Both men felt palpable relief when they reached cover

“Which way?” Ryan snapped as they came to a halt.

Jak paused, his impassive face refusing to betray the intensity of his concentration.

“There…there…” he said simply, indicating the direction.

Ryan knew what the albino teen was thinking: it was an obvious move. These people either credited them with no intelligence or had an innate confidence in the conditions, leaving them with little option.

“Let’s do it,” Ryan stated. “I’ll go clockwise, you counterclockwise. See how many there are, and how they’re spread, then meet at the mouth of the passage, fill in the others.”

“What if they not want us meet up?” Jak queried.

Ryan grinned. It was cold, without mirth. “They’ll want that—right now they’re wondering where we are. They’ll be so relieved we’ve turned up and they’ve got us all in one place that they won’t wonder what we’ve been doing until it’s too late…”

Other titles in the Deathlands saga:

Homeward Bound

Pony Soldiers

Dectra Chain

Ice and Fire

Red Equinox

Northstar Rising

Time Nomads

Latitude Zero

Seedling

Dark Carnival

Chill Factor

Moon Fate

Fury’s Pilgrims

Shockscape

Deep Empire

Cold Asylum

Twilight Children

Rider, Reaper

Road Wars

Trader Redux

Genesis Echo

Shadowfall

Ground Zero

Emerald Fire

Bloodlines

Crossways

Keepers of the Sun

Circle Thrice

Eclipse at Noon

Stoneface

Bitter Fruit

Skydark

Demons of Eden

The Mars Arena

Watersleep

Nightmare Passage

Freedom Lost

Way of the Wolf

Dark Emblem

Crucible of Time

Starfall Encounter: Collector’s Edition

Gemini Rising

Gaia’s Demise

Dark Reckoning

Shadow World

Pandora’s Redoubt

Rat King

Zero City

Savage Armada

Judas Strike

Shadow Fortress

Sunchild

Breakthrough

Salvation Road

Amazon Gate

Destiny’s Truth

Skydark Spawn

Damnation Road Show

Devil Riders

Bloodfire

Hellbenders

Separation

Death Hunt

Shaking Earth

Black Harvest

Vengeance Trail

Ritual Chill

DEATH LANDS ®

James Axler

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792–1822

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope.…

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

Blackness whirled around, some parts darker than others, some so deep they were no longer black but something else, something to which he couldn’t put a name. Something that was sucking him in and tearing him apart at the same time: inclusion and expulsion in the same breath. Breath of what? This was just darkness: but a darkness that seemed to have sentience and life of its own.

Like a bellows that fanned flames, it seemed to puff and blow until finally it expelled him, sending him spinning upward, dizzyingly until…

He opened his eye, wincing at the light. It was, to all intents and purposes, muted, but to his vision seemed harsh and glaring. The icy blue orb watered as he blinked, slowly adjusting.

Fireblast, would there ever be a time when the mattrans jump became easier? Would there ever be a time when he could look at the opaque armaglass and the disks inlaid on the floor of the chamber, without a feeling of revulsion or nausea? Without—yes, he had to admit it—fear? Fear that he wouldn’t awaken from the vivid nightmares of the jump, fear that his disassembled being would be scattered into a dimension he couldn’t comprehend, let alone name. A fear that the solution was becoming worse than the problem.

The problem being that to escape whatever firefight they had become embroiled in, to escape whatever wasteland they had been traversing, they used the mattrans in the redoubt from which they had initially emerged. Of course there were exceptions: sometimes the redoubt had been destroyed in action, sometimes their journey had taken them far from their initial point of contact. Mostly, though, they would return to the chamber to effect an evacuation.

So where would they end up? They never really knew, only that there was a good chance it would be better than where they had recently departed. That’s if the redoubt hadn’t been damaged and they weren’t transmitted into a mass of rock or a watery grave. Which was always a possibility. But it hadn’t happened yet, and a continued existence was about riding your luck and playing the odds.

Sometimes, though, in the seconds that seemingly stretched into agonizing hours as they began to emerge from the unconsciousness of a jump, Ryan began to wonder about the effect it had on their bodies and their minds. To have your very being disassembled, scrambled and shot across vast distances before being reconstituted once more: what kind of damage did that do over time?

Ryan Cawdor pulled himself to his feet, shaky and unsteady, the world around him spinning rapidly one way, then slowly the opposite, as it gained equilibrium. He felt a rise of bile in his throat and spit a gob of phlegm onto the chamber floor, hoping it would halt the rising nausea. Breathing deeply, closing his eye, he felt his guts settle.

Around him the others were beginning to stir. Krysty and Mildred were the sharpest, dragging themselves from their stupor, climbing unsteadily to their feet and checking their weapons and themselves, in that order. J. B. Dix took a little longer, choking slightly as he came around, his unfocused eyes seemingly small and beady without his spectacles, only coming to life when he placed them on his sharp nose.

Which left Doc and Jak, always the last to come around. And, as always, Jak greeted their new surroundings with a spray of vomit, bile spewing from his guts as he tried to adjust himself to being made whole once again. His body shook with the spasms as he braced himself, on all fours, against the floor of the chamber before heaving. Watching him, Ryan wondered how much more of this the albino could take before he was running on empty, with nothing left to do except to spew himself inside out.

But what options did they have? Without this mode of travel, they would have bought the farm long ago. There were too many enemies, too many troubles behind them to stop running, even if it did sometimes seem as though they never actually moved.

Doc muttered to himself, only the odd syllable breaking surface and making sense. Sense in that it was something recognizable, not that there was any kind of logic running through his discourse. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, smearing streaks across the pale skin, a pallor like a man who was already chilled.

Mildred moved across to him, slowly, still feeling her own way out of the jump.

“I don’t know why he’s still with us,” she muttered almost to herself. “By rights, he should have crumbled to dust a long time ago.”

Ryan gave her a skewed grin. “Doc’s got no choice, like all of us. Stay with it or buy the farm. Who’d want to do that by their own choice?”

Eventually, Doc’s eyeballs turned from in on themselves and slowly began to come to terms with the world around him.

“My dear Dr. Wyeth.” His voice sounded husky as Mildred solidified in front of his eyes. “I had the most wonderful dream. That I was free—”

“You’re free now,” Mildred said softly. “At least, you’re with us and you’re okay. And you’re still alive.”

Doc grimaced. “Is that how you define freedom? Does it not occur to you that we seem to be at the mercy of some blind idiot deity who pushes us on, even when we would wish to stop? An entertainment for Olympians who would wish us to fight the same battles once and again, for all eternity? Never resting, never stopping, always being driven on to constant, repeated combat for nothing more than their own gratification.”

