Ritual Chill

by James Axler

“Let me blast one,” J.B. yelled over the noise. “Might drive ’em back.”

  Ryan looked up, to be showered with a fine rain of dust. They had to do something.

  “Okay. Wait till one of the bastards is hammering at the shutter, then I’ll open it, you fire, and I’ll slam it shut as quickly as possible, hope for the best. It’s not much of a plan, but it’ll have to do.”

  J.B. agreed. There was a shutter front and back, but most of the bears’ attention was focused on the front and sides of the hut, so they opted for the front shutter. Ryan aligned himself to the side, ready to open and close quickly. J.B. raised the M-4000, and they waited for one of the creatures to hit the right spot.

  The bears seemed to do everything but pick that one area. Four times Ryan steeled himself, only for the expected battering to fail to materialize. He was keyed to the point where he could feel his nerves so taut that they were singing under the pressure.

  So keyed that he almost missed the moment. The wall shook at his shoulder, the shutter bulged under the pressure of seven-hundred-plus pounds of wild animal. Ryan yelled a signal to J.B. and pulled open the shutter. The Armorer settled the M-4000 into his shoulder and squeezed as the shutter flew back. By the time it was fully extended, his finger had tightened enough to pressure the trigger, loosing a load of barbed-metal fléchettes into the ravenous maw of a wild bear. He barely saw the result before Ryan had slammed and secured the shutter once more, but that fragmentary image was imprinted on his retina. He could see the face of the bear—the impassive, glittering eyes, the slavering jaws and sharp incisors, the distended snout—suddenly tear itself apart in a hundred directions as the load hit home, shredding bone and pulping flesh, rendering the brain and eye mush into nothing more than a fine spray that spurted backward from the bear’s suddenly imploding skull, landing on the rock and ice beyond.

  For a few minutes it seemed to have the opposite effect to that intended, as the attack redoubled in fury, the bears making every effort to barge their way past the cinder block to get at their prey. The walls shook and it seemed as though they had to surely crumble under the assault, the structure groaning and cracking under the continued pressure. Whichever way the companions turned, responding to the sounds from outside, expecting each to be the breach of their defenses, then there was another sound from the opposite direction that seemed to spell the same message.

  The air was thick with dust from the crumbling hut, making it hard to breathe, catching in their throats and making their eyes water, obscuring their vision. But still the cinder block held firm.

  Gradually the attacks began to subside, the constant waves of battering becoming less and less frequent, the yowling of the bears still outside losing its anger, becoming more and more a howl of frustration and fatigue.

  As daylight began to creep into the cracks at the windows, and through the cracks in the roof where the structure had been moved by the attack, they heard the bears begin to retreat. Still howling, the sounds grew more distant with each plaintive cry.

  “Figure it’s safe to take a look?” Krysty asked.

  “With caution,” Ryan agreed. He and J.B. moved to the door, the Armorer keeping the M-4000 poised. Ryan opened it to let the daylight flood in, blinding them after the low level light of the oil lamp.

  The two men stepped outside. It was quiet around the hut, although there were signs of frantic activity earlier, and the front was awash with semifrozen pools of blood. The corpse of the headless bear lay sprawled under one window, a viscous mess spread around the body all that remained of the head.

  Looking away toward the west, Ryan and J.B. could see the remnants of the bear pack wearily wandering back toward their dens. There were only five left, now. One lay under the window, two were scattered where they had fled the night before, and three were clustered in a mess of fur and blood where the initial gren blast had hit. There were three others who had bought the farm on the way back, just falling in their stride as the effect of their wounds and loss of blood had finally taken its toll.

  “Got lucky,” J.B. said shortly. “We need to get the hell away from here.”

  “Agreed,” Ryan replied. “We know where Ank Ridge is, and we know that there must be some kind of trade trail. We hit that, and we should be headed right. Question is, how far have we got to go?”

  “As far as we have to,” J.B. answered, as though it were a question not worth asking.

