Deathlands 071: Ritual Chill

by James Axler

  He pulled back and walked over to the map, taking the frame from the wall and placing it in the middle of the table. He seemed oblivious to the stunned silence around him. If he did notice it, he didn’t let it show. Hoicking up, he spit onto the frame and cleaned off some of the dust and dirt from the glass, revealing underneath a map of how the Alaskan regions had once looked. The map was yellowed and stained, even under glass, and bore a date in one corner: 1879.

  “This was what it was like before skydark,” he began simply. “The travelers came over these plains of ice and around these coastal areas, moving toward the port Ank Ridge.” He spoke as though it was something he had learned by heart: certainly, it would have been simple to do this, as his finger followed a thinly traced, dotted line that wove across the face of the paper, taking the travelers across the continent on a hesitant path until they reached the far coast, then upward to the point marked “Anchorage.” The fact that he mispronounced the name gave away the fact that he couldn’t read and was reciting from memory.

  “Here they settled,” he said, indicating an area some thirty miles inland—a fraction of an inch on the map’s surface scale. “Then skydark came and things changed. Our old homes destroyed, the land reaching up to the skies and spitting fire back at the heavens before settling down once more. Most who still lived made villes back on the ice and rock, but we came up here.”

  “Why? Why did they do that?” Ryan asked.

  “Rocks still spit fire, but down there is safer from the hot seas. Animals, too—bear, wolf—all move to warmer region. They don’t have huts to save if the rocks spit again, they just run,” he explained, a smile momentarily cracking his face. “The others don’t want to have to build again. And they’re scared of the wildlife chilling them. But it’s warmer here, and the rocks don’t spit that much, and the closer the wildlife, the easier the hunting.”

  “So why hunt party on rock and ice when find us?” Jak asked.

  Ryan shot him a glare. They were learning something, and the one-eyed man thought Jak’s question would make Thompson clam up.

  He was wrong. Thompson shrugged. “Sometimes we can track bear or wolf down onto the plain. That’s where they go to hunt, and if we follow, then it’s more open. Depends on the trail we pick up.”

  It seemed, on the face of it, a reasonable answer. But there was something that didn’t ring true to the albino. He would let it lie, for now. Leave any further questions until later.

  Ryan returned to the subject of the map. Indicating the coast around Ank Ridge, he asked, “This is all still like it is here?”

  Thompson shrugged. “Mostly. Some of it fell off during the rock shifting after skydark, some of it was hit by nukes, they say. But Ank Ridge still there. And now a trail that runs from here to here.” He indicated a point that was near the redoubt, tracing past its location and past the ransacked ville they had encountered. The trail then continued up and around until it snaked its way into Ank Ridge.

  “How many villes along that route?” Ryan asked.

  Thompson shrugged. “Hard to say. Some are villes, some no more than one, maybe two huts where trappers try to stay alive. Maybe eight, ten in all.”

  “We stayed in one last night. It had been ripped to shreds by something. What was that?” J.B. asked bluntly.

  Thompson paused. For a moment it seemed as though he would refuse to answer. As though each word had to be considered carefully before he was ready to speak. Finally he said, “We don’t have that much to do with the villes on the trail. Lazy fuckers who want something for nothing. Don’t realize you have to work for everything in this life. They only want to take. So we don’t mix with ’em, not unless we’ve got something we really want to trade. Some of the trappers, they know what work is, they’re okay. But the villes… Dunno what could be giving them trouble. Maybe they’re just fighting with each other. It wouldn’t be the first time that it’s happened.”

  It sounded reasonable, plausible, even. But there was something a little too contrived about the answer. All of the companions felt the same thing, as one: by asking the question, J.B. had taken them from safe to stormy waters. They would have to be careful now.

  As if to emphasize this, Thompson put the map back on the wall and brought the meal to an abrupt close.