“I don’t think I would have put it quite like that,” Mildred mused. “But I do wonder how much more of a battering a body can take before it just gives up. And for what?”

“Staying alive,” Ryan answered. “That’s all. Anything else is—shit, what did that old book say? Gravy.”

Krysty gave him a curious glance. “What kind of an old book was that, and what the hell did it mean?”

Ryan shook his head, regretting it as some of the dizziness returned. “It was just some old book that I found once, but I figured that what it meant was that keeping out of shit was the main thing, and anything else good was extra and should be appreciated.”

“Nice sentiment, strange expression.” Krysty shrugged.

“Yeah. But any kind of words won’t secure this shit, so let’s get to it,” Ryan replied, figuring that it was time to stop thinking and to see where they had landed.

IT WAS A SHOCK. All redoubts followed similar patterns, were designed from the same predark plans that meant the old predark sec forces could move from redoubt to redoubt and familiarize themselves with the layout immediately, know where everything was in the case of a sudden alert. Not that it had done any of them much good when the nukecaust had come, because no matter where you were, you had to surface sooner or later. And if you were sec, you were supposed to be fighting this war.

But within the fantasy world of the twentieth-century military, it all made sense: keep these things to a basic design and U.S. soldiers could live down there for as long as it took.

Which was, ultimately, good news for the companions, who could find their way around any redoubt in which they landed. Except that this time they wouldn’t have to: they already knew it.

There were many similarities, but all the same every redoubt had its differences and unique points. Some of these were to do with the specific function allotted to the base in its predark life. Some were to do with the ravages of time in the period since. It meant that each redoubt that existed, no matter how long it had been silent, still had its own specific character.

This one hadn’t been empty that long. No sooner had Ryan and the companions carried out basic maneuvers and secured the area than the familiarity of this particular redoubt impressed itself upon them.

“Can’t be,” J.B. said. “Hasn’t happened all that often.”

“If you consider that there are only a finite number of these infernal places and that the laws of probability dictate—”

“Doc, shut up.” Mildred cut across him. “Are you saying that we’ve been here before? ’Cause I sure as hell don’t get any bells ringing.”

“You haven’t been here before,” Ryan answered with emphasis. “Neither has Jak. But the rest of us know this place only too well.”

“Only too well indeed,” Doc echoed with a touch of melancholy in his voice. He began to wander down the corridor outside the mat-trans control room. He appeared to know where he was going.

“Safe doing that?” Jak questioned.

“There isn’t anyone here to harm us,” Ryan told him.

“No one, but mebbe a few memories that aren’t so great,” Krysty murmured.

They followed behind Doc, Mildred and Jak exchanging puzzled glances. No one else spoke. They merely followed the old man as he trailed along the maze of corridors, his demeanor showing a definite intent. He passed numerous closed doors and moved up a level, until coming to a closed door.

The companions held back, letting Doc enter the room on his own. They could hear the sounds of lockers being opened, the rustling of clothes and then silence.

Krysty moved forward silently, looking into the room. Doc was on his knees in front of a line of open lockers, among a pile of clothes. There were jackets, short skirts and buckskin boots. He took a yellow silk blouse and held it up to his nose, inhaling deeply before looking at Krysty with an almost infinite sadness.

“They don’t even smell of her. They don’t smell of anything at all. It’s as though she never existed.”

IT HAD BEEN A WHILE. Perhaps not that long, but it was hard to say. So much had happened to them since then that the passage of time seemed impossible to quantify. Finnegan and Hennings were gone. So were Okie and Hunnaker. Doc had been even more of an enigma. Mildred had still been frozen, and Jak still in the bayou. The corpses of Keeper Quint and his sister-wife Rachel were here somewhere, wherever they had dumped them after the firefight that had chilled them—Hunnaker, too. And Lori was lost to them. Quint’s daughter—mebbe Rachel’s, mebbe another chilled wife’s, they’d never been able to work that one out—who had chosen them over the insanity of her inbred family existence and had become Doc’s companion. The clean slate of her untutored mind provided a sounding board for the time-traveler’s tortured psyche until she had been cruelly snatched from him.

The redoubt had continued to function without anyone to trouble its automated systems. Left to the efficiency of the old tech, it had continued to light and heat the underground warren and to maintain a level of operable capability. It hadn’t changed since they had left it.

Which should have given them cause for celebration. The showers and baths still worked, the water was still hot. There were still plentiful supplies and the armory was as it had been left after they had plundered it last time. Even having taken all that they could carry, there was still far more that had been left behind. The size of the armory—indeed, the size of the redoubt as a whole—had been dictated by its proximity to the old Soviet Union, and even though that threat had long since been erased, the detritus of an ancient conflict still marked its passing.

The glittering mosaic floor of the stores still beckoned with operating old tech, clothes, vids and tapes of old shows and music the likes of which Mildred hadn’t seen since her predark life.

It should have been a chance for them to rest up, knowing that they were alone and that there was little to disturb them beyond the sec doors to the outside world. They could relax and recuperate.

But it wasn’t going to work that way.

The armory, for a start. If the remains of the twisted skeleton they had encountered on their last visit weren’t enough, the distorted skeleton was now dust, disturbed from its years of rest, the warning scrawled in blood on the door now faded after being exposed to the touch of human flesh and sweat, they were soon reminded that the majority of the weaponry and ammo left in the armory was of little use to them. The blasters were too big or clumsy, or not makes and models in which any of them were proficient or comfortable. The ammo for the weapons they used was either cleaned out or not there in the first place, the only ordnance left suitable for the blasters they had dismissed.

Beyond the armory, there was enough old tech and cultural artifacts to keep them occupied for years. Except that Jak wasn’t interested, Mildred found them reminders of her past that she would prefer to keep buried, and for the others they were reminders only of the previous visit and the disasters that had ensued.

Mildred, tired of being reminded of the world before the nukecaust, asked what had happened.

She listened while they told her and Jak of their previous visit to this redoubt and their encounter with the Keeper. How he had been desperate for new blood to provide for another Keeper to succeed him, and how he and his sister-wife Rachel had clung to the companions to give them that new blood, wanting to keep them here. About how, when they had then left the redoubt they had encountered the Russian bandits who had made their way across the wastelands separating the old United States from the old USSR in the snow-filled lands that had once been Alaska.

Jak nodded recognition when they spoke of the Russian Major, Zimyanin, who had led the Russian sec in pursuit of the bandits. The name was familiar to him from the time when the mat-trans had sent them to the old capital of the USSR, Moscow, and they had once more encountered the granite-faced sec man.

