Chill Factor

by James Axler

  IT WAS ALL that Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin could do to hold on to the tattered rags of his fleeing sanity.

  "The boy gone and all dead!" he bellowed, eyes looking clear through the wounded sec man who'd brought him the unwelcome message.

  "All but me, Major-Commissar," he replied, hoping for some kind of grudging praise for his escape.

  "All dead," the Russian repeated, shooting the guard through the center of his chest.

  THE SENIOR SEC MAN wasn't absolutely sure he'd heard the Russian's command correctly.

  "All of them, Major-Commissar?"

  Suddenly Zimyanin was filled with enormous good humor. "Yes, my good chap. Execute every single worker not in the mines. It will take an hour or so. Then all of the available beaters… sec men, can join the hunt. It will be great fun if the weather remains satisfactory, will it not?"

  "The shift in the tunnels?"

  "They will stay there. After we have caught Cawdor and his mewling brat, then we shall reorganize the remaining serfs into two half shifts. And you will lead search parties to replace those who have given their lives for their beloved leader. I might raise a memorial to their loyalty."

  There was a distant smile on the pocked face that made the sec man wish he could find a very deep hole to creep into until this even more terrifying madness had passed.

  "See to it. Execute them, then bring all the men to where the sport has taken us."

  "Where's that, Major-Commissar?"

  "The trail in the snow will quickly provide us with the answer to that riddle, my comrade," Zimyanin promised, chucking the sec man under the chin.

  RYAN HAD SEEN similar sights in other places in Deathlands, normally on the edges of the ruins of the larger villes, where power and industry had ridden in tandem. But the huge rusting towers of machinery were a new experience for Dean and for Kate.

  "Was it some sort of religion?" she asked, standing stricken with wonder in the main entrance hall.

  "Must've been to build blasters. Is that what it was for, Dad?" Dean craned his neck, peering upward.

  "Turbines and generators to work these mines in the old days, way back before the long winters came along."

  "We hiding here?"

  "Yeah." Ryan looked around, not displeased with what he'd found. The building was truly enormous and must once have housed some of the processing equipment as well as the power plants. It was a maze of corridors and levels, where three armed people could comfortably hold off a hundred. In the end the weight of men and blasters would triumph, but it would be at a terrible cost and take a lot of time.

  And a lot of time meant a lot of chances to escape free.

  "Could be worse," Ryan said.

  "IS IT SURROUNDED?"

  "Not really, Major-Commissar."

  "Not really!" Zimyanin shook his head in mock bewilderment. "That sounds rather as though my express orders have not been followed. Is that correct?"

  "Not… I mean that we don't have enough men to cover it completely."

  The Russian smiled. "Of course."

  "It's real big."

  "And I had thought it so tiny it would fit into the hand of a child. No, I am merely jesting, my dear fellow."

  "And the back runs clear up against the face of the cliff."

  The smile vanished like the sun behind thunderclouds. "Can they escape us that way, do you think?"

  "There's a path that leads up and around the valley. Trackies use it."

  "You have men covering it?"

  "Sure. Yeah. Course. Right, Major-Commissar. Men with rifles watching the back."

  "There are no tracks leading out again?"

  The sec man smiled. "Thought of that. Checked real careful. Got a breed... part Chiricahua Apache from the deserts. Went right around."

  Zimyanin managed another smile. "You've done well. Had you failed me I would have heated a ramrod until it glowed white, and then I would personally have inserted it, slowly, into your body. They would have heard your screams even in far-off Mother Russia."

  The guard swallowed hard. "Want us to close in or just sit tight?"

  Zimyanin glanced at the sky. "Still three hours to first lamp."

  "Light."

  "What is that?"

  "You say 'first light,' Major-Commissar. Not 'lamp.'That's all."

  "Ah, I understand. I am grateful. I am always eager to add to my poor store of knowledge of the English tongue."

  "You was sayin' about there being three hours until… dawn."

