by James Axler
Okie kept her M-16A1 carbine with the collapsed stock, adding to it an IMI Mini-Uzi submachine gun. It weighed just over six pounds and was less than fifteen inches in length.
Krysty liked the clean, silvered finish on a Heckler & Koch P-7A 13 pistol, which fired a 9 mm bullet out of a thirteen-round magazine. Because of the large number of rounds it held, there was a special insulating block in front of the trigger to absorb heat from the gas that retarded the slide opening. J.B. nodded his approval of her choice.
Finnegan and Hennings both went for the fifteen-round model 92 Beretta pistol with frame-mounted safety, firing a 9 mm round.
They both liked a whole rack of dull gray Heckler & Koch submachine guns with built-in silencers and fifty-round drum magazines; they fired single, triple or continuous bursts of 9 mm bullets. The card said it was a development of the famous HK-54A2 model of the 1990s.
Ryan watched J.B., strolling around the rooms of new guns, hands behind his back, lips moving as though he was silently praying. But he wasn't. He was simply comparing the various qualities of the blasters ranged all around him.
"Can't do much better than what I've got," he finally said, watching the others carry armfuls of ammo down to their dormitory.
He pulled out his Steyr AUG 5.6 mm. "Nice Browning Hi-Power over there. Might take a Mini-Uzi like Okie got. Useful if we meet a mess of muties. And a new knife or two. Mebbe stock up on grens, huh?"
There was a polite cough from behind. The men spun, each dropping instinctively into a fighter's crouch.
"My apologies, gentlemen, if I caused a shimmer of nervousness to trickle through your bodies."
"Just fuck off, Doc," said J.B., relaxing, pushing back the brim of his crumpled fedora, fumbling in his pocket for one of his favored cheroots.
"I have taken the liberty of arming myself, if you have no objection, so I can be less of a weight for you to bear on our little jaunts."
"Jaunts?" exclaimed Ryan. "What kind a blasters you got?"
"An uncle of mine, a dear, sweet man, once owned a handgun of some rarity. A weapon for the connoisseur. Also, in the right hands, one to blast off the balls of a demented stickie, if I may be excused a lapse into the vernacular."
"You may, Doc. You fuckin' may," said Ryan, smiling.
"I have taken this to aid me in my striding over the difficult terrain we seem to encounter."
He held a long ebony walking stick in his right hand. As he tossed it in the air and caught it, the glittering silver pommel was revealed. It was a beautiful carving of the head of some ferocious animal with great teeth and a mane of hair.
"Handsome, Doc," said J.B. admiringly.
"More than that, my dear Mr. Dix. Voila!" With a twist of the hand he loosened the head, drawing out a snaking rapier of polished steel from within the ebony shell. "From the plant of elegance, I pluck the flower of mortality."
"What about a blaster, Doc? Nice sword, though."
"Grudging praise from you, Mr. Dix, is better than the most fulsome flattery from the lips of lesser mortals. Yes, as I said, I believe..." He paused, looking confused. "Did I mention the handgun that an uncle?.."
"Yeah," said Ryan. "Go on."
"I saw it. Here it is." He pulled a massive blaster from the front of his frock coat.
"It's a double-barrel cannon, Doc!" exclaimed J.B. "Le Mat, ain't it? Heard of 'em. Never thought I'd see one."
Ryan extended a hand for the pistol, nearly dropping it, surprised by the weight. Doc Tanner also handed him the card that had been in the showcase.
It read, "A nine-chambered percussion revolver designed by Dr. Jean Alexandre Francois Le Mat of New Orleans in 1856, being granted U.S. Patent 15925. Manufactured in Louisiana by Pierre Beau-regard, later to fight as General for the Confederate States Army at Manassas and Shiloh. This model of a .36 caliber. The unusual element of a Le Mat pistol is that it also has a second, central, smooth-bore barrel, to take a .63-caliber scattergun round. The nose of the hammer is manually adjustable."
"Big muzzle, looks about eighteen bore," said J.B. Dix, holding the heavy blaster. "Could be good. Got ammo for it, Doc?"
"Ample, Mr. Dix, thank you. I shall take it down to our quarters. Are we to try the gateway or do we go for the great outdoors?"
