by James Axler
RICK FELL ASLEEP quickly, lying on one side, curled up like a young child, arms wrapped around himself. The streetlights outside the building came on with the night, and they cast a feeble glow through the cobwebbed glass. Krysty stood looking down at the slumbering man.
"Gaia! He's so ill, Ryan."
"I know it. Can you feel how bad he is?"
She knelt and touched him very softly on the forehead, her long gray fur coat sweeping the floor.
Krysty looked up at Ryan. "I think the shadow is closing in fast," she said quietly.
Rick stirred in his sleep, swallowing hard. His lips moved, but neither Ryan nor Krysty could make out any words.
"Soon?" Ryan asked.
She straightened, shaking her head. "Depends on what 'soon' means, lover. If you mean in the next hour… or if you mean in the next week or so."
"Let's take the next week or so."
She nodded. "Think so. Could be his sickness might go into remission again. But it looks to me like he's near the wire."
"If he loses the race before we get the door of the gateway fixed…" He didn't need to complete the sentence.
"Then we get to live what's left here in Moscow. I know that. So we best get those tools tonight and try and make sure Rick's fit enough for the journey back."
"And the flag," Ryan added.
"Oh yeah." Krysty smiled. "And the flag."
RICK HAD A KIND of fit around midnight. He began to moan loudly, until Ryan found a length of cotton rag and jammed it between his jaws to silence him. This time they'd been able to distinguish words. Sentences. Rick had been babbling about his parents who had lived in the ville of New York, on what had been known as the Lower East Side.
"Jack can't bring home the beef and Naomi hates the street gangs. Fears all fears. The subway and Central Park, mugging and dark places and being alone among millions, and shadows and sudden noises. Rats and roaches and Republicans. Porn houses and there goes the neighborhood. Serial butchers and men who pulled out—"
That was when Ryan finally shut him up, fearful that his echoing screams would penetrate into the dark ville beyond.
But Rick wasn't done.
His body suddenly flexed and tensed, his legs jerking spasmodically, heels beating a rattling tattoo on the concrete floor.
"Hold him!" Ryan called. "Fireblast! Keep him quiet, Krysty!"
Despite Ryan's great strength and the freezie's exhausted frailty, the man was still proving too much of a handful. His arms thrashed, catching Ryan a glancing blow on the side of the face, making his teeth ring. Another punch hit him on the upper arm, numbing the muscle.
Rick's eyes were wide open, seeming to float in blood-filled pits, staring up sightlessly at the damp-stained ceiling. He kept rolling his head, trying to dislodge the gag. Bubbling, muffled screams tried to burst from his throat.
Ryan clung to him, keeping him pinned, coughing as their struggle kicked up clouds of acrid dust. Krysty stood for a moment, looking down at the two thrashing, tangled figures, trying to work out how best to help Ryan.
"What can… ?" she began.
"Put him out," Ryan panted. "Quick. Out!"
Krysty didn't hesitate. She balanced on her left foot and swung back the right, kicking with a careful aim and considered force at the freezie. The toe of her dark blue leather boot hit him just behind the ear with a soft, dull thud.
He immediately went limp, allowing Ryan to roll away from him. "Thanks." He eased the unconscious freezie onto his right side and removed the hunk of cotton from his mouth so that the man wouldn't choke. "Hope you haven't chilled him, lover."
"Little poke with my toe? He'll be fine. Well, I don't suppose he'll be fine." She bent down and began to run her hands along Rick's arms and legs, probing at the layers of sinew that coursed beneath his pale skin. Krysty shook her head as she straightened. "Tone's real bad. Seems like the muscles are plain giving up. I can feel fluttering under… kind of like everything going into spasm. Bad."
Rick blinked and his eyes twitched open. He looked from face to face, unfocused. A thin trickle of blood dripped out of a corner of his mouth. He blinked again.
"Oh, hi guys," he said. "What happened?" His fingers explored the lump behind his ear. "Ow! Did I fall?"
"I kicked you in the head," Krysty told him. "You went jolt-wild. Couldn't hold you, and you were making a lot of noise."