But even though he may have expected to have heard all about their previous encounter, he was astonished when the facts unfolded. The fact that they had broken a dam with an old missile and flooded part of the land in escaping from Zimyanin’s arbitrary justice was something that had been unknown to him. Ryan’s description of the expression on the Russian’s face when the dam broke made Jak laugh, a short, loud bark that broke the silence. A noise he doubled when he heard how the man had been duped by another missile, this one a dummy.

It should have broken the tension, but it didn’t. They were all still uneasy. There was little in the way of useful food supplies left from their previous stopover, so they would have to move soon anyway: jump to another location or walk out into a hostile and frozen environment that had been changed by the dam burst. If they jumped, it was possible that the new redoubt and its environs would be just as hostile.

As Ryan had once read in a predark book, better the devil you knew… They’d attempt to find more supplies in the frozen wasteland before attempting a jump.

“RECKON WE SHOULD MOVE as soon as possible,” Ryan said to Krysty as they settled into the whirlpool bath that was still working perfectly. “Could make the food last a few days, but…”

Krysty shook her head, the long red tresses flowing freely over her shoulders. Despite the air of unease about the redoubt, there was no danger, and so her sentient hair remained at ease, despite the swirl of worry that surrounded her heart.

“It’s going to be hard out there. Real hard. I remember what it was like from before. But it’s got to be better than in here. It’s like there are ghosts watching us, coming down and pressing us into the ground.”

Ryan said nothing for a moment. Finally he broke the silence. “Shouldn’t be that way. We’ve chilled our share—had to, before they chilled us. Quint and Rachel were just another two. No reason they should come back, not something stupe like ghosts, but the memory…”

Krysty reached out and stroked his face, tracing the line of his scar from the empty eye socket down to his jaw. “It isn’t them,” she said simply. “It’s Hunnaker. It’s Lori. It’s being back where so much really started. And it’s being able to relax for once. We know what’s out there—more or less—and we know what’s in here. There’s nothing to keep on edge about. And when you do that, that’s when the ghosts start to creep back and you have the time to think about all the things that you don’t really want to think about.”

“So mebbe the sooner we get on the move, the sooner we have things to deal with and the sooner this feeling will go.”

“You got that, lover.” She pulled him toward her. “But while we are here, do you remember what we did the last time we used this bath?” Her hands probed beneath the surface of the water, reaching for him. “Oh, yeah, I reckon you do.” She smiled.

“Right…” Ryan moved in close, his hands reaching down under the water for her.

It wasn’t just sex, it was making love, connecting in a way that they hadn’t been able to for too long. They had the space, the privacy and the time. What was more, the intensity drove away the demons, banishing them to some area far away where they could no longer disturb or intrude.

It was only afterward, when they had finished, and had left the bath, that Ryan wandered into the gym that led off the bathroom. While the bath drained as noisily as it had on their previous visit, and Krysty dried herself off, there was some memory that had come back to Ryan and was bugging him. It was only when he looked over at the closed door and expected to see a length of green ribbon that he remembered: Quint had watched them when they were here before and had left the ribbon by accident. He wore it in his long, tangled beard. Krysty had found the length that time. And now Ryan had expected to see it once again, even though he knew that was impossible.

He was still standing naked, staring at the door, when she came out to him. Following the line of his gaze, she knew what he was seeing in his mind’s eye.

“Do you think Doc’s right?” he asked simply. Then, when he noticed Krysty’s puzzled stare, he added: “What he was saying in the chamber, about us repeating ourselves time and time again. Back here, waiting for it to start over just like last time…”

“But it’s not the same, is it? There’s no Quint, no Zimyanin, and the landscape outside is different after the dam broke. We’ve got Jak and Mildred. So it’s different. But there are some things that are the same, that are always the same. There’s always some bastard who wants to stand in our way, or pick a fight with us. So we fight. Either that or let them chill us, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to buy the farm yet.”

“True enough,” Ryan agreed, putting his arm around her and pulling her close so that he could feel her warmth, reassure himself that she was real even if his fears weren’t. “But don’t you remember that one time we wanted to head to where Trader said there was a place we could settle and build a life without having to fight?”

“Yeah, and look how much we had to fight when we were looking. No more or less than we have to fight now. Mebbe it doesn’t even exist. Mebbe it’s like that place Mildred told us about once, that was in an old book. Erewhon. Even heard of that myself, back in Harmony. Supposed to be where everything was perfect.”

“So where was it?”

Krysty fixed him with a stare. “Know what you get if you take the letters in Erewhon and put them in a reverse order? Nowhere, Ryan. And mebbe that’s what Trader’s place is—just somewhere in your head that you can try and make.”

“But the disk. If we could ever have cracked that comp code, then—”

“Then mebbe it was only the plans for some so-called perfect place, like all the ideas that those stupes who started the nukecaust ever had. Plans, not a real place. And if it was a real place, mebbe it was standing then but not now.”

“So there was no point in searching?”

She shrugged. “Depends what for. If it’s for something solid and tangible, then mebbe not. But if it was for somewhere we could settle and make that place ourselves, then mebbe.”

“Then every time we land somewhere, there’s always a chance. If only it wasn’t for those stupe bastards who just don’t get it…”

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN an opportunity for them to get some valuable sleep before they stepped out into the frozen wastes, but no one was in any mood to sleep easily in the redoubt that night. The sense of unease that had permeated the air like a poison gas got into their dreams, making them wake from nightmares. Some never got as far as the nightmares: Doc stayed awake all night, staring at the ceiling, trying to will himself into sleep but failing as the images tumbled around his head. Lori became mixed with Emily, Rachel and Jolyon. His love in the new century entangled with those of two hundred years before. All lost to him now, like everything. Like his very sanity. Even if only from the things he had witnessed since being shot forward into a post-nukecaust world. Let alone the horrors of being dragged from his own time, subjected to whitecoat experiment, then discarded like a broken doll.

By the time morning came, and most had groggily awakened from their disturbed slumbers, Doc was no longer sure if any of this was real. Was he really here or was he still in a cell, taunted and tortured for the benefit of a twisted science?

Even worse, was he still back in the nineteenth century, in a padded cell, raving and delusional while his beloved Emily wept for him?

For, if he were truly mad, how would he know?

Chapter Two

The sec code on the main door was still the same. Of course it was, there was no reason why it would change. The redoubt had been undisturbed since their last visit. That was, surely, part of the problem.

They stood at the entrance, waiting for the door to grind into motion and open. The extreme weather conditions in the wastelands beyond and the lack of anyone to maintain the system, except for those parts that were self-maintaining, had meant that the elements had taken their toll on both the door and its mechanism. Slowly it revealed the world beyond, from the first crack letting in the cold and driving winds, forcing back the constant warm air that had cosseted them since their arrival.