"You haven't found nothin' to help operate that fireblasted gateway, Doc?" asked Ryan.
"Only what I knew already."
There it was again, the peculiar suggestion that Doc Tanner had somehow been around these redoubts before the Chill. Which was clearly impossible. That was a hundred years ago. Doc might be a muddled old fool most of the time, but he wasn't thatold. You could lay an ace on the line about that.
"So how do you know that, Doc?" asked Ryan, seeing the same question on J.B.'s lips.
"I'm not too..." He stopped speaking, looking up beyond Ryan's head into the dark shadows that clung to the corners of the high room beyond one of the narrow ob slits. "There is a vid camera up there, moving to watch us. I fear that the Keeper will know we have intruded into his sanctum sanctorum."
"His what?" asked J.B., his face creasing with irritation.
"Guess Doc means we've pissed in Quint's best pot," said Ryan. "We should go."
"Doc, you go. Take as much ammo as you can carry. Tell the others to keep to the dorm. Ryan, come with me. Somethin' you've got to see."
Doc bolstered his Le Mat and shuffled off, the tip of his sword stick rapping on the floor. Ryan followed J.B. through a smaller arch into yet another gallery of weapons.
There it was, complete with ammo of all sorts, including rounds of tracer. And a thin booklet giving a full account of the gun and how to strip and service it.
"In the big fire," said Ryan, whistling his surprise. "That's for me! What about the others?"
"No time," replied J.B. "They got what they got. You take this. I'll carry as much ammo as I can. Let's go."
It was a rectangle of metal with a night scope on the top and a pistol-grip butt and trigger on the bottom and was unlike any other weapon that Ryan had ever seen. The name was on the side, just below the sight. Heckler & Koch, Model G-12 recoilless rifle.
The outside of the book gave the main facts, and they were amazing. It fired single shot like any ordinary rifle. On continuous fire it worked at six hundred rounds per minute. But in three-shot bursts it fired at over two thousand rounds a minute: a staggering rate. The other innovation was that the 4.7 mm cartridges were caseless, which meant that he could carry a much greater supply of ammo than with a conventional weapon.
Flicking through the manual, Ryan's eye was caught by several facts he wanted to study at greater leisure. But right now, with the vids recording his every move, it would be smart to leave. He snatched the gun — nearly dropping it because of the film of oil that still covered it — filled his coat pockets with mixed ammo and quickly followed the disappearing figure of J.B. Dix.
* * *
"The big hunk called Joe just gotten himself iced," said Okie through a mouthful of doughnut. She was watching yet another old police serial, Hill Street Blues.
Ryan was lying on his narrow bed, perusing the arms manual for his new gun, occasionally helping himself from a bag of mutlicolored sugary sweets called Jelly beansthat Krysty had found.
Finn and Hennings were playing a noisy vid game called "Klingon Blasters." Hun was stretched out on her bed, running her fingers through her green hair, listening to some music called soulon her cans.
Doc was lying on his own bed, eyes closed, chest moving regularly in sleep. J.B. was muttering to himself as he tried to persuade one of the microwaves to disgorge several cheese-filled portions of chicken breast.
"I'm the Klingon expert, you stupe," yelped Finn, excitedly.
Henn walked away disgustedly. "Fuckin' Klingons. Next time we'll play for creds."
"What'll you spend it on?" asked Krysty, sitting by Ryan, brushing her long, flaming hair, allowing it to spread in fiery waves across her shoulders.
"A fift
y-shot mag on this beauty, J.B.," called Ryan, cradling his new toy.
"Doesn't tumble like the five-fifty-six does. Won't mebbe do the damage, but I figure it's better for — well, look who we got here."
Everyone turned, except Hun, who was deafened by her own music. Standing at the door was the Keeper, paying them a visit.
Quint was flanked by his two wives, Rachel grinning toothlessly on his left, Lori a couple of paces behind on the right. All three of them were holding their MP-5 SD-2 silenced submachine guns under their arms, in a casual, unthreatening way.
Ryan immediately began to feel concern. Not one of them actually had easy access to a loaded blaster. Indeed, Hun, eyes closed, humming away to herself, still hadn't seen them.
