Chrono Spasm

by James Axler

  Mildred ran her hand through Krysty’s hair again, checking for any other signs of damage. There was no blood, and just the one swollen lump at the back of her skull, like a robin’s egg trying to break through the skin. Krysty winced when Mildred ran her fingers over it, but it didn’t seem to be anything too worrisome. There was, of course, always the chance of internal bleeding with a skull injury like that, but Krysty was strong. And besides, there was nothing that Mildred could do while they were stuck there.

  Mildred then moved across to check on Nyarla, keeping her voice low as she asked some simple questions about how the young woman was feeling. Like Krysty she seemed fine. It transpired that she had been rendered unconscious using a drug of some kind, sounding to Mildred like chloroform or similar from the way she described it.

  After that, Nyarla returned to her spot next to the heater, and Mildred and Krysty could feel the heat radiating from it as they crouched to join her. Mildred was pleased to note that some color was coming back to Nyarla’s cheeks, but she still looked exhausted and scared.

  “It’s okay,” Mildred soothed. “We’re safe for now.”

  “No.” Nyarla shook her head. “They’ll come for us. The men. They always do.”

  Krysty fixed Nyarla with her emerald eyes. “We’ll look after you,” she promised. “No one will come tonight.”

  Slowly, the young woman nodded, but her fear remained palpable. Krysty thought it best to change the subject, to take Nyarla’s mind off of the threat of being raped here in this awful hive of ice. She recalled the thing that she had said earlier, about the place where time had frozen.

  “When we spoke earlier,” Krysty began, “back in the woods, you said something about a frozen area where time itself had stopped. You gave it a name—Yegok Rask...?”

  “Yego Kraski Sada.” Nyarla nodded.

  “Yego Kraski Sada,” Mildred repeated.

  From the floor beside her, one of the women spoke up, her eyes still closed and a thin woolen blanket pulled up tightly to her chin. “We call it His Ink Orchard in English,” the woman said.

  “Yes,” Nyarla agreed, “it is dark place where God sows time like crop. My father, he tell us to stay away from place. People, they go there and we don’t see them again. They get...held.”

  Mildred looked from Nyarla to the sleeping woman. The woman had short hair dyed a vibrant shade of rusty red by some food coloring. She looked about twenty, maybe twenty-five, and her face was flat and tanned in the familiar manner of an Inuit. As if aware that she was being stared at, the woman’s eyes flashed open.

  “Do you know about this place?” Mildred said. “His Ink Orchard?”

  The woman nodded, her eyes narrowed in the flickering light of the burner. “Everyone knows about it,” she said quietly. “Whole herd of babas got lost out there once, couldn’t get them back. After that no one would go there.”

  Mildred didn’t know what babas were but she guessed it was local dialect for sheep or cows or goats, most likely something that could be farmed and eaten in the unforgiving climate. “How far away is this place?”

  The red-tressed woman closed her eyes and gave her head a visible shake of irritation. “Closer every day,” she said with a resigned sigh. After that she rolled over, pulling the blanket over her head intending to go back to sleep.

  “So, what do we do now?” Krysty asked, pitching her voice low so as not to wake the other women in the room.

  Nyarla had fallen asleep already, her tired body curling into a fetal position, light snoring emanating from her open mouth. Mildred looked at her and smiled. “We sleep in shifts,” she said, “and try to avoid getting surprised again.”

  Krysty nodded in wordless agreement, and she made her way back to the door to assume the first watch, crouching there with boot heels touching her rear.

  Mildred was grateful that her friend had volunteered without asking. She needed sleep. The cold seemed to have drained the last of her energy.

  * * *

  J.B., MEANWHILE, had been locked in a similar cell to the one that Ryan and Doc had been forced to share. His also had a small window that was open to the elements, and it looked out onto an open area to where he could just barely make out the twinkling lights of the stars.

  The sour-faced Inuit sneered at J.B. as he shoved him in the back, forcing him to stumble into the room due to his bindings. Off balance, J.B. crashed to his knees with a whoosh of expelled air, causing the bored-looking Inuit to guffaw. He got up again slowly, reaching for his battered fedora where it had tumbled from his crown.

