by James Axler
So had some of the men.
But Aliev was unmistakably the finest tracker in all of Mother Russia. His skills had made him shunned by other sec men, whose inbred superstitions told them the mutie was a warlock. Nobody could be so miraculous at tracking.
Yes, Zimyanin decided. If there should be any more talk of missing horsemen out at—he checked the map—out at Peredelkino, he would send Aliev and a patrol.
It was a pleasing thought. Zimyanin took up the bowl of cold cabbage and began to grimly pick his way through it.
JUST BEFORE RYAN LEFT the house with Krysty and J.B., the freezie caught him by the sleeve and pulled him to one side.
"Yeah?"
"A private word, Ryan."
"What?"
"Not for the others."
"Sure."
Rick shook his head. "I mean it, Ryan. Not a word. Not even to Krysty. You have to give me your word of honor."
"Honor? Oh, yeah. Honor. You got it, Rick. What's the problem?"
"The problem is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, friend."
"I know it. Lou Gehrig's disease. Why you were frozen in the first place. We all know you got the illness."
"When you get sick, Ryan, real sick, one of the things a lot of folks do is sort of immerse themselves in their disease. Read up everything you can. Look desperately for any oddball, freakish miracle cures. I did that. I knew there wasn't. That was why I agreed to be a cryo guinea pig. And you thawed me out. And here we are."
"So, what's the point, Rick? We have to make some miles before dark."
Behind the freezie Ryan could see a pallid sun breaking through and bouncing off the immaculate spread of snow.
"The point is I've been in remission. Now the disease is entering another phase. I can feel it. Recognize it."
"What phase?"
"Terminal, Ryan. Very definitely terminal."
"When?"
"Soon."
Chapter Twelve
"DID HE SAY how long he meant by 'soon,' lover?" Krysty asked.
"Mebbe weeks."
"Months? Could be more remission."
"No, J.B., I don't figure so. You see how bad he looks. Walks stiff. Loses his balance. I guess the guy knows his own body. He says weeks if it goes well. Only some days if not."
It had never even occurred to Ryan not to tell Krysty and the Armorer the bitter news about Rick. Screw honor when it came to hiding things from friends—your life could depend on their knowledge. In many ways the news didn't make a whole lot of difference.
They still had to get the gateway door and the linked triggering device repaired. To have any chance of returning to the Deathlands, they had to make a jump. The alternative was to cover thousands of miles across country, over a bitterly hostile land through bitterly hostile people. With no idea of the language.
All of them wore the swaddling coats and hats of mixed furs that served the dual purpose of keeping them warm and concealing their identities. Ryan and J,B. had left their long-barreled guns behind, as well as all the ammo. If the mansion should come under attack, Jak and Doc would need the long-distance firepower.
The companions also carried packages of dried meat and fish, and a canteen of water, though with so much snow around it would be hard to die of thirst.
Their farewells had been brief. There was no possible way of knowing how long they might be gone, or even if they would return. Living in the Deathlands taught a man that partings had a habit of becoming permanent.
Walking was difficult. The layering of snow was much deeper than it had been the day before. In the exposed open spaces the wind had swept the ground clear and bare, but in the dips and hollows it had banked up in drifts, often two or more feet high.
Ryan led the way, retracing their steps toward the cabin of the old woman and her monstrous son. Or husband. That was something they'd never know. The woman's body had disappeared from where Jak had killed her. From spoor around the place, Ryan guessed that it had been wolves. A little scattered blood marred the pristine whiteness of the snow, and a few gnawed splinters of bone poked upward from the ground.
When they reached the hut, they discovered that the three ponies had disappeared. But the corpses of the men remained, jumbled under a kindly shroud of snow. And the body of the giant was still wedged in the doorway.
"We figure the ville has to lay over there." J.B. pointed toward the faint smudge of a trail behind the cabin.