  “Best if you return to your hut now. Tomorrow you go out with the hunt party, catch food for yourself and us. Starts at sunup, so you need to rest. You catch nothing, you eat nothing. That’s the way it is with us.”

  As they returned to their hut, across the dark and quiet ville, with every inhabitant inside their own dwelling, shored up against the night, they could only wonder if the hunt party would turn them into the prey. Had they asked too much of the chief? Enough to make themselves a danger?

  Only the cessation of an uneasy night’s sleep would bring an answer.

  EARLY NEXT MORNING found them standing in the center of the ville, faced with a group of hunters. The hunt leader who had found them the day before was leading the new party, and he introduced the six hunters—including himself—to the companions.

  They were a motley crew. Apart from the hunt leader, who was named McIndoe, there were three who had either withered arms or limps, and two who had missing limbs. One had only one arm and the other had no legs but highly developed arm muscles to propel himself on a sled.

  “This is Connelly, Quinn, Ferguson, McHugh, and Taggart,” McIndoe said shortly, indicating each briefly in turn. The man on the sled was Taggart, and it was hard for any of them to take their eyes from him. The idea that he could be a good hunter was something that was difficult to assimilate. Yet he had to be, for the Inuit had no time or space for those who couldn’t contribute.

  “Don’t worry about him,” McIndoe said, noting their stares. “Worry about yourselves. You don’t get nothing, you don’t eat nothing.”

  “I was just wondering,” Doc said distantly, “I note that you all have Irish- or Scots-derived names. Do any of you have any native names at all?”

  McIndoe looked at Doc strangely, like Thompson the day before. Was the old man trying to be funny or was he just crazy? The other Inuit betrayed little, but a few swift exchanges of expression warned the companions that Doc was on thin ice, thinner than they would have to traverse this day.

  “These are our native names. We get two—one for our fathers, and one for the Almighty, just as it was handed down to us.”

  “Ah…” Doc nodded and tapped his nose. “I think I begin to see.”

  Taggart hoicked a phlegm ball, which landed at Doc’s feet. “Can we get goin’ before I freeze my balls off?” he growled.

  McIndoe nodded and, with no further words wasted, indicated that they move out.

  The companions fell in with the hunting party. There was no conversation among the hunters, and so the companions likewise declined to talk—either to their hosts or among themselves. What could they say to one another that may not give something away to the hunters? What could they say that may not cause offense and put them in danger? What, indeed, could they say without the very silence being broken and construed as an insult?

  So they walked in silence. The hunting party led them through the short trail to the concealed exit that lay on the wider trading trail that ran through the forest. Without a word, the party led the companions farther along the trail than they had progressed before Doc’s detour, and they were surprised to find that the trail began to wind back down toward the icy plains. Although it was still bitingly cold at this level, the increased foliage and the fact that they were on the lower slopes of volcanic activity warmed the area in relation to the plains, and they couldn’t understand why the trail didn’t proceed through the seemingly more inviting forested areas.

  Jak suddenly stopped. Ryan and J.B., noticing this, also held back, attracting the attention of Mildred and Krysty. Only Doc continued with the Inuit, seemingly in a world of his own making. It was only when McIndoe held up his hand to halt them that Doc looked back w
ith astonishment on his face.

  The Inuit hunt leader also looked back and nodded with satisfaction. “Hear it, too?” he asked simply.

  Jak nodded. “Three or four, tracking us. Stopped now. Will they attack?”

  McIndoe shook his head. “Not in daylight. Probably coming back from hunting themselves, maybe tired. Could take us, but the odds not good. Won’t say bears are clever, but learn to be cunning. If we were a smaller group…”

  “We take them?” Jak asked.

  Again, the hunt leader shook his head. “Not if we can’t see ’em. Go in there to get ’em and we get separated, make easy meat. We wait, see who moves first.”

  “Mexican standoff,” Doc muttered.

  The Inuit looked baffled—or, at least, as baffled as their bland expressions would allow.

