Chill Factor

by James Axler

  "Red alert," he said quietly. "Every man will find himself in the state of highest readiness in the event of there being trouble."

  Again, the word ran through the sec men, and all of them stood that bit taller and tried to look triple alert for the Russian's benefit.

  Zimyanin began his patrol along the rows, starting with the shift that was waiting to go into the mines, so that less laboring time would be wasted by the interruption.

  Face after sullen face, with an occasional worker attempting a scared, sycophantic smile. Most looked at the ground, until he issued a general order that everyone was to lift their heads and stare him in the eyes.

  Every now and again the muscular Russian would stop and tell a man or a woman to remove a hood or a scarf, peering intently into their faces.

  "Now the second row, if it is not too much trouble for you?"

  Dean was in the second row, away toward the far end. But as the ranks opened up, it was easier to see.

  "It's him," Ryan said quietly.

  "The boy?"

  "Sure."

  His son seemed fit enough, standing among the other workers. Ryan noticed that Dean deliberately avoided looking in his direction. With someone as cunning and perceptive as Zimyanin, that might be dangerous.

  To Ryan's dismay, the leather-coated Russian stopped directly in front of the boy and was obviously speaking to him. Whatever he was saying, Ryan felt that it wasn't likely to be good news.

  "WILL GOODE." The voice was flat and gentle, eyes alert and interested. The pockmarks that scarred Zimyanin's face were harsh and shadowed in the bright sec lights. "Will… Goode."

  "Yes, Major-Commissar."

  "Why do I have the sense of something hidden about you?"

  "I don't know."

  The Russian cupped the boy's chin in his hand, gripping the sides of his face so hard that Dean thought he could hear his own teeth creaking in protest.

  "I look at you and my memory shakes. Why is that, Will Goode?"

  "Don't know," the boy mumbled, trying to pull clear of the iron grip.

  "I think you do. Perhaps you should come to my quarters for a few hours, Will, and I could ask you some questions. I could show you my collection of knives, Will." Zimyanin finally let him go.

  Dean licked his lips, tasting the salty bitterness of his own blood.

  The Russian smiled, making the boy feel very alone and frightened. "We'll see, won't we, Will. Yes, we shall see."

  "Yes, Major-Commissar."

  Zimyanin moved on several places along the line, then suddenly walked back to Dean, making him jump.

  "Why have you been looking so very carefully in every direction, Will? Every direction but one. You have been avoiding looking over there." He pointed behind himself, toward the general area of Ryan's working party.

  "No. No, Major-Commissar."

  "No, what, Will?" The voice was gentle as the hissing of a cobra—just before it rears up and strikes.

  "No, I wasn't looking at anyone."

  "But were you not looking at anyone, that is more the question?"

  "No, I wasn't not looking at nobody."

  "Good, Will Goode. Will Goode will be good, will he not, Will?"

  Zimyanin threw back his head and roared with laughter at his own clumsy joke. Less than a hundred yards away, Ryan's fingers tensed, the nails biting into his own palms. His hands itched for the familiar butt of the blaster.

  "It's good, young man, very good. Yes, you and I will certainly speak together again." He turned to the sec man who stood watchfully at his elbow. "Dismiss this shift."

  "You haven't seen them all, Major-Commissar."

  "Your perception does you credit. Perhaps you could go into the mine and perceive some trackers for me. Could you?"

  "Sorry, Major-Commissar. You want to see the out shift, Major-Commissar?"

  "Yes."

  Again there was shouting and pushing and the occasional soft noise of rifle butts connecting with padded flesh. Eventually Ryan's work party was hustled into place, with him standing next to Kate in the front row.

  Zimyanin walked toward them, hands behind his back, a distant smile on his face.

  His eyes were roaming along the huddled, filthy, mud-slobbered figures, all seeming identical. Ten steps away from them he stopped dead, the dark stare focusing on Ryan.

  The gauntlet lifted and a finger drilled directly toward him.

  "You," Zimyanin said. "Yes, you."