Ryan clapped his hands together, trying to sustain circulation. To his disappointment the biting cold air had sought out the cavity in his tooth, making every breath a sharp pain, and the empty socket of his left eye was weeping copiously in the cold, tears trickling over the numbed skin of his cheeks.
He was also concerned about the language problem. Any stranger or outlander in the Deathlands was regarded as a suspicious threat. But at least a person could hope to talk his way out of a dangerous situation. He'd asked Rick to try to teach him a few useful phrases, but the freezie had pointed out a little knowledge could well be worse than none at all. Once someone started to speak, then there would be pressure to continue. They'd do better to fake deafness or pretend to be mutes.
The morning brightened into afternoon. The curtain of gray lifted, folding away toward the south and leaving a sky of pale blue behind. The clouds didn't seem to have the livid chem colors of clouds in the Deathlands, looking more like clouds in the few surviving old vids that Ryan had seen.
"Feeling warmer," J.B. panted as they slogged along, forced to lift their boots high to keep them clear of the crusted snow.
"If the time of year's right, then I figure this could be the spring. Maybe it'll start thawing real soon."
Krysty nodded her agreement, pushing back the hood of her gray-speckled cloak, shaking out her long red hair. "Definitely warmer. Look. It's melting off the branches of the trees. In another couple of hours we'll be plowing our way through mud."
A belt of tall pines soon appeared in the northeastern horizon, in the general direction of where they believed the remains of Moscow lay. And they encountered fresh tracks of horses.
"Smoke," Krysty announced, sniffing the air.
Ryan couldn't detect it, but he didn't doubt that Krysty was correct.
"That way?" he guessed, pointing to the northeast.
"Right. Wood smoke. Not cooking. Although…" She hesitated. "I think there's also bread at the baking. Yeah, bread. Could be the ville."
J.B. drew his blaster and worked the action, relishing the oiled click as it moved. Ryan knew that the Armorer would already have checked the action before going to sleep the previous night, and once again before leaving that morning. It was as much a habit as breathing to J. B. Dix.
"How far off, lover?" Ryan asked.
"Difficult to tell. Wind's veering and dropping all the time. I'd guess it's around three to four miles off."
As the breeze fell away, the temperature began to rise. Within the next half hour it climbed at least a dozen degrees, making the walking slightly easier but much more unpleasant.
The dry frozen layer on top of the drifted snow was melting, softening and losing its pristine sheen. As the companions stepped through it their boots sank into a watery mush like cold oatmeal that rose above the knee if someone was unlucky enough to hit a deep hollow. The path meandered alongside a narrow stream. As they'd joined it, the water had been fringed with a delicate tracery of cobwebbed ice, stretching out from both the banks to meet in the middle.
Now that was gone, broken up and whirled away. The stream widened and ran faster, swelling with the inrush of meltwater. By the time the three friends came within sight of the ville the noise made conversation difficult, and the narrow stream had become a full-blooded river.
The trail had also widened into a horse trail, well trampled and thick with a sticky orange mud.
There was a sparse belt of trees ringing the hamlet. The houses appeared to be made mainly of packed earth with a roof of some kind
of thatch. Ryan crouched behind a stunted larch, cursing as its branches dripped water down the back of his neck. Krysty and J.B. knelt on either side of him, all staring intently at the afternoon activity in the small ville.
The well at the center of the cleared patch of dirt, which seemed to be the village's square, was clearly the social focus for the community. Women, all seemingly identical in ragged furs and filthy boots, gathered there, drawing water and engaging in chitchat. A few men appeared every now and again, as well as a scattering of muddied children. A number of scrawny mongrel dogs slunk about the place, nuzzling for scraps, occasionally bickering noisily among themselves.
"Bastard dogs," J.B. hissed. "One of them scents us and goodbye'll be all she wrote."
Ryan nodded. It was true that animals around a strange ville were a difficult obstacle to try to overcome.
