Red Equinox

by James Axler

  Ryan, gun drawn, saw the confused tableau and decided instantly to charge through. He was so far committed that retreat was impossible.

  Shooting on the run, he killed the noncom and took out the two men on each side of him, leaving a gap for him­self—a gap that opened directly in front of the careering baby carriage.

  The SIG-Sauer held only two rounds.

  Panicked, one of the sec men jerked on the trigger of his rifle. Bullets sprayed everywhere. The blaster was out of control, spitting fire across the steps, chilling the woman with the leg wound.

  Before the sec men realized what was happening, Ryan was on top of them. With only two bullets left it wasn't a time to get careless. He followed the carriage, the squeal­ing of the baby rising above the rest of the bloody cacoph­ony.

  A sec man stood in front of him, rifle at his hip, braced and ready.

  Shooting from above and on the run, Ryan was pleased to see the sec man tumble backward, blood flowering from a wound in his upper chest. The dropped blaster nearly tripped the fleeing man, but he managed to vault it, keep­ing his balance. He overtook the rocking, rolling, jolting carriage, now three-quarters of the way down the immense flight of steps.

  Ryan could see thirty or forty people near the bottom, but none seemed to be in uniform and they were all mak­ing desperate efforts to save themselves. No one seemed as though he were interested in trying to stop the one-eyed man with the smoking blaster in his fist.

  Then Ryan was at the bottom of the steps, seeing his avenue of escape opening to his right—the fringes of an ancient nuke site, broken buildings leaning and tumbling against one another. It was a place where nobody lived, a place where he could run, dodge and hide, eventually working his way back toward the row of workshops where his friends were waiting for him.

  He heard a bumping, clattering sound behind him, and turned to see that the carriage had miraculously made it all the way to the bottom. It pitched over the last two stairs, the red-faced occupant still screaming its head off.

  A stout sec man, with faster reflexes than the rest, was halfway down the steps, and he leveled his AK-47 in Ryan's direction.

  The last round from the SIG-Sauer hit him below the left armpit and drilled through his chest, shattering ribs. Shards of edged bone sliced through the man's heart and lungs. As he fell, the sec guard's finger locked on the trigger, send­ing a final burst of lead fanning across the bottom of the steps.

  The carriage had just bounced to a stop, a few feet clear of the last stair. The baby was still strapped in place, shocked but alive. The turnips were all gone, tumbled to the four winds.

  Half a dozen of the bullets from the Kalashnikov ex­ploded into the carriage, shattering its hood and sides, killing the child instantly.

  Ryan clutched his empty blaster and sprinted away from his pursuers.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  THE NEWS TOOK a half hour to reach Major-Commissar Zimyanin. He'd been working out that evening in the seedy gymnasium beneath the monolithic building that housed the ville's principal sec offices. He hadn't left word where he'd gone, as he intended to be out of his room for only a few minutes. But the weights had beckoned to him, and he'd been pushing himself harder and harder. He added more disks of iron to the polished bar, pressing greater and greater poundage, his muscular body streaming with sweat, veins throbbing at his temple.

  A young clerk eventually tracked him down, peeping cautiously into the weight-lifting room.

  "Comrade Major-Commissar Zimyanin?"

  At that moment the officer was struggling to bench-press 120 kilos, straining to raise the heavy bar. His teeth gritted in determination, he hardly even heard the muttered, ner­vous query.

  "Comrade Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin?" the clerk said a little louder.

  "Yes!" The word was spit out with a ferocious venom that nearly sent the young man rushing off down the ill-lit passage.

  "Message… There's a… Sir, a message for…for you."

  Zimyanin eased the bar back onto its rests and slid out from under it. He sat up and wiped himself with a clean towel. "What message? The Americans? What is it?"

  "The man with one eye, Comrade Major-Commissar. He has been seen."

  Zimyanin's face didn't change expression, and he kept his voice flat and neutral as he turned to look at the clerk. "How many dead, Comrade?"

  "Dead?"

  "Dead! How many?"

  "How did you know there were people killed, Comrade Major-Commissar? The news has only just reached the of­fice and—"

  "I have met this man once before. I know that where he sets his foot, flowers die. Where he breathes, the little bird drops out of the sky. So, how many dead?"

