Chill Factor

by James Axler

  "Fourteen hundred," Ryan said. Somewhere along the line a couple of hours had somehow gone missing. There were so many things about the mat-trans system that were inexplicable.

  Less than a hundred paces farther on, Ryan found himself out in the open. He hesitated, keeping within the shadowed mouth of the cavern. Here the damage was total. There wasn't any way of being sure, but it looked to Ryan as though the redoubt had once extended a good deal farther. But there'd obviously been a number of direct hits by nukes, hitting the sec doors and demolishing them in explosions of almost unbelievable intensity.

  Outside there was a day of fierce dullness. A leaden sky squatted over the surrounding mountains, leaking occasional random flakes of uncertain snow.

  Ryan was high above a valley. A steep trail picked its cautious way down the flank of the mountain toward a frozen river at the bottom. Layers of mist sliced into each other, rendering it difficult to make out what was happening at the lower end of the narrow roadway.

  There appeared to be some kind of industrial complex, with a broad highway running parallel to the river, and dark tunnels that vanished into the steep crags opposite.

  Ryan shaded his eye with his hand, peering into the sighing depths two thousand feet below him, trying to make out what was happening. It looked like a mine, with several shafts. There was a number of buildings, some with smoke or steam billowing from them.

  Close by the river there was what could be a spoil tip, covered in snow, but with a pale yellow streak running from it into the water.

  "Sulfur?" Ryan said. "Could be."

  There was a wide variety of mines scattered throughout Deathlands. Some of the older minerals, like gold, silver and platinum, were now of very little value. With scant industry, it was the older basics like coal, iron and lead that mattered. And sulfur was useful to make so many things, most notably explosives.

  It was also, Ryan knew, in very short supply. If the scene below him was a substantial sulfur mine, then it would represent enough jack to turn a man into a baron overnight.

  And if that man happened to be Major-Commissar Gregort Zimyanin?

  THE MIST WAS THICKENING and the snow was beginning to fall with a more serious sense of purpose. Ryan looked once into the valley, deciding that he really didn't want to pick his way down that exposed trail. If it was Zimyanin, then it would be very surprising if there wasn't armed guards all over the place, probably with glasses, monitoring the area around. From above, it appeared that there was only one road into the site, though the head of the long box canyon had a faint track smeared across the sheer face at its end.

  It would make more sense to try to get down into the occupied zone during the hours of darkness, which meant finding somewhere to hole up until then.

  He retreated along the corridor until he found the place where it had split, turned and went along the second passage.

  It dipped and climbed, with no side turnings and no doors of any sort. The lights were worse, with only one of eight working. Ryan was able to see that this was the way less used. There was little driven snow and only the faintest of boot marks.

  Eventually even those vanished.

  It was a puzzle why the corridor went such a long way without getting anywhere. Ryan guessed he'd walked over a mile, along a featureless tunnel.

  When he glanced up, surprised to find no sec-vids at all, he spotted the height of the ceiling—and the heavy-duty brackets fixed there at intervals.

  "Monorail wags," he said, his voice disappearing into the vastness below the mountain.

  This wasn't a normal corridor like in other redoubts. This was a communication link between two totally separate sections of the military complex. In the days before the endless frosts there would have been little metal cars, suspended from an overhead rail, whisking personnel at high speed from one part of the redoubt to the next.

  RYAN HAD WALKED for more than an hour. He was sweating, his coat unbuttoned. He'd noticed that the lights were getting stronger again, with nearly fifty percent of them functioning perfectly.

  And there were bones.

  In the four weary miles of passages there'd been skeletons of a variety of wildlife that had crept into the redoubt and died there, of either starvation or thirst.

  Only one was human, the brittle clothes indicating he'd died many years earlier. And the manner of his passing was clear. The bones were entangled with those of a middle-sized bear. A rusting iron spear was buried in the hollowed rib cage of the animal, piercing the ragged shreds of hide.