"Which way to Moscow?" Krysty whispered. "Looks like a wider road out the far side there. It's in the right direction."
J.B. pulled out the miniature sextant and compass, angling it to the light that filtered through the branches of the trees. He read off the direction. "Northeast by a half east. That could be about right. Yeah."
While they watched and waited, Ryan considered what scant knowledge he possessed of Russia, realizing that it was abominably little. After sky-dark, as far as he knew, there had been no communication at all between what remained of the Russians and the survivors of Deathlands. The only thing that was certain was that there was a bone-deep hatred of each other's country.
Having traveled around the edges of the rad-blasted devastation that had been New York, he figured Moscow wasn't likely to be a whole lot better. But there had to be suburbs. From his experience around the rebuilt villes of Deathlands, Ryan knew that most life flourished in what remained of the old suburbs.
"Nothing here," Krysty said.
"Nope. Nothing. Lot of dirt and stink and suspicion. Nothing we need."
J.B. flexed his shoulders. "Agreed. Let's move on around."
IT WAS J.B. who killed the dog. They were three-quarters of the way around, picking their way cautiously between the patches of cover, checking that nobody from the ville was coming their way. They'd just negotiated a part of the woods that had been particularly unpleasant. From the copious evidence all around it was obvious that the wretched ville had no sanitation arrangements. Everyone simply came out and did what they had to among the trees.
Krysty began to giggle quietly to herself as they picked their way carefully onward.
"What's the joke, lover?" Ryan asked.
"Carl Lanning, the smith's son from Harmony. You know?"
"Yeah. What about him?"
"He always said I'd end up in the shit. He finally got it right."
All three of them laughed, laughter that was snapped off clean when the dog appeared from the far side of a small clearing.
It wasn't a particularly large animal, no more than two feet tall at the shoulder and probably weighing less than a hundred pounds. But it wasn't carrying much fat. Waves of muscle rippled over the squat shoulders and it stood foursquare, lips folding back off savage teeth. A thin trickle of yellow foam clung to its underslung jaw. In the sudden silence they could hear a faint snarl, rumbling deep in its belly. The sunken eyes were rimmed red.
"Gaia!"
Ryan took in a slow, whistling breath, leveling his SIG-Sauer P-226, finger taut on the feather-light trigger. He held his fire. If the dog barked they could have the whole ville teeming about their ears within seconds. If he shot the animal, even with the baffle silencer, there was a good chance of someone hearing the muted report of the blaster. Same result.
There was always the hope that the cur might simply take it into its head to turn and run, allowing them to move on unhindered.
That hope died the moment he saw the head go back and heard the first beginning of the howl of warning.
J.B. never hesitated.
He drew the Tekna knife left-handed and threw it underarm at the dog. The needle-sharp blade spun across the clearing, glinting in the sun. The point buried itself in the creature's throat, beneath the ruff of its muscular jowls. The yelp died, stillborn, and the dog staggered a few steps sideways, collapsing with a feeble, bubbling attempt at a bark. Blood oozed from its open jaws, tinting the froth, and its powerful legs kicked and scrabbled at the carpet of snow.
J.B. walked across and stooped to retrieve the heavy knife, jerking his hand away as the dying animal made a determined attempt to take a few of his fingers with it into the long stillness.
"Bastard," he muttered with no anger, waiting a half minute until the mongrel's eyes filmed over and it lay dead. Then he withdrew the Tekna and wiped it in the ground before resheathing it.
RYAN HAD FIGURED that the bodies of the three horsemen might have been found by now. What he didn't know was the extent to which rural Russia was subject to sec patrols. Generally in Deathlands sec men were visible in any numbers only near a large ville run by a powerful baron.
They'd only been in the country for a few hours and they'd already managed to kill five Russians. And a dog, Ryan added. There wasn't going to be any way they could throw themselves on the mercy of their unwitting hosts and took for anything better than a hemp collar and a short dance on the air.
