Latitude Zero

by James Axler

  "You scalp better than the bloody Iroquois themselves, my dear friend!" he shouted feebly.

  Despite the overwhelming noise of the falling water, the pool was comparatively calm. There was no strong undertow, and their drop had taken them a little to one side of the main current. All five bobbed close together, glancing around and trying to get their bearings. Ryan pointed, seeing the tatters of another inflatable raft, wrapped limply around a lichen-covered boulder to the left. That meant that Strasser had come the same course that they had, with what looked like the same result.

  There was a shelf of low rock that thrust out from among trees on the right of the river. Ryan led the way toward it, moving in a slow sidestroke, kicking out strongly. The others followed him in a ragged, splashing line, Doc bringing up the rear, huffing like a world-weary grampus.

  Krysty, last but one, suddenly screamed and vanished beneath the water, emerging a moment later, arms waving. "Something grabbed me," she said. "Something down in… Oh, Gaia!"

  Beneath the oaks that fringed the pool, the noise of the fall was dimmed, the surface of the water calm and glassy. Just in front of Krysty, that stillness was broken by the eruption of a corpse.

  It bobbed up, head first, clad in a torn blouse that revealed white breasts, the skin gashed into bloodless lips. Its eyes were wide open, staring blindly, protruding from their dark sockets. The mouth gaped, and the swollen, purpled tongue thrust obscenely between the thickened lips. As the corpse danced and swayed, everyone could see that there were marks, livid against the pallor of its throat. The hair of the woman, very dark, fringed the face.

  "Someone strangled her," J.B. said, looking at the marks with a professional interest. "Did it real good."

  Ryan stared at the dead woman, wondering if the fingers had belonged to Cort Strasser.

  "Or Mildred," he murmured to himself, striking out for the shore.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  STRASSER AND MILDRED had been the only two on their inflatable who'd seen the terrifying drop before plunging over. Rafe had been looking back toward his chief, staring past him to see if he could catch a glimpse of their inexorable pursuers.

  Rosa, still gripping Mildred's revolver, lay on her face in the swilling water at the bottom of their raft, oblivious to everything.

  Mildred saw the silken edge of the fall and was already starting to untie herself. Strasser also spotted the peril, and he began to laugh.

  That was the last sound that Mildred heard as they dropped vertically, ending with a great wave of white foam.

  In the smaller inflatable, the effect was even more devastating, with most of the strained panels bursting, and whole sections disintegrating. The mooring rings ripped away, releasing all four of them from the sinking vessel.

  Mildred had untied herself from Rosa and was now completely free, trying to kick to the surface. She broke into the light and sucked in a great gulp of cold, wonderful air, when something snatched her ankle and pulled her under.

  In the dark deeps, she realized that it was Strasser's woman, and, locked into blind panic, she was still holding Mildred's blaster!

  Using all her strength, Mildred reached down the other woman's right arm, groping for the hand and the solid weight of the ZKR 551, feeling it and twisting with savage power. She was aware that she'd probably broken at least two of Rosa's fingers. She managed to wedge the pistol into the back of her belt, out of sight, but she was still pinioned below the water.

  Mildred groped in the suffocating blackness, aware of the splintered emerald light far above, finding Rosa's long black hair and fumbling lower. The woman snapped at her, and Mildred barely jerked her fingers away in time.

  Now she found the neck, her strong hands clamping around the slender throat, crushing the arteries and cutting off the supply of blood to the brain. For several startled, fearful seconds Rosa fought against the strangling grip. But Mildred's medical training had taught her precisely what to do.

  Her own breath was fading, but she was inexorable, maintaining the brutal hold, forcing the other woman still deeper. She felt Rosa go limp, but she didn't relax, grimly counting off another twenty seconds, though her own lungs were bursting. She finally let go, kicking the corpse toward the bottom of the pool.

  When she surfaced, Strasser was already kneeling on the gleaming rocks, the Stechkin steady in his fist. Rafe was on hands and knees at his side, coughing and spluttering.

  "You chill her, bitch?" he shouted.

  "She drowned." Mildred waited for the tearing shock of the bullet, but it never came.