  "I was. And I think that you and the rest of the sec men should wait and watch. The rest will join you once the killings are done." Even as he spoke, he could hear the sound of regular, spaced single shots, coming from the living quarters. Zimyanin smiled as he thought of another joke. Living quarters. "They are dying quarters, are they not?" he said.

  "Sure are," he agreed blankly. "So, we all sit tight. Go in when we got enough men?"

  The Russian's brain was racing like a flywheel that's lost its controlling governor. "You will simply wait for a further order from me."

  He spun on his heel and began to walk toward the cathedral bulk of the massive building. The noncom guard called after him, asking where he was going.

  "Where? Elementary, my dear man. Cawdor and I have things to settle. I am going inside, and I might be some time."

  His heels ringing on the icy snow, the short, powerful figure disappeared into the looming entrance of the power plant.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  THEY HAD ALL heard the clatter and shouting as the thin line of uniformed sec men got into position around their hiding place.

  Ryan left Dean and Kate huddled together on a high gallery at the heart of the rambling complex, going himself on a swift and urgent recce.

  He squinted out unseen through the smashed windows. Twice he could easily have picked off members of the Russkie's attacking force with the SIG-Sauer, but that would have shown his hand too soon. Better to wait and use surprise and doubt as primary weapons.

  He counted twenty men, all with rifles, containing a thin perimeter. In the distance he could also hear the regular sound of shots being fired, a sound that spoke of organized killings. Ryan could hardly believe that Zimyanin was taking out all his own workers, just to have a better chance at him. But that was the only sensible and logical explanation.

  Apart from the far-off echoing shots, the sarcophagus was still. Once Ryan thought he heard a faint sound, a metallic scraping, like knives being dragged against a stone floor, but it wasn't repeated.

  ZIMYANIN HAD BEEN TRAINED as an ambitious young man in the arts and crafts of street fighting, dodging in and out of gaping doorways, checking hollow cellars and roofless attics, working in a combat team, each man supporting the next.

  Then, as an officer marked for promotion within the sec force, he was sent to hone his skills among the empty boulevards of the largest ruined ville, a place that had changed its name so many times over the centuries that it was now simply called "Grad."

  There he'd run alone, given a Makarov and a single round of ammo, with a saw-edged knife, sent among the young gang packs that ran in the ice-slick streets. They were teen killers known as "werewolves," eager to scent out and destroy any stranger on their turf.

  After all that urban training, promotion had finally come—to the far-off northeast, where only a narrow strip of frozen sea separated Russia from the States of Deathlands, where a ville might be a hundred miles from its neighbor.

  Zimyanin had always resented that obscure posting, unaware of how many enemies he'd made in the security hierarchy, men who feared the stocky young man with the pockmarked face, shaved head and the flat eyes of a psychotic killer.

  There was a piece of paper in a filing cabinet in Moscow that held the details of the major-commissar. One question asked where he should be sent. The handwritten answer said simply "As far away as possible."

  Now, at last, Gregori Zimyanin had the chance to use those distant skills in urban com
bat. He picked his way silently through the accumulated rubbish of more than a century, the rifle snug across his shoulders. The 9 mm Makarov PM in his right hand probed at the air in front of him with all the cautious delicacy of a cobra's tongue.

  His pulse was up a couple of points, the adrenaline racing through his body like the most delicious elixir.

  It was going to be good.

  Cawdor was a dangerous opponent, but he was crippled with the boy. And, from the tracks, the young woman who'd been seen with him.

  Zimyanin had tried to put himself into his enemy's mind—best to tuck up the baggage somewhere safe, and then try to watch out for any threat himself. Which was exactly what Ryan had done.

  THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS of the building when it had been running full-out were impossible to imagine. The generators, crushers, conveyors, graders and processors must have been deafening. Even now, stepping carefully through the darkness, Ryan found his head filling with awe.

  He stopped on one of the upper galleries, kneeling behind some tumbled display paneling, staring intently into the whispering depths below him.

