by James Axler
"Guessing's not so good as knowing," he whispered as he made his cautious way back to the sleeping hut.
He could've filled a book with the sayings of the Trader.
THERE'D BEEN A LONG intense discussion among the senior sec men on duty during the night. Should the major-commissar be awakened?
If so, who would do it?
If not, who would explain why when the Russian was up and about at dawn?
In the end a majority thought he should be woken up. Then it was down to the drawing of straws to determine the lucky man selected for that honor.
The knock on the door of Zimyanin's quarters was hesitant, but it still brought an instant response. "Who is there?"
"Cliff Roberts, Major-Commissar."
"What do you require of me?"
"Dead man at the armory."
It was way below freezing, but Cliff Roberts was perspiring, waiting in the corridor, hearing the sound of movement from within. The door opened and the barrel of the Makarov pistol probed toward his face.
"Dead? A sec man?"
"Hutson, Major-Commissar."
"How?"
Roberts swallowed nervously. "We checked him over. No wound. No bullet. Not a knife. Not strangled. I looked at his neck myself."
Zimyanin was out in the passage, standing uncomfortably close. "You did well. The corpse has been stripped?"
"Sure has. I asked around, and it seems Hutson had a real bad cough. Used to spit red. There was blood by the body, frozen on the ground. You reckon that he might've sort of coughed and choked?"
Zimyanin nodded slowly. "It seems a possible conclusion, does it not? No wound?" He spotted the hesitation. "No wound, my man?"
Roberts swallowed, wondering who'd sucked all the air from the corridor. "I saw his… His balls looked kind of swelled up, Major-Commissar. Others said it didn't mean shit."
"The armory?"
Roberts was on safer ground. "Still locked. Blasters all still chained. Doesn't look like it was a raid at all, Major-Commissar."
"But his balls were swollen, were they? Interesting. You've done well, Sec Man Roberts."
"Thank you, Major-Commissar."
"I'll come and look. But first arrange for a girl to be sent here now. Make sure she's been washed."
"A girl? Sure, sure, right away."
Gregori Zimyanin went slowly back into his room to wait. He felt a sudden need for sexual relief, to ease his mind.
There was something wrong. Nothing he could yet prove, but there was an intruder at work in his demesne, burrowing in the thick walls.
He could feel it.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
THEY WORKED FOR ANOTHER ten-hour shift in the depths of the sulfur mines, cold and wet, trying to save themselves from too much labor. Their plan meant that they'd try to link up with Dean's working party the next evening, which could mean starting on another twelve-hour shift immediately afterward.
Ryan was worried that his killing of the sec man might have brought an extra check, but there was no sign at all of Gregori Zimyanin, and the day proceeded normally.
As they'd filed into the noisome tunnels, they'd passed Dean's shift leaving. Ryan had looked desperately for his son, hoping that he might be able to send him some kind of a sign. But the yellow-slimed figures all looked identical.
The snow had stopped, and the morning felt appreciably warmer. The river was running in full spate, brown and thick, topped with a tumbling creamy froth. Before they'd even been marched into the shelter of the tunnels, it began to pour with rain.
"Shaft Four, Level Two" was the order. "And watch for slips. Couple got buried last night. Two women. So much shit fell on top of them they'll stay there for years."
THE MAZY WILDERNESS of the vast mines made it absurdly simple to slip away again. Picking their moment when one of the sec men was in another part of their section, they simply walked off from the noise and the lights.
Ryan deliberately didn't go too far away. It had reached the point where they'd taken an irrevocable step. If a sec man caught them now, they couldn't afford to be trapped and taken back. Both of them carried their blasters tucked into the front of their belts, ready for action.
All they had to do was find somewhere to keep as dry and warm as was humanly possible.
And wait.
THE DAY DRIFTED BY. Ryan tried hard not to keep looking down at his wrist chron, but he still couldn't believe that only four or five minutes had crawled past since his last glance at the digital dial.
Every now and again one of them would stand and move around, trying to keep the blood circulating and fighting off hypothermia.
Ryan managed to sleep for a few snatches, waking finally at the distant sound of whistles and shouts marking the end of the shift.
"Not one of my best days," he commented.
"Want me to warm you some?"
He shook his head. "No. Got to get someplace we can look out for Dean. Tag on the end of his line and then spring the lad."
Kate looked at him. "I've never known a man like you, Ryan Cawdor, and that's the truth."
He smiled and kissed her once on the cheek. "You're something, Kate."
Less than four hundred yards away, on a parallel passage, three levels above Ryan and the young woman, two electronic red eyes glowed venomously in the darkness.
DEAN HAD DECIDED that he'd have to make a break for it. Now that he knew that his father had come for him, it seemed his best plan was to try to sneak away from his work shift and then try and link up with Ryan. He was puzzled that he hadn't seen J.B., Doc, Krysty or Mildred. Or especially Jak Lauren.
But the boy guessed that the others were probably holed up in a base somewhere, possibly close by the gateway.
Today they'd been told they were going to be down on Level Five, Shaft Eight, which was one of the deepest working faces in the entire complex. The boy had caught a conversation between a sec man and one of the senior overseers. For some reason, Zimyanin had personally ordered this particular group to go down into what was widely regarded as one of the most dangerous sections of the mine.