"I see. I recall the doctors saying that I might lose some control when it came to…you know. Sorry, guys. I'm fine now. Truly. We ready to rescue Old Glory?"
"Not 'we,' Rick," Ryan corrected. "I am and Krysty is. You pointed out the tools we have to get."
"But…" the freezie began, until Krysty stopped him with an angry stare.
"You got an excuse for being sick," she said. "Doesn't give you a reason for being double-stupe, does it?"
With an effort he managed to heave himself to his feet, sniffing and wiping away the blood with his sleeve. He finally met Krysty's eyes. "No. Guess it doesn't, does it? Gimp like me'd slow you and Ryan down."
"Yeah," Ryan agreed. "So you stay here. Keep outta sight and wait for us. If we don't make it back by sunset tomorrow, you're on your own. Try for the ruined house, southwest of here."
"Keep outta sight. Sure. Outta sight, man. Right on. Too much." He turned away, voice breaking. "Too fucking much."
THE GUARD WAS an old man, closing in toward sixty, married with three children and eleven grandchildren. The youngest had been keeping him awake for the past week, and he was desperately tired.
Dmitri Olgarchev, the senior museum orderly, had passed by on his rounds an hour ago, with his usual admonition to keep a careful watch on everything, in case the Americans came in to thieve. Every night for the past twenty-three years he'd said that. Sometimes Sergei wanted to strangle him. But this particular night, with the whole ville a seething nest of rumors about American spies, Dmitri hadn't said it. He'd just nodded curtly and gone on his way.
Sergei didn't believe anyone would ever break in. Nobody had ever broken in, in all the years he'd worked there. As far as he knew, nobody in the history of the world had ever broken in.
Why should they?
He'd found his usual spot in the corner of the narrow gallery that had dummies hanging from sets of gallows-each was dressed like some hero revered by the Americans. There was an alcove beneath a window that opened onto a rusting iron flight of steps. Sergei had been told that it had been built to help people escape if there was a fire. Now it was so corroded and fragile that it would probably collapse if three men got on it at once. Under the window was a pile of material, drapes that had long fallen from the wooden poles.
Sergei curled up and fell instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.
THE LADDER HAD CREAKED alarmingly as Ryan led Krysty up the rungs, but the main securing bolts seemed solid enough under the red lace of thick rust. Heckler & Koch in hand, the one-eyed man had darted from shadow to shadow, around the back of the towering mausoleum to the place he'd spotted during their propaganda tour—a vulnerable window above a quiet alcove, filled with a bundle of material.
Ryan had figured it would provide them with a soft, quiet landing when they jumped down off the windowsill. He landed like a cat on the pile of discarded drapes, but his nostrils suddenly filled with the stink of sweat and stale tobacco. As he began to move down to the floor he tripped over the old man, and dropped his pistol.
It was too quick to be called a fight, more like a fumbling scuffle. Ryan knew immediately that he was up against a frail old man whose heart had leaped into his throat with terror, nearly choking him.
In some predark vids, Ryan and his friends had been amused to see the way that enemies were treated. Regardless of what kind of threat they might pose, they were generally left unconscious or tied up. Either way, they often escaped.
Things usually didn't happen that way in the Deathlands.
The old man was an enemy whose muffled yell could be e
nough to put a noose around Ryan's and Krysty's necks.
As Sergei fought for survival, breath rattling in his throat like water down a drain, Ryan clubbed him on the side of the head with his forearm, stunning him. He locked the scrawny throat into the angle of his arm and used his other hand to apply the strangling pressure. After thirty seconds he felt the body jerk to stillness, the pulse that fluttered against his wrist halting, starting again for a handful of beats, and stopping.
"Ryan? You all right, lover?"
"Yeah. Got us another Russkie."
"Can't hear anyone else," she whispered, picking her way through the darkness to stand beside Ryan. "You?"
He laughed quietly. "You know bastard well that if you can't hear anything I'm not going to hear anything either."
To their surprise, the glass cases that held the American equipment and tools weren't even locked. The simple handle and catch opened easily at a touch.
