Chill Factor

by James Axler

  The wind had veered during the night, and Ryan could now catch the smell of the sulfur, bitter at the back of his throat.

  It looked like the mine was working a multiple-shift system. He could see lights down there and small trucks rattling along narrow-gauge rails. There was a line of figures marching together, tools glinting on their shoulders. Ryan wondered whether one of them might be Dean.

  There was enough light from the moon, half hidden behind ragged clouds, for him to understand the general shape of the canyon. Now he could make out a number of spidery-thin trails that cut across the flanks of the cliffs, with dozens of dark holes that he guessed must be old diggings.

  There was so much activity by the meandering river that Ryan began to have doubts about getting in that way.

  His eye followed the roadway down from the ruins of the redoubt, locating a narrow path that dived off it to the right. It seemed to circle completely around above the main workings, joining the maze of other tracks on the far side of the valley.

  From there it might be possible to infiltrate one of the work parties, not far below.

  The old tarmac was slick with patches of ice, and there was a faint mist of powdery snow falling around Ryan, dusting the shoulders of his coat.

  There'd been the momentary concern that Zimyanin might have guards out, ranging them into the mountains around the mine, but common sense said that he'd have some sentries close in, to keep the workers from escaping. In such an isolated position it wasn't likely that there would be anyone wanting to get into the sulfur workings.

  AS HE PICKED his way lower, Ryan was able, for the first time, to hear the sounds of the mines—the regular metallic wheezing of a large and powerful jack-hammer, pounding away near the entrance to one of the shafts, the squeaking of iron wheels on rusting rails; pulleys and hoists whining; men calling out commands.

  Once Ryan thought that he heard a shot, but he couldn't be sure.

  The trail forked about three hundred feet above the river at the valley's bottom. The main blacktop carried on down, but a faint track led off to the right, just where Ryan had spotted it from above.

  Here the going was harder and more treacherous, the footing unreliable.

  Twice he found pockets of deeper snow, crumbling and dangerous. He tried to work his way across the first and ended throwing himself flat, arms and legs spread, clinging desperately for purchase to a spur of jagged rock. Below him the snow fell in a tumbled avalanche of ice and stones.

  The second time he picked a more indirect route, going up and around the patch of snow, returning again to the path when he was safely beyond it.

  Walking slowly along an exposed flank of the mountain, it occurred to Ryan that this wouldn't be a good place to meet any kind of animal coming in the opposite direction. There was also the danger that Zimyanin might have planted guards after all. In the moonlight, against the dusted white of the hillside, Ryan was aware that he'd stand out like a dog turd in a bowl of buttermilk.

  From everything he could see, it seemed like the narrow track was probably used only by wild goats.

  The encounters with the murderous sec droids had thrown his plans out of kilter. The need for sleep had been paramount, but now he was a little later than he'd intended to be.

  Dawn would break in less than an hour, and by then he'd need to be safely under cover. Preferably close to the mines. Already he could detect the first pale glow in the eastern sky, and he was barely halfway around the perimeter of the bowl of rock.

  Taking greater risks, Ryan started to move faster.

  The snow was beginning to fall with more purpose, the flakes larger, the wind whipping them around with greater venom, making progress harder and even more dangerous.

  The only slight consolation was that the drop in visibility would also make it more difficult for any guards to spot him.

  Ryan wished he'd borrowed J.B.'s beloved old fedora. The melting snow was soaking his hair, running down his neck, trickling under his shirt.

  The weather was deteriorating into blizzard conditions with the serious risk of becoming a total white-out.

  But Ryan Cawdor had no choice.

  To turn back would mean that dawn would expose him on the winding trail, and it had been dangerous enough in fair weather. To stop would be to die.

  He put his head down, set each foot carefully in front of the last and pressed forward.

  THE TRACK HAD long vanished, and Ryan had to fumble onward. He leaned to his right to try to counter the fear of being sucked away into the abyss that beckoned on the other side. For the first time, the one-eyed warrior began to entertain the thought that he might die in this bleak, freezing wilderness.

