Deathlands 071: Ritual Chill

by James Axler

  Jak nodded recognition when they spoke of the Russian Major, Zimyanin, who had led the Russian sec in pursuit of the bandits. The name was familiar to him from the time when the mat-trans had sent them to the old capital of the USSR, Moscow, and they had once more encountered the granite-faced sec man.

  But even though he may have expected to have heard all about their previous encounter, he was astonished when the facts unfolded. The fact that they had broken a dam with an old missile and flooded part of the land in escaping from Zimyanin’s arbitrary justice was something that had been unknown to him. Ryan’s description of the expression on the Russian’s face when the dam broke made Jak laugh, a short, loud bark that broke the silence. A noise he doubled when he heard how the man had been duped by another missile, this one a dummy.

  It should have broken the tension, but it didn’t. They were all still uneasy. There was little in the way of useful food supplies left from their previous stopover, so they would have to move soon anyway: jump to another location or walk out into a hostile and frozen environment that had been changed by the dam burst. If they jumped, it was possible that the new redoubt and its environs would be just as hostile.

  As Ryan had once read in a predark book, better the devil you knew… They’d attempt to find more supplies in the frozen wasteland before attempting a jump.

  “RECKON WE SHOULD MOVE as soon as possible,” Ryan said to Krysty as they settled into the whirlpool bath that was still working perfectly. “Could make the food last a few days, but…”

  Krysty shook her head, the long red tresses flowing freely over her shoulders. Despite the air of unease about the redoubt, there was no danger, and so her sentient hair remained at ease, despite the swirl of worry that surrounded her heart.

  “It’s going to be hard out there. Real hard. I remember what it was like from before. But it’s got to be better than in here. It’s like there are ghosts watching us, coming down and pressing us into the ground.”

  Ryan said nothing for a moment. Finally he broke the silence. “Shouldn’t be that way. We’ve chilled our share—had to, before they chilled us. Quint and Rachel were just another two. No reason they should come back, not something stupe like ghosts, but the memory…”

  Krysty reached out and stroked his face, tracing the line of his scar from the empty eye socket down to his jaw. “It isn’t them,” she said simply. “It’s Hunnaker. It’s Lori. It’s being back where so much really started. And it’s being able to relax for once. We know what’s out there—more or less—and we know what’s in here. There’s nothing to keep on edge about. And when you do that, that’s when the ghosts start to creep back and you have the time to think about all the things that you don’t really want to think about.”

  “So mebbe the sooner we get on the move, the sooner we have things to deal with and the sooner this feeling will go.”

  “You got that, lover.” She pulled him toward her. “But while we are here, do you remember what we did the last time we used this bath?” Her hands probed beneath the surface of the water, reaching for him. “Oh, yeah, I reckon you do.” She smiled.

  “Right…” Ryan moved in close, his hands reaching down under the water for her.

  It wasn’t just sex, it was making love, connecting in a way that they hadn’t been able to for too long. They had the space, the privacy and the time. What was more, the intensity drove away the demons, banishing them to some area far away where they could no longer disturb or intrude.

  It was only afterward, when they had finished, and had left the bath, that Ryan wandered into the gym that led off the bathroom. While the bath drained as noisily as it had on their previous visit, and Krysty dried herself off, there was some memory that had come back to Ryan and was bugging him. It was only when he looked over at the closed door and expected to see a length of green ribbon that he remembered: Quint had watched them when they were here before and had left the ribbon by accident. He wore it in his long, tangled beard. Krysty had found the length that time. And now Ryan had expected to see it once again, even though he knew that was impossible.

  He was still standing naked, staring at the door, when she came out to him. Following the line of his gaze, she knew what he was seeing in his mind’s eye.

  “Do you think Doc’s right?” he asked simply. Then, when he noticed Krysty’s puzzled stare, he added: “What he was saying in the chamber, about us repeating ourselves time and time again. Back here, waiting for it to start over just like last time…”

  “But it’s not the same, is it? There’s no Quint, no Zimyanin, and the landscape outside is different after the dam broke. We’ve got Jak and Mildred. So it’s different. But there are some things that are the same, that are always the same. There’s always some bastard who wants to stand in our way, or pick a fight with us. So we fight. Either that or let them chill us, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to buy the farm yet.”

  “True enough,” Ryan agreed, putting his arm around her and pulling her close so that he could feel her warmth, reassure himself that she was real even if his fears weren’t. “But don’t you remember that one time we wanted to head to where Trader said there was a place we could settle and build a life without having to fight?”

  “Yeah, and look how much we had to fight when we were looking. No more or less than we have to fight now. Mebbe it doesn’t even exist. Mebbe it’s like that place Mildred told us about once, that was in an old book. Erewhon. Even heard of that myself, back in Harmony. Supposed to be where everything was perfect.”

  “So where was it?”

  Krysty fixed him with a stare. “Know what you get if you take the letters in Erewhon and put them in a reverse order? Nowhere, Ryan. And mebbe that’s what Trader’s place is—just somewhere in your head that you can try and make.”