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  OUT OF THE CORNER of his eye, Ryan could pick out his son, an upright, sturdy little figure, marching away with his own work party toward the main entrance of the sulfur mine. He felt utterly certain now that he'd never ever see the boy again.

  There might just be enough time to snatch out the SIG-Sauer P-226 and empty the last remaining eight rounds into the unmissable figure of the powerful Russian.

  "You!"

  "Yeah, Major-Commissar," Ryan replied, playing the futile game out to its last moments.

  "Your eye."

  "What about it?"

  "What is wrong with it?"

  Ryan lifted a hand to where his left eye had once been, bringing it away with a smudge of bright blood against the golden yellow of the sulfurous mud.

  "Rock fall, Major-Commissar."

  Zimyanin stepped closer, head pushing forward as he peered into Ryan's face. "It is a severe wound that merits treatment at the nearest practicioner of medicine."

  He was proud of remembering that sentence from the age-old phrase book.

  "Wash it and put a rag over it. Be fine then, Major-Commissar." Ryan was trying to put a nasal whine into his voice, like the speech of some of the people from the swamps.

  "You are sure."

  Zimyanin grimaced at the sight of the man in front of him.

  He was tallish, though standing in a slumped, beaten kind of way. Since he'd just come off a twelve-hour laboring shift, the Russian didn't find it very surprising. His clothes were covered in the ubiquitous golden slime, crusted and cracking, making it incredibly difficult to tell what he looked like. There was a rag of white cloth knotted around his throat.

  His feet were also completely caked with thick dollops of stinking mud, layered with the sheen of fresh ice.

  It was faces that intrigued the Russian.

  He looked at the man, trying to penetrate behind the mask of dirt. The wound to the left eye was obviously severe and he felt a momentary pang of respect for courage.

  "Grace under pressure," he muttered to himself.

  There appeared to be a ragged gash just above the eye, puckering the skin under all the dirt. Blood had flowed down, completely filling the socket and clogging the eye itself, covering it under an impenetrable mixture of dark earth and fresh, bright crimson.

  Zimyanin shook his head. There was something still not right. His sec boss's intuition told him that. A tiny bell was ringing in an abandoned room at the farthest edge of his memory. He could hear it ringing, but still couldn't make any sense from it.

  He moved even closer.

  The man started to cough, struggling to muffle it with the palm of his hand. Failing, he doubled over, gobbing out a stream of yellow mucus and phlegm, missing the polished toes of the Russian's boots by a couple of inches.

  "Fucking piece of shit! Bastard prickless son of a gaudy whore!"

  Zimyanin swung his fist toward the man's stomach, feeling the impact, smiling as the worker went crashing down at his feet. He lifted his boot to stamp on the wretched dog's neck, then checked himself, remembering with some surprise that he'd just been admiring the man's courage with the severe wound to his left eye.

  For a moment the small bell rang a little louder, but Zimyanin didn't listen to it.

  "Take him to the doctor," he ordered.

  Ryan had seen the punch coming and had hardened his muscles, riding the worst of the savage blow. Now he looked up at the Russian.

  "I'll be fine, Major-Commissar. Thank you kindly, but le
t me have some food and a wash up and I'll be good as new by morning."

  He wondered for a moment whether he'd overdone the part.

  But Zimyanin had moved on, hardly looking back at him. He called over his shoulder, "Let him do what he wishes. It is not a matter of any conceivable concern to myself."

  Ryan pulled himself erect, hanging on to Kate's arm.

  "You all right?" she whispered.

  "Been better," he said. "Been worse."

  AFTER THE GRUEL AND BREAD, Ryan washed himself, taking great care not to do anything about the self-inflicted wound to the empty socket of his left eye.

  Using the young woman's knife on himself had turned out to be one of the hardest things that Ryan had ever done.

  If it had been his arm, or even his cheek, he'd have jabbed in the point without more than a moment's hesitation.

  But his lost eye…

  Ryan lived all his days with that memory. At times he felt he still had both eyes, so vivid was the image of the knife in his brother's hand, moving toward his face.

  Striking.