  Ryan stopped to eat, sipping sparingly at his canteen. He looked ahead of him, then back. It was impossible to tell which was which. Both looked utterly, blankly identical.

  But Ryan knew. He'd been blessed since his early youth with an excellent sense of direction. He carefully corked the canteen and pressed on, past the heap of white bones.

  It was another mile before he finally reached the sec doors.

  By now, he guessed that he must have traveled almost through the mountain, well into another valley. Or, possibly, much farther down the present one. Either way, he was a long ways off from the mine.

  And, probably farther away from his son.

  "CLOSED," HE MUTTERED. "Fireblast! Got to stop talking to myself. The first sign of turning shithouse rat crazed."

  They were massive vanadium-steel doors, running from floor to ceiling, with not enough room to get a gnat's wing through the gap.

  Ryan closed his eye and sighed. It was a double bastard that meant he'd have to walk partway back and then find some corner to curl up and sleep.

  There was a sign to the right of the doors:

  Security Weapons Research Unit. Closed Access. Personnel Cleared C5 and Above. Must Carry and Show Passes at All Times. Warning! This Means You. Sec Traps Set. Termination Levels Apply. Project Styx Subordinated Overproject Whisper ComSecCaWeaRes.

  It was one of the longest notices that Ryan had ever seen, and one of the most meaningless, though he didn't like the sound of "sec traps," and "termination level" had a finite ring to it. Since he couldn't get in through locked sec doors, none of it mattered very much anyway.

  "Bastard," he said quietly, banging his fist on the dark green door.

  He was already turning away from it when he realized something extraordinary. The door had moved.

  Ryan shook his head. Maybe the place was getting to him. He pushed gently against the cold steel.

  It did move. Only a fraction of an inch, but it had definitely moved.

  He leaned against it, using all of his strength. Silently the sec door began to open.

  Half an inch.

  An inch.

  Six inches.

  At two feet Ryan stopped pushing and peered through the gap, sticking out his tongue to try to taste the air.

  It tasted stale but breathable, just what he'd have hoped for in a section of a redoubt that had been sealed off for about a century.

  The light was much brighter inside. Ryan could see a kind of entrance hall, about a hundred feet across, with several smaller sec doors leading off it. All were shut.

  The floor was patterned with zigzag black-and-white squares, with silver wire in between the large tiles.

  Blaster in hand, Ryan slipped through the part-open doorway into the weapons research unit of the complex. Somewhere to his right, from a large black box with dancing green lights, he heard a faint click.

  He moved forward, his boots ringing on the tiles. To his surprise, he found that they were made of metal. Somewhere behind the walls, in the utter silence, Ryan could hear a humming, swelling noise, becoming louder, sounding like a generator building up a powerful electrical charge.

  "Sec traps," he said. "Termination levels."

  Then, before his brain could make all the connections, the murderous booby trap detonated itself and exploded into terminal action.

  Chapter Eight

  RYAN'S FIGHTING REFLEXES had sustained him through thirty-five or so years in Deathlands. They
'd carried him out of innumerable life-threatening situations. But what he'd also had was luck.

  This time it was luck that saved him.

  The patterned floor was simply a huge death trap, triggered by his weight. A massive jolt of electricity ran through the steel tiles, designed to fry anything and anybody.

  The mechanism was a hundred years old, designed in the megacull times before the ancient Earth died. The nuke generator responded nobly to the sudden call on its resources, providing the surge of power. But the wiring had rusted and frayed, attacked by damp and cold.

  Ryan was already starting to move, diving forward to try to get off the black-and-white patterns. His heart pounded with the bitter realization that he'd likely be too late.

  There was a crackling and a choking stench of ozone and burning insulation. Sparks erupted behind him and around him. He felt the blast of electricity as it hit him, sending him spinning off balance. The breath was driven from his body, and every muscle went into a spasmodic paroxysm.