His deep-set eyes were rheumy, red-rimmed and his straggly beard was stained with some sort of sticky oil, but Quint was nodding and smiling. He stopped about twenty paces from them.
"Keeper says greetings to our guests. First guests in a long day. Savin' those as sleeps down below. Sleeps the long sleep as ordered by the Keeper, don't they, my dear?" he asked Rachel, who nodded like a child's doll.
"Glad you've come, Keeper Quint," said Ryan, standing by his bed, signaling behind his back with his fingers, warning the others that he didn't like the course things were taking — warning them to be as ready as they could without actually taking any provocative action.
"The Keeper comes and goes when he wishes. When are you goin'?" he snapped, the colored ribbons fluttering in his beard.
"Day after tomorrow," replied Ryan.
"Eh?"
"He said they're goin' day after next, Quint," said Rachel.
"Keeper says mebbe. Mebbe they will and mebbe they won't."
Ryan Cawdor's eye was caught by the young girl, Lori. Standing just behind the old man, her husband, her mouth kept opening and closing, as though she was about to faint. In the quiet, Ryan heard her spurs tinkling.
"We go when we please, old man," J.B. said.
"Don't you speak to my brother like that, you glass-eyed shitter!" spat Rachel.
"Brother!" exclaimed Finnegan. "Thought he was your husband."
"Ah, you clever fat prick, he is. Brother. Husband. I'm his wife."
"Then?.." said Ryan, pointing to Lori.
"Oh, the dummy. She's his daughter's daughter. Don't have the brains of a frozen piss hole."
For a few moments everyone was silent, trying to assess the situation. Hun broke the stillness by getting up from her bed, starting to dance to the music. But she suddenly saw Quint and the others in their frozen tableau.
"What the fuck does?.." She pulled off the earphones, and they could all hear the shrill, tinny music.
"Keeper says you been wicked. Keeper says you been to see the place where death lives."
His voice was becoming louder and more querulous, with spittle spraying from his lips, dangling in his beard. Ryan noticed that the knuckles of the old man's right hand were whitening on the trigger of the Heckler & Koch. The sequins on his jacket shimmered in the overhead lights.
"Keeper says the law is set on them as breaks it. Keeper's word runs like the law of maintenance. To venture without is to die. To break..."
There was no warning.
Lori suddenly moved, pushing past Quint, sending him staggering into Rachel, running toward Ryan, dropping her own gun. Mouth open. Talking.
Screaming!
"It's trap! They kill! Kill 'em, Ryan!"
The room exploded with violence.
Chapter Ten
Britva had amputated three toes from his right foot, using the open cutthroat razor that had given him his nickname. After his fall into a pool a few days earlier it hadn't been possible to stop and light a pyrotab to dry out his socks and boots — not without running the risk of being abandoned as the unlamented Nul had been. So he'd waited and hoped. But eventually the blackness had come and the swelling. The toes had bled very little.
Uchitel had watched him closely for any sign of weakness, but the little man with the trimmed beard had kept up well.
The invasion was going better than he'd hoped. The one disappointment was that Alaska was just as poor as Russia.
The two communities they'd found and destroyed so far were even smaller than those across the ice river. One had consisted of only three wretched hovels containing seven human beings, four of them with strong mutie traits. Three of the locals had killed themselves as soon as they saw the invaders looming out of the driven snow.
Bet one of them had been kept alive: a lad of around eighteen in surprisingly good health, despite being riddled with lice.
Uchitel prodded his stallion to move faster. The temperature was dropping fast as night approached, and shelter was yet another couple of miles away, in the lee of a low ridge. Since arriving in America, Uchitel no longer felt the need to keep checking behind him. Those horseback soldiers, if they really did exist, would have given up days back, not daring to leave their own terrain.
The American boy had given them hope of better days to come.
Pechal had taken the lad, helped by Urach, watched carefully by Uchitel, who had held his phrase book open on his lap. The boy was stripped and tied to a skinning frame outside the hut where his mother lay raped, sodomized and dead.
After his failure with the trapper, the leader of the Narodniki had spent time studying the book, gradually learning how to choose his words with greater care. Now, he felt ready.