  He saw it, actually saw the tip of the blade as it grated into his left eye socket. There was liquid trickling down his face that mingled aqueous humor of the eye with a little blood. Surprisingly little blood.

  In the icy bleakness of the sulfur mines, Ryan had had little time to think about his plan, knowing that the patch would trigger the Russian's memory, whereas a bloody wound might slip by. He'd had no choice. It was done, and it had worked.

  THE REST of the working shift seemed totally indifferent to the presence of two strangers in their hut. Kate had a brief conversation with an older woman, who told her that they'd lost more than half their number three days earlier in a cave-in not far from the main entrance. As a consequence, most of them hardly knew any of the newcomers.

  Ryan lay flat on his bunk, the damaged eye socket throbbing painfully. His mind was racing over the possibilities now left open to them. He couldn't keep the wound open and bloody. Zimyanin had already noticed it. In two days, at the most, it would begin to heal and reveal the fact that there was no eye in the socket at all.

  "And then, we're in the deepest well of shit in Deathlands," he muttered to himself.

  DURING THE NIGHT Ryan and Kate sat close together while he ran through a summary of his thoughts. Kate had her own blanket across her shoulders, knees crossed, hunched up for warmth.

  Ryan, one eye on the sleepers around them, kept his voice quiet.

  "First, we know that Dean's here and that he looked okay."

  "Seemed it to me."

  "Second, I can't stay hidden from the Russkie more than a day or so."

  "Could break away and hide up in one of the abandoned tunnels."

  He shook his head. "No. He's on the watch for something that's out of the ordinary. You've got to realize, Kate, that Zimyanin is one of the most triple-dangerous men in Deathlands."

  "I know that. Remember I worked in this fucking mine, Ryan."

  "Yeah, sure. The third thing is I'm nearly flatlined on ammo. Half a dozen rounds. Got to get into their armory and stock up. Once we do that, Zimyanin'll be even more on the edge."

  "When are you going to try for the ammo?"

  Ryan looked around the room. "Have to try it in the night, then go after the boy and spring him the next day."

  "So, when do we move?"

  "We don't move. I move."

  "When?"

  Ryan's teeth flashed white in the gloom. "Like Trader used to say, now's as good a time as any."

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  XAVIER HUTSON WAS DYING. He'd spent most of his thirty years down near the Grandee, when a misunderstanding with the youngest son of a local baron had sent him off and running, as far north as he could get.

  But he'd had three bouts of pneumonia, the last one leaving him with weakened lungs.

  He'd heard about work at the sulfur mines, tending human cattle. It was the kind of job that he'd always been good at.

  But the weather had been appalling. When it wasn't snowing it was freezing and raining. In the past couple of weeks Xavier had started to cough up blood. Only yesterday there'd been a spasm that had racked him, gouts of thick, clotted blood splattering on the stones of the cavern.

  The major-commissar wasn't the sort of man to carry passengers. Xavier had seen enough bodies to be certain sure of that. He'd already decided that he'd swallow his own pistol when the time came.

  The trouble was knowing just when that time was.

  Right now he didn't feel so bad. One of the senior sec men had a birthday and there'd been some jugs of the colorless high-alk drink that sometimes sent you temporarily blind with its potency.

  Now he was on guard, outside the hut that was used as the armory.

  "Who's that?" Roused from his thoughts, Xavier was sure he'd heard the sound of someone walking, feet crunching on ice.

  "Who's movin' there? I'll chill you, you shithead bastard!"

  He stifled a coughing fit. It might be Zimyanin himself, trying to catch guards out, sleeping on the job. Less than a month ago Nevada Kenny had been caught by the Russian. They'd found him the next morning with a straight blade through his cock and balls, driven clear into the wooden wall of the hut, held upright by the knife.

  "Who's that?"

  Xavier looked around, swinging the barrel of the M-16 from side to side. There'd been a flurry of snow about a half hour ago, and the frozen ground was dusted white, shimmering in the silver light of the sailing moon.

  The noise wasn't repeated, and the man leaned back again, pressing himself into the doorway for some protection from the slicing wind.

