Chill Factor

by James Axler

  His eyes had roamed along the line, stopping when it encountered Dean Cawdor. Accompanied by one of the raiders, he'd stepped stiffly forward and paused in front of the boy.

  "I would be grateful to know your name," he'd said.

  Dean had hesitated a moment. "Goode," he said. "Will Goode."

  "I am Gregori Zimyanin, Will. Have you and I ever had the pleasure of making each other's acquaintance? Your face is oddly familiar."

  Dean had been bewildered by the man's odd, accented way of talking, which reminded him a little of Doc Tanner.

  He couldn't have known that the Russian had originally taught himself the language from a book published in 1911, called The English Tongue for the Benefit of the Russian Gentleman Abroad.

  The pockmarked man had tried again. "How old are you, Master Goode?"

  That was a tricky one. Having seen what happened to the young Apache boy, Dean tried to guess what would be a good answer. He hadn't yet seen anyone who looked under about twelve, though he knew that he seemed older than his years. "Thirteen, "he said.

  "Best you call me 'sir,' I think," Zimyanin said, smiling at him.

  A hand, in skintight black gloves, had reached out and touched Dean's face. With an effort he'd avoided recoiling. Fingers and thumb had spread wide, gripping his chin, squeezing. Dean had heard the bones creaking, and a little blood had seeped from his gums at the man's strength.

  Finally he'd let him go. "Watch yourself, Master Goode," Zimyanin had warned him. "There are those who would spread your lower limbs and attempt to penetrate you with their privy member. I do not permit that, but I can do little to prevent it. The lust that does not even whisper its name, as the poet had it."

  He'd smiled again and patted the boy on the cheek, leaving him puzzled and frightened.

  DEAN FELT HIMSELF SLIDING down toward sleep, welcomed after the rigors of the endless day. The work had been appallingly tough.

  They'd been roused at dawn, counted and fed with ample bowls of hot, salty soup, then marched under armed guard to the nearest of the mines.

  The boy's eyes closed, his memory of the next fourteen hours fading into a dismal blur.

  His last conscious thought was to wonder if his father would know where he'd been taken.

  Would he come after him?

  "Ryan," he whispered.

  Chapter Ten

  "DEAN," RYAN SAID.

  He was sitting huddled in a corner of the corridor, some distance back toward the gateway, closer to the ruined entrance.

  There was still no shred of real proof that his son was anywhere within a thousand miles of the redoubt, but if he wasn't down in the valley, working in Zimyanin's sulfur mines, then he might be anywhere in the whole of Deathlands.

  The food that Christina had given them was delicious, though it was already becoming stale. Water wasn't a problem in such a frozen wilderness, so Ryan drank deeply from his canteen.

  He lifted his head, leaning forward a little, straining his hearing. He tried to snatch again at the faint, elusive sound that had disturbed him.

  Without any conscious movement, Ryan's right hand was on the butt of his blaster.

  There it was again. Still only the smallest noise, far off, but in the overwhelming stillness of the stone sarcophagus it was unmistakable.

  Ryan stood, the SIG-Sauer drawn, his back against the curved wall. It wasn't a good place to try to defend, and he decided to move out to the place where the passage divided.

  The sound followed him.

  Each time he stopped, allowing the echoes of his own movement to fade away, the distant noise was closer to him.

  Ryan tried to analyze it: something that both clicked and scraped. Possibly a large bird.

  That was a particularly chilling thought, to be pursued along the endless passage by some vast, mutated eagle, with a huge beak of bronze and claws like steel arrowheads.

  He moved away faster.

  When he went more quickly, the noise seemed to recede a little. And when he slowed, gathering breath, it came closer again.

  There was an inexorable, worrying, ceaseless quality to the pursuer. Or was there more than one of them? Was it a flock of feathered avengers? It couldn't be birds. They'd have caught him now. Lizards? Snakes?

  Whatever it was, it kept on coming, never altering its speed.

