by James Axler
He turned, scanning the snow-spattered trees and bushes, their outlines barely visible in the starlight. And there, prowling among the bushes, was a white-furred mutie wolf, its massive head low to the ground, snout twitching as it sniffed at the air. It, too, had scented the blood and been drawn to it.
The wolf looked up, twin tusks jutting sharply from its bottom jaw, its pale eyes fixing on Jak’s. The albino watched as the wolf’s nose twitched again and its black lips curled back to reveal a fearsome set of teeth. Then it charged them.
* * *
WITHIN THE COPSE, Krysty spoke gently with Nyarla in a quiet voice while Ryan conferred with the other members of his crew.
“Must have come from somewhere,” Ryan said quietly. “She isn’t dressed for this climate.”
“What language is she speaking?” J.B. asked. “It didn’t sound completely like English to me.”
“She’s using English words,” Ryan said, “but there’s an accent. Thick accent.”
“Sounded Russian,” Mildred suggested.
“That’d make sense,” J.B. said. “According to the maps, Alaska is close to the border with the Russkies. Easy enough to sail that distance. Little extra ice and you could probably walk it.”
“She has a family,” Ryan said.
Doc cleared his throat. “Let me voice what is doubtless primary on all of our minds,” he said. “That the girl there is a slave of some kind, mayhap transported from the west and kept for entertainment.”
Mildred looked unconvinced. “You’re making some big assumptions. Huge ones.”
Doc inclined his head. “And yet we have seen such scenarios played out time and again, Mildred. The girl’s demeanor, and her cries for help, infer that she was running from our two friends back there. Would you not agree?”
“Yeah.” J.B. nodded. “That’s a given. You reckon they’re this Pomoshch fella she was shoutin’ about, Doc?”
“I feel it may be more simple than that, John Barrymore,” Doc said. “Pomoshch is likely Russian for help.”
Sitting with Nyarla beside the thick trunk of a conifer, Krysty was trying to find out what she could.
“It’s cold, isn’t it?” Krysty said. When Nyarla didn’t answer, she continued on. “How did you end up out here dressed like that?”
Nyarla looked introspective, her eyes focused in the middle distance. “Run,” she said in her heavily accented English. “I run.”
“From whom?” Krysty asked gently.
“They want me to dance for them,” Nyarla replied. “To do dancing.” She looked disgusted, and Krysty suspected that by “dancing” she actually meant something more intimate.
“Who?” Krysty asked. “Who wanted you to dance?”
“They live in ice,” Nyarla replied, her head turning toward the north. “My father says it freeze their hearts, that is why they so kholodnyi...so cold.” She pulled the blanket closer, snuggling into its warming embrace.
“Is your father there now?” Krysty asked.
Biting her bottom lip, Nyarla nodded uncertainly. “He run. With Elya.”
“It’s okay,” Krysty said. “You’re safe now.”
“Nyet,” Nyarla replied, her eyes suddenly fierce. “They come. They always come.”
“Who do?” Ryan demanded, having overheard the last of Krysty’s conversation with the troubled young woman.
“The frozen men,” Nyarla said. “From Yego Kraski Sada—the fields where time stands still.”
* * *
THE MUTIE WOLF unleashed a howl as it charged down the slope toward Jak and Ricky, where the naked man lay sprawled in the snow. Fast-thinking Ricky had his Webley Mk VI revolver out of its holster and in his hand in an instant. The weapon featured no safety and had been rechambered to fire .45 Automatic Colt Pistol bullets. But Jak warned him back, stepping directly into the path of the wolf as it thundered toward them.
“Just want meal,” Jak said gently.
The huge wolf emerged from the bushes, and Ricky gasped. Even on all fours, the mutant creature was almost four feet tall, and its muscular body was closer in size to a pony’s than a canine. Perfectly camouflaged for the snow, the beast had dappled gray-white fur and pale blue eyes that seemed full of intelligence. Jak held its stare, fixing it with his own.
The wolf stopped in place, eyeing Jak warily. “We all hungry,” Jak reassured the creature. “Not enough food to go ’round. Not out here.”