  But the aged sec trap had malfunctioned before anything near full power had been able to lash at the intruder. It had still been enough to knock Ryan on his ass, leaving him shuddering and shocked.

  "Fireblast!"

  He lay on his side, the SIG-Sauer twenty feet away, near one of the sec doors. When Ryan tried to sit up he found that his left arm was jerking, the fingers opening and closing, all utterly beyond his control.

  It took a quarter hour before he could stand. He staggered backward, whistling between parted lips, finding that his pulse was finally back somewhere toward normal.

  He looked at the floor by the entrance and saw that some of the metal tiles appeared to have melted, and that thin tendrils of smoke were still snaking up from between them.

  The box on the wall that had been gleaming with green lights now hung off at an angle, its interior blackened and charred.

  "Terminal sec trap," Ryan muttered. "Wonder if there's any more like you."

  His blaster safely holstered again, he made the rounds of the other doors, finding that all of them were securely locked against him.

  All but one.

  Ryan was puzzled why a double sec barrier should have been used for a single room, and why it had been left unsealed when all the others were triple bolted.

  The room was empty, except for a huge dust sheet draped over something. Or some things.

  Ryan grabbed a corner and pulled. The cloth disintegrated in his fingers, falling apart in a cloud of stinking dust. Coughing and blinded, Ryan staggered away, rubbing at his eye.

  Blinking through tears, he tried to recognize what it was that stood on a low stone plinth. It was some kind of machinery.

  He wiped his eye with the sleeve of his coat, finally clearing his vision.

  He could now see there was a wide red line painted on the floor around the plinth. The word "WARNING" was repeated several times. A rectangle of white card, which looked as though it had been propped against the machines, had fallen over when he tugged the cloth away and now lay facedown inside the red line.

  He looked up at the machines, fascinated by their strangeness.

  "Droids?" he asked himself.

  Five humanoid robots stood there patiently, legs slightly bent at the knees, arms dangling at their sides. They were no more than five feet tall, built mainly from rods of chromed steel. They gleamed in the overhead lights, untarnished by the passing of long, solitary years.

  The heads were polished domes, with small crystals set in place of eyes. They were dull and lifeless. Below was the android equivalent of a mouth—a metallic slit, half open, with the hint of teeth within. Was there a sharpness there? It wasn't possible to tell.

  The neck was tubular, articulated, like the small scales on the throat of a serpent. The chest was armored, broad, containing all the comp controls. Each arm was slightly longer than a human's would be, in proportion to its height, giving the robot the appearance of an orangutan, slouching toward eternity.

  One arm ended in three digits. Two were like pincers, with honed edges. The third was a clubbing hammer. The other arm terminated in four sharp blades, their points winking like needles.

  The droids' legs were a little shorter than those of a man, ending in flexible platforms, each tipped with shorter versions of the finger knives.

  They were the ugliest creations that Ryan had ever encountered.

  "Wouldn't like to meet you guys in a dead-end street at midnight," he said.

  Ryan was about to turn away, but the fallen notice captured his attention.

  Part of his concentration was focused on the quintet of stunted robots, and he ignored the red line and the warning painted on the floor. He stepped across it and bent to pick up the large card.

  Far away there were five dark panels on a control console. One of them became illuminated with the single word "Activate." Another set of screens lighted up, and flashed "Genetic Recording."

  The card was creased, the corners dog-eared and bent. The writing was covered in dust, and Ryan wiped it clear with his sleeve, his forehead wrinkling as he followed the faded printing.

  It was headed with a single line in maroon capital letters: SEC HUNTERS.

  Underneath there was an explanation, as though the five creatures had been exhibits in some sort of a military museum.

  Developed in the late nineties using latest cybernetic technology, the sec hunters are the most sophisticated devices known to man, and are years ahead of any comparable machinery from the Eastern Bloc. They "sniff out" the genetic body pattern of their prey. Once locked on to that one individual, they will follow and destroy, even though it takes them to the ends of the known world. Nothing short of total destruction will divert them from their lethal purpose.