  It was a relief to think that the young woman and his son were relatively safe.

  He didn't think that Zimyanin would attempt to rush the place during the night. The Russian was fight-wise enough to know that, even with the filtered moonlight, his men could take a devastating body count in the lethal maze.

  But he might send in one or two of his best sec men. Or even come in himself.

  Ryan felt the hairs at the back of his neck prickling with anticipation. Something was moving down below him—a shortened shadow, scuttling like a dancing crab, with a hideous, silent elegance.

  "Zimyanin," he breathed.

  DEAN CLASPED THE CANNON in his hands, ears straining at the stillness. He glanced a couple of times at the pale young woman sitting opposite him, looking toward the smaller doorway. She was holding her five-shot snub-nosed revolver in her lap, right hand on the butt.

  Kate caught the boy looking at her and smiled, teeth white in the gloom.

  The boy wondered if she'd be any use when it got time to draw the ace on the line.

  Ryan had picked one of the smaller control rooms, high up under the roof, on the side of the building nearest to the cliffs. His order to them had been very simple.

  "If it's me, then I'll warn you. If it's not me, then blast away. Hesitate and you'll be chilled. Both of you."

  Dean waited. It had never occurred to him for a moment that their chances of escaping from the building were so slight as to be nonexistent. His father was in charge, so it'd be fine.

  ZIMYANIN WAS AS HAPPY as he'd ever been in his entire life, enjoying an elation of spirit that was almost sexual in its power.

  This was what he'd been born for.

  To hunt a worthy enemy, man against man, with death waiting in the shifting shadows for the loser.

  He licked his lips, eyes darting from side to side, taking the greatest care to keep a watch out for any sound or movement above him. That was what his grizzled old instructor had knocked into him.

  "In buildings you can get chilled from behind, in front or to the side. Even from below. Four times out of five it'll be from above. Remember that, Zimyanin."

  Oregon had always remembered the warning.

  A man in flight would instinctively seek higher ground. He'd stake his life that Ryan Cawdor would be somewhere in the concrete layers above him.

  "I do wager my life," he breathed, smiling to himself.

  Like a panther picking its way over black velvet, he began to climb silently toward the upper levels of the vaulted building.

  RYAN SAW THE RUSSIAN again, on the farther side of the main power room, above the rusting turbines, each a hundred feet high. The dark figure was climbing toward a tottering gantry that would bring him into the highest floors.

  Over the past few days, since he'd left Jak Lauren, and the rest of his friends, Ryan had been vaguely aware of a change in himself. His life had been a number of differing periods: the frightened, tormented child; the teenager who'd run alone, become hardened to killing, learned the craft of death; the man who'd matured with the Trader, covering the land; then, the leader of the small group, and lover of Krysty Wroth. Now the father of Dean.

  Somehow, the days in the bitter cold around the sulfur mines had revealed a harder and more brutal persona. Without Krysty and the others to temper his violence, Ryan could see that he'd slipped toward the ice-hearted killer he might so easily have become had his life not been different.

  It was a thought that disturbed him.

  In his inner soul, Ryan couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that he'd known all along that Zimyanin would come after them, and that he'd left Dean and the girl up in their aerie as a bait for the Russian.

  He began to move through the dusty complex of rooms and passages, his heart filled with the excitement of the chase.

  Ryan become the ultimate hunter, the terminator, the bringer of death.

  NEITHER OF THEM said anything.

  Kate brought her blaster up very slowly, pointing it past Dean, toward the rectangular silhouette of the doorway. He'd heard it as well, and was half turned, his Browning Hi-Power drilling into the blackness.

  It was a regular, steady sound, like someone scraping a handful of chisels over stone. It didn't sound like feet.

  There was a hesitancy about the noise, as though the man weren't sure of where he was, or what he was doing there.

  It stopped.

  Dean pressed his back against the wall, sliding up to his feet. Opposite him, the young woman had done the same.