  “But the disk. If we could ever have cracked that comp code, then—”

  “Then mebbe it was only the plans for some so-called perfect place, like all the ideas that those stupes who started the nukecaust ever had. Plans, not a real place. And if it was a real place, mebbe it was standing then but not now.”

  “So there was no point in searching?”

  She shrugged. “Depends what for. If it’s for something solid and tangible, then mebbe not. But if it was for somewhere we could settle and make that place ourselves, then mebbe.”

  “Then every time we land somewhere, there’s always a chance. If only it wasn’t for those stupe bastards who just don’t get it…”

  IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN an opportunity for them to get some valuable sleep before they stepped out into the frozen wastes, but no one was in any mood to sleep easily in the redoubt that night. The sense of unease that had permeated the air like a poison gas got into their dreams, making them wake from nightmares. Some never got as far as the nightmares: Doc stayed awake all night, staring at the ceiling, trying to will himself into sleep but failing as the images tumbled around his head. Lori became mixed with Emily, Rachel and Jolyon. His love in the new century entangled with those of two hundred years before. All lost to him now, like everything. Like his very sanity. Even if only from the things he had witnessed since being shot forward into a post-nukecaust world. Let alone the horrors of being dragged from his own time, subjected to whitecoat experiment, then discarded like a broken doll.

  By the time morning came, and most had groggily awakened from their disturbed slumbers, Doc was no longer sure if any of this was real. Was he really here or was he still in a cell, taunted and tortured for the benefit of a twisted science?

  Even worse, was he still back in the nineteenth century, in a padded cell, raving and delusional while his beloved Emily wept for him?

  For, if he were truly mad, how would he know?

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  The sec code on the main door was still the same. Of course it was, there was no reason why it would change. The redoubt had been undisturbed since their last visit. That was, surely, part of the problem.
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  They stood at the entrance, waiting for the door to grind into motion and open. The extreme weather conditions in the wastelands beyond and the lack of anyone to maintain the system, except for those parts that were self-maintaining, had meant that the elements had taken their toll on both the door and its mechanism. Slowly it revealed the world beyond, from the first crack letting in the cold and driving winds, forcing back the constant warm air that had cosseted them since their arrival.

  All were equipped for this: the food stores may have been low and next to useless, and the armory of little practical help following their previous incursion, but the mall-like storerooms still had treasures to give forth. They had arrived with clothes that had adequately seen them through warmer climes, but were ill-suited to the conditions they knew they were about to enter. Along the walls of the storerooms, and off in the walk-in compartments that littered the jeweled mosaic floor, they had found boxes and racks of furs and man-made fibers that insulated against the cold. One thing was for sure, the personnel who would have populated the redoubt in the days before the nukecaust, were prepared for the weather.

  Krysty and Jak had both chosen furs—rabbit and fox—the pelts sewn together to form a muted pattern that would blend into a landscape less harsh than the one they were about to encounter. Out there, they would show up against the rock and snow. But camouflage wasn’t a primary concern. Especially as the artificial fibers chosen by Mildred and J.B. were of brighter colors—orange and blue. These were designed specifically to stand out on the landscape, to make their wearers easy to track. That was irrelevant: what mattered was that both these three-quarter-length padded and insulated coats had a number of pockets, many of which had a depth of more than six inches, strewed about their person. Without such capacious storage, both would have had to keep their supplies swaddled in their usual clothing, tight beneath the outer layer and difficult to reach in times of emergency. It was impossible to carry all their supplies in their satchels.

  Ryan had taken a full-length coat in artificial fiber, a Velcro fastening enabling it to be pulled open quickly. He still had his panga strapped to his thigh, and wanted to be sure he could reach it with ease and speed. For this very reason he, like the others, had eschewed the possibility of a full-body covering. In one of these, they would be completely insulated against the temperature drop: yet it would also make them slow and clumsy, their weapons having to be relocated on their bodies, leaving them unable to reach by instinct, and in a fraction of a second, their favored tools of slaughter. The moments spent fumbling in new places, remembering where they had relocated their weapons, would be minimal—yet could make the difference between chill or be chilled. He secured his scarf with its weighted ends around his neck.

  Doc, who stood to the rear of the line, was in black. It suited his mood. He had taken a full-length fur that swamped his angular frame, bulking him out so that he was almost unrecognizable. He resembled nothing so much as the kind of trapper he would have been interested to encounter in the time of his birth. But it’s doubtful if any trapper, no matter how long he had been alone in the backwoods, no matter how much cabin fever he had endured, would have had the unblinking intensity of stare with which Doc greeted the lifting of the main sec door and the harsh glare of the outside world.

  As the door finally ground to a halt, the winds from outside swirled around and welcomed them in a cold embrace. The taint of sulfur in the air caught at their throats and made them choke and cough before they became used to breathing it in. Although it wasn’t snowing, the air was still full of small flakes and particles of ice that had been chipped from the surrounding terrain by the strength of the winds. These stung on their exposed skin.

  “Let’s move it, people,” Ryan said simply, leading the way out of the redoubt and into the frozen lands beyond.

  Although they were alert for any threat that may be lurking around the mouth of the redoubt, all were still wrapped in their own thoughts, having barely communicated that morning.