  He concentrated all his senses on remembering what the trail had looked like, how far he might have gone, where the first of the dark openings had been. Normally his spatial awareness was as good as anyone's, but the wind and the swirling blizzard were bewildering.

  For some time he'd felt that the track had been moving slightly upward. From what he could remember, that could show that he was around the head of the box canyon and might be close to the first of the workings.

  The cliff to his right had been becoming more sheer, almost vertical in places. This meant the wind had nowhere to go, bouncing off, tugging at him, dashing the icy flakes into his face. Away to his left, the drop vanished into the whiteness.

  His ears caught a sudden slight change in the sounds around him. His right hand, feeling for support, found nothing.

  Ryan cupped his face, peering into a shapeless darkness. Cautiously he took a step toward it, finding instant relief from the storm.

  From the blackness ahead of him he heard a woman's voice, taut with fear.

  "Get out, or I'll blast your head off."

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE LARGE DORMITORY, hewn from the living rock, was empty. All the slaves were out laboring deep in the sulfur mines, and the rows of bunk beds were deserted.

  The trio of guards shuffled nervously, until Zimyanin turned and stared at them.

  "Your feet are uncomfortable as a result of the seasonal chill?" he said.

  They all stared at the ground, knowing that silence was often the best and safest reply to their unpredictable leader.

  Zimyanin looked at the two stiff corpses.

  One lay flat on its back, milky eyes fixed beyond the moist stone of the rough ceiling. The blackened gash at his groin was clotted with blood, showing how he'd met his ending.

  The other was hunched up, hands frozen in death, pressed against the face. Dark blood had seeped between his fingers from his ruined eye.

  "A good chilling, my brothers," Zimyanin said thoughtfully.

  "We wouldn't have bothered you, Major-Commissar, seein' as how there's often dead meat in here in the mornings."

  "You exercised your duty with a commendable skill," the Russian replied. "Whosoever performed these chillings did them with unusual capability."

  "You mean we done good?" the shorter guard asked worriedly.

  "You done very good. And you say there was no clue as to the identity of the slayer?"

  The sec men glanced at each other. Again it was the shorter one who replied. "No, Major-Commissar. No clue. No trail of blood. No weapon."

  Zimyanin leaned over the second corpse, moving the frozen hand from the face. "A knife with a slender blade, would you not say? Unusual, the delicacy with which the knife was used."

  Something bothered him.

  He took off his cap and rubbed his gloved hand over his bald pate. There was some lost half memory plaguing him. Not lost. Just mislaid. It would come back to him.

  "Could it have been one of the new intake of laboring serfs?" he asked.

  "Mebbe."

  "I think I should perhaps parade them and then see if any—What is it?"

  One of his mine foremen had come into the dormitory, coughing to attract Zimyanin's attention.

  "Trouble in Number Six shaft, Major-Commissar."

>   It crossed Zimyanin's mind that it hadn't been such a great idea to bring his lengthy official title with him into Deathlands. Perhaps he should shorten it to just "Major."

  "Trouble?"

  "Ladder broke and took part the hoist with it. Knocked a barrel of nails down the side. Other end fastened to a windlass. Barrel of nails was heavier than the windlass, so it went down and the windlass went up."

  Zimyanin turned away from the bodies and the sec men. The nagging worry about the identity of the killer disappeared under the torrent of words from the bearded foreman.

  "Barrel hit bottom and broke, spilling the nails out. Now the windlass is heavier than the barrel, so it goes down and the empty barrel comes up. Man grabs it and swings off. Makes the barrel heavier again. So the windlass is going up, but on the way it hits the man hanging on the barrel and knocks him clean off it. The barrel's lighter now and—"

  The burly Russian had reached the man, whose story seemed as though it might be neverending.

  Without breaking stride he punched the man full in the middle of his face, breaking his nose and sending fresh blood dribbling into his beard and over his coat, knocking him on his back and shutting him up.