All were equipped for this: the food stores may have been low and next to useless, and the armory of little practical help following their previous incursion, but the mall-like storerooms still had treasures to give forth. They had arrived with clothes that had adequately seen them through warmer climes, but were ill-suited to the conditions they knew they were about to enter. Along the walls of the storerooms, and off in the walk-in compartments that littered the jeweled mosaic floor, they had found boxes and racks of furs and man-made fibers that insulated against the cold. One thing was for sure, the personnel who would have populated the redoubt in the days before the nukecaust, were prepared for the weather.

Krysty and Jak had both chosen furs—rabbit and fox—the pelts sewn together to form a muted pattern that would blend into a landscape less harsh than the one they were about to encounter. Out there, they would show up against the rock and snow. But camouflage wasn’t a primary concern. Especially as the artificial fibers chosen by Mildred and J.B. were of brighter colors—orange and blue. These were designed specifically to stand out on the landscape, to make their wearers easy to track. That was irrelevant: what mattered was that both these three-quarter-length padded and insulated coats had a number of pockets, many of which had a depth of more than six inches, strewed about their person. Without such capacious storage, both would have had to keep their supplies swaddled in their usual clothing, tight beneath the outer layer and difficult to reach in times of emergency. It was impossible to carry all their supplies in their satchels.

Ryan had taken a full-length coat in artificial fiber, a Velcro fastening enabling it to be pulled open quickly. He still had his panga strapped to his thigh, and wanted to be sure he could reach it with ease and speed. For this very reason he, like the others, had eschewed the possibility of a full-body covering. In one of these, they would be completely insulated against the temperature drop: yet it would also make them slow and clumsy, their weapons having to be relocated on their bodies, leaving them unable to reach by instinct, and in a fraction of a second, their favored tools of slaughter. The moments spent fumbling in new places, remembering where they had relocated their weapons, would be minimal—yet could make the difference between chill or be chilled. He secured his scarf with its weighted ends around his neck.

Doc, who stood to the rear of the line, was in black. It suited his mood. He had taken a full-length fur that swamped his angular frame, bulking him out so that he was almost unrecognizable. He resembled nothing so much as the kind of trapper he would have been interested to encounter in the time of his birth. But it’s doubtful if any trapper, no matter how long he had been alone in the backwoods, no matter how much cabin fever he had endured, would have had the unblinking intensity of stare with which Doc greeted the lifting of the main sec door and the harsh glare of the outside world.

As the door finally ground to a halt, the winds from outside swirled around and welcomed them in a cold embrace. The taint of sulfur in the air caught at their throats and made them choke and cough before they became used to breathing it in. Although it wasn’t snowing, the air was still full of small flakes and particles of ice that had been chipped from the surrounding terrain by the strength of the winds. These stung on their exposed skin.

“Let’s move it, people,” Ryan said simply, leading the way out of the redoubt and into the frozen lands beyond.

Although they were alert for any threat that may be lurking around the mouth of the redoubt, all were still wrapped in their own thoughts, having barely communicated that morning.

Doc was last to leave. He tapped the sec code back in to close the door, lingering as it ground slowly shut, taking a last look at the interior before it was finally cut off from view.

“Farewell, thou bitter friend,” he muttered as the bland expanse of corridor lessened. It was a quote half remembered: where from, he couldn’t recall. He could recall little with any clarity, these past few hours, and it was only when he had moments of such stark recognition that he realized what he had become. Old before his time and not even allowed to be within the constraints of that time. He was an exile. Something else came back to him. He said the words softly. “Home? I have no home. Driven out from those that I love, I—” He stopped, his brow furrowing as he sought the words that seemed to chase away in his mind. What was that, and where had he heard it?

Like everything, it was shrouded in a mist of confusion. Even his very being seemed to be nebulous, hidden even from himself. How did he know that everything he had seen and experienced had been true? He remembered his Descartes and the Frenchman’s espousal of an idea that it was possible that all he saw was not true, just something placed in front of his eyes by an evil genius who sought to deceive him.

On first reading this, he had thought it a clever conceit and had argued with friends and colleagues on the inherent absurdity of the idea. But now he wasn’t so sure. As the door finally closed, who was not to say that it wasn’t merely another shutter in a long procession of such; a curtain brought down on a stage while the scenery was changed, ready for the next act.

“Doc, are you listening?”

The old man turned to find Mildred looking back at him, her face almost obscured by the hood of her padded coat, the snorkel design taking it over her features and hiding her expression.

“Sorry, I—” Doc tried to make himself function, but all he could think was, What if she is not real? The ambiguity paralyzed him. He knew that if all this were genuine, then he had to move, keep up just to survive. But if not, then…

“What the hell is wrong with you? It’s just as well I thought to look back, otherwise we would have lost you already. We haven’t even got more than a hundred yards from the redoubt and you’ve already nearly vanished on us.” Her tone was sharp, betraying her own unease and shortness of temper.

“My dear Doctor, I cannot apologize. I have not been myself.” Then who are you? asked a voice in his head. “I shall try to, as you would say, snap out of it.”

Mildred’s expression, still partially obscured by her hood, softened. “We all felt weird in there, Doc. Even me, and I wasn’t here before. It’s okay, we can just walk away.”

She beckoned to him and waited until Doc had walked a few steps toward her before turning and continuing after the others.

Doc Tanner followed, words and thoughts still racing in his mind, tumbling over one another. There may be situations you can walk away from, times and places. But if it is yourself from which you seek to escape? How can you ever walk away from yourself?

THE FROZEN WASTELAND was much as they remembered it, those who had been here before. The sky was tinged yellow with sulfur, the same that got down into their throats and lungs, making breathing difficult as it scraped at the membrane, making each of them want to choke. Breathing was best if taken in shallow gasps. Deep lungfuls of air made them cough, sucking in more air so that the urge to cough became greater, the circle harder to break. The chem clouds above them tinged the skies with yellow, the heavy banks of gray and yellow scudding across the expanse of sky with a rapidity that spoke of the intensity of the wind currents, the sudden changes in direction for the tumbling clouds making them all the more ominous, as though they were about to lose their abrasive contents upon the earth below.

The terrain was much as they remembered. Banks of snow, meters deep, were driven and formed against sheer rock by the force of the winds, the loose snow on top treacherous, the ice banked beneath waiting to trap them. Against this were the exposed walls and inclines of rock, slippery with long strings and trails of moss and lichen that had been allowed to grow and prosper as the snows were scoured from them. All around, the earth had been broken by the shifting of the rock beds, new inclines, small mountainous ranges and recently formed volcanoes spewing the sulfur into the air, peppering the landscape to the horizon.

