from mutilating the corpses of the woman and Uchitel, though Hennings pushed them aside to retrieve the fallen piece of jewelry.

“Take it, girl,” urged the tall black, handing the ruby to Krysty. “Better you than them. You fuckin’ earned it.”

The two corpses bobbed downriver, ending the short and bloody history of the Narodniki.

Zimyanin had been diligently studying his phrase book again. Ryan had thumbed through the brown paperback that had belonged to Uchitel. The Russian spoke first.

“I thank you for your assistance. Now we take all your country for party.”

“What? No fuckin’ way, friend.” Ryan’s gesture and tone needed no translation. The officer indicated his overwhelmingly superior forces with a wave of his hand. “Your country is not strong. We take. You not veto us.”

It was the moment that Ryan Cawdor had suspected was coming from the time the Russians first appeared over the ridge. They must have ridden across many miles of Alaska and seen no opposition. Now only three men and a girl seemed to stand between them and all of America.

“Let ‘em go. We can make the redoubt and get the fuck out of here.”

Finn’s argument was unanswerable. To fight here was to die. If they stood aside, it was better than fifty-fifty that the Russians wouldn’t provoke a fire-fight, and the gateway would carry them far from here. This bitter northern land with its freezing residue of the nuclear winter wasn’t their concern. There surely wasn’t any profit in trying to defend it.

Ryan hesitated only a moment.

“No,” he said.

“Nyet?” asked Zimyanin in disbelief.

“No. This is our land. You get back to Russia and your party. Go.”

“You fight?”

“Damned right we do.” He drew the G-12 again, emphasizing his point.

The Russian thumbed through his book frantically. Eventually he seemed to find what he wanted. “You will die all. Why?”

“Friend of mine back in Deathlands once took off all his gear and jumped in a tar pit. I got him out, cleaned him down and asked him the same question—asked him why. He said it seemed a fuckin’ good idea at the time.”

Zimyanin looked at Ryan, finding him utterly beyond comprehension. Behind Ryan, Henn and Finnegan laughed at his story.

“Ready,” said Ryan. “Here it comes.”

There was a sudden burst of automatic-weapons fire, faint and distant, high up the valley, toward the ghost town. Everyone looked around, seeing three figures grouped around something: a pointed object about as tall as a man.

“It’s the fuckin’ dummy missile,” gasped Hennings.

“Shut up,” snarled Ryan.

Zimyanin took his precious Zeiss binoculars from their leather case and raised them to his eyes, adjusting the focus. He held them there for a long time, finally lowering them.

Silently, ignoring the whispers from his troops, he swung off his horse and stood holding the reins. The book open in his gloved right hand, the Russian beckoned to Ryan, then gestured at the missile.

But he couldn’t find what he wanted to ask. Shaking his head, clicking his fingers in irritation, finally sighing, he pointed again toward J.B. and the rocket,

“Boom?” he asked, hesitantly.

“Yeah, Boom! Fuckin’ great boom! Boooooom!”

“Da,” agreed the Russian, searching assiduously again for the phrase he wanted. Eventually he found it,

“To your good health, American, and to your land.”

He offered a hand, and Ryan reached out and took it, shaking, it firmly. He looked, into the eyes of the Russian.

“And to your good health, brother, and to your country and party.”

Zimyanin clicked his heels and bowed slightly. Remounting he called out an order to his patrol, then led them slowly across the valley toward the west.

Toward the icebound Bering Strait.

Toward Russia.

About a half-mile away he stood in the stirrups, and raised a clenched fist to the watching Americans. Ryan waved in acknowledgement.

Finally the last of the cavalry unit vanished over the ridge and the day was quiet again.

“That was close, lover,” said Krysty, finally holstering her pistol.

“Yeah,” agreed Ryan. “It was close.”

 

Epilogue

« ^

THE CODE FOR THE OUTER DOOR of the redoubt, 108J, worked, and they trooped inside, leaving the two buggies out on the plateau for the local muties to find. Inside the cavernous building, the temperature had fallen since the time they left only a couple of days earlier. Many of the lights were either flickering or extinguished.

They spent an hour stocking up on food and ammunition, then using J.B.’s map, made their way to the gateway on the fourth level.

“Goin’ to try a code, Doc?” asked J.B.

“I fear there would be little point. I think we must trust to the random element and hope we finish somewhere better than this wasteland.”

“Somewhere warmer, Doc, if you don’t mind,” Henn put in, grinning.

Ryan was last into the chamber, with its now-familiar floor and ceiling patterns, and its strange glasslike walls. Everyone sat down, with Krysty pulling at Lori’s arm to show her what to do. The girl had shown signs of great nervousness as they moved through the redoubt where she’d spent all her life, but her trust in the others carried her along. Now she sat with them on the floor.

“It’s like a quick sleep and then a bad headache,” said Finnegan to her. “We wake somewhere else.”

“Somewhere good?” she asked.

“Who knows?” answered Ryan. “Everyone ready? Then here we go.”

He closed the door firmly. The lights began to gleam and dance. He had just enough time to sit down before he felt the jump beginning.

 

THE INSIDE OF HIS BRAIN felt as if it had been chopped into a million splinters, then flushed down a dark, echoing drain.

Ryan Cawdor blinked open his eye and looked around. The first thing he noticed was that the chamber was uncomfortably hot.

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