  "Nineteen, Comrade Major-Commissar."

  Despite his steel self-control, Zimyanin couldn't quite conceal his surprise at the total. "Nineteen! On his own? No companions with him? Nineteen dead? With a Stechkin machine pistol? With a grenade of some…? No?" The young man had shaken his head. "With a broken stick, Comrade?"

  "A single-shot handgun, they said. The dead include sec men, a woman of eighty winters and an unweaned baby."

  Slowly, very slowly, Zimyanin stood, stretching like a great cat until his muscles creaked. He sighed and shook his head. "And he escaped?"

  "In a way, Comrade Major-Commissar."

  "In a way? In a way! What does that mean, you slaver­ing imbecile?"

  "Yes. Yes, he escaped. Yes, Comrade Major-Com­missar. I am very sorry, but he escaped."

  Zimyanin smiled. "You have no need to be sorry, boy. It was not your fault. If it had been I would have hung you from that beam there, taken out a very thin knife and peeled the skin from your entire body, beginning at your heels and finishing with your pretty little face." He threw the towel to the floor, suddenly impatient to be moving. "I shall be in my office in four minutes and thirty seconds. I will read the full report then."

  "Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar." The man vanished through the wing doors, reappearing at Zimyanin's bel­low. "Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar?"

  "Make sure that Tracker Aliev is ready to move imme­diately."

  "A CRYSTAL PRISM used to hang in the front window of my Aunt Zelda's apartment in the South Bronx. Funny the way that became the place to live in the 1990s. Just before that it'd been like Pits City. Anyway, this crystal prism used to hang there, and it would catch the sun. When I was a kid I'd sit and watch it like it was magic. The colors would all streak the white ceiling. Aunt Zelda would say it was a wizard's paintbrush." Rick smiled at the gentle memory. "God Almighty, Ryan, those were such good days. I was around twelve. I never had such good days as when I was twelve. Does anyone?"

  "Twelve wasn't a happy time for me," Ryan replied. "Not with my brother."

  "I'd killed a man by the time I was twelve," J.B. pon­dered.

  "I'd killed 'bout fifteen," Jak said. "Mebbe twenty. Couldn't count good."

  Rick lay back on his makeshift mattress, eyes closed.

  Ryan looked at him, trying to remember how the freezie looked when they'd first seen him, trying to read the hol­lows around the eyes and the deep lines carved around the dry-lipped mouth. The genetic spillage from the nukings a century ago still meant a very high mortality rate from dis­ease throughout the Deathlands. It wasn't unusual to see people dying of illness. Ryan must have seen thousands in his life. Once the Reaper laid his talons upon a shoulder, the signs were unmistakable, and Rick carried all of those signs.

  J.B. caught Ryan's eye. He looked down at the dozing freezie and shook his head, motioning for Ryan to join him on the far side of the building, near where the corpses of the two thieves were already beginning to ripen and smell.

  "Have to be tonight. And that could be too late for him," he said. "I never saw many a man so close to death who was still breathing." He shook his head. "But the Russkie bastards'll be as thick as flies on horse shit."

  "Yeah. Gotta try for it. Least there's the chance of bet­ter food at the old house." Ryan glanced
around at Rick. "No tools, no hope of mending the door. Even with him alive. We get there with the tools and Rick goes into the valley…least we have an outside chance of repairing it. We have to go, and real soon."

  JAK LAUREN WAS a prince of thieves. Covering his white hair with a fur hood, he sneaked out into the night, to scavenge and recce around. He returned in less than a half hour with news, good and bad.

  "Seen wag. Easy steal. Two sec bastards. Chill 'em easy. Close by."

  That was the good.

  "Triple-hot. Sec bastards everyplace. Hundreds. Start­ing fucking scan-search. Roads blocked. Saw big sec man, bald and mustached. Shouting and pointing. Real grim fucker."

  "Zimyanin," Ryan said quietly.

  That was the bad.

