by James Axler
"Forgotten how bad jumps were."
Ryan turned around, seeing that Jak had managed to get up on hands and knees.
"Want help?"
"No. Thanks. Fucking cold, Ryan."
"Yeah. Freeze the balls off brass well-digger. Get your coat on."
The teenager managed to work his way upright, leaning heavily on the walls. He struggled into his coat and slapped his arms against his sides.
"If cold in here, what like outside?"
"Colder, I guess. Ready to move on?"
Jak sighed. Ryan couldn't decide if his face looked even more pale than usual. "Head's bad," he said.
"Want to rest awhile?"
"Don't know." Jak's legs suddenly gave out, and he sat in a floppy heap, very nearly rolling on his face.
"Jak! Fireblast!" Ryan stooped over him, not sure what to do.
"Sorry. Went black. Rest here. You go look around, Ryan."
"Sure. Keep your blaster handy. And do your coat up."
Ryan went out, careful to leave the gateway door partly open. Jak gave him a small wave of his hand as his friend left.
Ryan found a pile of clothes almost immediately, heaped in a corner of the control room, close by the main sec doors to the whole mat-trans section of the redoubt. The doors stood wide open, showing evidence of having been blown with ex-plas by a real expert.
There were heavy coats—many fur-lined—plaid shirts, warm boots in all sizes, woollen jumpers with roll necks, at least twenty pairs of winter gloves and several scarves.
Ryan guessed that it was a selection ready for Zimyanin's men as they returned from their slaving missions, and for their victims to save them from freezing to death in the first minutes after their arrival.
"Arrival where?" Ryan wondered aloud. He'd forgotten to bring the Armorer's pocket sextant to help find out just where they'd ended up.
Which reminded him to check his rad-counter.
He opened his coat to glance down at it and saw that it was way over from the green level, through orange toward red.
Hot spots were somewhere near.
At least they could make use of the extra layers of clothing.
Ryan picked out a mackinaw coat in dark gray and black plaid. It was thick and heavy, and looked to be about the right size for Jak Lauren.
He also took a couple of pairs of thermal gloves, thin enough to enable you to still operate a blaster, but warm enough to stop your fingers from freezing.
Before returning to the gateway chamber, Ryan stepped to the sec doors and glanced out. The corridor to the left was an instant dead end. To the right it wound along out of sight. The air was freezing, and the walls, floor and ceiling were all coated with a fine layer of powdery snow. The vid-cameras below the roof all seemed to have become iced up. Not one appeared to be functioning.
Jak was standing when he returned, but he was holding his head, his fingers pressed against his eyes.
"Feel… Head's worse than any jump before. What'd you find?"
"Good thick coat. Should go over everything else you got on. And gloves for both of us."
"Been out?"
"Looked into the passage through the main control room. They've been blown open. Haven't gone any farther. Bit of snow's lying." He handed him the mackinaw. "Oh, and there's some rad hot spots close by. Counter's near red."
Jak pulled on the plaid coat and whistled. "Better. Thanks." He managed a thin smile. "Be okay, Ryan. Walk it off. Any idea where we are?"
Ryan shook his head. The worrying thought had come to him that they might not even be on the North American continent anymore. Their one jump that had landed them in the heart of post apocalypse Russia had been a dreadful warning. And if there was a gateway in Russia, then there might be one anywhere else in the world.
Jak stumbled as they moved into the wide corridor beyond the control room. He quickly regained his balance, but Ryan had noticed. Noticed it and was worried.
He had known the young man long enough to have built up a profound admiration for his incredible agility and athletic skills. Nobody was more lethally acrobatic in close-combat fighting.
"Lot foot marks, Ryan."
In weather that was well below freezing, it was almost impossible—even for the most skilled tracker— to determine how long tracks had been made. Here there was also a faint breeze that kept the microscopic grains of snow in perpetual motion, like a shallow river of ice.
Ryan knelt and examined the marks, but the edges were blurred and indistinct.