It was a harsh terrain to cross and an even harsher environment in which to live. There was little sign of any life that made its home in this unwelcoming terrain, and yet Ryan clearly recalled being attacked by dwarf muties and encountering wild bears on his first excursion into the wastes. There had also been some small communities and isolated trappers who had fallen prey to the Russian bandits. It was doubtful whether their deserted settlements would have been reclaimed by others. Even so, Ryan was still intent on keeping his people focused for any dangers that may be lying in wait.

The floods caused by the breaking of the dam had done little to change this section of the Alaskan tundra. It would be another half-day’s march through the oppressive weather conditions before they reached that spot. In the meantime, each could be lost in their own thoughts. Although they remained alert and aware, the atmosphere of the redoubt still weighed heavily on all of them.

MILDRED LOOKED BACK to check that Doc was still following. The black figure, stark against the landscape, trudged through the snow, head held erect against the winds, eyes seemingly—although surely this was a trick of the obscured light—unblinking and wide, regardless of the wind and ice.

Mildred was concerned about the old man. More than the others, she had some kind of grasp of what he had to be feeling. She, too, was out of time and in a world for which she had been ill-prepared. The others had been born to this, it was all that they had ever known. She, on the other hand, had been living in relative affluence and comfort in the late twentieth century before being put out for a routine operation. If all had been well, a few days and she would have been recuperating at home, catching up on soaps and developing couch potato habits, before resuming work. Instead she had awakened to a nightmare that was all the more terrifying for being real.

Since that first moment it had been fear, adrenaline, constant movement and action. Living on the brink of death. Perhaps life was always like that, but it wasn’t something that the late 1990s had prepared her for; the stark choices of this new world were often not choices at all, but imperatives. Act first, ask questions later.

What had her life become? These people with whom she traveled were closer to her than anyone she had ever known. They had bonded with her in a way that no one else ever had. J.B., particularly. In many ways she knew them as well as she knew herself. Yet they were as alien to her as…as she was to them.

She frowned, keeping her eyes on the terrain, scanning constantly for any movement that might betoken danger. What the hell had made her feel that way? These were things she had never thought about before, and things that were, in many ways, pointless to consider. There had been downtime before, time in which they could stop and smell the roses—although, come to think of it, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen anything resembling a rose—but it had never led to her feeling this way. It was something she had caught from the others; particularly from Doc. A kind of melancholy that had spread over them.

It was dangerous. If any of the others were still thinking like this, then they could be at less than triple red. God alone knew what could survive in conditions like this, but sure as hell something could. And it probably wouldn’t like them intruding on its territory.

AS RYAN LED THE COMPANIONS, things nagged at him in a way they hadn’t before. Since his early days in Front Royal, he had been brought up as befitted a baron’s son, albeit not the firstborn. He had been taught to be a man of action, a man who could make snap decisions and be sure of his judgment. There were times when he had to think about what he was doing, when there were many arguments to weigh up, but for the most part he had to trust his gut instinct, honed by years of experience, and act accordingly.

But right now he wasn’t sure what that instinct was telling him. A feeling of unease had settled over him like a shroud. Take what they were doing now. He knew, as most of them did, what the terrain and the weather conditions were like out here. In fact, they couldn’t wait to get away last time they had landed in this pesthole. And yet, rather than jump immediately, he had decided to lead them out into the wasteland to try to head for the nearest settlement. Was he actually afraid of the mattrans? The things that had flashed through his mind during the jump were little more than fleeting impressions, vanishing like dreams, like the tendrils of mist that remained after a jump. And yet they had triggered something within him. An unease at how much more of the mat-trans they could take. That had to have influenced his decision, as had the emotions stirred by landing back in a redoubt where they had experienced friends buying the farm.

The words exchanged with Krysty the night before also nagged at his mind. What were they doing this for? Where were they going? Were they cursed in some way to wander forever and never to find peace?

Ryan looked around him at the stark rocks, the deceptive snowbanks that looked solid yet could suck you in meters deep. No sign of wildlife yet, but that growling instinct deep inside told him it was here somewhere. He couldn’t afford to let these things take over his mind.

Ryan looked back over his shoulder at the others as they followed. All seemed to be lost in their own thoughts.

All the more reason for him to stay on triple red.

JAK LOOKED UP as Ryan turned back, and for a moment the albino’s red eyes flashed as they met with the single blue orb of the man at their head. Ryan never looked back; he was always focused entirely on keeping alert to their surroundings. The fact that he was acting out of character just confirmed what Jak had been thinking.

There was something very wrong with everyone. Something to do with landing in that particular mattrans. Jak hadn’t been to this place before, but it was too cold for his liking. The food in the redoubt had been poor and there hadn’t been much of it. Plenty of everything else, but not of anything that really mattered. And there wasn’t much out here. His finely honed senses told him that there was some wildlife, but it kept out of the harsh conditions as much as was possible, emerging only to forage for food. Difficult to tell anything from smell, as the rank odor of the sulfur from the volcanoes around them overlaid everything, making it hard to distinguish scents.

Jak could feel the air of gloom and despair that seemed to overlay everyone, but he didn’t care. It would pass, like all things. Jak had seen those he cared about most taken from him and chilled. He had traveled forth in search of those who had perpetrated the deed and exacted revenge. And then it was gone. Yes, he remembered. And yes, it hurt. But it didn’t matter. There was nothing he could do about it. The only important thing was to stay alive.

In many ways, Jak couldn’t understand why the others seemed to be feeling and acting as they did. Things affected him, but he was always very sure of what was a priority. There was a time to think about such things, which was usually in the dark of the night. But not now. Not out here.

If everyone else was going to allow themselves to be distracted by what they had felt back at the redoubt, then Jak was going to have to keep himself on triple red. For the rest of them as much as for himself.

J.B. WAS UNEASY. He knew how everyone was feeling—he’d felt it himself—but now they were out in the wild and it was time to cut the crap and get with the plan. If they were going to reach the settlement called Ank Ridge, then they would have to set a strong pace. He looked up at the sky, pausing to wipe the ice from the lenses in his spectacles and to pull down the brim of his fedora. It would have made a little more sense to stow the hat away and use the hood on his coat—it had a snorkel like the one Mildred was wearing—but it would take a lot to dislodge the Armorer from his beloved hat. It was a part of him, and if you couldn’t be yourself, then what was the point of going on?

Dark night, he couldn’t believe that thought had just gone through his head. It was like some kind of mental virus that had spread through them, making them slack. They couldn’t afford to be slack. Life was too precious, too easily snatched.