  "Like a bastard machine," he said, as he stopped again for a few moments.

  RYAN WAS OUT OF BREATH, doubled over with a stitch, wincing at the pain in his side. "Time to stop running," he panted.

  He'd chosen to go toward the outside of the complex, halting as he neared the entrance. Outside it was snowing, the flakes drifting by on a gentle wind from the north. It was evening, the light almost gone. The tunnel was still dimly lighted by the remaining few ceiling lamps.

  There was rubble everywhere, and Ryan picked a large pile to make his stand. He kneeled behind it, gun ready, waiting for his pursuer to reveal itself. Clicking and scraping.

  Whatever it was moved steadily along, keeping up a good brisk walking pace mile after mile, without once stoping or checking, following him as though an invisible wire linked them together.

  The wide passage in front of Ryan curved slightly to the right, so that it wasn't possible to see what was advancing toward him. At his back there was another fifty yards or so of the package, then the open space above the endless, dark drop down into the valley far below.

  Now the noise was much louder, so close that Ryan could pick out new, subtle shades and tones buried within it.

  There was a faint creaking, or squeaking, like unoiled hinges on a door, the metallic scraping sound and a faint mechanical whirring. Ryan shook his head, trying to imagine what could be moving toward him around the bend of the corridor. It now cast an oddly distorted shadow in front of itself, from the brighter lights farther in.

  "Come on," he breathed, steadying his right hand, holding the blaster in his left hand.

  The floor was far more uneven, heaps of tumbled stone scattered all around. From the sudden slowing of the noises, it seemed as if Ryan's pursuer was finding it peculiarly difficult. The steps had become hesitant, less even.

  The shadow still moved, growing shorter. Ryan squinted along the barrel of the pistol, centering it chest-high, onto the middle of the wide corridor.

  The sec-hunter android suddenly appeared in his sights.

  "Triple fuck," Ryan growled. The robot stopped.

  In the half-light it looked less human than when it had been standing on the plinth with its four fellows. The head was a mass of metallic planes, the ruby eyes reminding Ryan of Jak Lauren. It turned very slowly from side to side, almost as though it were trying to scent its prey. Its hands hung motionless at the end of the skeletal arms, the polished chrome reflecting the overhead lamps.

  Ryan guessed what must have happened. The warning on the card, and on the floor, came back to him. Obviously he'd managed to trigger the sec hunter, allowing it to somehow lock on to him and trail him through the redoubt.

  A droid like this wouldn't have much of a range, he figured. Maybe his best plan was simply to keep moving and outrun it. Assuming it had been making its best speed, Ryan knew he could go faster. And it looked as though it would be clumsy on anything other than a smooth, flat surface. Get it outside, and it would quickly lose interest in him.

  Ryan stood, which turned out to be a serious error of judgment.

  The android made a peculiar whining sound. In his imagination, Ryan thought it was like an inward cry of triumph. Its head came up, and its eyes bored through the semidarkness straight toward the waiting man. It crossed Ryan's mind that the creature was probably fitted with some sort of night sight.

  The appearance of the hunter droid was so menacing that the man instinctively ducked down again. The steel frame seemed to quiver with a tense anticipation as it stared fixedly toward him.

  There was a long silence.

  "Malfunction?" Ryan whispered. After all, the thing was a hundr
ed years old.

  There was the faint noise of tiny gears meshing, and then steal on stone as it began to move forward again.

  Ryan risked another glance. His greatest worry was that the droid could be equipped with some sort of laser weapon. The moment it centered properly on him there would be a narrow beam of lethal red light that would cut him in half.

  But the carapace of steel across its chest didn't seem to contain any kind of opening for a weapon.

  It was moving slowly, with an odd, clumsy grace, picking its way around the fallen chunks of stone from the walls and the ceiling.

  The distance between them was less than twenty paces and diminishing.

  The idea of simply running away was still attractive, and Ryan glanced behind him to the mouth of the long tunnel.

