by James Axler
Which meant there must have been a strong contingent of maniacal muties barring the way to it.
Dolfo Kaler knew how to deal with crazies. Blow 'em away. He bartered, he finagled, he called in every long-term debt he had out, and in the end every man jack of his team had an automatic rifle of some description and a stack of rounds. He also acquired seven MGs, four flamethrowers and a supply of precious fuel and two bazookas. Not to mention a box of grenades and a launcher.
And then he set out.
There were six big steam trucks, snorting and grinding and belching black smoke, and they shifted butt one fine spring morning when the skies were not as yellow as usual and a hazy red fireball of a sun was doing pretty well in its struggle to penetrate the haze. There must have been half of Mocsin on the edge of town to see them off, waving crudely fashioned flags and whooping and hollering fit to burst. Maybe three thousand souls to watch the biggest thing to happen to the town in decades.
Kurt remembered it. He remembered it very well. It had happened on his birthday, and his ma and pa had taken him to see the cavalcade as a birthday treat. Kurt remembered yelling with the rest of them. He didn't really know what he was yelling for, except that just seeing those huge, lumbering steam trucks lurching out of town was exciting enough — the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. And the guys in the trucks, yelling, too, caught up in the glamour of it all, waving their pieces above their heads, all clearly itching to fire a few shots to finish the celebration off but not daring to because ammo was ammo then, and you didn't waste one single round of it.
And Kurt remembered the payoff. The horror of that day, maybe four months later, with the late summer sun blistering down through the haze, a light wind whipping up the dust into the heavy air in thin spirals — and the single raggedy man crawling toward him, blind eyes staring out of a gaunt and blackened face, one desiccated hand clawing and twitching in the air like a mummified insect come to dreadful life. A human skeleton, his clothes in rags and tatters, inching his way laboriously along the ruined blacktop. Muttering and mumbling to himself as his knees and bony legs scraped faintly along the dusty road, he pulled himself wearily forward with the sound of old parchment being gently squeezed.
Dolfo Kaler, a man of considerable will.
Kurt remembered turning and running in blind panic back into town, his bare feet hammering at the hot, dusty ground. He remembered the confused aftermath, the deputation of eight armed men, led by Jordan Teague himself carrying a pump-action, Teague striding out of town toward the blackened, sticklike figure rustling its way along the rutted blacktop. He remembered how they kept their distance from Kaler, well out of reach in a half circle, watching him drag himself slowly toward them. How they glanced at each other, shook their heads, faces showing a mix of horror, boredom, grim ruthlessness. How they all, as one, each of the eight, lifted their pieces and fired.
Kurt remembered that, all right.
He remembered it was Jordan Teague who aimed at the head and blew it off with an ear-cracking roar of sound, automatic fire and pistol single-shot clattering in echo, rounds jerking and smashing the stick man up and down and back along the blacktop in a flailing scramble of limbs and blood and flesh chunks.
They said they had to do it because it was a stone-cold cinch that Kaler was contaminated in some way; maybe he had the Plague itself. That was a popular theory because guys who caught the Plague found themselves driven to the limits of their endurance and beyond before they finally fell apart.
But Kurt knew the sun-crisped ruin of a man did not have the Plague. Even at the age of ten he knew that. Knew for sure. A classic symptom of Plague was that you could not talk, could not articulate words, you could only gargle and growl and foam at the mouth. And Kaler might have been mumbling and muttering when Kurt found him, but there were words coming out of his mouth: most were garbled, incomprehensible; a few were chillingly intelligible.
Kurt could hear the rasping croak now, the words creaking out through those blackened lips: "Fog...fog devils... tear you... apart..."
McCandless's voice cut through his dark musings.
"I said, what do you think, Kurt? You listenin' to me?"
And now there he was, trekking through this savage land at McCandless's heels, following Dolfo Kaler's trail and the trail of all those other poor bastards who had never made it back to Mocsin. Never made it back to anywhere.