  Finger to her lips, Kate inched toward the door, ignoring Dean's attempt to stop her with a warning wave of his hand.

  She peeked into the passage.

  And was decapitated by the killer sec droid.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  IT HAD BEEN tracking with an infinite, programmed patience, twice seeking the watery sunlight of the open hillside to recharge the fading solar batteries, waiting until relays were tripped and it was able to move once more into the blackness of the tunnels.

  Its sensors kept it moving, following the traces of the double helix that had been imprinted into its circuits.

  Once it had only missed the human by a scant hundred yards, finding itself the wrong side of a crevasse, unable to get across. Ladders presented an almost insurmountable obstacle to the lethal robot, though its insensate drive to kill had led it to make clumsy attempts on a couple of the simpler climbs.

  Now it was close. Its vents sucked in the air, analyzing it, tasting the spectroscopic presence of its target. But it was also ailing. Hundred-year-old circuits were beginning to falter, giving microsecond delays in important relays, distorting information, making it hesitant.

  But it still found the act of killing absurdly simple.

  The knived fingers were long and powerful, and had remained razor sharp. The young woman's slender neck parted like a mouth opening in a sigh. Her skull toppled heavily to the floor, spouting blood everywhere.

  Dean closed his eyes and screamed at the top of his voice.

  Ryan heard the high, thin scream of white terror and began to run toward it.

  Oregon Zimyanin heard the high, thin scream of white terror, smiled, and began to run toward it.

  AFTER THE FIRST MOMENT of mind-rocking horror, with hot blood splashed into his face and eyes, the boy ran for his life. He'd barely glimpsed the metal creature that stood swaying gently in the doorway, its carapace clotted with steaming blackness. All he'd noticed was the twin ruby eyes, drilling in his direction.

  Dean was out of the other door, arms pumping, unbalanced by the heavy automatic in his right fist. Never for a moment did he think of turning to try to use it on the apparition.

  The gantry shivered under his pounding boots, and chunks of corroded iron peeled away and fell clear to the first floor.

  To his left the hanging walkway had already collapsed, giving him only two op
tions—straight ahead or to his right.

  Ahead of Dean someone was moving fast toward him.

  Shaking like a leaf, the boy dropped to a crouch, leveling the Browning, finger on the trigger.

  "It's me!"

  "Kate's dead. A fuckin' droid took her head clean off."

  Ryan was nearly there, at the joining of the wavering gantries. Beyond his son he could make out something advancing, with a grating, inexorable step.

  "Fireblast!"

  "Can we stop it?"

  Ryan put an arm on the boy's shoulder, feeling the shocked trembling. "Could try. Best steps we can take are fucking long ones."

  "Where?"

  "That way's broke."

  "This one isn't too safe. Feel it moving, and bits fell off it."

  Ryan watched the slow, shuffling progress of the robot closing the gap. "Best is the way I came. We can get into another part of the building…" He glanced over his shoulder. "There's someone…" Then he recognized the burly figure, silver circles gleaming on the lapels of the dark coat. "It's the bastard Russkie!"

  Zimyanin had spotted him at the same moment, pausing and unslinging his rifle, which was able to hit a man clean through the forehead at a thousand yards in the hands of an expert.

  The major-commissar was less than eighty yards away from Ryan and the boy.

  "Chill him, Dad!"

  The android was about sixty paces from them, moving in its usual unhurried way, its knife blades clicking and whirring against each other, almost as though it were eagerly anticipating the ultimate success of its mission.

  The whole gallery was swaying, cables singing and more pieces flaking away from it. Ryan's intention to empty a mag of the SIG-Sauer in the direction of Zimyanin was too risky, a small, partly hidden moving target in near darkness.

  "It's over, American friend," the Russian called, bringing his blaster to his shoulder.

  "That way," Ryan said, pointing to the dark-shrouded gallery to the left. It meant running directly toward the advancing sec robot, but Ryan and Dean were closer to the aerial crossroads.