Deathlands 071: Ritual Chill

by James Axler

  Here was opportunity. The roughly hewn doors were ill-fitting, and where panels of wood and metal had been joined together were seams large enough for plas-ex charges. The hinged sections were also poorly fitting, gaps appearing between door and wall.

  His problem was to fit the plas-ex and detonator without being overheard or spotted by the sec men who hovered less than several feet above him. Despite the extreme cold he could feel the sweat gather in the small of his back and trickle down his forehead, stinging in his good eye and slipping beneath the patch into the puckered and empty socket, as he worked the plas-ex into the gaps, priming the detonator. He kept looking up, almost able to smell the musk of body heat and animal skin from the guards above him. He was sure that he had to be visible in the light, at least partially. Certainly, as he looked across the twenty-foot divide that was the double-door span, he could see McIndoe working feverishly at his own task.

  The Inuit finished, looked across and spotted Ryan. He gestured him to move back into shadow as he withdrew.

  Ryan placed the last detonator and stepped back, looking up as he did. The men in the crow’s nests had their gazes fixed on the ridge that defined the height of the valley. It hadn’t occurred to them to look down.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Ryan pulled back into the shadows and made his way to the point of cover where McIndoe was waiting.

  “Careless for one who say so much the other way,” the sec chief commented. “Come, we don’t have much time. Others must be back by now.”

  Ryan checked his wrist chron. The Inuit was probably right. And daylight would come soon.

  They began the ascent, each knowing that before they had time to rest adequately, they would once again be making the descent. But this time more openly, in an all-out attack.

  * * *

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dawn broke on the Inuit as they began to separate and prepare for attack. They were still far enough from the lip of the valley to be invisible to the inhabitants of the ville below, and could move with some freedom as long as they kept the noise to a minimum, something at which the Inuit were adept.

  Jordan and Thompson consulted with McIndoe while the shaman looked on askance. It seemed more and more obvious that the old man wished to distance himself from the leadership, lest anything should go badly awry. From their small grouping, the companions could observe this with impunity.

  “Reckon Doc got strategy get this right?” Jak asked in a tone of voice that suggested it was the closest he would ever get to a rhetorical question.

  “Who knows what’s going through that mad bastard’s head at any time?” Ryan replied. “It’s not Doc who bothers me. What does Thompson know about this kind of firefight, and what is McIndoe going to do to help him?”

  “You figure he knows what he’s doing?” J.B. queried.

  “Who? McIndoe?” Ryan allowed himself a short, humorless laugh. “I’d say that bastard knows exactly what he’s doing. Question is, who’s he doing it for? If he’s gonna set up Thompson to take a fall on this, then where does that leave Doc?”

  “Where does it leave us?” Krysty interjected. “We’ve got to get ourselves out of here, and try to get Doc before we hightail it. So if McIndoe decides that he’s going to put us right in the firing line to buy the farm, then how do we get ourselves out of that—and get Doc into the bargain—without the Inuit turning on us?”

  “If I knew that…” Ryan began, petering out with a shrug.

  “So it’s just a matter of looking for the chance and grabbing it triple fast, before they have a chance to figure out what we’re doing, right?” Mildred asked. From her tone, it was most definitely a rhetorical question.

  Before they had a chance to discuss the matter further, the conference group in the distance broke up and Thompson came bustling toward them, with Doc striding behind him. Trailing them, beckoned by the chief but showing a distinct lack of enthusiasm, came McPhee. He had the air of someone who would rather be anywhere else than here. McIndoe, watched by Ryan, moved off to start dividing the Inuit into combat units. On the faces of those closest to the companions he could see the set determination shine through their normally impassive visages as they watched their sec chief.

  The way these people fought, they wouldn’t rest until they enemy was chilled or they had themselves bought the farm in the attempt. A noble determination, but one that would cause problems when the companions were attempting to extricate themselves from a combat into which they had been unwillingly pitched.

  By the time the trio reached them, Doc’s long stride had put him in the lead of the group. The closer he got, the easier it was to see the messianic gleam in his eye. His mouth was flecked with white-foamed spittle at the corners, which flew in all directions as he began to speak. The fire of battle had already taken him over.

  “Are ye ready? Are ye ready for the war to end all wars? We will save this tribe, and the Almighty will not have sent me in vain. Aye, I cannot tell ye how good it feels to be at the forefront of this noble cause. We have just been discussing tactics and the best way to attack these heathens and take them for our own. I want ye to be in the forefront of this with me, as I know deep in my bones that ye are the finest fighters I have ever had the opportunity of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with, and I know that together we can triumph. Are ye with me?”

  “Slow down, slow down,” Ryan said, gesturing to Jordan to calm down. “We will join you, but first we have to know what you plan to do.”

  “Aye, aye, that makes sense,” Jordan agreed, nodding maniacally, his eyes betraying that he was hyped up beyond the capacity for rational thought. It was as though a bloodlust had already infected him, before the first shot had been fired. It was no surprise to the companions, particularly to Mildred, who had noticed this tendency to hysteria in Doc Tanner many times before. The old man’s psyche was so fragile that it took little to tilt him over the edge.