  Ryan fixed his friend with a stare. “It’s not that simple, is it? Doc’s still screwed, everyone else is strung out—me included—and we don’t have much in the way of food or warm clothing after the last couple of days. We need the next ville to be close…real close.”

  J.B. nodded, then added something that Ryan had already been thinking. “That’s not all, is it? Look at the way those buildings were ripped apart. Those critters were hammerin’ at us all night and couldn’t get in. Whatever chilled everyone in the ville and tore shit out of it, it wasn’t those bears. They were just there for the pickings.”

  Ryan nodded. “So just who or what did do that? And where the fuck are they now?”

  Chapter Six

  Exhilaration. Expectation. A sense of anticipation.

  No way around it. He shouldn’t feel his good, but he did. Ryan looked to the horizon and relished the chance to walk on and tread the path toward the ville they knew as Ank Ridge. Coming out of the ruins where they had spent the night, and surveying the remains of the enemy they had vanquished despite their strung-out condition, Ryan felt a burst of fire explode within his soul. Yes, they knew there was another enemy out there—one that caused the ruins before the bears came scavenging. Yes, they knew that the enemy was probably out there somewhere, and there was every chance that they would encounter it if they followed the trading trail between here and Ank Ridge. But wasn’t that exactly what they did?

  Meet a problem head-on and blow the bastard out of the water. Ryan wasn’t a stupe. If there was a way to solve a problem without risking life and limb in a firefight, then they’d go for that option first. Truth was, though, that often the other side of the fight didn’t want to know about anything other than hand-to-hand, blaster-to-blaster confrontation. So, if that was what they wanted, then give it to them. It wasn’t necessarily the best way, but it was often the only way. And it became a habit that was hard to break, an adrenaline fix that made them feel alive.

  What was it that Mildred said occasionally? Some old predark expression that Ryan was sure he had seen or heard somewhere before, but not really understood. Something about stopping to smell the roses. Fireblast, the only thing that roses smelled of in this world was the shit that made them grow. There was nothing here to stop and look at, nothing that was worth it. So maybe that’s what they were doing: fighting on until they found something. And maybe the fighting was like jolt, something that took over and became the most important thing of all.

  One thing was for sure—as they began to move out from the ruins toward the next settlement on the trail, and the eventual destination of Ank Ridge, Ryan could only think of one thing. Whatever was out there, bring it on: let them see what it could do.

  J.B.’s minisextant readings and their own sparse knowledge of the territory had given them a destination. It led them across the rock and snow-strewed plains toward the upland ridges around the base of the volcanic region. Those who had regularly forged paths between the settlements and individual huts to trade—or just for the occasional human contact in the case of those who lived and hunted out in the wild—had chosen to make their trail in the relative shelter of the scrub growth and stunted trees that clustered at the base of volcanic activity, given warmth and some topsoil as a result of the churning rocks below.

  It took three hours for the companions to reach this relative shelter, and such were the conditions they traversed that it seemed almost like a tropical forest as they reached the first trees. They had little in the way of supplies—water they had been able to replenish at the ruined settlement—
but they were running low on the self-heats, and although these did provide the basic nutrients, they were often hard to force down. And the cold seemed to wrap around their bones like an ice shroud. The winds were strong and consistent, howling across the emptiness of the plain, with little except the occasional crop of rock or man-made huts to break them. Even though they had been fortunate enough to encounter only the one storm, there were still ice and snow particles constantly in the air, soured by the ever present sulfur from volcanic activity. It caught in the throat and lungs, making communication—even breathing—hard. The stench worsened as they moved closer to the uplands, but faced with a choice of freezing to death or choking on some sulfur fumes, there was really no contest. They had taken warm outer clothing from the redoubt, but that had been severely damaged during the encounter with the dog pack, leaving them with, in relative terms, some rags that didn’t fulfill their function. The cold seeped in through the cracks, leaving them at the mercy of the elements.