The path had become a trail and now widened to the width of a two-lane blacktop. Most of the snow had already melted from its surface, the potholed pavement showing through. The river ran alongside it on the left, pounding over huge tumbled boulders, its noise now deafeningly loud. On the right side of the road the forest had thickened and darkened, massive pines gathering close together with barely room for a man to squeeze between the trunks.
"Don't like this!" J.B. shouted, looking behind them. "Can't see a quick way out if we get ourselves caught here."
Ryan nodded and stopped. He looked at the metallic gray of the icy water and knew that nobody could hope to survive in among the rocks for more than a handful of seconds. "Have to be the forest!" he bellowed back.
There wasn't too much of the day remaining. Clouds were bunching over the low hills ahead of them, where the trail disappeared. Ryan was thinking about when they should stop to find a hiding place for the night.
Because of the noise of the rushing river, none of them heard the clattering engine of the jeep until it roared around the corner right in front of them. It was filled with five armed sec men.
Chapter Thirteen
MAJOR-COMMISSAR ZIMYANIN flicked through the report, one of dozens that landed on his desk every morning of every working day. He glanced through it, stopping as his eye caught the familiar name.
"Peredelkino," he muttered, running the flat of his hand over the polished dome of his skull.
Only the day before there'd been something about a hamlet out that way, in the southwest sector of the grid.
"Peredelkino." There'd been three men missing. According to this report, they hadn't been located yet. But there was a mysterious corpse of a very tall mutie. "Stuck in a doorway," mused the officer. It sounded sufficiently bizarre to be interesting.
But what was even more interesting was the account of the motorized sec patrol that had been driving out on the river road and had come across three strangers.
"The missing horsemen?" he asked aloud. He immediately answered himself. "No." They'd all been male. One of these had been a woman. The descriptions had been amazingly sketchy. "Wearing furs. Who doesn't at this time of year? Shortish man. Glasses. Tallish woman. Maybe with red hair. And a tall man with only one eye. All of them could have been deaf muties?"
He pushed the report from one side of his desk to the other, recalling another phrase from his English book. Deaf muties. "Could you possibly repeat that? I regret that I am a little hard of hearing."
Still, the three seemed to have escaped, so that was the end of that.
The descriptions didn't ring any bells at all for Zimyanin. Shortish man. Redhead. Man with one eye
. Nothing uncommon. In the country of brutality, the one-eyed man was common.
"BLACK DUST!" J.B. exclaimed as the jeep came skidding around the bend, braking hard only forty yards in front of them.
Ryan had once spent some time in a stinking prison close by the Lantic. So close that the rising tide each day flooded the cell to within a couple of feet of the ceiling. An old man was dying there; indeed he finally slipped away in Ryan's arms. Before his death he passed on to the young one-eyed man his sole piece of wisdom. One on which he had not acted himself.
"When you get took prisoner…you gotta know you get more chance of breakin' away in the first five minutes than you'll get in the next five years."
Ryan had always remembered that.
And there wasn't a mess of choices.
The patrol had rifles, looking at a distance mostly like Kalashnikov AK-47s. It was highly unlikely that three handguns could chill the five uniformed sec men without taking losses.
The track stretched behind them, fairly straight, for over a hundred yards. Plenty of time for the rifles to put them down in the melting slush.
And the river was death.
"Trees! Now!" Ryan yelled.
The sec men weren't used to that kind of speed. Illegal drinkers, mutie hunters, an occasional small band of ragged guerrillas. That was the limit of their experience.
The three fur-wrapped peasants moved far too fast for them to react. By the time any of them had their blasters unslung, the track was deserted. One of the sec men was a secret Christian and he surreptitiously crossed himself, suspecting that they might have encountered a trio of forest ghouls. His mother had warned him of such creatures. They had long tongues that rotated like steel drills and insinuated themselves into every orifice of the human body, draining all your precious fluids.