  “What’s a ‘Mexican,’ some kind of bear we ain’t seen before?” McIndoe asked.

  “Just an expression, dear boy, meaning that neither of us wishes to be the first to move,” Doc explained.

  McIndoe didn’t reply. He just gave a brief nod, with the kind of expression that suggested all his suspicions about Doc had just been confirmed.

  They stood on the exposed path, following the sounds of the bears as they moved through the undergrowth. Ryan was sure he caught sight of a patch of fur through the green, but he might have been mistaken. Like the others, he had withdrawn a weapon, pulling the Steyr and gently racking a shell.

  The noise grew fainter.

  “Must be well-fed and tired,” McIndoe commented, adding, “Bastards…”

  “So that’s why the trading trail doesn’t make more use of the slope for warmth and windbreak?” Mildred questioned.

  The hunt leader graced her with the faint ghost of a smile. “Might be colder down there, but at least you can see what’s coming at you,” he commented.

  They continued on in silence until they moved through the sparsest clumps of tree and brush, down onto the flat of the plain where all was rock and ice, and the trail became fainter, harder to follow.

  McIndoe stopped and looked around him, ignoring the screaming winds that battered them from all sides now that they were in the open.

  “Thing is,” he yelled over the noise of the wind, “up there the game can hide from you, and a lot of it’s got a hell of a punch if it decides to fight back. Less if it down here, but easier to see, and less chance of it getting you first. Our ancestors found that out the hard way.”

  “Sounds right to me,” Ryan agreed, “you can’t argue with experience.”

  Experience may have been correct, but it was not necessarily the easiest route. The enlarged hunting party continued on across the plain, following the trade trail that was just visible in the conditions. There was no snow falling, but the clouds had settled heavy overhead and the winds were blowing in from the volcanoes in the distance, making the stench of sulfur stronger than ever in the already sour air. The ground was hard beneath their feet, each footstep jolting up to the knee joint as heels hit solid rock and ice. As they moved farther from the forest, there were banks of snow blown up against the sudden upward thrusts of rock wrenched from the earth by the post-skydark upheavals. Some may have hidden caves like the one they had stumbled into. It seemed like years before, though it was only a matter of days.

  And all the while, the Inuit stayed silent, padding across the plains, Taggart propelling himself on the icy rock with more ease than the others, his sled taking to the conditions. There was no sign of any game.

  Nor was there any sign of another dwelling or settlement.

  “McIndoe, tell me something,” Ryan yelled over the crosswinds. “How far is it to the next ville from here?”

  “No ville for a good few hours, maybe more—next stop is a fur trapper, just two huts. Used to live there with his wife, two kids.”

  “Used?”

  McIndoe shrugged. “Something come and rip shit out of them, just like the last place on the trail.”

  “But it hasn’t got your ville.”

  McIndoe fixed Ryan with a glare. “We ain’t on the trail, and we keep ourselves hidden. You having trouble figuring why with all your stupid questions?”

  Ryan bit back an answer, choked on the desire to lash out. He wasn’t the sort of man to take such an insult, yet he could see why the Inuit had spoken thusly. The questions were stupe: deliberately so, as he wished to probe without seeming too obvious. Guess he’d failed there. Maybe he’d need to keep his eye out to watch his back.

  “There—over north northeast,” Quinn yelled, gesturing with a misshapen hand. “Deer.”

  The companions followed the hunter’s indication. About half a mile away, but moving slowly toward them, was a herd of twenty deer. They looked fatigued, slow and hungry. From their height, they should have been carrying more bulk, but they would still supply the ville with a good source of meat if they could be mowed down.

  The Inuit snapped into a practiced maneuver, spreading out and moving swiftly across the packed ice and rock. They made no allowance for the companions having little knowledge of their hunting methods, so Ryan decided that his people would best act as an independent hunt party from this point onward.

