Chill Factor

by James Axler

  TIME WAS DIFFICULT to calculate, groping through the endless corridors. The tiny battery on the chron derived its power from the sun, and Ryan was hesitant to use its light facility in case it ran out. But he checked every now and again.

  "Been down here about five hours," he said.

  "Seems longer." Kate sniffed. "Colder."

  "Feel fresh air. Noticed it some time back, when we went off down that side shaft and had to come back again. Could be getting closer to the outside. You feel it?"

  He rested with his hand just touching the rough cold wall. Now, standing still, he listened to try to hear… anything. But there was just the tidal swell of blood coursing through the secret canals of his inner ear.

  "Can't feel anything, Ryan. Just double cold and triple tired."

  "Want to take five?"

  "Yes."

  They sat side by side, backs against the wall, knees tucked up for warmth. Ryan felt Kate's hand move onto his arm, down to his wrist, touching his gloved fingers.

  "Ryan?"

  "What?"

  "You got a woman?"

  "Yeah."

  "Where?"

  "Back where I come from."

  "Where's that?"

  "South."

  "Never been south. Heard it's hot. You know any barons down south?"

  "Met some. Why?"

  "Cody used to say he could've been a baron once. If he'd had the luck."

  Ryan laughed quietly. "Friend of mine called Trader used to say that if he'd had big enough wings he could have flown to the sun."

  But Kate didn't laugh. She wasn't even listening to what he'd said.

  "You hear water?"

  "No."

  "I got good ears. Used to hear them bringing the soup around in the sulfur mine, way before anyone else did."

  "No. Still can't hear it. What kind of water? Louder or nearer?"

  Kate let go of his hand and Ryan could almost feel her concentration.

  "Running water. Like…like a stream, but real far. Not getting any louder."

  Despite the biting cold, Ryan's first thought had been that there might be a flash flood racing through the twisting caverns.

  "You sure about the noise not being louder?"

  "Sure, Ryan. Can't you hear it? Guess I got young ears. Cody used to tell me that. Young ears."

  Ryan had a strange momentary flash of realization that he knew hardly anyone as old as he was. Virtually every friend he'd ever had was dead. There were so many kids in Deathlands.

  "Mebbe we should go take a look at this water," he said.

  IT WAS an embarrassment to him that they'd walked another ten minutes before he was certain that he, too, could hear the sound.

  It was a dull pounding, like a river going through a deep gorge. Ten more minutes on their blind trudge along the tunnel, and he could feel vibration coming through the wall to his fingers.

  Despite the difficulties of keeping any sense of direction in the pitch blackness, Ryan had thought for some time that they'd been moving generally downward.

  "Air smells damp." Kate was still close at his heels.

  "Yeah. There's ice forming on the floor again. Watch your step."

  The round walls of the shaft were also carrying a thin coating of frozen water, slick against his gloved fingers.

  THE NOISE SWELLED, until normal conversation became impossible.

  From a murmur it became a sullen roar, filling the ears. Now they could both taste the dampness of spray on their lips, the water filming their faces and clothes, freezing almost immediately.

  Kate was excited at the thrill of something to break the grinding monotony of the endless, featureless passageways. Ryan was apprehensive.

  By the deafening thunder, it was obvious they were near to a massive underground river, maybe one that drove the power turbines of Zimyanin's sulfur mines.

  To encounter it in the swamping blackness of the shafts was a terrifying prospect.

  But the reality was worse. The noise made the senses reel. The air shook with it, taking away all awareness of time and place.

  The footing had become treacherous. The floor had generally been very smooth, but now there were small pebbles and larger stones. The walls were rougher, with slabs fallen away and patches of something that felt like a coarse lichen.

  Ryan stopped and pressed his mouth to Kate's ear, bellowing at the top of his voice. "This must flood some times. Triple care."

  He felt her head nod understanding.

  KATE FELL FIRST. She grabbed at Ryan as she went down, but her fingers slipped off his wet coat and she crashed to the stone floor.

  He stopped and knelt, fumbling to try to find her. But the girl had completely vanished.

  Ryan shouted her name, though he realized that shouting was utterly useless. She could be only six inches away from him and she wouldn't hear a word.

  The ice at this point was thick, swirling under his hand in ribbons of frozen velvet. The passage was sloping downhill, and he had to struggle to keep himself from sliding.

  Something brushed against the side of his head and he turned toward it, feeling Kate's boot on his cheek.

  Ryan grabbed at it, reaching his way up her leg, pulling the young woman closer to him.

  She was wriggling, her hands beating at him in a feeble, protesting way, as if she were trying to push him off.

  Ryan rolled on top of her, pinning her down, feeling both of them slipping on the slick floor. He managed to get his face somewhere close to hers, calling out as loudly as he could.

  "You all right?"

  He lay his stubbled face against her mouth, feeling her lips moving, her breath warm in his ear.

  "Yeah. Bit bruised. Get…"

  He couldn't hear the last part so he yelled for her to repeat it,

  "Said get off me!" she screamed.

  With an effort, they both managed to regain their footing, clinging to each other like a pair of drunken dancers.