On the ground, the naked man was whimpering, wrestling against the staked ties that held him by wrists and ankles to the ground. His extremities had turned a lifeless shade of gray, with white stripes where the ropes chafed against him.
Ricky took a step toward the man and leaned down to examine the ropes. Tied to the man, each rope was a foot long and brutally nailed into the ground through a wooden stake. The stakes looked impossible to pull free, but Ricky was sure he could untie the knots given a minute or two. What good it would do the man gutted the way he was, he couldn’t imagine.
A few feet away, the wolf stared at Jak as the albino stood his ground. It snarled again, lips pulling back from its vicious teeth. Each tooth was four inches long and looked as sharp as a knife.
“No dinner today,” Jak stated. “Not here.”
The wolf tilted its head as if listening. Ricky watched, amazed by the performance. It was almost as if Jak had an instinctive bond with the animal. Something about his manner seemed to calm the angry beast, cowing it despite its greater size.
Jak had prior experience of taming animals. One time, a few years ago, he had been partnered with a mutie mountain lion, their curious bond inexplicable to his human companions.
For a long moment, the two faced off, Jak’s gaze never leaving that of the wolf, his hand held close to the .357 Magnum Colt Python he wore holstered at his hip. If it came to it, Jak would shoot the beast, but something that size might take more than one shot, and Jak didn’t like his chances of outmaneuvering a hungry wolf.
The wolf snarled once again, and Jak replied, his own lips pulling back from his teeth, a noise of warning issuing from deep in his throat. Then, magically—or it seemed so to Ricky—the wolf backed away, hunkering down as if in supplication to Jak.
The albino turned back, a cunning smile on his lips as he walked toward Ricky and the staked-out victim. It was at that instant that they heard the gunshot cut the air.
The wolf went down in a hail of bullets and Jak and Ricky dived for cover as that same stream of bullets clipped the ground close to their feet. They were under attack.
Chapter Four
“What the nukeshit was that?” J.B. cursed as the distant sound of bullets cutting the air echoed across the landscape.
“It came from down there,” Doc said, using his swordstick to point past the tree cover toward the distant, snowcapped hills.
Nyarla scrambled to her feet, unwrapping the blanket to free her arms. “Papa?” She was going to run, Krysty could see it in her eyes.
“It’s okay,” Krysty said, reaching for the young woman’s wrist. “We’re safe up here.”
Nyarla shook her head, the fear clear in her wide eyes.
Mildred and Ryan had joined J.B. and Doc as they peered through the trees at the northern edge of the clearing. More gunshots were coming from that way in ones and twos, abrupt rattles echoing through the silent air.
“How far?” Mildred asked.
“Close,” Ryan replied, drawing his SIG-Sauer. “And I’ll bet scrip for ammo it’s Jak and Ricky.”
J.B. pulled out his mini-Uzi as Ryan led the way through the trees, with Doc and Mildred following.
Krysty remained behind with Nyarla, holding an arm over her shoulders to try to calm her and to keep her warm. “It’s okay,” she encouraged. “Shh. It’ll be okay.”
* * *
DOWNSLOPE, JAK AND RICKY were scrabbling for cover as a fifth shot cut the air close to their hiding place. With the first shot they had dived for the nearest clump of bushes, their shaken leave
s sprinkling loose the snow that covered them like dandruff.
Ricky had his DeLisle carbine in his hands, its black barrel pointing ahead of him like an extension of his body. “Where are they, Jak? You see?”
Jak looked calm, but he was roiling inside. He was pushing his senses to their limits, reaching out with sound and smell and sight and touch to try to detect from which direction the ambush was coming. “Up there,” he said as another bullet issued from the distant blaster with a muffled burp. “Ridge.”
Ricky watched where Jak had indicated, his eyes tracing the snowy line that mounted an undulating curve of ground. The stretch of ground was dotted with occasional trees, maybe just one or two every twenty square feet, with a further line of trees capping its highest point—an ideal spot to hide with a scoped rifle and wait for prey, Ricky realized. Between here and there was open territory, the snow-covered ground looking pale blue beneath the night sky, twinkling ice crystals shimmering here and there like tea lights.