There'd been a number of discarded sacks and bags in the abandoned workshop where they'd left Rick. Ryan had brought one of the strongest, tucking it inside his long fur-trimmed coat. Now he loaded it with the various tools that the freezie had managed to point out to them. He placed them inside the bag one at a time, trying to avoid making any noise.
"Ready?" Krysty whispered.
"Nearly. Hear something?"
"Two of them. Don't think they're coming this way. Sounds like they're mebbe a floor above us."
"Done," he said, carefully snapping the case shut.
"The flag."
"Sure. Through here. Keep to the side of the halls, in the shadows."
"I know."
"I know you know." He grinned at her in the dim light, teeth gleaming.
Ryan had an almost perfect memory for places and directions. He could recall most of the villes he'd ever visited, and what the trails were like, in and out. Despite the twisting corridors and linked rooms and stairs, he led the way with unerring skill to the huge chamber where the flag was kept.
Before moving to the center of the room, he waited with Krysty in the pools of darkness that floated beneath the overhanging balconies, studying the glass case carefully.
"Can't seen any sec men," he whispered.
"Me neither."
The glass case wasn't locked and he opened it, wincing at the unpleasant stickiness of the slimed glass on his fingers. The material on the precious banner was dry and dusty as he touched it, lifting it off its pedestal.
He heard the faint click too late, the click that triggered the lights and the klaxons.
Chapter Twenty-Four
RYAN WASN'T A MAN to stand and waste time cursing. The flag had been sec-bugged, and that was that. No point in putting it back again.
Old Glory was attached to a short length of aluminum tubing, no more than a couple of inches around. The banner itself was about five feet by three feet—at least what was left of it. One edge was burned and torn and felt to Ryan like it could easily come apart in his fingers.
Folks around the Deathlands didn't fly the Stars and Stripes that much. Now and again you'd find a baron in some tear-ass raggedy ville who thought the flag might give his place a touch of class. But it appeared often enough in the books and magazines and vids of the predark days.
Ryan felt a strange pang run through him, like the hum of a live wire badly insulated under the earth, a sort of a shudder. Just touching the flag gave him the odd tremor of hidden emotion. Then the klaxons started to sound and the lights flickered on in the hall. The moment was gone.
But he still gripped Old Glory.
They were close to the farther exit of the museum, but they both knew it would be locked and guarded by the sec forces. Without a word passing between them, Ryan and Krysty turned around and raced flat out for the window that had given entry to the building.
"Give me the flag," Krysty urged, half turning as she sprinted along a narrow passage. "You got the tools."
Ryan wasn't disposed to argue. The sack rattled and banged against his hip as he ran, and carrying the scorched flag made him clumsy. He handed it over to Krysty like a sprinter passing a relay baton, seeing her grasp it firmly.
The alarm was slowly triggering the lighting system throughout the museum, the harsh ceiling strips shimmering on, seeming to pursue them. The pealing of the electronic warning signal was deafening, but it stopped as suddenly as it had started, bringing the realization that men's and women's voices were echoing from all sides, behind, above and below, in the maze of vaulted corridors.
And ahead of them.
The firefight was brief, bloody and one-sided. The sec guards were mainly elderly, and not one of them had ever had to draw a blaster in anger. Since the appearance of the terrifying Comrade Major-Commissar Zimyanin, the numbers on duty had been doubled. But nobody had warned them that they were going to get shot at—shot at and chilled.
The confrontation took place in the gallery where the rows of dummies were hanging in their hemp collars. As the first of the guards appeared at the far end, Krysty dived for cover into an alcove, drawing her H&K P7A-13, the silvered finish gleaming in the stark overhead lighting. Ryan slid across the other side of the wide passage, blaster already in his hand, squinting around the angle of the wall to judge the threat of the opposition.
There were six of them, strung out in a line, with only a couple having bothered to draw their pistols. The rest held truncheons of dark wood.
It wasn't a moment for discussion. Ryan and Krysty needed to get past the guards, and get past them quickly. Every second would make it harder to break through and escape.