  The trek across the plain was made bearable by the knowledge that they would soon be able to find a little shelter from the harshest excesses of the environment. Furthermore, there would be the chance to hunt for some fresh game that was able to survive and make its home in the sparse forestation. With a grim-set determination that ran throughout the group, they marched on, each lost in his or her thoughts, and the majority of those thoughts concerned with shutting out the cold and just putting one foot in front of another until they were in less stringent climes.

  For nearly all of them, these thoughts ran along similar lines to Ryan’s: life in the was about the adrenaline rush of survival. There was nothing more than dreams to dwell on when that rush was absent, and all those dreams told you was that the reality sucked. Better to live for the instant, to live in that rush, than to acknowledge the apparent futility of striving to survive. They would each have articulated this in a different way, but for all of them it was a feeling shared. Ryan’s sense of exhilaration had spread throughout them, and their progress was steady, if at times slowed by the exegeses of the climate.

  Their pace began to pick up as they neared relative shelter. There was little sign of a trail across the plain: some worn rock, some signs of activity across the barren land; but as they neared the lower slopes, the rock broke down into a rough, gravely soil, segueing into the kind of loam in which plantlife could take root. Within this, snaking through the trees and shrubs that doggedly withstood the icy blasts, there were signs of a trail. Dogs had trodden this flat, compacted beneath their heavy paws and flattened further by the runners of the sleds they pulled.

  With a trail to follow, and some shelter now provided by the environment, they could begin to think about a faster progress. There was the possibility of hostile wildlife, such as the bears they had fought off the previous night, but equally there would be smaller mammals to supplement their diet.

  On balance, it was a better place to be, and the grim determination that hung over them was replaced by an optimism. Here was something with which they could work.

  Meanwhile, Doc walked with them, but was not of them. His fever having passed the crisis, he was now a little better, and although Krysty and Mildred had taken turns to hang back with him, he was able to keep pace. His eyes were clear, if faraway, and he was able to conduct brief conversations with them as he marched, informing them that, despite their worries, he was now perfectly all right and they could leave him be.

  But inside his head, there was turmoil.

  WHAT IS THIS THAT STANDS before me? Is this the extent of my world, or the extent of my imaginings? Or are they, indeed, much the same thing?

  I can recall little of the last day or so. I remember Lori coming to me from out of the mists of time and space to tell me of my mission. Yet that mission is lost to me. I shall recall it, I know, for things come back to me at the strangest of times. And yet I wonder if it shall appear to me in the same manner. Will she come to me again?

  I remember their names—Krysty and Mildred. The man with one eye is Ryan; the one with spectacles, John Barrymore, and the albino is named Jak. I remember things we have experienced together, matters in which it seemed all was lost and yet we still managed to come out attached to our hides. And yet, for all that these things seem so real, I wonder if they were. I remember the whitecoats who took me from my home and into another time. I remember the things they did to me. Were these real? It seems so improbable that I quail before the fact that it may be truth. If so, then there is no sanity in the world and it is this, and not myself, that is at fault.

  I saw them as angels, come to carry me from the seas of madness and return me to the isle of sanity. But these are not angels. Neither am I insane…at least, I assume not. Perhaps the whitecoats were true, and the arcane and bizarre technology—I can think of no other way to describe it—that they used to trap me is now being used to feed this into my mind, to make of me an experiment, and see how I act within the parameters of their fictions.

  But I am not a rat in a maze. And these are not angels. Neither are they devils. They do not exist. I will play the whitecoat games until I am ready to break free. If it again makes me mad, then what is that? Am I not mad already? They underestimate me on this score. I have nothing to lose, and they have their precious experiments.

  We shall see who is the wilier, the smarter.

  I just have to bide my time. And of that, I have plenty.

  “DOC—YOU OKAY?”

  The old man snapped out of his trance to see J.B. Dix in front of his face, a look of confusion crossing the man’s thin, weather-beaten face.