The eviscerated man still lay staked on the ground a little ways to the left, moaning. Jak realized what he was now—he had been staked out to attract bigger prey, like leaving a steak or string of sausages to distract a dog. The mutie wolf was someone’s dinner, most likely several someones given the bastard size of the brute, Jak thought, and he and Ricky had just stumbled into the chill zone at the wrong instant. But now that they were in it, it was going to take some quick talking or quicker chilling to get them out alive.
Jak eyed the distant tree line again, watching for the muzzle-flash of the longblaster. The echoes were muffled, making it hard to triangulate just where their distant chiller was. Jak waited.
“I don’t like it,” Ricky whispered, looking up at the trees.
“Cover me” was all Jak said in response. Then he bolted from the cover of the bush, sprinting in a rapid zigzag pattern, scrambling past the twitching corpse of the wolf and up and around in a long arc that would end at the distant trees.
A flash came from the tree line followed a split second later by the loud report of a longblaster. An instant later, a bullet whipped past Ricky, kicking up a plume of powdery snow as it impacted with the ground close to the gutless victim’s foot. Ricky hunkered down behind the snow-covered bush, rattling off a blast from the powerful DeLisle. A .45 bullet whizzed away from the weapon’s silenced barrel with just a whisper of parting air.
Ricky was already moving, scrambling across the icy ground toward another cluster of bushes, not waiting to find out if he had hit their opponent. The answer to that question came a moment later when another thunderclap echoed through the air as a bullet flew down the slope. A 9 mm round hacked through the bush behind Ricky like an arrow, cutting through the space where he had been hiding not three seconds earlier.
In a swift, long-practiced movement that he had learned from his Uncle Benito, Ricky brought up the DeLisle and rattled off a second shot, sending the bullet hacking through the undergrowth and up into the line of trees. The bitter tang of cordite hung in the air, but Ricky was on the move again, his legs pumping as he scrambled to the next patch of cover, close to the fallen body of the mutie wolf.
After a moment, another bullet whizzed back in response, clipping the hindquarters of the wolf just a couple of feet from where Ricky hid.
Damn, he thought, this guy’s using night lenses. There was no other way he would be able to track Ricky with such accuracy on the night like this.
Ricky moved again, scampering away from the body of the wolf as his foe sent another bullet downslope in his wake. All he could do now was keep moving, seeking new cover until Jak made his move.
Jak, meanwhile, was still running up the slope, taking a circuitous route. He had his Colt Python revolver in his hands, six rounds chambered once more after his battle with the ill-tempered caribou outside the redoubt doors. He was close to the trees now, and grimaced as another muzzle-flash illuminated the darkness with the snap-bang of a longblaster’s discharge.
Then Jak was weaving into the group of low trees, his Colt Python stretched before him like an accusing finger.
He saw the chiller immediately—a man wrapped, like the others, in rags, his face and head covered in scarves. A pair of night-vision goggles lay beside him, a few spots of snow settling on their cool titanium frame. The man was lying in the dirt, snow melted around him from his expelled body heat, his battered Mosin-Nagant longblaster propped on a low outcropping. The weapon was a two-hundred-year-old design, featuring a rudimentary crosshairs arrangement, a raised circle of steel at one end, in which the target could be ringed and then shot. Jak was impressed that the man had managed to hit the wolf at that distance.
The shooter turned as Jak appeared amid the trees, alerted by the crunch of his boot heels on the snow. Jak brought his Colt around in line with the shooter’s head, squeezed the trigger, watched emotionlessly as the man’s head kicked back and to the side with the impact of the bullet. The man went down in a flail of limbs, his Mosin-Nagant slipping from the outcropping, a red blossom flowering across his head scarf.
But before Jak could acknowledge his victory, a second shooter appeared, dropping from the branches above his head and landing on Jak’s shoulders. Jak crashed down to his knees, releasing his grip on the Colt Python as he slammed into the dirt.
“Tough break, meat bag,” the man atop his body snarled as Jak’s head reeled. “You should’ve looked more careful afore you jumped in.”
Jak heard the familiar sound of a handblaster being cocked as he sprawled in the frost-speckled soil. He struggled to move aside, driving his body away even as the half-seen shadow brought the weapon around in a tight arc. Then Jak felt something hard strike his head—the butt of the blaster—and he felt the bile rise to his throat as his head went crashing to the ground once again.