  Ryan's worry was deepening every moment. The idea of having to go back was depressing and potentially life-threatening. He hadn't found a side passage they could have tried for what seemed like hours, and there was always the serious hazard of the sec hunter, mindlessly wandering the dark passages, hunting him down.

  To try to make sure they stayed together, he linked hands with the young woman, picking his way over the solid floor of ice past tumbled boulders, their progress slowed to a crawl.

  He was soaked and frozen, the spray that filled the chambers penetrating through the layers of his clothes. Every movement brought a stiff crackling from the delicate tracery of ice that covered every inch of his body and head.

  A few yards farther on, disaster finally struck.

  A huge fallen rock had tumbled from the roof of the passage and lay smack in the middle. It was eight feet high, shaped like a pyramid and sheeted in pebbled ice.

  Ryan was leading the way over it, fingers locked with Kate's, when he lost his footing on the farther side. He gave a soundless cry, swamped by the rambling of the water, and began to slide, out of control.

  When his boots struck the passage floor, Ryan knew that they were in serious trouble. It sloped steeply away from him, toward the sound of the river. He tried to let go, but the young woman was also slipping, her hand tightly gripping his.

  In desperation, Ryan kicked out with his steel-tipped combat boots, chips of ice flying around them. But he couldn't get a purchase, sliding faster and faster, feet first.

  For a moment he was aware that they were both falling through space, then Kate was whirled away from him as they both plunged into the racing, icy river.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE SHOCK WAS so terrible that it nearly stopped Ryan's heart. Though he'd been cold and wet before sliding helplessly into the black waters of the underground river, it was immeasurably, unimaginably so much more ghastly.

  It was as though his entire body had been dumped into a whirlpool of razored ice crystals, while making a particularl
y bad mat-trans jump.

  He lost contact with Kate immediately, their hands torn apart by the astounding pressure of the water's flow.

  Ryan was rolled head over heels, trying to bring up his knees to make himself as small as possible. But control was out of the question. There wasn't the tiniest glimmer of light as he spun along, nothing that would give him the slightest clue which way was up.

  Even holding his breath was difficult with the pressure of the river squeezing and pushing him. For a moment he felt something brush up against him, which he guessed must be Kate. But the current wrenched them apart again.

  He knew that death was grinning close by, ready to take him into its own endless darkness. A river like this might run for miles beneath the mountains, sometimes dropping hundreds of feet over a jagged abyss, or squeezing itself into a narrow tunnel, filling it from floor to roof.

  He grabbed another breath.

  The water turned him, so that he was going feet first, carried at what seemed a dizzy speed, the icy flood surging into mouth and nostrils, nearly choking him.

  THREE TIMES Ryan had bobbed to the surface, the blackness and the bitter cold of the air seeming little different to the darkness below the freezing river.

  Each time he was able to take in less air before being dragged under again.

  Despite his desperate efforts to survive, he could feel that he was losing control.

  J. B. Dix had once told him that a man falling through ice on a winter lake, in the farthest north, could measure his life in seconds. Even if he was hauled out immediately, the chill would have gone bone-deep and death was almost certain.

  The immense weight and power of the water was drowning his mind as well as his body. Despite his efforts to fight for air, the weight of his clothes and the cold were dragging him down.

  Deeper.

  But he became dimly aware that the movement of the river had changed. The crushing force that had toyed with him was slowing and becoming more gentle.

  Ryan kicked hard, hoping he was moving in the right direction, feeling his lungs close to bursting. His long-held breath whooshed out as his head again broke the surface.

  After the torrent, it was more like floating in a gentle lake. He was conscious of space above and around him, like in the huge chamber that he'd encountered earlier in his explorations of the old mine.

  By swimming out, he was able to move even farther from the center of the current, eventually bumping into a wall of smooth, wet rock. Though the turbulence and pace had all eased, he was still being carried along at a brisk walking pace, unable to find any purchase at all on the sides of the tunnel.

  Ryan shook his head, clearing his ears. The brain-numbing sound of the torrent had faded away behind him. Or was it in front of him?

  "Kate!" In the vast midnight space, his voice sounded feeble and strained.

  He tried to drift on his back, but the weight of his water-filled boots and sodden clothes kept pulling at him.

  "Kate! You hear me? Kate!" This time his voice seemed louder, but he was also uncomfortably aware that the rushing noise of the river was swelling again. The water was flowing faster, sweeping him into its center once more.

  The echo of his shout was shorter, warning him that the roof of the cavern was becoming lower, closing in on him.

  A vicious undertow heaved at his legs, like the clinging hands of drowned mariners, trying to draw him down.

  Just before Ryan's head dipped once more below the freezing river, he thought he heard a woman's voice, calling his name.

  But he couldn't be certain.

  RYAN CAWDOR was unconscious. The channel had become smaller, shrinking to a narrow flume. Now the underground river was racing twice as fast as it had before, dropping almost vertically at times, hurling its helpless victim around and around until he blacked out.

  When he came to, he was tangled in a net, his head above the surface of the water.

  "What's…" he mumbled, realizing at the same moment that there was some sort of light gleaming around him, a pallid and watery light, coming from burning torches stuck around the walls.