Looking up at the clouds, he could see no indication of which part of the sky held the sun. He had a rough idea of their location, but they hadn’t made Ank Ridge last time they were here, and he really needed to get a reading so that they could plot a course. His hand went to the minisextant in one of his pockets, reassuringly feeling the contours. Once he could get a reading, then he would feel a little less anxious. The heavy clouds above them looked about ready to unleash a storm. Before that happened, he’d rather know exactly where he was.

Unusually he was in the center of the loose line. Another indication of how things had gone to shit this time out. They were in no fit condition to defend themselves if a danger arose, and this concerned him. But that wasn’t all. It still rankled him that they had left so much behind in the armory. Blasters and ammo that weren’t their usual weapons but could have been useful. It was a constant struggle to keep their supplies in any kind of firefight-ready state. A few more blasters wouldn’t have gone amiss: but no one had been willing to consider that, wrapped up in the gloom of the redoubt and their memories.

For the most part J.B. didn’t know what they had to worry about. Looking ahead to Krysty, Jak and Ryan, he felt they were all at the same point. They were alive, and nothing else mattered. He kind of figured Jak may feel that way, too.

But it was when he looked behind him, at Mildred and Doc, that he truly wondered. None of them could imagine what Millie or the old man had been through. None of them could know what was going on in their heads. They could only hope that they could keep it together.

TOGETHER. THAT WAS THE KEY. If they could keep together, they could get through this. Krysty was sensitive to other people’s moods. It was a blessing and a curse. Right now, it felt like the latter. There was an oppressive weight—like the clouds above them, she thought with a wry grin—that hung over the group. It had begun when they had realized where they were, and had worsened as they had moped around the redoubt, letting the memories get to them, letting the lack of activity cause them to dwell on what had gone before. But Mother Sonja had taught her that regrets were useless. The only thing to do was to use the mistakes, to use the past to learn and move on.

At least they were moving physically. Mentally, she wasn’t so sure. She could still feel the overall mood, and it was still dark. It affected the others as much as it affected her, she was sure. It was merely that they were unaware of the subtle way in which it permeated them.

It would pass. When something happened to jolt them from it, it would dissipate and they would be themselves once more. Most of them. Mebbe not Doc. Fragile at the best of times, coming back to where they had met Lori may be too much for him.

Doc worried her. She shivered from more than just the subzero temperature and pulled herself farther into the fur coat.

DOC KEPT PACE, but only physically. His eyes were staring ahead, but in truth he didn’t see the people walking ahead of him as anything more than a series of shapes. They maintained their size as long as he kept equidistance: therefore he adjusted his pace accordingly to theirs. It was simple. It allowed his mind to wander.

Lori. So sweet. Beautiful and blond, with the most astoundingly long legs. Those eyes, always wide with amazement and wonder. He would talk to her, tell her things, and he was sure that she couldn’t follow his discourse. Yet sometimes she would understand one thing, then a while after, another, and she would make the link between the two. The expression on her face: the joy of understanding, of having a point of communication between herself and the man who had become her protector. Those moments had been sublime. And they had been so few before she had been cruelly taken from him. As he had been cruelly taken from Emily.

As his life had been cruelly taken from him.

There was only cruelty. Nothing more. The rest was a pretence to lull him into a sense of security that was no longer justified.

There was—He stopped, looked up as a distant rumble was followed by a sudden flurry of snow and ice on the wind.

Storm.

Chapter Three

Within seconds the air around them became an impenetrable mass of ice and snow, whipped to a ferocious speed by the sudden squalls of wind. The lightly numbing sensation of ice on the skin became the pinprick whiplash of seemingly solid particles hurled against the face and hands with venom by the elements. Where they had been able to see in front, to the back and sides, to identify where the others stood, now they were all alone, each of them lost in the sudden blanket of white that the storm threw up around them.

Ryan cursed to himself, screwing up his good eye against the constant flurry of razor-sharp icicles that threatened to blind him, the empty socket of his rendered eye now gnawing with a dull ache as the cold penetrated through to the bone, bypassing even the flayed nerve-endings around the old wound. If they didn’t find cover soon, then they would be lost forever. If they didn’t find one another, then all hope should be abandoned now.

Taking a moment, dragging a breath as deep as he dare without taking the freezing snow into his lungs and turning them to ice, Ryan calmed himself. Panic was the real chiller in such situations. If he could keep calm, move with economy, then there was a chance.

He hadn’t changed direction since the storm suddenly hit, so he knew roughly where the others had to be in relation to him. He could only hope that they, too, had been able to stay calm and not make any sudden, panicked movements. Normally he would stake his life on it, but since they had landed in the redoubt there had been a mood that made nothing as certain as it had been before. He knew how much he had been affected and had seen the others change similarly.

There was only one way to know for sure. In the pockets and concealed storage flaps on his coat, he had a length of nylon rope. Tough, fibrous and waxed to insure that it would run smoothly through the hands, it had lain unused since before skydark. What had made him pick it up, he couldn’t say, but he was glad now that he had. He couldn’t tell how long it was in total, so—unwilling to waste too much of the length—he opted to tie it around one sinewed wrist rather than his waist. Looping and tightening the knot, he payed out a short length and took slow, deliberate strides toward the last position he had seen Krysty.

He remained silent. There was no point shouting, as any cries would have been carried away on the winds, buried beneath the howling of the storm. To risk expelling air and inhaling the snows was another drawback. Better to try to use energy wisely.

Underfoot was becoming treacherous. They had been on a rock surface that grew slippery with the settling of the snow and ice. Ryan took each step carefully, trying to control the urge to move quickly lest he completely lose his way. The slow-motion feel was enhanced by the blanket of snow formed by the storm, making it seem as though he was standing still, even though he knew his feet were actually moving.

Then, so suddenly that it made him almost start in surprise, a shape loomed out of the white; a dark patch in the blizzard resolving itself into a head of wild red curls surmounting a heavy, snow-sodden fur. Krysty was looking around, wary, as though she were too cautious to move.

Without words, she moved toward Ryan. Although visibility was impaired by the whirling snow and ice, she could see the rope and she knew what she had to do. Tying herself on, she beckoned Ryan to the position where she had last seen Jak.

The albino was also noticeable by his fur, forming another dark shape that loomed out of the whiteness. He was waiting patiently, as though expecting them.

Forming a train, attached by the umbilical of the waxed rope, the three of them moved through the storm, trying to keep bearings on where their companions had been stationed when the storm descended. All could feel the cold begin to seep into their bones, aching that gave way to a comforting numbness, making them feel drowsy. Just lying down where they stood and falling into a deep sleep would feel so good—a sleep so deep that they knew, individually and without having to affirm this with the others, that they would never awaken.