"What are these?" Jak asked, moving closer to the wall. "Like bear? Double small. Cubs?"
Where there were cubs there was probably a mother bear. Ryan had seen mutie grizzlies that had topped eighteen feet on their hind legs, and it wasn't a sight he particularly wanted to see again.
"Could be cubs," he agreed. "Better walk real careful here."
THE REDOUBT HAD BEEN totally abandoned and stripped clean, probably even before sky-dark and the onset of the long winters.
Most of the lights still worked, showing that the trusty nuke generators were still ticking away, buried deep in the bowels of the complex.
As they moved along, the breeze noticeably fresher, Jak seemed to be recovering a little of his strength, though Ryan noticed him twice put his hand to his forehead and press it against his eyes.
"You okay?" the one-eyed man asked.
It wasn't simply a polite question. You didn't have polite questions about health in Deatblands. If you asked, it was because it mattered.
Jak stopped and looked at Ryan, his face showing the struggle.
"No," he said. "Head filled with snow. Very sick. Muscles feel like wet string." He paused. "Sorry."
"Can you go on?"
"Yeah. But not firefight. No."
"Mebbe we should try and find somewhere to hole up. Let you gather strength again."
Jak sighed. "Time's wasting." Ryan figured that this was probably one of Christina's sayings.
"Couple of hours?"
"Sure."
"We'll go on and try to find a shelter. If not we can go back to the gateway."
The boy turned away from him, eyes narrowing. "Something," he whispered, pointing down the wide passage ahead of them.
Ryan couldn't hear a sound, but he trusted Jak's heightened senses.
Both of them drew their blasters, flattening against the curved wall, one on each side. There was no cover at all.
Then Ryan heard it, a peculiar noise, snuffling, halfway between the cooing of a wood pigeon and the whimpering of a young puppy.
He glanced at Jak, who shrugged his shoulders.
The noise grew closer.
Jak laughed, holstering his Magnum. "Cuddlies." He shook his head. "Heard of 'em. Never seen. Double cute."
Ryan also bolstered his SIG-Sauer, finding his own face breaking into a smile. He'd once heard an old man, singing in a gaudy someplace, talk about how people didn't like to eat "cute" food. Chickens were ugly. So were pigs. Kittens were cute, so nobody wanted to eat little kittens.
The cuddlies were cute.
There were three of them, about twelve inches long, with stubby little legs, covered in a coat of hair that was a mixture of honey and gold. They came scampering toward Jak, making tiny noises of pleasure and welcome.
The teenager started to kneel down, beginning to peel off his gloves.
Ryan wished he could have had an old vid-camera to record the charming scene.
The first of the cuddlies reached Jak—and sprang at his throat, ripping a gash with its razored claws that gouted bright crimson blood into the snow.
Chapter Six
"FIREBLAST!"
The second of the cuddlies had set its needled teeth into Jak's calf, just above the top of his heavy combat boot. The third was pattering amiably toward Ryan, its liquid eyes alight with the desire to butcher him.
Hampered by the thick plaid coat, Jak was struggling to knock the creature away from his throat. There was no time for eithe
r man to draw a blaster. Besides, the cuddlies were too close.
Ryan had to look to himself first.
The little furry animal was at his feet, poised on its muscular hind legs, ready to power itself up toward his face.
The panga whispered from its sheath, the haft filling Ryan's gloved hand.
"Fuck bastard!" Jak yelped, dancing away and kicking the second of the cuddlies from his leg. He was grappling with the one that still raked at his face and throat, clinging to the collar of his coat.
Ryan swung the eighteen-inch steel blade down in a curving blow, decapitating the creature. Its head rolled like a child's furry toy, its body plopping dead at his feet, blood trickling from its neck.
Instinctively the second of the miniature killing machines turned away from Jak and went whining toward Ryan. It dodged the first hacking cut from the cleaver, its claws skittering sideways on the powdery snow.
Nothing seemed to deter its murderous intentions, and it closed in on the man again.