  He smiled to himself, remembering the Trader again. "Man who runs away, lives to run away another day," he used to say.

  "Dead enemy won't trouble you again," Ryan said. "Logical advice sure gets you in a spin."

  He stood and fired four carefully aimed shots at the advancing droid.

  Two hit the middle of the chest armor, one at the narrow conduit of the throat and the fourth between the eyes.

  The 9 mm full-metal-jacket rounds punched the android back in its tracks. The two to the chest region ricocheted in a starburst of sparks, screaming into the blackness of the tunnel. The one to the narrow throat clipped the side, ripping the metal, exposing a tangle of colored cables. The one to the chromed skull impacted solidly, leaving a neat circular hole in the forehead, an inch from the glowing eyes.

  "Got you, you tin-can bastard," Ryan said, straightening up.

  The droid leaned forward at an odd angle, then resumed its careful walk, picking its way among the rocks, clawed feet lifted high.

  "Fireblast."

  The gap between them had now shrunk to barely ten paces.

  The SIG-Sauer carried fifteen rounds in a full mag. Ryan fired six more, concentrating on the droid's head.

  At that range it was utterly impossible for him to miss.

  All six struck home in an area no larger than a thumbnail, rocking the android. Ryan heard a grinding and grating sound. One of the crimson eyes blinked out. The mouth opened and closed a dozen times at lightning speed, giving him a glimpse of a triple row of serrated teeth, slightly rusted.

  The right arm lifted, the pincers clicking together. The right leg lifted, slowly, then lowered again. Dented and holed, the droid's head revolved clear around through three hundred and sixty degrees, the one eye gazing toward Ryan again.

  He fired two more shots, taking out the last eye, but still not knocking the creature over.

  Ryan backed away, as silently as he could, toward the opening, the freezing air brushing against him. His boots scuffed at the loose sand, making only a whisper of sound.

  That was enough for the hypersensitive aural receivers in the android's skull.

  It began to stumble toward Ryan, both arms up, the knives whirring at the end of the elongated left arm.

  He turned and ran toward the fresh evening air, taking care not to trip and fall. Behind him he could hear the robot coming after him.

  In the entrance Ryan paused and looked back, seeing that the great hole in the misshapen head was leaking a thick, clear oil.

  As soon as he stopped moving, the droid also stopped. Its blinded skull turning from side to side. Ryan noticed that one of the arms now hung motionless, and it was rocking unsteadily.

  There was the hope that the bullets might have done sufficient damage to eventually render the machine totally harmless.

  That might only take a few seconds. Possibly minutes?

  Hours? Ryan thought.

  Close to the open air he was conscious once more of the extreme cold. Standing motionless, he could already feel numbness at his finger ends.

  There was a loud click, as though a contact had been thrown. The head of the sec hunter tilted to one side, as if it were listening to a particularly intriguing story.

  The turgid oil was dripping over its splayed feet, pattering on the icy floor of the tunnel.

  Ryan considered emptying the rest of the mag into the chest cavity, where he assumed the master controls lay. But if twelve rounds hadn't chilled it, another few bullets might just be wasted.

  He made his decision. The one-eyed man raced to the very edge of the abyss and stopped there, calling to it. "Come on, you bastard! Here!"

  Then he took four cautious steps to the side, near a pile of jumbled stones.

  The crippled droid lurched toward the gap, out into the open, hesitating as if it sensed the sudden widening of the air around it.

  It was less than six feet from Ryan, close enough for him to be able to hear its dying. Contacts were crackling and fuses blowing deep inside its armored heart. The blinded head turned very slowly, and he readied himself to avoid any attack. He could smell hot lubricating oil, taste the thin coil of brownish smoke that trailed from its gashed throat. Its head turned away again, with an uncomfortable grating sound. On the end of the dead arm, the knife blades were moving very gently, tinkling like tiny temple bells.

  Ryan held his breath. He reached down and picked up a stone the size of his fist and lobbed it over the edge of the damaged roadway, hearing it rattle and clatter down the sheer cliff face.