Ryan didn't need to tell Krysty what she had to do. Her gun was unsilenced and its sharp crack filled the corridor. Ryan felt the satisfying thump against his wrist as he fired the silenced 9 mm blaster. Two shots from each put down four of the Russians, all dead or dying.
Krysty's first snatched shot hit a lean woman a finger's breadth above the sterno-clavicular joint, tearing her lungs to rags of tissue, chipping the spine as it exited just below the left shoulder. Her second shot caught a man immediately behind through the throat, sending him skidding sideways, drowning in a welter of bright arterial blood.
Ryan aimed carefully. The range was less than twenty paces, under good light, but that wasn't any reason to get careless. One bullet passed through the gaping mouth of a younger man with a heavy mustache. He went down spitting teeth, blood and bits of his tongue. His hands reached to his face as though there were some way that he could pluck the full-metal jacket from the ruined depths of his brain.
A fraction of a second later Ryan chilled the woman immediately behind the dying man, a small part of his mind registering the fact that she had only one eye.
The other two sec guards skidded to a halt, paralyzed by the totality of the slaughter around them. They stared unbelievingly at the four flopping, jerking, bleeding bodies strewed about their feet.
Krysty neatly killed the man on the left with a bullet between the eyes. Ryan chilled his man with a single shot that entered just below the jaw, ripping through the larnyx, emerging as a twisted hunk of lead.
The redhead was ahead of Ryan, hurdling the jumbled bodies, nearly slipping in the lake of spilled blood as she landed. She stumbled but recovered her balance and hared along the passage, Ryan at her heels. Above them, the grotesque dummies of Washington, Lincoln and Kennedy gazed blankly down at the crimson shambles.
Behind them they could hear shouts and an occasional scream. Ryan caught the distant noise of a shot being fired from a small-caliber handgun, but the bullet came nowhere near them. The body of the old man, crumpled in the pile of drapes, lay where it had fallen, beneath the broken window that opened out onto the rusting fire escape.
The flag streaming behind her like a banner of fire, Krysty jumped up and scrambled through the window, pausing on the narrow sill to grab the sack of tools from Ryan. She vanished into the night while he vaulted up behind her.
The air was
black and cold, with streaks of sleet dashed across it.
A volley of shooting erupted behind Ryan as he stepped on the corroded iron steps. A pane of glass shattered at his back.
"Getting closer," he shouted, following Krysty's scarlet hair down the escape.
The retaining bolts that fixed the ladder to the outside wall of the museum groaned in noisy protest as they scrambled quickly down toward ground level. This was the point of maximum threat to their safety. Ryan knew that if the sec guards had been quick enough off the mark they'd have the perimeter covered and he and Krysty were as good as chilled.
Despite Zimyanin's warnings, life had been cozy at the establishment for far too long. The theft of the old American flag had never even been considered. Indeed, hardly anyone on the staff even knew that the banner was linked to any sort of automatic sec device. So the lights and Klaxons sent everyone into a panic.
The exterior security system hadn't been tested within living memory. It was supposed to function as a part of the internal warnings, but the wiring was old and rotten. One single floodlight came on reluctantly, but it served only to illuminate a corner of the roof, effectively blinding a sec guard armed with an assault rifle.
By the time the new director of security at the museum had nervously called up Zimyanin, Ryan and Krysty had reached safety.
"THOUGHT YOU'D BOTH taken the last train to the coast," Rick said, greeting them with a weak smile.
"What?"
"Means chilled, lover. I heard Uncle Tyas McCann say that, back in Harmony."
A sec wag went roaring by outside, a revolving red light flashing on its roof. The three friends froze a moment, but the vehicle didn't stop.
Ryan put down the sack of tools and squatted on the floor beside Rick, letting out his breath in a long sigh of relief. Krysty laid the torn remnants of the Stars and Stripes beside him and sat, shaking her head.
"Wouldn't want to do that too often," she said quietly.
"Bad?" Rick asked, reaching out to touch the tattered hem of the flag.