  Strasser laughed. "Saved me the trouble. Was going to chill the double-stupe little Mex gaudy today. Come on out. Let's haul ass!"

  RYAN WAS AGONIZINGLY conscious that Cort Strasser could be waiting for them behind any of the thick grove of trees. There were clear tracks leafing off up the path from the river, one that was definitely Mildred's. Over the past few weeks Ryan had familiarized himself with her trail. He also spotted Strasser's footmarks, which meant that the third was the lieutenant, the man with the polished nunchaku sticks. Rafe.

  Even with the former sec boss of Mocsin holding Mildred, unless she'd managed to break free after strangling the woman, the odds still favored Ryan and his friends. Whatever the cost in blood, the end of the trail was coming closer.

  AFTER THE FATIGUE of the river passage, Strasser drove Rafe and Mildred along at a fearful pace.

  There was a track from the river that wound up steeply for two hundred feet. There the trees began to thin out, and open spaces appeared. Twice Strasser called a halt, pausing and listening. But the noise of the river still filtered through, drowning out the noise of any pursuit. Mildred had succeeded in covering the butt of her revolver with her torn blouse. Knowing that she might only get one chance against Strasser and Rafe, she was content to wait for the right moment. As things went, it didn't seem like she was in any immediate danger.

  Until her feet slipped and she slid backward, crashing into the skull-faced man. Strasser struck out at Mildred as she collided with him, but he was taken, by surprise, having to grab at her to save himself. His hands went around her waist, and she felt the sudden tension as his fingers touched the concealed weapon in the small of her back.

  He snatched the blaster, pushing her away from him with an almost orgasmic sigh of pleasure. "Aaah, what is… Clever, lady, clever. Drowned the slut and got your pretty pistol back, all at the same time. No wonder Cawdor has you along."

  "I hope you develop penile cancer and die slowly and in the worst pain a man could imagine," she said calmly, though her heart fluttered with anger and with something that she knew was fear.

  "If I do, bitch, you surely won't be around to do any gloating. You'll be dead. If not today, then very likely tomorrow. And if I have the time to enjoy your chilling…"

  With a jerk of her blaster, the skull-faced man motioned her to start moving again, up toward the crest of the ridge.

  They moved fast in a strung-out patrol line, Jak at point, with J.B. bringing up the rear. Blasters were drawn and ready, but from the teenager's reading of the trail, it looked as if Strasser was setting a very fast pace. They passed a point where there seemed to have been some sort of a scuffle, marks of skidding feet in the damp earth.

  Ryan stared around, somehow expecting to find the corpse of Mildred spread out for them by the maniacal hatred of Strasser. But the spoor of the three pairs of feet still continued toward the top of the hill, where Jak had paused, waiting for them.

  "Look" was all he said.

  During his life in Deathlands, Ryan had seen plenty of evidence of what the mega-cull of the mass nuking had done to the earth, but he'd never seen a small area so devastated by quakes. It looked like the land had been trampled, then eaten up and spit out. You could clearly see where the waves of seismic force had turned solid rock into flowing jelly. From where they stood it was possible to make out the distant curve of the Grandee, bending around the tumbled remnants of a group of high p
eaks.

  "There's some buildings there," Krysty said, brushing her crimson hair back off her forehead. "Look to be ruins."

  "Could be the redoubt and the freezie center," Ryan said. "Or some kind of tourist motel or visitor center. Looks to be around six miles across the valley there."

  "Doesn't look like any kind of a trail between hither and thither," Doc commented. "Just an awful lot of trees."

  Below them there was a solid mass of pine trees, seemingly impenetrable. Though Ryan looked carefully he couldn't see any sign of Strasser.

  The afternoon was already wearing on, though the sun was still above the range of low hills that stood, shrouded in haze, some forty miles to the east.

  "What that?" Jak exclaimed. "Dogs?"

  The mournful cry came from somewhere below them in the dark green ocean of forest, a rising, vibrating sound that chilled the bones.

  "Not dogs," Ryan told him. "Wolves."