Despite his young years, Dean had survived long enough in Deathlands to have an instinctive feel for situations.
And he didn't like the feel of this one.
So, he'd decided to make a break for it as soon as he had a chance.
ON THE PREVIOUS DAY Ryan had noticed that a gallery ran high around the top of the vast chamber, just inside the main entrance. Virtually all of the working parties began their day by passing through there.
Now he led the young woman toward the vantage point.
They doubled on their own tracks, hearing the sound of feet moving toward them, and found a narrow passage where they hid, out of sight of the quartet of sec men that pounded by.
Once the sound of the tramping boots had faded into the distance, they proceeded toward their destination,
"Keep low."
The gallery was wooden planking, suspended on a network of thick ropes, swaying and dipping as they stepped onto it. It was a good hundred feet above the glistening floor of the chamber, shrouded in shadow, like the complex web of some gigantic spider.
There was only a single rope to hang on to, and Kate fell behind Ryan, calling out her distress.
"Can't."
"You can."
"Frightened of falling."
"Stay where you are." He turned around to check her position. "Just keep low, Kate, and stay quiet. We'll get out the same way, so you're safe."
She hunkered down on hands and knees, struggling not to peer between the rotting slats of wood to the floor below. Already the first of the groups of slave workers were thronging through on their way to their shift locations.
Ryan ignored her, concentrating on trying to spot Dean. Because of the assortment of torn clothes and furs, it was a difficult task.
"Gaia, help me," he said through clenched teeth.
He'd once asked Krysty how her powers of "seeing" worked, and
she'd simply replied that she didn't know. All she'd said was that she never consciously strained to use the mutie skill, that she kind of switched off and allowed her subconscious to point her in the right direction.
Ryan breathed slowly, letting his eye roam freely around the echoing cavern beneath him, trying not to control what he was doing.
"Dean," he said.
He followed his intuition, concentrating on the small figure in the dark maroon jacket, the hood thrown back tp show his mass of black curls.
At that precise moment the boy looked up, past the dizzy maze of thin ropes and cables to the hanging bridge far above his head.
For a split second, father and son stared into each other's faces. Ryan turned to Kate. "Come on."
Chapter Thirty-Eight
WITH A MOVEMENT of his flattened hand, fingers spread, Ryan warned his son not to make any approach, or let on that they knew each other.
He and Kate had moved quickly through the throng of workers, heads low, careful not to make eye contact with any of the sec men.
He'd watched to see which tunnel Dean's shift entered, and in less than five minutes he and Kate were safely tagged onto them, grabbing at a pair of shovels from a pile at the top of the first ladder. The guards were oblivious to the extra two workers.
Dean was second in the column of sixteen men and women. Ryan gradually eased his way closer to the boy, pushing a place or two toward the front as they stopped for each fresh descent into new levels of the mine.
There was far more water around than at any other time. It ran down the walls of the vertical shafts, gathering in slick pools of golden mud along the centers of the passages. Twice they waded through fast-flowing streams that appeared to come out of bare rock and vanish somewhere lower down.
After descending four ladders, Ryan was only one place behind Dean, with Kate jostling at his own elbow.
"Kind of wet today, kid," he said.
"Sure is, old man," Dean replied, not even turning to look at his father.
"We goin' deeper?"
"One more drop."
"You okay?"
"Been better."
A guard drew closer and spotted them talking. "Shut up!"
Ryan waited until they were at the bottom of the swaying ladder. "Got to move quick. Russkie knows me from way back."
For the first time, Dean glanced at him "Your eye! Is it so's he won't pick you?"
"Don't ask so many questions. Just be ready to move fast."
"Her?" He gestured with a thumb toward Kate Webb. "With us?"
"She's been helping. When we run, she runs. Name's Kate."
Dean nodded to the young woman. "Hi."
Once again, a sec man walked toward them, and Ryan tensed himself for trouble. But this time it was something different.
"Listen good!" Every head turned slowly toward the guard. "Been some falls around here. Bad ones. So watch where you step and how hard you dig. The rain on top and a double-fast thaw's making it even more sodding dangerous. So, you been warned."
After delivering the information, the sec man went to the ladder and climbed rapidly up to the next level, leaving the work party completely unattended.
RYAN QUICKLY EXPLORED the shaft, finding to his disappointment that it was closed off, with the single exit up the same ladder that they'd come down. It was obviously a new work area, with no other passages leading out.
He passed the news to Dean and Kate.
"So, what do we do?"
"Either climb to the next level, but that's risky, or wait for the end of the shift and try to drift away from the end of the line."
Dean shook his head. "Dangerous."
"We've done it before, son. Sure, it is dangerous, but it looks like the best chance there is."
The rest of the workers were becoming more and more suspicious, watching Ryan's wanderings, and the hurried snatches of conversation with the young boy and the skinny woman.
Finally a tall man with a ragged white beard went crabbing over to Ryan. "Hey, mister?"
"What?"
"We got to shift tons of dirt or we get flogged. Or worse."
"Yeah?"