Ryan feinted to slash, then turned his wrist, thrusting with the point. It caught the jinking beast through the side of its chubby stomach, penetrating clean out the other side.
There was a squeal of rage and shock from the cuddly, as it was lifted off the ground by the panga, its little legs kicking furiously.
Having got it onto the blade, Ryan was now faced with the problem of getting it off again.
Its jaws gaped, its forked tongue flicking toward him. There was a bizarre image of food being cooked on a long skewer over hot coals.
"Cute fucking food," Ryan grated, clenching his gloved left fist and punching the cuddly as hard as he could. He knocked it off the cleaver onto the floor, where he was able to slice its head off its body as it struggled to regain its feet.
Jak finally ripped the surviving creature from his collar and threw it to the ground. It scampered away down the corridor, its pretty fur matted with the boy's blood.
The youth's face was a mask of scarlet, the plaid coat sodden with blood, steaming in the icy cold. He ripped the jacket off, hands darting behind him, coming out with one of the throwing knives. By now Ryan had drawn his blaster, but Jak waved at him.
"No! Fucker's mine!"
His arm went back then flicked forward, his wrist snapping with the force of the throw. Ryan caught the flash of pale light as the leaf-shaped blade spun along the passage, striking the furry little creature through its nape, severing its spinal cord and leaving it dead in its tracks.
"Ace on the line," Ryan said appreciatively.
"Bastard!" Jak grinned at his companion, teeth like white pearls set in crimson velvet.
Then his eyes rolled upward and he slumped unconscious to the bloodied snow.
THE ANGLES of the corridor held small piles of snow that Ryan was able to melt in the palms of his hands and use to try to clean the teenager's face.
He'd suffered a maze of cuts and gashes, most clean-edged, some of them superficial. There was a longer, deeper one that ran along the angle of Jak's jaw, below his ear, another that just missed the corner of his mouth.
He'd come around in less than half a minute, wincing as the water touched the open wounds.
"Poisoned?" was his first word.
"Doubt it."
"Never heard cuddlies bein' killers."
"Me, neither. Keep still."
The blood had virtually stopped from all but the two deepest cuts. Ryan had torn a strip of cloth from the lining of the plaid coat, pressing it against the lips of the wound, trying to hold them together and check the flow.
But every time he took it away, the crimson began to seep again.
Jak tried to sit up, but Ryan made him lie flat and still.
"Keep watch for more fuckers."
"Sure." He had the blaster drawn and ready by his hand.
The boy lifted his own fingers and touched himself on the cheek, staring fixedly at the brightness of the fresh blood.
"Bad," he said.
"Not good," Ryan agreed.
There was a stretched stillness in the freezing corridor. To Ryan's great relief, there was no sign of any other cuddlies in the vicinity. Despite their diminutive size, they had a murderous passion for killing that would have made a dozen of them potentially lethal opponents.
The wounds weren't in any sense terminal, but they were severe enough to need stitching or clamping. The reality was that they might be facing some double-prejudice action in the next twenty-four hours or so.
"Not fit enough, Jak," Ryan finally said. "Best get back home."
"Another jump?"
"Yeah."
He almost smiled. "Think stay with you."
But they both knew he wasn't going to be able to remain there.
"Can't stop the bleeding."
Jak sniffed. "Tear more cloth. Use it on way home. Be fine."
"I know."
"Sure jump'll be home?"
"Sure." Ryan wasn't at all sure. It all depended on whether anyone else had used the gateway outward in the past couple of days. If they had, then that would be the last destination and that would be where the wounded teenager finished up.
IT DIDN'T TAKE THEM LONG to walk slowly back along the passage, through the large room that held all the master controls for the mat-trans unit, then on through into the gateway itself.
Ryan glanced behind them, seeing that Jak was leaving a clear trail of ruby drops on the shimmering whiteness. If there were many cuddlies left in the redoubt, it wouldn't take them very long to pick up the scent of spilled blood.
"Shall get in?"
"Sure. Get comfortable. Then give me the word, I'll press the buttons and then shut the door for you. All right?"