Sure he was mad. But come to think of it, not half as mad as Jordan Teague would have been if Teague had gotten his fat hands on him. Hiring on with McCandless had been the perfect escape — except of course for McCandless's lousy rep and McCandless's lousy destination. If only he'd headed off elsewhere on the road to the Darks, managed to sneak away on foot or stolen the truck. If only. But there'd been no time, no opportunity. McCandless had already been able to claw some gas from somewhere, enough to fill the tank of the beat-up, rickety truck that had only just managed to get them here before seizing up completely in the foothills. That was where McCandless had iced the fifth member of the party, Denning, and that was where they'd bedded down for the night, and that was where, burn it all to Hell, he should have split.
But he hadn't. And he still wasn't entirely sure why.
Maybe the vision of riches or weaponry beyond his wildest imaginings had held him to this course: an infatuation with power.
Maybe it, was just as simple as a belief that when the chips were down he could get shot of McCandless and Rogan and maybe Reacher, too — but maybe not Reacher; Kurt felt a vague kinship with Reacher — and take what was there all for himself. Simple greed. Maybe that was it.
Kurt shrugged, his face still masklike.
"Yeah."
"Yeah what?" rasped McCandless. "Yeah, ya listenin' to me, or yeah, we're all gonna get lucky?"
The thought struck Kurt anew that there was no way McCandless was going to share with him if they struck it lucky. Or with anyone. He had in fact been aware of that all along, right from the start, right from the moment when McCandless had grabbed him.
McCandless — sharing? Even an eighth? Fat chance.
He said, his voice lifeless, his mind filled with the sudden image of Denning with just a bloody mush were the back of his head had once been, "Both."
"Fine," said McCandless, with a grin. "So let's do it. Let's move, huh? Let's get us some of that good fortune."
They stumbled up the road, Reacher in front, McCandless next, then Rogan. Kurt took up the tail.
He gripped his old Armalite auto-rifle with both gloved hands, left under the stock, right around the trigger guard. Every so often he glanced back, but there was no one there. They'd seen no one since they'd left Mocsin. No muties, no mannies, no norms. Nor had they seen much fauna, come to that. The odd snake, nothing much else, nothing that looked at all as if it could wipe out a party of fifty men and all the men who had gone before.
Nor had they seen any sign of the steam trucks. No rusted hulks, no nothing. So unless the area they still had to reach, the high side of the mountains, was inhabited, it looked as if the only thing that could have dealt death to all those pilgrims of the past was the fog.
The fog that Dolfo Kaler had babbled about.
Fog devils, he'd said. Tear you apart, he'd said.
A fog with claws.
The wind was getting wilder, a banshee wail that echoed and reechoed around them. The four men had to fight to keep their balance, to stop from being plucked into the air and hurled over the edge of the precipice. They hugged the granite wall, stumbling and staggering onward, holding on to rocks with their gloved hands.
Kurt had to sling his rifle, a thing he did not care to do in a situation in which a second's delay in pulling it off his shoulder might be all the difference between life and death. But it was either that or be buffeted by the howling gale across the road and over into the black abyss the other side.
Suddenly it was colder. Much colder. Kurt stared upward, saw snow sweeping in from afar, a blizzard of ice and sleet hu
rled across the wilderness straight at them.
Yet still the lightning flickered and flared, exploding the blackness every few seconds with an unnatural radiance.
Head down, Kurt cursed through gritted teeth as the whirling maelstrom of ice chips exploded over them, battered them like hammers. Blindly he groped in his furs, tugged out heavy-duty Snospex, somehow managed to pull them over his head. He pulled the hood of his furs down hard, then crouched, gripping chunks of rock for dear life as another blast of wind hammered across the road with a demon's roar.
The wind died as suddenly as it had risen. It disappeared as though it had never been. Fat snowflakes softly feathered down through the air.
Breathing hard, Kurt clambered to his feet and unslung his rifle. He stared around, fearful that something might have snuck up on them while the gale had kept them flattened to the rock wall.
Nothing. The lightning cast a cyanic glow over the mountainscape. McCandless turned, stumbled back down toward him.
"Blasted nukeshit storm. Ain't seen nothin' like it. Ain't natural."
Kurt said, "Ain't nothing natural in the whole nuke-shittin' world, McCandless. Not since the Nuke."
"Shit," spat the big man, "yer a philosopher, Kurt." He turned back disgustedly. "C'mon! Move it! Let's go!"