  Ryan rested for a few moments, trying to register some of his lost strength. Over to his right there was a sort of quay, carved from the bare rock. It was obviously man-made, with rusting iron rings set into it at intervals. He figured its length around two hundred feet, and its width close to fifty feet. Beyond it he could just make out the gaping mouths of two more tunnels.

  With an effort he managed to ease his right hand out of the strong plastic folds of the net, slipping the panga from its scabbard and taking the greatest of care not to drop it into the black water. The honed edges sliced the coils apart, freeing his left arm completely.

  The net was stretched clear across the river and was, by the feel of it, weighted down at the bottom. At this point the water was much wider again, running more slowly and steadily. As Ryan jerked at the mesh, he saw that he wasn't the only prisoner. There were a number of slim, white fish, with protruding eyes, much too large for their narrow skulls.

  "Ryan."

  "Yeah."

  "You all right?"

  "Cold and wet and— Where are you?" He strained his head to look around.

  "Here."

  The girl's voice came from the deepest shadows.

  "Can't see you."

  "Caught in this bastard trap."

  "Can you pull clear?"

  The girl actually managed to laugh, the sound rising above the noise of the underground river.

  "Got fishes stuck all around me. You on the right?"

  "Yeah, close to a kind of a jetty. Come to me."

  Kate was only a few feet away when he finally spotted her. There was a bruise on her forehead, and a trickle of watery blood seeped from her nose. She reached out a hand and he grabbed it, pulling her close to him. Her body was trembling as though she had the quaking sickness, and her eyes were very wide.

  "Life's packed with thrills, ain't it?" she said. "Could do with a quiet few minutes now and again. Make a sort of change, you know."

  She laughed again, her voice ragged and loud. Ryan put an arm around her thin body, hugging her close.

  "It's all right, Kate," he said. "Let's get out of the water."

  Ryan had to use his panga once more, cutting away a thick tangle of netting. Then he was close enough to the rough stone of the quay to reach out and grab one of the rusting rings.

  "Hang on," he said, letting go of the young woman while he heaved and kicked his way out of the freezing grip of the river.

  Once he was on dry land, he knelt, panting, and reached down for Kate. The weight of water in her clothes made it a struggle to lift her out.

  "Going to die if we don't start moving," he panted. "Least we could get a fire going from one of those torches. If we can get some wood to burn."

  "Who laid the net?" she asked.

  A part of Ryan's mind had been working on that one since he first broke the surface. Over his years of traveling through Deathlands, he'd sometimes come across small groups of people who lived in caves. And in a desolate wilderness like this, fish were likely to be one of the few things you could depend on for survival.

  The unanswered part of the question was whether the fishers would turn out to be friendly or not.

  Less than two minutes later they found the answer to that question.

  Friendly or not?

  Not.

  Chapter Twenty

  ONCE THEY STARTED to move along the quay, Ryan and Kate saw a number of passages leading back into the depths of the mountain.

  All of them had torches smoldering at intervals along the walls, but Ryan was puzzled at the poverty of the lighting. The flames were feeble and smoky, casting so weak a glow that they were hardly better than no lights at all.

  Behind them, the ceaseless rumbling of the great river was drowning out any other noises.

  His infallible sense of direction had finally failed him.

  The tumbling ride
through the midnight maelstrom had totally disoriented Ryan. He'd been spun around like an egg through a whisk and had lost all idea of their whereabouts. The only thing that he knew for certain was that they were a whole lot lower than they'd been when they started their journey.

  They had to be close to the bottom of the steep-sided valley, near to the sulfur mines, near to Gregori Zimyanin.

  And near to Dean Cawdor.

  "This one," he said a moment later, leading the way toward the nearest of the narrow, vaulted corridors. "Why that one?"

  "Why not?"

  The passage bent in a sharp dogleg, only fifty paces long.

  "Fireblast!"

  He snatched at Kate's wrist as he turned, tugging her with him, around the corner.

  "What?"

  "Shut up!"

  He was pulling the young woman behind him, back toward the river, glancing over his shoulder as they moved clumsily together.

  Behind them, soaring over the hissing roar of the water, Kate suddenly heard a sickening sound, a rising, ululating howl, like a pack of hunting wolves suddenly striking a trail.

  "What are they?" she managed to ask as they reached the jetty.

  "Not sure. Mebbe it's some of those trickies you spoke about."

  "Trackies."

  "Yeah." He looked around, desperate to try to find a hiding place. But the expanse of cold gray stone was bare, featureless. Apart from the other tunnel openings, there was nowhere to conceal themselves from the shrieking horde.

  Except the river again.

  "Here."

  Ryan slid into the last of the ill-lit cavern entrances, beyond the trapping net, so that they could at least hurl themselves back into the torrent as a final resort.

  The screaming had reached a crescendo, then died away just a suddenly, as if someone had given a signal that had brought a total hush.

  Kate was quivering, pressed against Ryan, but he couldn't tell if it was terror or simply the biting effects of the freezing water. He drew his SIG-Sauer from its holster and held it in his right hand.

  He risked a quick glance from cover, immediately pulling back into hiding. The one look had told him all he wanted to know.

  And more.