  The fact that Jordan was now reacting the same way suggested that there was more of Doc inside his head than they had any right to expect. This may be a good thing. It was extreme trauma that had brought out the Jordan persona, so perhaps another extreme trauma would elicit Doc’s genuine personality from within once more.

  Thompson and McPhee were now with them, and had both noted the stranger’s manic fervor. McPhee found it hard to disguise his disquiet with this development—in fact, he could barely be bothered to disguise his unease. But the chief seemed to take it calmly, as though this hysterical behavior were a necessary part of preparing for battle.

  Certainly he smoothly took over from the overwrought Jordan in explaining the tactics to the companions.

  “We split ourselves into small units, place ourselves around the edge of the valley, moving quickly before the sun is fully up and the plas-ex goes off. Once that’s gone, then the fuckers down there will know we’re here, so there’s no point in hiding. We see what damage the plas-ex has done to the walls, and we try to get through any holes and go for the center of the ville, closing in and driving those we don’t chill into the center, where we can fire them up.”

  “Burn them?” Ryan asked, aghast.

  “Of course—that’s the old way to sacrifice,” Jordan replied suddenly. “We cannot build a wicker man in which to house them, but the city is their body, and so it is the same thing.”

  Mildred and Krysty exchanged glances. Both knew enough about predark religions and beliefs to know that there was a kind of logic in what Doc-Jordan was saying, but there was something about his driven demeanor that was worrying. This was a man on the verge of a complete mental collapse. And what of the hidden—or lost—Doc persona then?

  But now there was little time to worry, as Thompson cut across the old man, keen to explain tactics—and the part the companions would play—before they ran out of time.

  “You will come with us—” he gestured to himself, Jordan and the distinctly uneasy-seeming McPhee “—at the forefront of the attack. We will head down into the
valley from this point and take the gates as they are blown apart, forming a spearhead into the ville. It is my place to take the head of the attack, and I want you with me as I trust Jordan’s views on your capabilities. We have only minutes to prepare, so I leave you to brief your people and join us.”

  It was possibly the longest speech that any of them had heard the Inuit chief make since they had first arrived on the frozen wastelands, and there was something about the quality of his words that made the chill air of the Alaskan morning run even colder through their blood. In his own way, he was as driven as Jordan, and would willingly go to his own chilling to achieve his purpose.

  Thompson turned and walked away, McPhee tailing him with a displeased frown tugging at the corners of his otherwise unreadable face. Doc lingered for a moment, and as he leaned in and spoke to them, there was an edge of his true personality that seemed to break through the thick burr of the Scot Jordan.

  “I know I can trust you,” he said simply, before turning and striding off in the wake of the chief and the shaman.

  “That one crazy man,” Jak said softly as Doc departed. “Like man wanting buy farm.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Ryan replied in an equally low tone. “If he’s gonna be that determined to lead the line, then we’re gonna have a hell of a job to get him and ourselves out of this.”

  “That’s going to be a tad difficult if we’re leading that line with him,” J.B. said wryly. “It’ll be all we can do to stop running straight into the farm.”

  “Yeah, we need to find a way to make sure that we don’t head the charge,” Ryan mused. “I guess what we really need to do is to persuade Jordan that his interests are best served if mebbe he isn’t right at the front, but in the second wave. That way we don’t walk headlong into the firefight and we can shelter him.”

  “Need watch our side, too,” Jak added. “Fuckers not like us. Might have agreement with McIndoe, but not know if others keep to it.”

  “True, and I figure I can trust him, because the stakes are so high for him, but I can’t be certain. We need to watch our own backs, mebbe take out some of the Inuit around us so we can clear a path to get the hell out.”

  “So what you’re saying is that we need to watch everyone in case they want to chill us, and try to save some old buzzard who’ll want to charge headlong to his own doom,” Mildred summed up. “Shit, Ryan, you aren’t asking much, are you?”

  Ryan allowed a hollow, barking laugh to escape. “Put it like that, it doesn’t sound so great, does it?”

  “First things first,” Krysty said decisively, cutting into the pensive silence that had formed in the vacuum behind Mildred’s words. “Let’s get Doc where we want him, and I think I may have an idea about that.”

  THE TIME WAS APPROACHING fast. Too damned fast for McPhee, who sat on his haunches, watching the preparations around him. The majority of the tribe had already dissipated into the half light of the approaching dawn, leaving a number who looked to his jaundiced eye like a pitiful few to take on such a monumental task as storming the gates of Fairbanks. McPhee was no coward. Such a thing was unknown among the Inuit, whose natural disposition was to fight until the bitter end. But there was a world of difference between being a coward and being practical. He was certainly the latter, and could foresee nothing but disaster. No matter how big the holes blown in the walls around the ville, they were still outnumbered and walking into bottlenecks that would leave them lined up like sitting targets.

  McPhee just couldn’t see the necessity of buying the farm for no reason other than a glorious folly. And this was looking more and more like a glorious folly. His attitude had been changing constantly, his position as medicine man, and the training from childhood that had entailed, clashing with his natural pragmatism.