  “Don’t get too comfortable in here,” his captor taunted. “Not enough meat on your bones to get you anything but a short stay.”

  With those ominous words still ringing in J.B.’s ears, the man stepped back through the doorway and sealed the cell shut with a great plug of carved wood. The wood had been tooled to show figures, barely visible in the faint light. J.B. studied them for a moment as he brought himself up off the floor. They showed men and women with naked bodies and devils’ faces, the work of some deranged mind.

  Wary of the restraints he wore, J.B. sidled to the window. He felt the ice breeze of the north wind pound against his face as he peered out into the night. The area appeared to have been burrowed out of the center of the glacier, which suggested that the ville had a donut shape.

  Freezing cold, the open area was large enough to generate its own sound, a low hush where the wind played through it from outside. J.B. gazed at the night sky, locating Orion’s Belt and, from there, Taurus and Canis Minor, all the while wondering just what the hell they had walked into this time.

  Eventually, the sky still dark, J.B. fell into a restless sleep, his body shivering and quaking to remain warm.

  * * *

  “FUCKING CANNIES,” Ryan muttered, shaking his head as he stared out the window of the tiny cell.

  The ice chamber was so tight that they would have to sleep sitting up. Ryan, a tall man by any reckoning, leaned his back against the wall, thankful for the blanket effect of his fur coat, while Doc lay as best he could, his legs bent against the wall with the window, his frock coat covering him like a bedsheet.

  “Did I ever tell you about my dear Emily?” Doc asked, his hushed words breaking into Ryan’s thoughts of escape.

  In the darkness, Ryan nodded. He had, many times. But the old man didn’t seem to remember. It was like this sometimes with Doc—he would drift away from them, into a fugue of memory, where the past became more real than the now. He was getting better as time went on, but occasionally his mind still slipped away.

  “She looks so beautiful,” Doc continued, “as she bakes cakes in the kitchen for Rachel and Jolyon. And the smells, my goodness, the smells! That woman could tempt the angels down from Heaven to sample her wondrous pastries and iced delights.”

  The old man’s voice wended on in memory, his words slurring as sleep gradually overcame him. Ryan’s mood lightened as Doc’s words tapered off. It had to be nice having memories of better times to slip away into, Ryan thought. All he had was death and loss, his own son snatched from him, only to return to his father to suffer heartache and bitterness.

  The old man snored while Ryan sat still, his lone eye fixed on the stars glimmering through the open hole of the window. He could hear the restless noises of the mutie caribou from somewhere nearby, their lowing echoing with the ominous fury of a distant earthquake.

  Ryan was weaponless, but he wasn’t helpless. If it came to it, he would revert to his fists, his muscular body trained by the hard school of the Deathlands. And Doc still had his swordstick, disguised as the walking cane. The old man had played up his infirmness when he had climbed the ladder, drawing attention to his need to use the cane to steady himself. None of these ice scavengers had given it a second thought, which left Ryan and Doc with one weapon between them.

  Ryan’s mind worked furiously, plucking at the problem of their incarceration high up in this glacial roost. To escape from up here would r
equire not simply getting access out of the cell, but also making their way through the caverns that had been drilled into the ice, past that grisly meat locker where men’s bodies swung in icy silence. There would be guards, Ryan knew, sec men, made strong by the cold weather. From his initial observation they appeared well-armed—almost everyone they had passed at this eerie ice ville bore a blaster or a knife of some kind.

  Ryan replayed the location in his mind, mapping each turn they had taken, trying to work out which path to take should the opportunity to escape present itself. A few feet away, Doc snuffled, rolling over on his side and pulling the collar of his coat tighter over his shoulder to keep warm.

  As he sat there, Ryan’s thoughts turned to Krysty, his lover. Perhaps one day they would settle somewhere, give up this hand-to-mouth existence, the constant cycle of running and chilling. Mebbe raise a family of their own just like the one Doc Tanner had left behind in the 1800s. “Memories are waiting to be made,” Ryan told himself quietly as the cold breeze blew against his tired face. “Just waiting to be made.”