  "Enough," Zimyanin said. "I have got the picture." He swung out of the door toward the mine, shouting over his shoulder, "Yes, I see."

  Chapter Fifteen

  RYAN STOOD HIS ground. "You want me to go out into that storm ?" he called.

  The woman replied, sounding nervous, but still determined. "Unless you want to be cut in half, mister."

  "If I go out there I get to die in the snow. Might as well stay here. Won't harm you."

  He heard a new voice, old, tired and frail, barely audible by the cave's entrance. "Don't let him in, Kate. Please don't."

  "Two of us, mister."

  "One sick and the other scared."

  He took a couple more steps inside the cavern, straining his eyes to try to see who else was in there. But it was so dark he couldn't make anyone. There was the smoldering remains of a fire much farther in, but that was all.

  "I'll chill you."

  "What with?"

  "What?"

  Ryan repeated the question. "Tell me what kind of blaster you got there?"

  "You'll find out, you shit-eating sec bastard!"

  "Think I'm a sec man, lady?"

  Again, the old man's voice. "Don't tell nothin' to him."

  Ryan laughed. "I'm freezing my ass off here. And you reckon… I've been called some stupe names in my time, but never a sec man."

  "Don't try to talk your way in here. Just get out, will you?"

  "No."

  "No?" Desperation rode over the word.

  Ryan was now convinced that the woman didn't have a blaster at all. If she'd been carrying one, then she'd have used it by now.

  "I'm coming in now. I see a fire, and I'm colder than a grave-digger's cock. If you're going to pull the trigger on what you got, then you better do it right now."

  "I got a knife."

  "Sure."

  "And I got a knife, mister."

  Ryan sighed. "Look, the two of you. Standing where I am you can see me. See I got a blaster. You don't. I can just cut you both down where you are. Think about it. Fireblast!"

  "How do I know you aren't one of the silver circle men?"

  "The what?"

  "You know."

  Ryan nodded. "The bald man with the pocked face and mustache. He still got the mustache?"

  "See, Kate! He knows Zim!" There was utter, abject terror in the trembling voice.

  "Kate, I met a man called Gregori Zimyanin, way back. Now I think he's lifted my son to work for him in those mines. I come to get him back. If I can do it."

  "And kill Zim?"

  "Sure. Not an easy man to take out of living, but I can sure try. That is—" he took another couple of steps into the cave "—if I didn't freeze to death first."

  RYAN LEANED BACK, his coat open, enjoying the feel of the flames on his cheeks. The fire was set far enough back into what he'd learned were ancient, pre-Dark mine workings to make it impossible for it to be seen by any watchers in the bottom of the valley.

  He looked across at his two new companions.

  Kate Webb was seventeen years old, as skinny as whipcord, with dark hair hacked off short. Her only weapon was a short knife made from poor, soft metal, barely able to keep an edge.

  Her grandfather, Cody, was somewhere around the seventy mark. He wasn't sure about just where. He had no weapon at all.

  Both of them wore a ragged assortment of patched and torn furs.

  The girl had told Ryan their story, with occasional interruptions from Cody.

  They'd been trawled in from New England about eight months ago—neither of them was sure about the precise passage of time—brought in through a gateway with a number of other people from their small rural ville.

  It occurred to Ryan at that point that Zimyanin must also have stumbled upon the significance of the Last Destination control on the mat-trans unit to be able to go out and back with such facility.

  The consequent thought was that if any of the Russkie's men used the nearby gateway before Ryan could spring Dean and get away, then the setting would probably be altered. Getting home again to New Mexico would be almost impossible.

  Along with about two hundred slave workers, Kate and Cody had been put to labor in the depths of the sulfur mines.

  "Many guards?" Ryan asked.

  "Thicker'n jiggers on a dead dog," the old man replied.

  The pair also seemed unsure about how many workers and sec men were around the mining complex. Kate explained that a lot of people died.

  "The shafts are narrow, deep and triple dangerous. Folks fall. Rocks fall. Ladders fall."