  Just before midnight J.B. and Ryan stood on either side of Rick, ready to support him. The Stars and Stripes had been peeled off the metal stanchion, and the freezie had insisted on carrying it himself. He wrapped it carefully around his middle, using the leather belt on his coat to keep it snug. Ryan and J.B. had divided the tools between themselves, leaving Jak free to scout on ahead of them and take out the sec men.

  "Time to go," Ryan announced.

  Rick looked around the empty building that had been home for a couple of days. "Goodbye to our freeway re­treat," he said, lifting his hand in a mock salute. "I shall return. No way I will."

  The albino teenager went out first, glanced all around and beckoned to the other three to follow him into the cool, damp night.

  ALIEV WAS EXCITED, grunting and snuffling, on hands and knees, scampering around like a hunting dog, face to the ground, head twitching from side to side.

  The rest of the sec men had drawn back into a cautious circle and watched the Mongolian tracker with a mixture of religious fear and rank disgust. Most of them were ap­palled and frightened by the sight of the little man.

  Major-Commissar Zimyanin watched his protege with a pleased, far-off smile. Comrade Marshal Josef Siraksi would have mixed feelings at the news of the massacre. The descriptions of the one-eyed man and his unique blaster, combined with the theft of the American flag, couldn't possibly be ignored now. Nor could Gregori's suspicions be derided.

  "I trust that you are now convinced of my probity in this matter," he whispered to himself. It wouldn't be long now before he could practice his hard-learned English.

  Aliev looked up at the officer, rubbing his hands to­gether in a gesture that meant he had found the trail. Despite the numbers of people who had been around the bottom of the Isenstien Steps, the track of the one-eyed man wasn't that difficult to locate. And once Aliev had the spoor, nothing would turn him from it.

  Zimyanin glanced at the cheap and unreliable chron on his left wrist. It told him that the time was closing in on the middle of the night. However far and fast his prey might have run, he would still be caught and taken. Perhaps by the morning.

  "By the dawn's early light." Zimyanin smiled.

  RYAN TOUCHED HIS TONGUE to the socket where the trou­blesome tooth had been, finding it still felt tender. But that dreadful nagging soreness had gone.

  "Gotta rest," Rick panted. "Sorry, Ryan, sorry."

  "Don't keep saying 'sorry.' It's getting to be like a rad sore you have to pick at."

  The freezie looked at J.B. "I don't mean to keep… I'm sorry… I mean. I guess I should never apologize. It's a sign of weakness." For some reason that brought a weak grin to his parchment-pale face.

  "Jak's been gone a long while," J.B. said to Ryan.

  "Yeah. Quarter hour. Mebbe you or me should have gone with him."

  "Only two sec men, he said."

  "Could be more."

  "Three. Four. Still back the kid to take 'em easy."

  Ryan leaned against the tumbled wall of the long-ruined house and looked up at the sky. The low clouds that had dominated the night an hour or so back had cleared. The temperature had dropped, and he could see uncounted stars glittering with a ferociously cold gleam.

  "Guess so. Give him another five then I'll go see what's up."

  Less than a minute later the teenager appeared out of the darkness, waving the others to move forward.

  As they each put an arm around Rick's waist to help him up, they saw Jak—holding his knife—gesture toward his own throat. He repeated the motion twice more.

  "Three sec men," Ryan said.

  "Where?" Rick asked worriedly.

  "Dead," Ryan replied, "of course."

  THE WAG WAS PERFECT. It was impossible to tell what it might have been when it started out its life. It had been modified, customized, and chopped and altered so many times that only a few inches of metal might have been orig­inal.

  The tires were worn almost down to the canvas, but the engine looked sound. Homemade armor plating had been fixed to the front and sides of the cab. The seat was wide enough to take all four of them.

  And the tank was three-quarters full of gas.

  "Who drives?" Jak asked.

  "Can you handle it?" Ryan asked. "Don't fuck around if you can't, Jak. There isn't time. Can you manage?"

  "Sure. Four front and one back gear. Easy. Where you and J.B. ride?"

  Ryan considered the question. No use having them all jammed in the cab for the breakout from the dangerous center of the ville.

  "We'll take the back. Watch over the sides for any sort of trap."

  "What if road's blocked?"

  "Over, under, around…or through," Ryan replied, amending one of the Trader's sayings. "In this case it'll be around or through."