Time was on a delicate balance. They had to find the others and then find some kind of shelter before the cold claimed them. One of the two was hard enough, given that they had to act swiftly and yet were hampered by conditions. To do both was almost asking the impossible. Yet they had no option: to think of either success or failure was to invite despair and to waste time. They could only act, not think.

Dogged movements through the opaque blanket of white took them to J.B. The Armorer met them halfway, his own plan being to try to move toward them. His keen sense of direction had stood him in good stead among the whiteout chaos. Mildred was with him, having been close enough to catch up to him before the snows had become too obscuring.

Which left Doc.

THE WHITENESS. Comforting. Like the blankets that covered me when I was young. Perhaps I should lay down now and sleep as I once slept beneath a counterpane this hue. Feel cold and yet warm. The outside will try to suck the heat from within me. Who am I to resist? There is nothing now but the white: the blank sheet of my mind, wiped clear of all extraneous matter. This is the state to which I should aspire, the state from which all madness shall recede. I shall be whole again. To sleep perchance to dream. But what if I no longer wish to dream? What if I just wish to sleep and never wake? Or to sleep and then, when finally I am wrested from the arms of Morpheus to find myself back in the realms of sanity and the warm embrace of my beloved and our children?

Now there is little to do but sink into the embrace of the light. It keeps away the phantoms that have so tortured me, making it a matter of simply resting my weary bones before blessed oblivion…

MILDRED INDICATED where last she had seen Doc. Unwilling to say anything in the teeth of the gale, to waste breath and energy, she pointed to where the shambling figure of Doc had last been located.

Roped together, as quickly as they dared in the uncertain and treacherous conditions, the five of them moved in a close line through the blinding hail of ice and snow. Stumbling on the rock and ice beneath, one almost dragging the others down with every other step, they continued toward the area where Doc had last been seen.

Mildred let out an involuntary curse as her feet hit a soft yet unyielding object. There was nothing in front of her eyes except the white of the storm, and the sudden obstruction caused her to pitch forward, dragging J.B. behind her. Although Mildred went down, the Armorer struggled to keep his footing. The last thing they needed in such conditions was to tangle themselves by all hitting the ground. Feeling him pull on them, the others braced and held their footing until equilibrium was restored.

Mildred, meanwhile, had recovered herself enough to be in a kneeling position and to know that the obstruction that had caused her to fall was the prone body of Doc Tanner. He lay on his side, curled up in a fetal ball, eyes wide and unseeing. For a moment she feared that he might have bought the farm, but as she put her palm in front of his face she could feel the heat of his breath.

It was as though he had given up and lay down to die.

By this time, the others had gathered. Mildred looked up and from her expression they knew that he was alive, despite their first impression.

Now they were together; the first part of their task had been achieved. But with each passing second the blazing storm sucked the heat from them, despite the thickness of their garb. The snow and ice stung the skin, the constant wet and cold causing the skin to chafe and split on the faces, their eyes streaming as the water was driven relentlessly into the fragile membrane. Stiffness crept into their every limb, making movement harder with every moment.

They had to move, to find shelter. But where? Wordlessly, Ryan moved so that he could help Mildred lift Doc to his feet. The old man was unhelpful but not obstructive. It was as though he had no notion of what they were doing, his body a deadweight, a neutral presence.

Jak indicated that they should move to the left, and took the lead. Ryan had no idea where the albino was headed, but trusted the hunter’s sharp instincts to have spotted some possible shelter before the storm had made the landscape a featureless blank.

Jak always kept himself open to the environment, no matter how it may be constituted, which was how he had managed to hone his hunting instincts in earlier days. It was how he was able to survive now. Even though thoughts other than the immediate surroundings had been racing through his mind while they had marched, still a part of his attention had been focused on the area through which they traveled, searching out any places where fresh game may be found and where dangers may lie. As a result, he had spotted an area almost hidden behind a snowbank, where the rock had risen from the earth and formed a shelf. The snow had banked and gathered beneath it, but at one end it tailed away. There seemed to be no apparent reason for this, and Jak had figured that some passing fauna had burrowed it out or else it had failed to take because of a vein of heat.

The nearest volcanic mass was about half-hour’s march from where they now stood. That didn’t mean that a shift in the earth and a fissure in the rock hadn’t formed a tunnel through which some of the heat from the mass could escape.

Unerringly, not thinking but trusting to instincts that had rarely set him wrong, Jak led them toward the area where he had seen the break in the snowbank.

It was impossible to tell how near or far they may be until they were upon it. The ice beneath their feet grew less slippery, but the snows deeper, sucking at them with every step, trying to pull them down, making forward progress harder with every movement.

Breath came in short gasps, lactic acid building in muscle and making their limbs feel heavy and useless, stumbling and almost falling, dragging one another down. Ryan and Mildred suffered most, with Doc propped between them, his arms over their shoulders, their own supporting his weight. He moved his legs mechanically, almost as if unaware of what he was doing, his weight shifting unpredictably as his feet lost purchase and he slipped first one way, then another. It was difficult for Ryan and Mildred to keep him—and themselves—from falling face-first into the snowbank. Strength of will, stubbornness, a need to survive—those were the only things that could account for dragging one leaden foot after another, thigh muscles knotting in white-hot agony, so hot that they felt as though they could melt the snow and ice surrounding…

And then they were out of the storm. Without even realizing, they passed from light to dark, white to black. From numbing cold to something a little warmer that was at first ineffective, but gradually began to thaw the cold in their bones, the numbness turning to the pain of frozen skin and muscle before easing into something approaching normal. Pins and needles running through their extremities, a maddening itch inside their skin that couldn’t be scratched.

The floor was solid rock, uneven and with a layer of moss that gave it an almost soft, carpeted feel. Inside their heavy clothing, even with the moisture the materials had absorbed, they felt circulation begin to return. They were thankful that Jak’s ability to study and analyze his surroundings without even thinking about it had led him here. A thankfulness that they couldn’t share with one another, as they gasped in the warm air, able now to breathe more easily without freezing their throats and lungs, yet still unable to speak.

After the bright white of the outside world, the cavern in which they found themselves was, at first, pitchblack. A little light filtered in from the narrow opening to the outside world, marked by some moisture where the storm intruded, the cold air battling in swirls with the warm air expelled from the cave. Gradually, as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the light—such as it was—enabled them to discern dimly outlined shapes. Even Jak, whose red pigmentless eyes preferred the gloom to the brilliance of strong light, found the conditions hard to read.

