James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero

by Ground Zero [lit]

  J.B. sat cross-legged, looking at it, wondering which of the guards had placed it there while he was sleeping. The irons around his ankles were frozen, scorching his flesh wherever they touched it.

  He could hear whispering outside the warped planks. Dimly, against the stark whiteness of the snow that lay thick upon the rocky plateau, he could make out the silhouettes of some of his guards, waiting to snigger at him when he tried to reach the tantalizing dish of food, because they knew that the chain around his throat, secured to a heavy ringbolt in the wall, would leave him short, inches away from the bowl.

  J.B. knew that, as well, and he sat very still, unable to take his eyes off the creamy pudding.

  THE WALKING DEAD WERE all around Ryan, every empty eye socket turned blankly toward him. The wind blew at the tattered clothing, whistling through the shrunken holes in the dried flesh. Step by slow, unsteady step, the corpses were coming closer.

  He leveled the Llama Comanche at the nearest of the shambling horrors.

  MILDRED HAD BEEN on vacation with some of the other members of the Olympic pistol team, staying in a newly built block of apartments near Pagosa Springs.

  The nearest shooting range was at South Fork, the far side of Wolf Creek Pass, nearly eleven thousand feet high, but this afternoon Mildred had gone off on a trek of her own, borrowing a Jeep to take the twisting, narrow trail into the San Juan Mountains, up toward Cimarron.

  There had been no forecast of the snow that suddenly came swirling around her, closing visibility to twenty feet, rushing at the windshield so that it was like driving into an endless white tunnel.

  It was as if the heavens had opened and dumped six months' snowfall on her, all in one storm.

  The radio had been giving sports news when it died.

  As she reached down to try to adjust it, the heavy-duty tires of the Jeep struck a tumbled log, jarring the wheel from her numbed fingers. The vehicle lurched to one side, off the ice-slick trail, and started to roll.

  Mildred grabbed at the door handle, but the biting cold had slowed her reflexes and she was way too late. The Jeep was already tumbling, over and over, bouncing and jolting. She heard a grinding crash of torn metal and then something struck her across the back of the head, above and behind her right ear, and the darkness opened its cloak and took her in.

  When she came around there was an eerie stillness, broken only by the howling of the wind. Mildred opened her eyes, wincing at the savage stab of pain that ran through her skull. She reached up and touched her face, feeling the cool stickiness of congealing blood across her cheek.

  Her careful probing made her fairly sure that there was no terminal damage done by the crash.

  There was a large duck-egg swelling where something had come loose from the back of the Jeep in the accident and clouted her across the head.

  "Could be worse, girl," she said, hoping that her own voice might lift her spirits. But it simply made her feel that much more alone.

  It was when Mildred tried to move out of the wrecked Jeep that she began to realize the seriousness of her dilemma. The seat belt was tight across her ribs and shoulders, holding her suspended in the inverted vehicle. A sharp branch of a broken pine had smashed through the driver's window, pinning her against the back of the seat. Though she wriggled experimentally, the beads in her plaited hair chattering softly, nothing much happened.

  She was completely trapped.

  Snow was blowing in on her face. From the position she was in, it was impossible to reach the release on the seat belt, though she tried hard.

  "Gas?" she said, wrinkling her nose, aware suddenly of cold liquid trickling across her chest. That was when she started to yell for help.

  JAK HAD BEEN HUNTING the big mutie cougar for three days and two nights.

  He and his wife, Christina, had been losing stock from their New Mexico spread since late October. Now Christmas was only a few days off, and every dawning brought a fresh trail of bright blood, ruby on the ermine of the snow, and the raggled remains of one of their sheep.

  He had a satin-finish Colt Python bolstered on his hip, and several of his beloved throwing knives concealed about him. But they weren't the right weapon for a cougar whose spoor showed he was close to twenty feet from nose to tail.

  The Winchester 70A bolt-action rifle was a good reliable hunting rifle, with its chrome molybdenum steel action and narrow serrated trigger. It had a hooded-ramp front sight with a white diamond-leaf rear sight for quick adjustment.

  Jak was carrying it at the high port, ready for action, his white fingers gripping the dark walnut stock with its high-comb Monte Carlo undercut cheek piece.

  The pack on his back, containing survival provisions, was weighing perilously light.

  The animal had led him up into a maze of meandering canyons, all coated in snow, each one indistinguishable from the one before or the one to come. Jak had a wonderful sense of direction, but the swirling blizzard was robbing him of that and he was no longer certain which way was home.

  His streaming mane of white hair was coated with crystals of powdery snow and ice, making it stiff and heavy, tinkling faintly as he turned his head.

  He squeezed between a large, rounded boulder and the sheer wall of rock that lined the arroyo on his right. His boots rattled into a cache of old cans and bottles, rotting away and biodegrading with an infinite slowness since the distant years of predark.

  The snow had stopped falling about an hour earlier, and the covering was untouched and virginal.