  “I—I’m sorry, I fear I was miles away,” Doc mumbled, suppressing the urge to smile now that he was sure this was nothing more than a drug or electronically induced illusion.

  “Well, good. Me and Jak are going to hunt, see if we can get something other than these shitty self-heats to eat. Can you help the others get some shelter together?”

  Doc nodded. “You can rely on me, my dear John Barrymore,” he said. He knew that he always addressed J.B. thus, and the satisfied flicker that crossed the man’s face told him that he had hit the right buttons.

  Let them think I am well again, back to my “old self,” and that all is well. The Tanner philosophy for the moment…

  Doc watched J.B. and Jak disappear into the denser parts of the woodlands, then glanced up at the sky. There was cloud cover, but not so dense that he was unable to place the sun. A brighter patch of cloud where it tried to shine through told him that it was now late afternoon. They had been marching for hours and it had seemed to pass in the blinking of an eye.

  Looking around him, Doc could see that the other three companions were gathering brush and rocks to build both a shelter and a fire. Mildred placed the rocks in a circle, clearing the space within before starting to build the fire. She worked meticulously and fast, touching a match to the outer edge, using drier wood to spark the rest, nursing the sparks until the fire took and began to send sweet smoke upward to counter the ever present sulfur. While she did this, Ryan and Krysty worked quickly and tirelessly, despite the rigors of the day, to build a shelter from branches and foliage that would at least cut down the wind chill that swept from the plain. And despite the fact that the smoke would attract any predators by smell, they wanted to cut out the light from the surrounding area, making their camp harder to find. The pack that had attacked them the previous night was still roaming, and there may be other dangers…specifically, whatever had reduced the settlement to a ruin.

  Doc took part. He dragged branches, wove foliage into a protective cover, and responded to any questions about how he felt with politeness and an ambivalence he hoped flew over their heads.

  Bide your time, Theophilus Tanner. Bide your time.

  JAK AND J.B. HAD BEEN making their own progress while the others had been making camp. As they traversed farther into the woodland, they found that the cold became more bearable. Without the wind-chill factor, which had been neutralized by th
e forestation, the cold became manageable and the canopy of foliage over their heads held the snows at bay. Beneath, there was a layer of moss and lichens that mingled with bracken and the hard-packed soil. There were spores for bear, as well as more obvious signs of their passing, such as broken branches and trampled bracken, but also spores for the smaller mammals that eked out an existence in the harsh weather. Squirrels and rabbits for sure, and some larger mammals to judge by what they left in their wake.

  Both men would use blades and snares for hunting. Jak had an accuracy with the leaf-bladed knives that was uncanny, and J.B. constructed a wire snare with which he was able to trap rabbits.

  Moving slowly and as quietly as possible, breathing shallow and waiting frozen until their muscles cramped in the cold, they managed to catch enough game for a good meal. Water to supplement that which they carried with them was also available from a small stream that flowed from farther up the ridge.

  J.B. took some of the water in the palm of his hand and lifted it to his lips. He grimaced as the bitter taste caught the back of his throat.

  “Drinkable, but not what you’d call sweet,” he said to Jak. “I just hope that there were some water purifying tablets in the haul Millie took back at the redoubt.” He used his canteen to gather some of the bitter fluid.

  The two men returned to their camp to find the fire taking and their companions able to rest up. They joined them, Jak and J.B. continuing where they left off by skinning their prey before setting it to roast over the flames. The meat tasted sweet after the foul slop of the self-heats, and they all ate until full. J.B. and Jak had been so successful that there was even some food left for the next morning, a rarity that would be enjoyed.

  Watch assigned, Ryan settled down to sleep before he was called, Krysty moving up close to him.

  “Think we’re out of the rough yet?” she asked.

  “Not until we find people, another ville. We need to know we’re headed the right way, and that whatever took out that settlement hasn’t got to the others before us. We might be able to let up a little then, as we’ll have a source of food and water. But right now…”