"So, you and—"
"Not pulling our weight. That what's worrying you, is it?"
The man saw death in the single, cold eye and he shuddered. "You got to understand, mister, that it ain't fair if—"
"Sure, sure. Made your point. We'll do some digging for you."
A sheer face stood fifteen or twenty feet high, its muddy surface pitted by shovels, streaming with freezing water. Ryan and Dean went to join two other men, while Kate stayed with the rest of the group to fill the buckets that swayed up the long greasy ropes toward the distant processing plant.
There was no warning of the fall.
One moment Dean was standing between the other two workers, with Ryan busy shoveling about ten feet to the right. The next moment the face dropped away, bulging out, releasing a wave of pent-up slurry that knocked Ryan off his feet and sent all the others into a screaming tangle of arms and legs.
Tons of thick mud gushed into the cavern.
Ryan's mouth filled with the stinking ooze, and he fought for his life, struggling with blind desperation to get back onto his feet in the semidarkness.
The initial tide eased, and he managed to claw himself upright, fumbling for his shovel. He wiped his good eye clear of the mud and looked around frantically for Dean.
But the boy had vanished under the wall of earth, mud and water.
"Get help! Kate, call the sec men. Shovels, here, now!"
Ryan could see a pair of feet protruding from the fall, with one torn boot. But he knew it wasn't his son and he ignored it. He started to dig frantically, working with such desperation that the shaft of the shovel snapped like a rotten twig and he dropped to his knees, burrowing with his bare hands into the semiliquid mass of watery mud. He fumbled among the jagged hunks of rocks, feeling for some contact with the boy.
There was the noise of feet on the ladder, and someone bellowing orders, shouting for everyone to get out before the whole place caved in.
"There's folks trapped!" Ryan called, his groping fingers suddenly touching something soft and yielding, flesh within cloth.
"Do as you're…" the sec man began, hesitating as he saw Hyan scrabbling in the yellow muck, heaving out a limp, helpless little body.
"Dean," Ryan said, shaking the boy, heaving him the right way up. The boy's head lolled on his neck, and a trickle of blood seeped from his left eye. But he still breathed.
Kate was behind him, shoving fingers into Dean's open mouth, scooping out gobbets of filthy slime, freeing his airway. The boy coughed, arms flailing as Ryan gripped him tightly in his arms.
"Leave him be," the sec man ordered. "We'll get him up top."
"I'll carry him," Ryan insisted, not even looking at the guard.
"I said leave him."
"Don't you…"He half turned, glimpsing the rifle butt as it went crashing into the side of his skull, just in front of his right ear.
The adrenaline was screaming through Ryan's body, forcing him away from the chasm of blackness. He reached out for the sec man, fingers clawing for the pale, staring face. But the M-16 swung down a second time, and he toppled over the brink into darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
KATE WAS BACK IN THE hut, with the survivors of the shift. They'd been allowed to return early, trudging through the teeming rain, already turning once more to sleet as the temperature dropped back below freezing.
Three of their working party had died in the fall, and one had been shot by a sec man when he wouldn't stop screaming about his broken thigh.
On the specific orders of Gregori Zimyanin, Ryan was held prisoner in a small room at the back of one of the sec huts. His wrists were manacled behind him, and he lay on the cold stone floor. Blood caked his face and the side of his head from the beating the sec man had given him.
The Russian hadn't yet visited him, preferrin
g to devote his attention to the serious cave-in in the low-level shaft. The whole of that section of the mine was closed off.
"Send them in to clear it."
"They won't go, Major-Commissar."
"I fear my hearing has become afflicted. I thought I heard you use the word 'won't' to me."
The sec man had felt his bowels turning to water and had pressed his thighs together, trying to clench the muscles of his buttocks. "We gave a good thrashing to two of the lazy dogs, but the rest still wouldn't go down."
The Russian had sighed. "I believe in the pragmatic world of real politik."
The senior guard had blinked. "What?"
"We must move more slowly. I will investigate myself and judge the danger. Then I will talk to some of the older members on the shifts. Persuade them that the hazard has abated."
The sec man had seen some of the Russian's methods of persuasion. One of his first jobs when he enlisted had been to scrub the splattered blood from the ceiling of the 'persuasion' room.
DEAN WAS UNCONSCIOUS. He'd been taken away and was in another room of the same large hut as his father. Zimyanin had looked in briefly on his way to check the damage to the mine, standing for several long seconds at the bedside of the young boy.
A woman was trying to clean all the clotted mud and blood from the lad's scalp, wiping away at the chalk-white face.
RYAN WONDERED whether his skull might have been fractured. It ached, and every time he tried to move, a ferocious stab of fire raced behind his eyes and injected acid along his spine.
He was furiously angry at himself, angry at his own futile, destructive anger.
Once he'd plucked Dean from the swamping mass of yellow mud, he should have slipped quickly away, ready to try to carry out the rescue on some other, safer day.
But he'd allowed the choking mist of rage to fill his brain. Now he was a helpless prisoner.
Dean was safe. One of the sec men had been kind enough to tell him that. It had been the same guard who'd told him that Zimyanin had asked for him to be held safely.