They trudged onward, snow still drifting down from the lightning-slashed blackness all around them. It was hot again, humid. Clammy. Kurt could almost taste the electricity in the air, like a sharp razor flicking at his tongue. He shrugged irritably.
He watched Rogan ahead of him. Rogan, too, had pulled his parka hood over his face, but was now shoving it back up again. The gesture, the movement somehow angered Kurt. He sniffed the air, wondered idly how Rogan would take it if he suddenly cut loose with his piece and blew his head off. Kurt chuckled darkly to himself. Not very well, he thought. Not very well at all. It was so nuke-blasted hot.
He took a bead on Rogan as he silently swore. Rogan's head filled the sight. Kurt dropped by a millimeter or so. Now the stupid clown's neck. A round in there at this distance would plunge through skin and tissue, shatter the cervical vertebrae, punch out the thyroid cartilage, send the whole head spinning off sideways. In his mind's eye he could clearly see it sailing through the snowflakes, blood spraying out from the torn underside.
Suddenly there was a flurry of movement in the sight, a yell of outrage exploding from the target. Kurt let the rifle down slowly as Rogan's own piece jerked up.
Rogan screamed, "What the hell you doin'?"
Kurt held his rifle loosely and grinned. "Thought I saw a movement."
"Where? On my head?" Rogan's face was red with fury.
"Yeah. Flea or something. Maybe a louse. Who knows?" Kurt was now impassive.
"What's with this stupe? He out of his mind?"
McCandless glared at Rogan.
"Shut it. You want the whole mountain to hear you?"
"He was tryin' to kill me!"
Kurt said, "He's overreacting, McCandless. I think he's gone wacko."
Rogan took a step toward him, the rifle jabbing out. There was a crazed expression on his face. Kurt's own gun was raised again, aimed at Rogan's heart.
McCandless jumped forward, banged his left hand down on Rogan's rifle, clamped it tightly. He shoved the piece downward.
"Ya both crazy! Do I blast ya both?"
Kurt dropped his rifle and yawned deliberately.
"Dunno what's eating him. I was just sighting, that's all. Seems to me, McCandless, you want to keep an eye on your buddy or he's liable to do us all in."
"Listen..." Rogan's voice was thick with rage. One gloved hand jerked up, forefinger stabbing toward Kurt. "You listen to me..."
"Youlisten!" McCandless heaved himself at the man, swung him around. He now had his automatic pistol out and was jabbing it at Rogan's face, the muzzle inches from the man's left eye. "Shut it! Just shut it!" McCandless's eyes bugged and Kurt's hands tightened on his own piece. Any moment now, he thought, any moment... "Hey!"
Reacher. Up front. Kurt's eyes shifted from the two men in front of him and refocused on the senser mutie up the trail. Reacher was standing beside a bend in the road, waving an arm, gesturing frantically. McCandless's grip on Rogan loosened. The .45 slowly dropped. Reacher was shouting, "Round here. Quick." McCandless lumbered up the road toward him, still gripping the pistol. Rogan shot Kurt a black look, then followed. On Kurt's face was a dark smile, the eyes narrowed, the lips a thin curved line. Kurt shivered slightly, then wiped an arm across his brow. He was still hot. He moved on up the road, keeping to the left side even though the wind had dropped and was no longer sweeping across in violent gusts.
At the bend he stopped. Reacher was now beside the precipice, pointing. Kurt stepped to his side and stared down.
"Caught sight of 'em," the mutie said. "I was backing away, thought McCandless and Rogan were going to go berserk. Then I'm on the edge and I look down."
"Yeah." Kurt gazed at what the flickering lightning revealed far down into the plunging abyss — heaps of twisted wreckage, rusty metal skeletons, parts scattered far and wide along the narrow rock bank of the raging river. Beside him, McCandless, on his knees, stared down, too.
"So that's where they ended up."
"Yeah." Kurt swung around, to look at the winding road. It narrowed, curved around the rock wall to the left. A blind corner. But there was no one, nothing, no hidden cave mouth from which might erupt a horde of shrieking muties.
He sniffed the air. A strong smell of ozone drifted into his nostrils, sharp and heady. He noticed that the lightning had become forked, crackling with blue-tinged flares, tiny explosions that added eeriness to the already strange lighting effect. The sweat was pouring off his brow and he wiped at it with his sleeve again, inhaling the strong fur smell as if to ward off that other alien and unnerving odor.