  Jak continued to pick his way after the cougar, pausing when he saw tracks ahead marring the perfect blanket of unsullied whiteness. He glanced behind him, feeling a momentary discomfort, then stooped to examine the trail.

  They were both human and animal, combat boots and mountain lion. His own boots. And the mutie cougar.

  Jak realized that he had been walking in a blind circle through the canyons.

  He also realized with a chill of fear that the tracks of the cougar overlaid his own boot-marks, meaning that the animal was following him.

  Jak started to swing around, finger on the trigger of the Winchester, knowing in his heart that it was going to be far too late.

  KRYSTY LAY ON THE BUNK in the dark cabin, under the two threadbare blankets.

  The oil lamp had given out so long ago that she couldn't remember, and the wood for the fire had been exhausted about three days earlier.

  When Ryan hadn't come back from his trading trip to the ville across the big river, and the snows had closed in on their little home, Krysty had begun to ration the food that remained, gradually cutting down what she ate each day.

  Her ribs had begun to protrude through the skin, and she could see the sharp planes of her face changing in the broken square of mirror that hung above the sink in the kitchen. The bright sentient hair was dull, clinging miserably to her head.

  There was a thumbnail of dried cheese left and a handful of oats.

  Nothing else.

  She was deeply aware of her own weakness, and certain now that Ryan wasn't coming back, leaving her with two choices: to lie still and starve and slip away in the bitter cold, painless and easy, or to get up on her feet, pull on a coat and her dark blue Western boots, open the cabin door and try to make it to the ville.

  Uncle Tyas McCann had once told her of an exploration to the farthest reaches of the Antarctic. An Englishman who hadn't wanted to slow down his companions with his frostbitten feet had walked out of their tent, saying that he was going outside and he might be some time.

  Krysty had always remembered that.

  Her fingers shook as she buttoned the coat, and she had hardly enough strength to pull on the boots embroidered with the pretty silver falcon wings.

  She noticed that the skin around her nails had gone dark blue, almost black. Last time she'd looked at her feet, the toes had been in even worse shape.

  A coughing fit racked her, making her double over the bed, eyes weeping, the pain tearing at her chest. The
one small window in the cabin was coated so thickly with ice that it was impossible to see out.

  She wondered what had happened to Ryan. There had been a strange vision, oddly blurred and unreliable, of him walking through a plaza in a small frontier ville, past heaps of decayed corpses. Krysty had glimpsed movement among the bodies, but then lost her hold on the seeing.

  The coughing passed and she straightened, taking a few faltering steps to the door of the hut, laying a hand on the ice-cold metal of the latch.

  "I'm going outside," she whispered. "And I might be gone some time."

  DOC'S IMAGINING FOUND HIM sitting in front of a roaring log fire, hands cupping a tankard of mulled claret spiced with cloves and honey.

  It was late in the evening of the last night before the birthday of Jesus the Christ.

  The house was still and quiet, yet making the occasional small creakings of an old building. The toasting heat of the parlor contrasted with the bitter frost and driving snow outside the shuttered windows.

  Emily had gone up the stairs a few minutes ago, kissing him on the cheek, whispering her affection into his ear, blushingly promising him a special early Christmas present once he joined her in their cozy bedroom, where the copper warming pans were already in place.

  The children were fast asleep, two small angels in their beds, curly heads on the goose-feather pillows. Jolyon was still too young to appreciate the magic of the season, but Rachel had been becoming more and more excited over the past few nights, her little face alight with the thrill of Santa's visit.

  Doc had sat them both on his lap and whispered to them of the jolly old white-bearded gentleman with the red suit who would bring gifts to all good children, telling them that they might just possibly catch the sound of his sleigh bells and the clicking of his reindeers' hooves on their shingled roof.

  He drained the glass, sighed and stood.

  The two boxes filled with brightly wrapped presents stood waiting in the large closet on the landing, ready to be put in place, one at the foot of each bed.

  Doc caught a glimpse of himself in the gilt-framed oval mirror above the hearth and smiled at his image, revealing his perfect teeth.

  "By the Three Kennedys, but it's time to get to business," he said, "then up to pleasure dearest Emily."

  His face frowned for a moment, wondering why he'd mentioned three Kennedys. He knew nobody of that name.

  The maid would see to safely damping the fire. He reached for the clock key on his silver fob chain and wound the Westminster chiming timepiece on the mantel, taking great care not to over wind it and damage the mechanism.

  The stairs creaked under his knee boots, the polished mahogany banister warm to the touch.

  He paused a moment on the half landing, peering out at the blizzard. The snow still beat against the house like the silent wings of tiny birds, carried on the breath of a cold blue norther that had been raging now for six days.

  Doc carried on, reaching the dark at the top of the stairs, deciding to look in on his darling cherubs before bringing in the presents.

  Their room was the last one to his left, and he tiptoed along, over the delicate Persian runner, until he stood outside the bedroom door.