  The deer were headed for the shelter and comparative warmth of the uplands, and rather than head back to the wastes and a lingering chill, were attempting to reach safety by outrunning the hunters coming toward them, their desire to survive directing their choices.

  The Inuit each chose a deer, or a pair if they ran together, and closed in across the plain. They shot on the run, raising their rifles as their fur-wrapped feet pounded across the slippery plain. Taggart grunted heavily as he thrust himself forward with one gigantic push, angling his sled so he headed for his appointed target with a clear and flat run, pulling his Sharps from his shoulder as he glided across the surface, drawing a bead and firing, bringing down one of the deer with a clean shot that drilled through its skull.

  Others weren’t such good shots, taking wild aim and firing over and above the deer as well as wounding them. The injured creatures squealed, throwing terror into the herd, scattering them even more across the plain as they slipped on a cocktail of ice and their own warm blood.

  The companions moved more methodically, using their skills to head off running deer and pick them off with single shots. Doc, however, got carried away at the noise and sounds of battle around him and loosed the charge from his LeMat toward one unfortunate creature, its middle dissolving into a soup of blood, offal and bone. He cackled wildly as it flew sideways into another deer, for a moment all reason once more extinguished in his mind.

  Taggart set his sled on course for another brace of deer, propelling himself on a long slide and leveling his rifle. It was risky, as it took him across the path of a wounded deer that was galloping in wildly varying directions, blinded by fear and pain.

  It was as he snapped off the second shot, taking his eye from the rogue beast for the second it took, that it occurred. The creature stumbled into his sled, catching the back with a force that sent it spinning, picking up pace as it hit an ice patch. Thrown off balance, it was all Taggart could do to stay on the sled. Perhaps he would have been better to have taken the fall. As he battled to regain control, the sled careered into a snowbank, coming to a sudden halt. His momentum threw him from the sled, flailing helplessly for a second in the air before hitting the rocks with a sickening crunch, taking the full impact on his left shoulder. He screamed with the pain, high and keening.

  The hunt was almost complete. A dozen of the deer were down, and the hunters were beginning to round up the corpses, dragging them together across the ice. Even though the creatures were malnourished, they were still relatively heavy, and as he and J.B. hauled on a carcass, Ryan was glad that the ice covering the rock would assist them to drag the spoils partway back to the ville.

  “What do we do when we get off the plain?” Ryan yelled to McIndoe.

  “I send someone ahead. Others will come to help us haul it home,�
�� he returned. “I must see to Taggart.”

  Without another word he set off toward the snowbank where the stricken hunter lay. Ryan watched him, and then some instinct told him to follow. He chased after the hunt leader and was close enough to hear the following exchange across the wastes.

  “…shattered. Hurts like hell. Useless after this, and what use is that?”

  “Sure? If there’s any chance that you could—”

  “I’ll be a burden. You know that can’t happen. Better it happens here. You know what to do.”

  Ryan arrived in time to see McIndoe retrieve Taggart’s Sharps and chamber a shell.

  “What the fuck—”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” McIndoe said sharply, turning to face the one-eyed man. “Don’t mess with something that has nothing to do with you.”

  “He’s right,” Taggart snapped. “You may have your ways, but we have ours. I’m useless now, and there’s only one thing to be done.”

  “Just chill you?” Ryan asked. He could see the reasoning, but had his own reasons for confirming this.

  “You think I like this?” McIndoe snapped. “Taggart and me grew up together.”

  “Just do it, for fuck’s sake,” Taggart yelled with anguish.

  McIndoe raised the Sharps and put the barrel to the prone hunter’s temple. “Goodbye, friend,” he said simply before squeezing the trigger and snuffing out Taggart’s life. He turned away, face impassive but body language tight and tense.

  Ryan pondered on what he had seen. It wasn’t shocking. He could see why they did this. But if their people were that easily dispensable, then he was damn sure that his own people were equally disposable.

  They’d have to be triple red careful from now on….

  * * *

  Chapter Eight