  Doc was last to leave. He tapped the sec code back in to close the door, lingering as it ground slowly shut, taking a last look at the interior before it was finally cut off from view.

  “Farewell, thou bitter friend,” he muttered as the bland expanse of corridor lessened. It was a quote half remembered: where from, he couldn’t recall. He could recall little with any clarity, these past few hours, and it was only when he had moments of such stark recognition that he realized what he had become. Old before his time and not even allowed to be within the constraints of that time. He was an exile. Something else came back to him. He said the words softly. “Home? I have no home. Driven out from those that I love, I—” He stopped, his brow furrowing as he sought the words that seemed to chase away in his mind. What was that, and where had he heard it?

  Like everything, it was shrouded in a mist of confusion. Even his very being seemed to be nebulous, hidden even from himself. How did he know that everything he had seen and experienced had been true? He remembered his Descartes and the Frenchman’s espousal of an idea that it was possible that all he saw was not true, just something placed in front of his eyes by an evil genius who sought to deceive him.

  On first reading this, he had thought it a clever conceit and had argued with friends and colleagues on the inherent absurdity of the idea. But now he wasn’t so sure. As the door finally closed, who was not to say that it wasn’t merely another shutter in a long procession of such; a curtain brought down on a stage while the scenery was changed, ready for the next act.

  “Doc, are you listening?”

  The old man turned to find Mildred looking back at him, her face almost obscured by the hood of her padded coat, the snorkel design taking it over her features and hiding her expression.

  “Sorry, I—” Doc tried to make himself function, but all he could think was, What if she is not real? The ambiguity paralyzed him. He knew that if all this were genuine, then he had to move, keep up just to survive. But if not, then…

  “What the hell is wrong with you? It’s just as well I thought to look back, otherwise we would have lost you already. We haven’t even got more than a hundred yards from the redoubt and you’ve already nearly vanished on us.” Her tone was sharp, betraying her own unease and shortness of temper.

  “My dear Doctor, I cannot apologize. I have not been myself.” Then who are you? asked a voice in his head. “I shall try to, as you would say, snap out of it.”

  Mildred’s expression, still partially obscured by her hood, softened. “We all felt weird in there, Doc. Even me, and I wasn’t here before. It’s okay, we can just walk away.”

  She beckoned to him and waited until Doc had walked a few steps toward her before turning and continuing after the others.

  Doc Tanner followed, words and thoughts still racing in his mind, tumbling over one another. There may be situations you can walk away from, times and places. But if it is yourself from which you seek to escape? How can you ever walk away from yourself?

  THE FROZEN WASTELAND was much as they remembered it, those who had been here before. The sky was tinged yellow with sulfur, the same that got down into their throats and lungs, making breathing difficult as it scraped at the membrane, making each of them want to choke. Breathing was best if taken in shallow gasps. Deep lungfuls of air made them cough, sucking in more air so that the urge to cough became greater, the circle harder to break. The chem clouds above them tinged the skies with yellow, the heavy banks of gray and yellow scudding across the expanse of sky with a rapidity that spoke of the intensity of the wind currents, the sudden changes in direction for the tumbling clouds making them all the more ominous, as though they were about to lose their abrasive contents upon the earth below.

  The terrain was much as they remembered. Banks of snow, meters deep, were driven and formed against sheer rock by the force of the winds, the loose snow on top treacherous, the ice banked beneath waiting to trap them. Against this were the exposed walls and inclines of rock, slippery
with long strings and trails of moss and lichen that had been allowed to grow and prosper as the snows were scoured from them. All around, the earth had been broken by the shifting of the rock beds, new inclines, small mountainous ranges and recently formed volcanoes spewing the sulfur into the air, peppering the landscape to the horizon.

  It was a harsh terrain to cross and an even harsher environment in which to live. There was little sign of any life that made its home in this unwelcoming terrain, and yet Ryan clearly recalled being attacked by dwarf muties and encountering wild bears on his first excursion into the wastes. There had also been some small communities and isolated trappers who had fallen prey to the Russian bandits. It was doubtful whether their deserted settlements would have been reclaimed by others. Even so, Ryan was still intent on keeping his people focused for any dangers that may be lying in wait.

  The floods caused by the breaking of the dam had done little to change this section of the Alaskan tundra. It would be another half-day’s march through the oppressive weather conditions before they reached that spot. In the meantime, each could be lost in their own thoughts. Although they remained alert and aware, the atmosphere of the redoubt still weighed heavily on all of them.

  MILDRED LOOKED BACK to check that Doc was still following. The black figure, stark against the landscape, trudged through the snow, head held erect against the winds, eyes seemingly—although surely this was a trick of the obscured light—unblinking and wide, regardless of the wind and ice.

  Mildred was concerned about the old man. More than the others, she had some kind of grasp of what he had to be feeling. She, too, was out of time and in a world for which she had been ill-prepared. The others had been born to this, it was all that they had ever known. She, on the other hand, had been living in relative affluence and comfort in the late twentieth century before being put out for a routine operation. If all had been well, a few days and she would have been recuperating at home, catching up on soaps and developing couch potato habits, before resuming work. Instead she had awakened to a nightmare that was all the more terrifying for being real.