  He hesitated a moment, head to one side, straining his hearing. He could have sworn that he'd just heard the distant tinkling of golden bells and a muffled noise of animals, high up near the gable end of the roof.

  "I think that my imagination is getting the better of me," he said, smiling.

  He put out his hand, turned the chased brass knob and walked into his children's room, stopping, stricken.

  Despite the glowing embers of a fire in the grate, the chamber was absolutely freezing. The curtains were drawn, and a small oil lamp gave a gentle glow to the room. Doc put his hand to his chest, his breath frosting out in front of his face.

  The children lay sleeping in their beds, but they weren't alone in the room.

  A bulky figure stood between the beds, his back turned to Doc. All he could make out was that it was a man, and he was wearing a scarlet jacket and pants, and a cap in the same color.

  "I beg your pardon, but might I ask who you are, and what precisely your business is?"

  The man began to turn very slowly. "I'm Santa from the wintry north, ho, ho, ho. And I've come to collect your good, good children, Dr. Tanner."

  The voice was like a file being drawn over ice, implacably cold, each word grating its solitary way into the silence of the nursery. Despite the harsh attempt at merriment, it was the least humorous voice that Doc had ever heard.

  "Face me, damn your impudence! I'll give you a good thrashing for your-"

  The words died in his throat as the figure turned fully around, now visible in the mellow light of the oil lamp.

  It was like the devil's walking parody of Father Christmas.

  He was red-suited, with a thick white beard, but Doc saw that the beard was made from crystals of ice, matted together in an obscene simulacrum of the original.

  The eyes were empty ivory sockets, filled with blue-tinted chips of ice, that sparkled with an evil and unnatural life that sent a chill to Doc's heart.

  "Suffer little children, ho, ho, ho. Oh, yes, little children will suffer, Dr. Tanner."

  The mouth opened, and Doc saw that the teeth were needle-tipped ice, as clear as glass. One hand reached out over each bed, the fingers of clicking bone tipped with daggers of razored ice, slicing down toward the pitifully exposed throats of Rachel and Jolyon.

  Doc found that he couldn't move and be began to weep, the tears freezing on his cheeks.

  RYAN BACKED AWAY, the twisted, dried-out corpses remorselessly following him into a corner. He aimed the revolver at the nearest horror and squeezed the trigger.

  Instead of a powerful explosion, the weapon barely sighed, releasing a trickle of powdery snow over Ryan's feet.

  The one-eyed man dropped the useless blaster and began to scream.

  Chapter Five

  The voices were familiar, but they were coming from an infinite distance away. Blurred, rising and falling, seeming to echo around the inner walls of Ryan's skull.

  "He was nearest the door."

  "But we all shared the same kind of dreadful nightmare, with cold at its heart."

  The first voice had been a man, someone that Ryan had known many years ago, someone that he thought he still knew. And the second speaker was the black woman.

  "Mildred," he tried to say, feeling his dry lips move, but not hearing any sound.

  "Lie still, Ryan. It's not time to try to move around too much. Not yet."

  "Sure thing, Mildred."

  The last thing that he wanted to do was move. Even the thought of opening his eye was impossibly repugnant to him.

  He shifted a little, trying to establish how he was lying. On his back, head turned to the left, he decided. Mildred's doing again, making sure he didn't choke on his own vomit.

  "Missing," he said.

  "What is?" It was Jak's voice. "Blaster." His hand had crept down to the empty holster on his hip.

  "John Barrymore removed it for safety. Yours as well as ours, dear friend. He was the first to recover from this dreadful jump and he found you, lying by the partly open door, with your pistol in your hand."

  "Why?" Ryan sighed. His brain felt like it had been dragged behind a galloping horse through a mess of cactus.

  J.B. answered him, his voice sounding ragged and tired. "You were waving the SIG-Sauer around like you were surrounded by enemies. But you were trying to cock it with your thumb, like it was some big old revolver."

  "It was. Llama Comanche."

  "Dark night! Must be twenty years since you carried that as your side arm."

  "Were you caught in some kind of fantasy that involved being cold, lover?"

  Ryan finally risked opening his eye and waited patiently for it to recover some kind of focus. He saw that he was stretched out on the floor of a gateway chamber, lying on one of the circular metal disk
s. The armaglass walls were a beautiful shade of clear cerulean blue, like a summer sky in southern Utah. The others were all standing around him. The first thing that caught his eye was Krysry's fiery red hair, then the flare of magnesium white next to it that was Jak Lauren's head.

  "Cold?" he finally answered. "Yes. Big nightmare. Living corpses that. Why?"

  "We all did," Dean said. "Real rocky horror-show stuff, Dad."

  "But we all made it through the jump." Doc, leaning against one of the chamber's walls, idly tapped on the floor with the ferrule of his ebony sword stick, his gnarled fingers gripping the silver lion's-head hilt. "The mental process was peculiarly unpleasant, possibly because of the partly open doorway. But that was then."