  Ryan was still holding a second stone, but he replaced it quietly on the ground. The throwing of the first one had told him all he needed to know about the watch on the armory—a single man, nervous, possibly drunk.

  Who could ask for anything more?

  XAVIER FELT another cough coming on, and he grabbed a length of rag from his pants pocket to try to muffle it. The sensation always seemed to start just at the back of his throat, then slide down into his lungs.

  He felt a tap on his shoulder and he spun, nearly pissing himself in shock. There was a tall man standing there, real close, half smiling. He wore a dark coat, and Xavier noticed that there was something wrong with his left eye.

  "Shit! I never—"

  "Just wanted to ask something."

  It was all very ordinary and Xavier didn't feel in the least threatened, though part of his mind was beginning to wonder just who the fuck the stranger was.

  "Sure. What?"

  There was a fearsome, jarring blow to his genitals, so savage that it actually lifted him clear off his feet. Pain lanced through the sec man, burning into his throat, the shock almost stopping his heart. The carbine slipped from his hands, but he didn't register the sound of it clattering on the rocks.

  Ryan took the blaster and laid it gently to one side.

  The guard was on his knees, thighs spread, mouth open as though he were trying to shout a warning. Nothing was further from the truth. The only thing happening in Xavier Hutson's brain was a total preoccupation with a suffocating agony. Bile surged up, gouting between his lips, mixed with bright arterial blood from his ruined lungs.

  Ryan stood back, watching the man fall slowly forward onto his face, surprised to see him hemorrhaging as a result of the knee to his groin. He stooped down and pressed his index finger to the side of the sentry's throat, feeling for the pulse and finding none.

  "Have to tell J.B. about that," he said quietly to himself, dragging the corpse out of sight around a corner of the hut.

  The door to the armory was held secure by a single padlock. Ryan quickly found a rock of suitable size and shape, and sprang the lock open. The windows were all shuttered from the outside, so he closed the door behind himself and switched on the flickering overhead lights.

  He breathed in the familiar scent of gun oil and grease.

  There was a t
riple row of carbines, all held in place with a long chain running through the trigger guards, locked at either end. Half a dozen assorted scatter-guns were bolted into a steel cabinet on the far wall.

  Ryan was surprised at the low level of security that Zimyanin maintained in his armory. With his sec men clearly outnumbered by fifteen or twenty to one, any rebellion among the slave workers could threaten the hut filled with weapons.

  But he guessed Zimyanin knew what he was doing. From everything that Ryan had seen, the captives were so cowed and exhausted that a rising wasn't very likely to happen.

  In a drawer, there was a jumble of handguns, thrown untidily together. On an impulse he picked out one for Kate, quickly dry-firing it, listening intently to the sound of the action.

  It was the Charter Arms Undercover Model, which held five rounds of .38-caliber ammunition. The steel-framed revolver was one of the lightest ever made, weighing in, Ryan recalled, at about seventeen ounces. Its small size made it the perfect hideaway gun for the young woman to carry.

  Shelves on the long wall of the hut held boxes of all sizes of ammo. Ryan took a handful of .38s for the Undercover, and filled three 15-round clips with 9 mm rounds for his own SIG-Sauer. He also slotted bullets into the half-empty clip on the P-226, giving him a total of sixty rounds.

  It crossed his mind to use a slab of old and sweating ex-plas to blow the whole place apart, but it wouldn't help any in rescuing Dean, except as a diversion.

  Since his son was already working on his shift in the mines, there wasn't much point in doing anything in the open air.

  The escape, when it came, would have to be initiated from the shafts and tunnels, rather than outside in the admin complex.

  Ryan turned the lamps off again, then eased open the door of the armory, squinting into the moonlight to make sure there were no more sec men around. The snow was falling once more, covering the pool of blood and vomit by the entrance. He carefully clicked the padlock shut, smearing a little mud over it to hide the fresh scratches on the brass.

  As an afterthought, Ryan quickly dragged the dead body from its hiding place and left it on the ground in front of the door.