  RAFE WAS LEADING, pushing between the close-packed trees, holding a small wrist compass in his hand. They'd taken a bearing on the group of buildings across the valley and were now making their best speed toward them. But the wood was so dense that Strasser had called a pause, binding Mildred's ankles together with a hobble, so that she could only take shortish steps.

  "Stop you running, bitch." He grinned, easing his hand up the inside of her thigh as he stooped to tie her.

  "I'm not running anyplace," she replied. "I truly want to be there and see you down and done. I want to spit in your eyeballs."

  As he slowly lifted a brutal, careful fist, they all heard the dreadful howling of a wolf—from somewhere very close.

  RYAN AND THE others also heard that dreadful baying sound. They'd just entered the fringes of the forest, heading on a compass bearing toward the distant mesa of tumbled rocks.

  "Fireblast!" Ryan exclaimed. "That doesn't sound like any wolf I ever heard. Too deep. More like some sort of a cougar."

  "Could be the trees muffling the noise," J.B. suggested.

  Krysty shuddered and hugged herself. "Feels bad, lover. We have to go on?"

  "There's no way we could get back up that gorge," Ryan told her. "And to strike out crosscountry…" He allowed the sentence to fade away into the deep, pine-scented gloom around them.

  SEVERAL TIMES MILDRED stumbled and nearly fell, but the skull-faced man was always at her elbow, seeming to sense her uncertainty, gripping her by the wrist to keep her going. Rafe was in the lead, moving in an easy hunter's lope, the steel chain on his fighting sticks jingling as he ran.

  They reached a clearing in the forest, where lightning had felled a large tree, sending it crashing in flames. The fire had been localized but it had opened an area some fifty feet across. The scorched and blackened wood had been covered by tender ferns and the ubiquitous lichen. Rafe had paused at its center, looking around him, allowing his boss and Mildred to move past him toward the far side.

  The wolf appeared out of the silent trees, a little behind them, the breath hissing in its throat.

  "Oh, shit." Mildred sighed. Strasser didn't say anything.

  The mutie animal was huge. Its eyes glittered like fire, and stinking froth hung in clusters from its steaming muzzle. Its lips were peeled back off ferocious teeth. Mildred guessed that it stood at least four feet high at the shoulder and that it must weigh close to five hundred pounds.

  Rafe spun to face it, the nunchaku sticks whirring in his hands.

  "Hold it, Rafe. Cover us." Strasser started to tug the woman toward the far side of the clearing.

  "Sure, boss."

  "It'll chill him," Mildred protested. "Why not shoot it?"

  Strasser grinned at her. "Bring Ryan straight to me. Rafe can take his chances with the big mutie bastard."

  He paused just beneath the first of the massive pines, looking back to watch his lieutenant. Mildred couldn't believe Strasser's coldhearted betrayal of his number one man.

  Rafe was in a knife fighter's crouch, using the sticks to hold off the puzzled animal. Once it stepped in close and he whacked it across the snout, drawing a trickle of blood and a roar of pain. The creature backed off and crouched a moment, its eyes fixed on the man who faced it.

  For a moment Mildred actually started to believe that Rafe's skill and undeniable bravery would be enough to win the day.

  Then two more of the gigantic animals came loping into the clearing.

  "Boss?" Rafe said, half turning toward Strasser.

  "Bye, Rafe," the former sec boss said, dragging Mildred with him into the trees.

  "You can't—" she panted.

  "I can," he replied. "I have."

  For several seconds she heard nothing, conscious only of the cold iron grip of Strasser's fingers biting into her arm just above the elbow.

  Then she heard the noises—the clean, hard sound of the polished rosewood striking flesh; a yelp of pain and then a triple growling; a scream that started high and rose higher, until it was cut off in a brief, bubbling moan of terror and agony; the hideous sound of crunching bone, and finally the blood-chilling noise of a pack of wolves that have successfully completed their kill.

  As Strasser ran on, pulling Mildred with him, he began to laugh, louder and louder.

  Chapter Forty

  THE NOISE HAD WARNED Ryan and the others of the threat from the wolves. They moved on more cautiously, eyes raking the late-afternoon darkness around them for any sign of the animals. Jak spotted the mutie creatures in the clearing and waved to Ryan to cut around to the left. The wolves were too busy at their meal to notice the five shadows that flitted past them among the pine trees.