* * *
RYAN, J.B., MILDRED and Doc fanned out as they emerged from the tree cover. They could hear the shooting from close by, and ran with heads low, searching for its source.
“Jak?” Ryan called quietly. “Ricky? Where are you?”
Ricky’s voice replied on Ryan’s second urging. “Over here,” he responded. He recognized Ryan’s imposing silhouette moving among the shrubbery from his latest hiding place behind a fat tree stump. “On your left.”
Ryan took a half-dozen strides and met with Ricky a moment later where the lad was crouching beside the dead tree.
“You okay?” the one-eyed man asked. “We heard shots.”
J.B. joined them a moment later, and Mildred and Doc followed, giving the area a once-over as they hurried to join with their companions.
“Nice bit of roadkill out there,” Mildred said, indicating the mutie wolf.
“More over there,” J.B. added, pointing to the naked figure lying in the snow.
“The man’s still alive, J.B.,” Ricky stated, keeping his voice low and his eyes on the distant line of trees. “We found him when the shooting started.”
“Fireblast!” Ryan muttered. “Seems we can’t go five minutes without someone or something trying to chill us.”
“Listen,” Mildred said, raising her empty hand for quiet. “Hear that? Shooting’s stopped.”
The friends listened, but all they could hear was the insensate moaning of the staked man.
“Means one of two things,” Ryan said. “Either your shooter’s been decommissioned, or Jak has.”
“It’s not Jak,” Ricky said insistently. “Shooter knew I was here. We were exchanging fire up till a minute ago.”
“Could be reloading,” J.B. suggested.
“Or could be coming to chill your asses,” an unfamiliar voice snarled from behind the group.
* * *
STILL HIDDEN in the shadowy copse of trees overlooking the redoubt, Krysty kept Nyarla close to her, trying to share her body temperature with the freezing young woman. Nyarla was slipping back into shock, Krysty knew, could feel the way her body shook not from cold so much as sheer terror. What is she so afraid of? Kry
sty wondered.
The sounds of the nearby firefight seemed to have ceased. It had been almost two minutes since the last shot had echoed through the snow-daubed trees.
Another thought plucked at the edge of Krysty’s mind, something Nyarla had said just before Ryan and the others had responded to the gunfire. Could it be possible? she wondered. Could a place become so cold that time itself would become frozen? It seemed incredible and yet Krysty had seen many inexplicable things in her journeys across the Deathlands. One more would be nothing less than par for the course.
As she pondered that, Krysty saw a shape moving through the trees toward her. “Ryan?” she asked, her hand automatically going to her hip holster.
The figure didn’t answer, and Krysty subtly relaxed her grip on Nyarla, pushing her behind her protectively. Even as Nyarla changed position, the figure emerged from the wooded curtain. It was a man dressed in snow-dusted furs that made his body seem huge and round like a balloon. His face was masked with wrappings of dirty cloth and he held a slim, blowback blaster with a matte black finish in one gloved hand.
Krysty had unholstered her .38 Smith & Wesson by then, and she swung up its snubby barrel where it could be seen. “Freeze,” she commanded, unaware of the irony of her statement as snowflakes swam through the air around her.
The man reacted instantly, snapping off a single shot from his Russian-made PSM blaster even as he ducked behind one of the trees. The bullet whizzed past Krysty’s side, embedding in a tree behind her and her charge.
She moved, scampering toward the fur-wrapped figure as he darted behind the line of trees, her breath coming through clenched teeth and hanging in the air, where she had been in foggy little markers. The figure in the trees shouted something Krysty didn’t quite understand, and then his blaster barked again, launching another shot past the side of his tree cover toward the open area. Krysty fired back as he broke cover, cursing as her shot clipped a branch in a shower of falling snow, missing her quarry by a foot.
Krysty pushed herself harder, running for the man in the trees as another bullet clipped the air close to her left ear. Then she heard a scream, and she turned just in time to see Nyarla struggling in the bear-hug grip of a second attacker, this one dressed in similar ragged furs to the first.