  * * *

  JAK AND RICKY had been thrown into a larger cell in the warrenlike ville along with the three men who had been brought under armed guard to join the party. Jak had slumped to the floor, and he lay unmoving. This cell was much closer to the ground than the ones that their companions had been placed in, its walls made from compacted ice with seams of earth running through it in dark, dirty smudges. The room had no windows and no furniture. The only light came through the ice walls, the blurry flickering of a gas heater seen through layers of frozen water. The effect was like a painting or a child’s night-light, but it was enough to let them see their own misting breath hanging in the air.

  There were two other figures hidden amid the darkness, Ricky realized as soon as the great wooden door was rolled over the exit like a screw-top lid. One lay sprawled against the wall farthest from the light, his skinny body bent in on itself to keep warm. The other pulled himself very slowly to his feet and greeted his new cellmates.

  The other men were complaining, albeit timidly, one of them moaning about his missing wife. “She’s eight months gone,” he pleaded to the cool air. “If they harm the baby I’ll chill every last one of the bastards, I swear.”

  Ricky looked at the man with disdain. He wasn’t the sort who would chill anyone. He looked more like the kind who hid at home while people like his uncle had done the real fighting.

  Ricky turned back to Jak, whose pale flesh was painted an orange tint by the shimmering light of the nearby fire. “Jak?” Ricky asked quietly. “Jak, are you okay?”

  For a long moment Jak didn’t respond. He lay still, sprawled half-on and half-off a threadbare rug that had been placed on the floor of the cell. He had taken an awful beating at the hands of the cannies, Ricky knew.

  “Head hurts,” Jak said finally. “Feel like it went up against wag, headfirst.”

  Ricky smiled at that.

  While the other prisoners sorted out their sleeping arrangements, Ricky showed Jak the knife he had lifted from the sec man. “I bet he’s missing it by now,” Ricky said with a smug grin.

  Jak agreed. “Be careful with that. Our time come.”

  Ricky nodded, his smile disappearing and his face turning serious. Jak had far more experience in these situations than he did; while he wanted to mount an escape he figured that his friend would know when the right time to strike was, just like a mountain cobra waiting for the climber to pass.

  Jak leaned back down, pulling up his jacket so that it bunched under his shoulders to give him a little padding to lie against.

  “You hurting, Jak?” Ricky asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Jak shook his head, wincing as a burning pain raced across the back of his skull. “Sleep,” Jak told him.

  “Please stay alive,” Ricky whispered as he laid his slender body beside Jak. For a moment, his hand reached to the blade he had lifted, where it was hidden in his waistband. He pushed it around to the crease at the small of his back, making sure he wouldn’t roll onto it in his sleep.

  Around them, the men continued to mutter and complain. At some point, one of them realized that the figure lying against the wall farthest from the illumination hadn’t responded to any of their questions and he went over to check on him. The man’s eyes were open and there was a thin film of ice over each one. He had been dead for a week, his body perfectly preserved by the subzero environment. His corpse made for an uncomfortable cellmate.

  * * *

  WHEN THEY FOUND THEM they were close to death, sheltering among the dead trees whose branches scraped at the air like arthritic claws. Cupped in her father’s arms, the girl had a film of ice over her clothes and the exposed skin of her face, and the snow had begun to settle where she had closed her eyes. Her father clung to her like a precious treasure he had pulled from the frozen ground, his arms wrapped around her, his coat open, better to press her against his body. There was ice in his hair where his hood had slipped, and his scarf had frozen to his face, an icy line across his mouth and nose.

  “Wake up,” the man who found them said. He was a broad-shouldered man with skin like tanned leather and the perpetual stoop of one who had been walking against the wind for too long. He had climbing equipment, including a thick rope, strapped to his furs. Beside him, a second man and a woman surveyed the area with weapons poised. “Are you alive?”

  The man in the snow grumbled, the layer of ice on the scarf splitting in the folds as he moved his jaw. “Alive, yes,” he mumbled, his words accented thickly with Russian. “Alive.”