  The pragmatism was winning out. And he certainly didn’t trust the outlanders. Why would anyone who you had tried to chill sacrificially then agree to aid you in your task? Because they were offered little choice? Perhaps. But surely that would mean their imperative was to get out as soon as a chance presented itself—as it surely would in the heat of a firefight.

  So it was with a jaundiced eye that he saw Krysty leave their group and approach Jordan, who was seated with the chief. She began to talk, and even from such a distance, McPhee could see that her words were making an impression on the stranger.

  He decided it would be best to be a participant in whatever was taking place.

  As he neared them, he began to catch parts of the conversation. He came in just as Krysty was finishing a long, impassioned speech.

  “…right for you to sacrifice yourself. After all, if you’ve been sent for a reason, then surely it would behoove you to insure that you can see through that purpose?”

  “Aye, I can see what ye mean,” Jordan replied thoughtfully. “If this is to serve some purpose, it would be ridiculous for myself and the chief to fall before the enemy afore any of that purpose is realized.”

  “But we have a duty—I do—to lead my people,” Thompson said firmly. “I cannot stand down.”

  “But it would not be standing down,” Jordan reasoned. “It would be about strategy, about being there at the right moment, when the people come together, and not about wasting your life before the aim is achieved.”

  “After all, have you come all this way for nothing?” Krysty added, trying to press the advantage. She could see a shadow of doubt cross the face of the Inuit chief.

  McPhee smiled to himself. The fool was going to fall for it. He knew Thompson, knew that the woman had played on his sense of responsibility to the tribe as a whole. This way they would keep themselves and their friend the stranger from the front line of battle without appearing to lose face.

  Certainly, it meant that the shaman trusted them no more. However, it would benefit him to play along with this.

  “You know, what the woman says makes a lot of sense,” he said smoothly as he approached. “We have our own task to fulfill with this sacrificial firefight, and we do not fulfill that by buying the farm at the first moment. If we do, then this whole mission is in vain.”

  Jordan looked up at the shaman. He wasn’t alone in this, but it was his honest, open eyes that fixed on the medicine man. They were trusting, searching for guidance.

  “Ye think that this is the right thing? I can see that it is, but somehow feel that I am letting down the people I have been sent to serve.”

  McPhee shook his head. “No, you would be letting them down by being chilled before we have a chance to make good the sacrifice, before you can save the tribe you were sent to save.”

  Jordan considered this, then firmly nodded. “Ye are right. I have a sacred duty.”

  He turned to Thompson. “We must not go at the head of the attack. We must hold back and follow the first wave, so that we can be there when our victorious forces round up those who we shall offer to the Lord.”

  Thompson affirmed this, and McPhee breathed a silent sigh of relief. For the moment he was assured of a degree of safety.

  Krysty left them to return to the rest of the companions; but not without a sense of uncertainty. There was something about the medicine man that made her feel he was working to his agenda…and would have to be watched.

  LIGHT SPREAD across the wastelands, wiping out the glow from the valley below. Day slowly moved from the watches of the night, and around the rim of the valley the war parties of Inuit warriors were ready. Gathered in small clusters, waiting at the points where the expeditionary forces had planted the plas-ex a few short hours before, they prepared for the moment when the timed explosions would rent the air, signaling their cue to action.

  The sounds of a people waiting for attack came to them from the valley below, drifting up on the breeze: shouting, rough music, the clang of metal. The inhabitants of Fairbanks were on edge, unable to rest, knowing that an attack would come, but not when.

  They knew soon enough.

  The plas-ex detonators, timed to go off when
the day had fully broken, did their work. A string of explosions, less than a few seconds between first and last, echoed around the valley, raising clouds of dust, rock chippings and ice as the explosive rent great holes in the fabric of the Fairbanks defenses. Sections of the wall began to crumble around those holes blasted, cracks spreading, rock grinding against ice as the weight of the wall forced great chunks of rock and ice to topple, triggering further cracks and falls. In some areas, holes blasted by the plas-ex were blocked immediately by falls of rock from around, then reopened as additional ripples of destruction washed away the blockages in waves of shock.

  At the gates of the ville, the twin crow’s nests were toppled by the blasts that split the metal and wood doors from top to bottom, splintering the thick timbers and sending these splinters on a deadly trajectory, chilling those who were nearest to the explosion. The tumbling nests spilled their screaming occupants, who hit the rock floor of the valley with bone-splintering force. The doors fell in, scattering those who were in the immediate area lest they become squashed like bugs beneath the great weight.

  Behind the remnants of the wall, covered in dust, rock and ice fragments, the people milled in confusion. Some were blinded and deafened, concussed by the explosions, smothered in rock dust. They wandered aimlessly, not sure of what to do. They stumbled headlong into those who had been galvanized by the onslaught, and were now spilling from the center of the ville, crowding the narrow streets as they rushed to the ramparts, leaving the gaudy houses, bars, old buildings and newer shanties in which they lived to man the wall and defend their ville; to defend their lives. As they did, they hit those stunned by the explosions, falling over one another, fighting to get out of the way, to get fighting the enemy rather than one another.