  "And the sickness," Cody said petulantly. "Don't forget the sickness."

  Ryan had already noticed that both of them were showing signs of rad sickness, the old man much worse than the girl. She had a couple of small sores near her mouth, and he could see that she'd also lost her fingernails. Cody's lips were cracked, the skin on his face covered in nests of tiny, pustulent blisters. His hair was mostly gone, and all his nails had dropped off. He kept complaining about feeling sick.

  "Used to be a big man, Ryan. That your name, Ryan? Hearing ain't what it was. Yeah, Ryan. Big man. Look at me now. Get your thumb and finger around my wrist. Not even half a man."

  The small rad counter on the lapel of Ryan's long coat was showing crimson.

  CODY'S MIND GOT CLUTTERED and he began to mumble to himself, eventually falling into a deep sleep. Once be called out. "Take the wagons to the sea."

  Kate got up and peered out of the mouth of the cavern. "Morning shift's on," she announced.

  Ryan was more interested in where the mine shaft went. It seemed to extend way back beyond the fire. He walked back for a short distance, tripping over the rusted remains of iron rails. As far as he could make out, the caverns went deep into the heart of the mountain. He asked the young woman about it.

  "Don't know much," she replied.

  "These workings join with the sulfur diggings in the valley?"

  "Some said so. Zim got locals first when he came here. The mines was way small. But he brought in men with blasters. Took it over. Makes more jack than the world's seen. Got wags to take it all out and trade it."

  "How did you escape? With that sick old man in tow?"

  "Getting out the mines isn't hard." The girl's fingers touched the scabs around her mouth. "Isn't anywhere to go once you're out."

  "Why bother?"

  "Why?"

  "Sure. If there's no hope of freedom, why bother to try?"

  "Why not, Ryan?"

  "Not an answer."

  "Best I got." She hesitated. "Heard guards talk about trackies. Thought somehow they might help us."

  "Trackies?"

  Kate shook her head. "Don't know much. Kind of muties. Live in these caves. Reckon they run miles. Up and down and in and out."
>
  Ryan put the last piece of broken wood onto the dying embers of the fire.

  "You aim to die here?"

  She looked at him with a mixture of confusion and muddled pride. "Better for Cody. We was all going to die anyway. Better here, out in the open."

  Ryan shook his head. "Weak," he said, not bothering to hide his disgust.

  Her dark eyes bored into him. "What kind of shit's that?"

  "You get away and sneak here and hide up. Just so's you can both die. I say that's weak. The way a loser thinks. That what you are, Kate?"

  "No."

  He pointed a finger at her. "Yeah, a weak loser. Sure, Cody's heading out on the last train west. I can see that."

  "So, what should I do?"

  Her voice was raised, and the old man stirred again in his sleep. "Forgotten son…some yesterday," he mumbled.

  "You want to die, then why not wait your chance and take Zimyanin with you? Do some good. Go out a winner."

  The girl looked away from him. "Easy for you to say that."

  "I'd have done it if I'd looked at all the ways and there was no better option. Sure. Go out on your feet, Kate. Not your knees."

  She sighed, wiping at her eyes. "Don't matter now, anyways, does it?"

  "Might not matter to you. Does to me. I'm going to find a way down to the sulfur mines, and track my son. Bring him out. Chill the Russkie if I get a good ace on the line at him."

  "What about us?"

  He stood, dusting off his pants. "You picked this for yourself. Nothing to do with me."

  "Take us with you?"

  "No."

  "Why not, Ryan?"

  "Cody's run his race."

  "We can leave him and come back later. He'll be sheltered here."

  "I don't have the time, Kate."

  She stood up, shoulders hunched. "Don't give a rolling fuck about us, do you?"

  "No."

  "Bastard."

  "No. Knew both my mother and my father."

  Kate tried to slap him but his hand was faster, catching her wrist and making her moan.

  The slight disturbance woke up Cody. He blinked his rheumy eyes, wiping a thread of white spittle from his unshaven chin. "Hey," he said vaguely.