  "Wish I had a gun," Rick said, surprising everyone. "Could pull my weight. Even a dying man can squeeze a trigger."

  Ryan looked at him. "You stupe! We could've brought the blasters from the chills in the workshop! Why didn't you say?"

  "Didn't think at the time. Sorry. Just didn't think."

  "Too late now," J.B, said. "We gotta get moving."

  When they helped the freezie up into the cab, his foot slipped on the wheel hub and he nearly fell back into the dirt. Jak swung into the driver's seat, glancing once over the controls. He gestured with his thumb for J.B. and Ryan to clamber into the open bed of the armored wag.

  "Ready?" he called.

  Ryan tapped on the metal plate at the rear of the cab. "Let's go."

  GREGORI ZIMYANIN DIDN'T WASTE any time with the two corpses in the abandoned workshop. He tugged Aliev by the arm to attract his attention. "How many?"

  The tracker considered, finally fluttering his fingers at lightning speed in the code that Zimyanin had taught him.

  "Five? Four? No, slower. I don't understand what you're… There were three. Then two. Then four? Is that it?"

  The Mongolian nodded then slid a finger behind the dripping mask covering his nose and mouth to remove a stubborn lump of blood-flecked phlegm.

  "The three? Two men and a woman? One man sick? Yes?"

  Aliev again used the sign language, telling Zimyanin that the woman had gone a couple of days ago. The sick man and the other had stayed, and they'd now been joined by two more men. One young and light on his feet, the other older. Aliev used his hand to indicate their heights. Around five-foot-four for the young one, four or five inches taller for the other man. Now all had gone.

  "I can see that for myself, you whore-spawn mutie mongrel," Zimyanin snarled. "How long ago? How long? A half hour. Then we are closing. Outside." He called to the corporal in charge of the sec detail, "Keep your blun­dering imbeciles away from any prints out there. We're going to get them."

  JAK KEPT THE HEADLIGHTS dim and picked his way through the rubble of the most deserted back streets. Ryan guided him as best he could, trying to maintain a rough course to the southwest of the enormous ville.

  They glimpsed sec patrols, both on foot and motorized, but none came close enough to cause any serious worries for them. Until they were well into the suburb called Nikulino.

  Now the roads were better maintained, busier. As the buildings began to thin out toward the coun
try, there were fewer options to keep the wag from being spotted.

  Around two-thirty in the morning, with a steady rain beginning to fall, the inevitable happened.

  Chapter Thirty

  THE WAG SHUDDERED to a stop, the engine ticking over quietly. Jak opened the door on the driver's side and leaned half out, looking back at Ryan and J.B., who were peering around the armor plate.

  "Yeah," Ryan told him. "I see it."

  The road, lined with plane trees, stretched ahead for a quarter of a mile, houses scattered at intervals on either side. Just where the pavement began to bend to the right, with the silvery gleam of water visible, was a roadblock.

  Two small four-wheel wags were angled across the cen­ter of the road, with a gap between them of less than a dozen feet. Twenty or thirty heavily armed sec men had ranged themselves around the two vehicles.

  "Haven't seen yet," Jak said. "Moment pull out from trees, spot us. Fucking lot."

  The teenager was correct. Their wag was parked under an overhanging bushy tree, and the driving rain had already reduced visibility. But as soon as they began to drive at the roadblock, the guards would have about thirty seconds of clear shooting at them. It was much too long.

  J.B. pointed to where the old houses stood a little closer together. "Good chance we could work our way down there. You and me. Hit those stupes from the side. Mo­ment we start shooting, Jak revs up the wag and hits that gap in the middle."

  Rick's voice chimed in feebly. "Then we stop and pick you guys up and head for the dacha? That the master plan?"

  The silence from the other three slapped him in the face. It was Ryan who put it into words.

  "No, Rick. If you get through, you keep going. We'll try and give you a good head on them. That way, there's a chance—just a chance—that you and Jak could make it. We'll try and follow you when we can. But you don't stop. Jak knows that. If we make it, we'll make it. Watch for us."

  "You play mean pool, Ryan," the freezie said, pulling his head back inside.