  Ryan sniffed. At the back of his neck, the short hairs were beginning to prickle. He looked around the silent, deserted room, but nothing moved. Not even a grain of dust.

  There were a few more lines at the bottom of the notice.

  Warning: During test conditions on the sec hunters it is very dangerous to cross the marked red line. To do so may expose you to a potentially serious threat. If this caution is ignored and death, maiming or harm to personal possessions results, then the Government of the United States declares itself not liable for any, all or several suits for damages arising. In the event of accidental crossing of warning line IMMEDIATELY notify the nearest guard who will negate termination instructions to the devices. You have been warned.

  Not much of that made too much sense to Ryan Cawdor. He dropped the card back onto the floor and walked a few paces away, looking up at the five motionless pieces of ancient machinery.

  They had an air of menace about them that was unsettling. Ryan decided that he wouldn't spend the night in the same room and turned on his heel, walking out of the room, through the sec doors, back into the rest of the redoubt.

  Behind him the stillness was unbroken.

  For long seconds nothing happened. Then, in the empty silence, red lights clicked on in the eyes of one of the sec-hunter androids.

  Chapter Nine

  LESS THAN TWO miles from his father, Dean Cawdor was getting himself ready for sleep.

  He was tired and sore, his hands blistered, his lungs filled with filthy yellow dust. Dean kept coughing, trying to clear his throat of the ocher phlegm that threatened to choke him.

  In the dormitory around him, the semidarkness was noisy with coughing.

  Sulfur mines are hard on breathing.

  The ten-year-old boy lay on his back, staring at the rocky ceiling of the cavern only a few inches from his face. He didn't cry. Dean Cawdor knew better than to waste his time on pointless weeping.

  The past forty-eight hours would have been enough to reduce most men to helpless self-pity. Ryan's son had been devastated by what had happened, but he wasn't about to give in—not to anything nor anybody.

  The slavers had come at him out of a clear day, without any warning. By the time he'd seen the sign of
their dust, it had been way too late.

  His Smith & Wesson 425, with its ten rounds of rimfire .22, had been safely, and uselessly, back on his bunk in the Lauren homestead.

  They'd been brutally competent, but their hasty body search hadn't found the thin-bladed knife with the turquoise hilt sheathed in the small of his back.

  They'd tied his wrists behind him with a slender thong of rawhide, then hefted him onto a horse on a lead rein.

  The jump had been done, he thought, in two lots. The chamber wasn't large enough to accommodate the whole party, with their captives. There'd been four other prisoners with the gang, all male, all young. One was an Apache who spoke no English.

  The leader of the raiders had tried to make him talk, but the handsome boy had shaken his head and spit at the man, who'd drawn a long knife and cut the Apache's throat from side to side, dropping him to the sandy desert to kick and bleed.

  Once they'd arrived in the freezing redoubt, the prisoners had been hustled along, thrown warm coats and gloves to combat the bitter chill.

  The march down into the valley had been slippery, with rutted ice along the trail. Dean had spotted the mine and caught the sour smell of sulfur. He remembered the yellow spoil heap from a similar operation in the east, when he'd been with his mother.

  As they drew nearer he was able to appreciate the scale of the scene. There were dozens of men, and a few women, hauling tubs of raw earth in iron buckets along narrow rails. The guards wore a silver circle either on caps or on their chests.

  Along to the left, hidden in the shadows of the three-tiered bunks, Dean heard someone talking in his sleep, chattering and trying to explain that his mother would be worried about him. There was the sound of a punch against flesh and the talking stopped.

  The young boy was exhausted.

  After they'd been brought to the wired-in compound, someone had come to inspect them, a short, very muscular man that Dean had guessed must be the leader of the complex. He'd had a drooping mustache and had once removed a fur cap to show a totally bald skull. His face was very badly scarred, as though someone had fired salt at his skin from a scat-tergun.