  Ryan glimpsed the ragged remnants of the corpse, with enough remaining of the clothing for him to see, with relief, that the body could only be Strasser's lieutenant. Mildred and the skull-faced man must have gotten away and gone on ahead toward the remains of the distant building.

  "YOU DON'T HAVE a chance, you murdering bastard! You against Ryan and the others. No fucking chance at all."

  Strasser slapped her across the face, hard enough to rattle her teeth in her jaw. His voice was calm and gentle.

  "Lady, I've been alone all of my life, found in the outhouse of a frontier gaudy. That was how I started, and it's been downhill all the way ever since. Alone is what I like."

  It was a quarter of a mile from the edge of the forest to the main entrance to the old redoubt, up a steep, zigzagging pathway, its edges crumbled by the earthquakes of a century ago.

  At some point during the past hundred years the whole region had been submerged under water. It could have been the Grandee, blocked off somewhere south of the Mex border, or one of the other rivers, rerouted after the nuking. It had left great areas of soft sand, treacherous to walk on, piled in the low places all around.

  Mildred now walked ahead of Strasser. He'd freed her from the hobbles once they were away from the trees, making her keep ten paces in front of him. Her revolver was in his belt, the Stechkin machine pistol in his right hand.

  Once she stumbled into a patch of the yellow sand, finding it suddenly sucking at her feet, drawing her into its cool embrace. Luckily it was only a small area of quicksand and Mildred was able to throw herself quickly forward, breaking the suction by pulling herself onto solid, bare rock.

  "Better watch where you put them dancing feet, bitch." Strasser laughed.

  They reached the main gate to the abandoned fortress, with the skull-faced man constantly looking back over his shoulder, watching for any sign of Ryan and the others emerging from the forest. But the waving fringe of trees was undisturbed. To the west, the sun was already well down, showing only half its brazen disk.

  "Soon be dark," Strasser said.

  "So what?" Mildred replied, conscious of how bone weary she felt.

  "So, the night makes things level," he told her. "You'll see. Or, rather, you won't see."

  MOVING MORE SLOWLY, worried about the possibility of an ambush, Ryan and the other four didn't reach the edge of the trees until
dusk. The sun was gone, leaving only the fading golden glow over the western mountains. It had become much cooler, and their breath feathered out when any of them spoke.

  They could see the trail as it snaked above them, vanishing over the lip of the hill, in among the cold ruins. There was no sign of Strasser, though Ryan was uncomfortably aware of the Russian rifle that his enemy was so skilled at using. If it had come safely through the waterfall it could be trained on them from the shadows above.

  "We stop or go on?" J.B. asked, moving a drooping branch with his hand and peering up at the towering wreckage of the redoubt.

  "The longer we wait, the longer that triple bastard has to get around whatever's left up there. Be full dark in a half hour. We'll move then."

  FROM WHAT MILDRED had learned about the huge military fortresses that had been built in secret during the 1990s, she'd imagined them as impenetrably vast and indestructible. The Russian missiles had certainly damaged some of them, but that had been nothing compared to what the Earth itself had done.

  The massive sec-steel doors that had once guarded the front entrance were buckled and twisted, lying in rusting, mangled heaps in the dirt. Mildred couldn't imagine that anything remained of value in the ruined complex.

  If there had ever been a cryo-center linked to the redoubt, the chance of any freezies surviving looked hopelessly remote.

  "Now, bitch, we'll find us somewhere snug and warm. Somewhere that One-Eye won't come creepy-crawling after us. Get moving."

  Even Cort Strasser was nearing the far edge of ragged exhaustion. His gleaming boots were now cracked and muddied. His white ruffled shirt was torn and stained with trail dirt. The leather pants had several long tears in them. In the dusky light, Mildred could see the lines of tiredness carved deep in the wind-washed bone of the skeletal face, but his inexorably ruthless drive hadn't weakened for a moment. She knew that the first sign of rebellion, or any attempt to escape, would earn her a bullet through the head.