  “I’m Piotr,” the man who had roused him said. “We need to get out of here now. It’s not safe here.”

  Lying in the snow, Symon Vrack moved his aching limbs, so cold he could no longer feel them, checking that his daughter was still there. “Tarelya,” he whispered, “wake up. Quickly now.”

  In his arms, Tarelya roused with a groan. “So cold,” she said.

  “Yes, it’s cold,” Piotr agreed. “Come on, before the crows get here.”

  Symon looked askance at Piotr as he stood. “Crows? You think birds can fly in this?” The snow was falling in thick clumps now, billowing in the strong wind that rushed against the slope with the determination of a prizefighter’s punches.

  “The crows walk and leap,” Piotr explained as he helped Tarelya up. “They’re not birds.”

  Standing at the edge of the tree line, the woman dipped her head at the newcomers in greeting. She wore goggles over her eyes and her head was wrapped in woollen scarves that covered her mouth and her hair, leaving just the bridge of her nose exposed. “You’ve seen the mouths?” she asked, and Symon and his daughter nodded. “Crows is what we call them,” she explained. “Short for chronovores. They eat time.”

  “How can something eat time?” Symon asked, woodenly brushing the snow from his clothes.

  “We don’t know,” Piotr admitted, shaking his head. “End Day keeps on going, getting more compressed with every moment it continues. We are living in Hell.”

  Symon nodded. He had heard his place called by many names, one of which was the land that God had abandoned for darkness. Hell fitted the place as well as any other.

  Chapter Seven

  They were awakened when two burly sec men drew back the pluglike door and began beating them with sticks. It was still dark outside the cell, and Ryan was catnapping, alert to the movement of the door. Doc mumbled complaints as he came to, swiping the sticks away from his torso again and again, the men laughing and jeering. The men ignored his complaints, jabbing and poking him, issuing unintelligible taunts in their native tongue.

  Ryan watched all this through one slit eye, his back crushed against the wall of the room beneath the open window, his legs stretched out before him across the cell. There was a third sec man standing at the door, Ryan noticed, this one armed with what appeared to be a rapid-fire longblaster, possibly an AK-47, Ryan wasn’t sure from that angle. He readied him
self as one of the men stomped across the tiny cell toward him, a cruel sneer on his face. The man held a paddle-like stick, as wide as a hand and fifteen inches long. Ryan guessed that it was salvaged from somewhere and had served another purpose years before.

  “Heh, One-Eye,” the man growled as he drew the paddle back, preparing to strike Ryan to awaken him.

  As the paddle swung, Ryan’s left hand snapped up and grabbed it above its wide end, yanking it upward away from him. The move surprised the paddle’s wielder and he stumbled into the wall, striking his head just to the side of the open window. Still in his sitting position, Ryan’s other hand snapped up and grabbed the man by his throat.

  “Try that again and I’ll chill you,” Ryan snarled in the man’s face, “right here in front of your girlfriend.”

  The man’s face showed genuine surprise, his eyebrows rising comically on his forehead.

  “Yeah, you droolies understand English, don’t you?” Ryan continued, shoving his hand deeper into the man’s throat and pushing him away.

  With a wounded expression, the sec man pulled the paddle back, his sadistic game over before it had begun. Ryan pulled himself from the floor as the man backed away toward his partner. The other sec man had stopped jabbing at Doc and simply stood there, his own paddle hanging forgotten in his hand.

  When Ryan stood he found he was almost a foot taller than either of the guards. “Now,” he commanded, taking charge of the situation, “you have some reason for waking us or what?”

  The men spoke to each other for a moment, then one of them—the one who hadn’t tried to rouse Ryan—pointed his wooden stick at the one-eyed man. “You come with us. You follow, yeah?” His accent was so thick it made the words grate against Ryan’s ears as he tried to make sense of them.

  “Yeah, okay,” Ryan said, and he checked on Doc, helping up the old man.

  Outside the cell, they found themselves back in the ice-walled corridor, the strong smell of gas emanating from the dim, flickering lamps that were dotted along the floor.