  The droid turned its head slowly, painfully, taking a hesitant step forward, its steel claws extended out into cold space.

  Ryan braced himself. "Good night," he said, dropping a shoulder and hitting the droid in the middle of its back.

  Its arm whipped round with ferocious speed, catching the man a glancing blow on the elbow with the steel hammer. Ryan yelped and staggered away, clutching at himself.

  Knocked off balance, the droid couldn't do anything to save itself. Its feet raised and lowered, stamping on the crumbling stone.

  As Ryan watched through a watering eye, it toppled over and vanished.

  He sat and rubbed his bruised arm.

  It was becoming even colder.

  WHEN RYAN WENT to peer into the stygian depths of the valley half an hour after the sec hunter had disappeared, he thought he could still hear faint scrabbling sounds. A quarter of an hour later, the noises had stopped.

  The moon had come out and he could now see the glittering remains of the killer droid, lying in fragments near the edge of the sulfurous river.

  His elbow was still painful and swollen from the blow, and Ryan kept trying to massage it into movement.

  Before going down into the valley, he needed to get some rest. The fight with the sec hunter hadn't been physically demanding, but the surge of adrenaline into the blood always left a person having to pay the price later.

  Now he felt exhausted, conscious of the toll he was meeting for the tiring jump and its aftermath.

  If he wasn't to risk freezing to death, it was vital that he found some kind of shelter, which meant plunging back inside the redoubt.

  There was no point in trudging all the way to the section where he'd inadvertently triggered the security android.

  The temperature rose slowly, the deeper he walked. It didn't get anywhere near above freezing, but warm enough for him to sit huddled inside his coat, legs tucked under him.

  Sleep came easily to him.

  Despite the rigors of the past twenty-four hours, Ryan slipped into a comfortable, dreamless rest, head slumped on his chin.

  He woke only moments before the second of the killer androids attacked him.

  Chapter Eleven

  IT HAD COME sidling along the shadowy passage, dragging one useless leg behind it, the razored knives on its left hand constantly moving. It was like some dreadful monster from an age-old horror vid, the red glow of its eyes burning toward its prey.

  Water had seeped through faults in the rock above the complex, turning to a sheet of ice on walls and floor for more than a hundred yards. This glistening surface enabled the sec hunter to move along in almost total, whispering sile
nce.

  Only Ryan's extra survival sense saved his life.

  Though he wasn't consciously aware of it, he was actually moving even before his eye clicked open and the retina registered the chromed nemesis looming above him.

  The knives sparked on the wall immediately behind where he'd been sitting, one of the blades snapping in half. At the same time the droid's clubbing right arm brushed against his shoulder.

  Ryan had, of course, reloaded the SIG-Sauer right after his encounter with the first of the programmed robots. But he knew that there was little point in pumping a dozen precious rounds into the creature.

  He always had two spare mags in his pockets, but that still meant that he had less than forty bullets for the rest of his venture to rescue Dean.

  He rolled in a side-on somersault, the heavy coat making him clumsy.

  If the droid hadn't lost power to its right leg, Ryan could well have forfeited his life in that dark, bleak place.

  As it was, the attack was a clumsy, crabbed shuffle, both arms flailing toward the man. But Ryan was quicker, managing to get to his feet, running a few paces away from the android.

  Though he'd automatically gone for the blaster, Ryan bolstered it, weighing up his metal opponent, trying to see where its weakness lay.

  From his experience with the first of the killer droids, Ryan knew that it was frighteningly well-armored against bullets, and that it had a speed that more than matched his own. His only edge seemed to be in maneuverability. So far he'd been able to dodge its lunges and thrusts. But the first android had been handicapped by the fallen rocks and this one by its damaged leg.

  It wouldn't be fun meeting one out on dry, smooth ground.

  The droid's head kept turning, gears buzzing noisily, both arms windmilling. But it seemed to be having difficulty in locating its target.