"I don't like this," he muttered, turning back to the abyss.
McCandless grunted as he got to his feet.
"They must've been blown off the road. The wind just lifted the whole pack of 'em, threw 'em down."
"Steam trucks?" Kurt raised an eyebrow.
"Sure," snapped McCandless. "It happens."
"All six of 'em?"
"It happens!" The big man scowled at the rusty wrecks far below. Then he glanced at Kurt warily. "How come you know so much about what kinda traction those guys had?"
"I remember when Dolfo Kaler went out. It was only a couple of decades back. I was a kid, but I remember it."
"Yeah?" McCandless's voice was thick with suspicion.
"Sure. So what?"
"So nothing," growled McCandless, his eyes flicking back to the scene below. "See any stiffs?"
"Well, I guess they'd be picked bones by now." Kurt stared up at the towering peaks that soared above them, black and ominous. He gazed down again, noting the smoothness of the cliff face below, pierced here and there by tough-looking bushes that sprouted from unseen cracks and crevices.
"The acids would eat 'em up," Rogan put in, staring moodily downward.
"Ain't no acids round here," sneered McCandless. "Look at the rock, stupe. All round ya. Ain't eaten away. Smooth. Look at the road. Acids would tear all that up, dissolve the surface cover." He spat contemptuously into the sullen void below.
Kurt hitched his pack to loosen the straps. McCandless turned away from the brink of the precipice.
"Let's go. We gotta deal of trekkin' to do before we reach the top."
Rogan snarled at Kurt. "Don't you go pointin' that piece at me again, blaster. You hear me?"
Kurt did not bother to reply. He checked his gun, checked above, checked behind. He watched Reacher head toward the next bend, then moved on up the road himself, the ozone smell very strong in his nostrils now, an ugly, steely stink. He thought about the trucks and knew it would need a fantastic blast of wind to hurl them all over, all at once.
No wind, however fierce, had hurled them over into the abyss.
"McCandless!"
Kurt's head jerked up. Reacher was now at the bend, looking beyond it. His voice was not a yell but a hiss of alarm, incomprehension. There was tension there. Kurt began running. He passed both McCandless and Rogan, his gun held in both hands, his boots thudding on the road's hard surface. He reached the senser. He stared up beyond him at what lay ahead.
Fog.
A thick, sullen wall of it, gray-white, impenetrable. And huge. It blotted out the sky above them, loomed hideously high like an immense barrier across the road — a barrier that seemed to be alive, for it quivered and heaved gently. Thick tendrils stirred and inched out along the road's surface at its lower edge, like questing fingers, then retreated into the main mass. A dull, eerie glow emanated from its heart, blue tinged, somberly highlighting the immediate area.
Kurt gazed at it, his mouth suddenly dry. His eyes automatically took in the fact that it only extended to just beyond the edge of the precipice; there it seemed to fade away to become tattered shreds of whiteness hanging in the air. That somehow made it all the more unnatural, all the more terrifying. It seemed to Kurt to be not at all atmospherically created; not at all strange and random, in the way that much of the weather in the Deathlands seemed bizarrely random, in the way that here and now there was snow, heat, wild winds, periods of sullen stillness.
He whispered, "The fog..."
A hand grasped his shoulder and tugged at it. He half turned to face McCandless's glaring eyes.
"What the hell is this, Kurt? What the hell d'you know about this?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know anything."
"The fog, the fog'!" mimicked the big man savagely. "Ya knew this was waitin' for us. Ya knew it. How come, huh? How come ya know so much about this? What else ya got up ya sleeve, blaster?"
Kurt pulled himself away from the leader's grasp. He snarled, "I tell you I don't know anything. Dolfo Kaler talked about the fog, that's all."
"Dolfo Kaler was shot to shreds while he was still crawlin' into town. Even I know that, Kurt."
McCandless's .45 automatic was in the big man's hands, pointing at Kurt's face. McCandless held it two fisted, unwaveringly, his face behind the gun a mad, glaring mask. Kurt's own gun was held right-handed; he knew he didn't have a hope of jerking it up in time to blow McCandless away before the big man had sent a magful into him.