Jak took another long breath, shaking his head. "Don't know. Mebbe could—"
Ryan slapped him on the shoulder. "Mebbe couldn't, you stupe. Best for both of us, you going back to the others."
"Want blaster?"
"No, thanks. Go on."
"Luck, Ryan."
They shook hands quickly, the merest brush of skin against skin. Jak stepped into the chamber, then spun around. "Fuck that," he said, grabbing Ryan and hugging him hard.
Ryan returned his unexpected show of affection, feeling a slight prickling behind his eyelid. "Go on now."
He waited until the teenager was sitting, facing the doorway.
"Could be better if you lie flat. Sure it'll be okay the other end?"
"Want come see?" A single finger was raised, bringing a smile from Ryan.
The Last Destination control was pressed, then Ryan closed the door firmly, making absolutely sure that the mechanism was triggered.
"Watch your back!" Jak called.
Ryan was fascinated, never having been able to watch a jump from the outside of the gateway. The armaglass walls were unusually dark, but he went to press his face against them.
A great spark of static electricity slapped him across the side of his cheek with an audible crack, making him jump.
He could hear a humming, and there seemed to be tendrils of white mist billowing around, making it impossible to see anything, even to make out the slight figure of Jak Lauren.
A very bright light began to glow behind the armored glass. Ryan could hear a sound like a mighty rushing wind, becoming louder and louder, like standing in the path of a chem-storm hurricane.
It swelled, then began to fade. The light dimmed and he knew that Jak was gone.
And that he was alone.
Chapter Seven
RYAN HAD LOST count of the number of redoubts that he'd been in. The Trader used to reckon that nobody in the United States, except the topmost generals, had ever known just how many had been built. He used to talk about what he called a "new cold war" that had begun close to the end of the century. The secret military complexes had been established in a variety of isolated locations, many of them in commandeered sections of old national parks, as well as some in cities. And one or two in other places.
He walked on, f
ollowing the cold wind, his thoughts turning back to the Trader. The strange half rumor that he'd heard preyed on his mind—the possibility, however remote, that the Trader might still be alive, that his mysterious disappearance, clearly dying, might have been contrived. It wasn't possible. Ryan knew that. Yet nothing was impossible with the Trader.
"Over, under or around," Ryan said, shaking his head and smiling at what had been one of the Trader's favorite sayings. Perhaps that had been how he'd treated death.
Something that you found a way of defeating.
"No." That was foolishness. He knew it. Still, it couldn't be denied that the strange whisper that the Trader could be alive had made his own heart race.
Ryan thought back to redoubts.
Not all of them held gateways. He knew that from experience. But since they'd first discovered how to make jumps, back in the Darks, he seemed to have moved only through the mat-trans system.
Ahead of him, the wide passage was dividing, some fallen slabs of reinforced concrete showing what was probably old nuke damage, either direct from missile hits or indirect from earth shifts.
It felt strange to be on his own, with nobody to consult, no Krysty to ask what she "felt" around them, no J.B. to check his opinion.
He decided to check out the corridor that wound upward. The snow was thicker, drifted into neat piles against the walls, and it creaked under his boots. He stopped to wind his scarf over his nose and mouth. It was so cold that ice was forming in his nostrils, making breathing uncomfortable.
Ryan found more and more evidence of positive nuking damage. This redoubt had suffered some extreme prejudice at enemy hands, meaning it was probably a particularly important establishment. It clearly hadn't been neutron bombing, either, taking out life and leaving buildings. These must have been old-fashioned nukes that simply knocked the shit out of everything and everyone.
Walls were scarred, bare metal supports showing through in places, rust red. Huge chunks of ceiling had fallen, making it hard to scramble by. At one point a large arrow was daubed on the wall, pointing into the deeps of the complex. The light grew stronger.
Ryan glanced at his wrist chron. It had been early morning when they'd left the New Mexico homestead. It took less than two hours to make the jump that had brought them to this frozen place, another hour or so on recovering and on the fight with the cuddlies. It should be close to midday.