"Where are big house and store?" he asked, trying to pronounce each word the way the book said.
"What?"
Pechal laid a thumb on the boy's right eye and pressed; the boy screamed and tensed his skinny white body against the cords. Blood trickled from his burst nails, and his ribs stood out like a line of picket fencing. The pain was so severe that the boy lost control of both bladder and bowels simultaneously, making Pechal curse and step hastily away from him.
"Don't hurt him, Pechal. Not yet. I have read how America was a place of great riches. Everyone owned several houses and trucks and guns. It cannot be far to such places. I will ask him again."
Bizabraznia, the Ugly One, came swaggering by, clutching an earthenware beaker of zubrovka. From her walk, it was obvious she had drunk several mugs of the spirit already. She looked at the naked boy, reaching out and grabbing him by the genitals.
"If he won't fucking talk, Uchitel, then I'll fucking rip off his fucking balls. Hear him sing then."
"Leave him be."
All three of Uchitel's followers looked at him, hearing the familiar crack of command. The woman staggered unsteadily off toward the others, who were cooking a stew of root vegetables. Urach backed away from the helpless boy, resheathing one of his surgical-steel knives. Pechal pulled the gray hood of his long cloak over his head, bowing slightly. But Uchitel noticed how Sorrow's long curved nails were driven so hard against the palms of his hands that crescents of blood showed brightly.
"We would like to visit some reputable stores. Which do you recommend?" asked Uchitel, moving closer to the helpless youth, careful to avoid the fouled snow.
"Stores, mister?" gasped the boy. "I heard tell of 'em. Where Traders go. Ain't none. Not for a month's march there ain't."
Though most of the boy's words were incomprehensible to Uchitel, the negativity was clear. There was a long silence while he thumbed through the book.
"Can you direct me to the best place to buy a real bargain, if you please? Thank you."
"I don't know nothin' 'bout nothin', mister. Swear to the blessed savior, Jesus Christ crucified, I know fuckin' nothin'. I can't help you."
Uchitel blinked, fighting to control his temper. His translation book wasn't getting him anywhere. At the last hamlet he made the mistake of speaking to an old man only to find the dotard was deaf as granite. It had been a mercy to slit his throat for him. But now he was still failing. Failing was something that Uchitel didn't like.
"I will try again. I think his head is filled with ice," he said to the
other two.
The boy stared from one to the other, his face twitching with nerves, the cold making his whole body tremble. Already the yellow snow around his bare feet was turning to ice. These barbarians with such awesome blasters had come from the west. But everyone knew there was nothing to the west, just a land where chaos ruled and muties lived. The gross woman who had tugged at his penis with her rough hands had been frightening, but the one who was their leader and who was trying to speak to him in a crooked and halting tongue was the worst.
He had eyes of gold, like the ferocious mutie wolves that ravaged the land and were hunted for their furs. Never had the boy seen a man with such eyes. The face was kindly, the mouth full lipped and generous. Yet the young lad could hardly breathe for the fear the man inspired.
If only he knew what the man wanted, he would tell him. Tell him anything. If his family hadn't already been butchered, the lad would betray them now for his own life.
"I request you direct me to where I can find food and clothes."
It was Uchitel's last try. If this didn't work.
Suddenly an idea came to the boy. They wanted to find some place where there were clothes and food in abundance.
"Yes," he said.
"Da?" queried Uchitel.
"I know what you want. I heard tell of it. Ain't here. Ain't never seen it. Don't know anyone who has, but I heard tell of..." The boy stopped as Uchitel waved a warning hand, frantically turned pages of his tattered little book and finally found what he wanted. "Slowly, if you please, madam. I am a stranger and a visitor to your land."
"Slowly? Sure. You want the stoppile. Word is it's filled with stuff like you want. But my Dad said it was all bear shit. Doesn't exist. Anyways, folks go there and they die there. That's what they say."
"Stoppile?" repeated Uchitel. "Clothes and food?"
"Sure, mister. Stoppile. Near where Ank Ridge used to be."
Uchitel shook his head. "Where?" he asked, smiling to himself at the obvious wonderment he could read on the faces of Urach and Pechal.