They found themselves in a cavern that had a roof a little over ten feet in height. Recovered sufficiently to do more than hunker on his hands and knees gasping for breath and allowing his muscles to relax, for the seizing up of his body to gradually yield, Ryan withdrew a flashlight from one of his pockets and switched it on. The battery was still working, although not at full power. It barely illuminated the roof at the highest point, but showed the companions that they were in the center of the largest section of the cavern. It was narrow at the mouth through which they had passed, barely five feet in height, and rose to the ten-foot limit at which they found themselves, before sloping to less than the circumference at the opening. Down to about four feet, it seemed to tail off into an endless tunnel, the beam of the flashlight not reaching far enough into the gloom to make the far wall visible—if indeed, there was a far wall and they were not at one end of an indefinite tunnel. The constant flow of warm air made this likely.

“Thank heavens for that,” Mildred gasped, the first to speak. “I don’t think any of us would have lasted much longer out there.”

“Some less than others,” Krysty added, dragging herself over to where Doc lay unmoving and seemingly oblivious to his surroundings. “How’s he doing?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Mildred shrugged. “It’s more than just the blizzard that’s got to him. The physical symptoms I can treat, but the rest of it…” She trailed off with a shrug.

“We’ll worry about that later.” Ryan spoke with a note of concern in his voice. The flashlight was flickering, the beam failing. He hit the base, hoping that it was a connection rather than the battery that was causing the problem. J.B. delved into his own supplies and produced another.

“Always have a contingency plan,” he commented wryly as he handed it to Ryan. “Millie’s got one, as well, right?” he added, turning to her for confirmation.

Before answering, she rummaged through her own storage capacity to check that it was still on her person. “Check,” she affirmed as she found it. “At least that should keep us going for a while.”

“Storm pass soon,” Jak speculated, casting an eye at the mouth of the cave. “Too fierce last, mebbe blow out.”

“Figure it might. If and when, we need to have some definite plan. We’ve been wandering like a bunch of stupes. Nearly bought us the farm…can’t let that happen again.” Ryan gasped between sentences, the warm air still hurting in lungs that had breathed too much ice to clear quickly.

“Soon as it passes, I’ll work out exactly where we’ve ended up and head us toward Ank Ridge,” J.B. stated. Ryan agreed. A glance at Krysty told him that she was agreeable.

“What Ank Ridge got?” Jak asked. It wasn’t a question of dissent, rather one of curiosity.

“Didn’t get there last time we were in these parts, but it’s supposed to be the only ville in these Gaia-forsaken parts,” Krysty explained. “Got to be better than what we’ve seen so far.”

“Not hard.” Jak shrugged.

Conversation fizzled out. They were too tired for anything other than basics. Mildred and Krysty tended to Doc. After a short while, he seemed to become a little more aware of his surroundings. Although still silent and staring unseeing around him, he responded to touch and allowed them to seat him upright to tend to the abrasions and cuts he had suffered during the flight from the storm.

Ryan, J.B. and Jak marked out territory, examining the mouth of the cave and venturing a few hundred yards down the dark abyss of the tunnel. It seemed to stay at a constant height after a certain point and showed no signs of harboring dangers.

“Where does it go?” J.B. asked. It was a rhetorical question, but Ryan answered, as much to confirm his ideas to himself as anything else.

“Figure it goes back to that big volcano we saw about two miles from here. When it got thrown up, I’d guess that this was formed by some kind of pressure blow-out, like a safety valve of some kind. That’d explain the hot air.”

“Then let’s just hope that the bastard doesn’t want to blow itself before the storm blows out, otherwise we get boiled or frozen,” J.B. muttered darkly.

Having marked out their parameters, the three men returned to where Doc was being tended by Krysty and Mildred.

“How’s he doing?”

“Better physically, but as for the rest…” Mildred shook her head sadly. “Wherever he is, it sure isn’t here.”

They set camp where Doc was resting. With nothing in the cave to make a fire, they used some of the few self-heats they had left, some from the last remains of the food stores in the redoubt and some that they had been carrying with them. The food was foul-tasting, but had the necessary nutrition. They were all too exhausted to care about anything except restoring some nourishment and getting some sleep, eating in silence, Mildred feeding Doc. The old man took some of the food, but most of it dribbled down his slack chin, his eyes moving from side to side without seeing.

I. ONLY I. HOW CAN I be taking sustenance when there is nothing but myself, and I know that I am not the one feeding me. There is only one answer. Whoever is feeding me does not exist, and I am not really eating. The food and the feeder are nothing more than mere illusions sent to torture me, to take me back to the hell from whence I have only recently managed to flee. But I shall not return. If that was sanity, then I wish nothing more than insanity. If it was insanity, then whatever truth sanity holds for me cannot surpass the horror of the mad places.

There is only I.

I… But who am I?

THEY TOOK TURNS SLEEPING, Ryan electing to take first watch as leader, allowing the others to rest. He kept one flashlight going, using the one that was beginning to fail until the flickering beam cast light no farther than a couple of yards past where they rested. He switched to the flashlight J.B. had given him, using it to sweep the area to the rear of the cave and to light the area at the mouth. All the same, he was careful to dip the beam so that it hit the rock immediately in front of the opening and didn’t shine out into the wastes beyond. It was unlikely there was anything out there to notice a sudden sweep of light should it appear, but he sure wasn’t about to take that chance.

A perverse aspect of this storm was that it seemed to have swept through them and burned out the melancholy and apathy that had permeated their bodies. Say what you like about the adrenaline rush of danger, and how much you’d like to avoid it, but it put things into perspective. Survival pissed all over introspection every time. It was just a shame that it had taken this storm and nearly buying the farm to wake them up.

Wake them up. Wake him up. Ryan was suddenly aware that his reverie had been the beginning of a descent into sleep. Jerking his head up, blinking heavily, he realized that he hadn’t been as aware as he would have liked. Outside, the sound of the howling wind had dropped and the snow shone white in the darkness of the night, the storm slowly subsiding and the blanket of white becoming a dappled curtain. Deceptively pretty to the eye, especially the eye that was trying to stay wakeful.

Ryan swept the area with the flashlight, the beam extending into the dark.

There was something that made him stop and flash back over the area he had already covered.

There was nothing. Something. Nothing… Was it his imagination, some hallucination brought on by his need to sleep?

“Ryan, what going on?” Jak raised his head, disturbed by the beam that had wavered and hit him as it passed over the ground. He was alert, having snapped into consciousness immediately. He frowned as he saw the torpor on Ryan’s face.

“Not sure… Thought I saw something,” Ryan said haltingly. “It was back there, but…”

Jak scrambled to his feet. He could see that Ryan was almost losing consciousness as he tried to speak. The one-eyed man had pushed himself to the limit and beyond, and it was now catching up with him.

Jak took the flashlight as Ryan let it droop. Now that Jak was awake, every fiber of his being was telling him he could rest, even though he was trying to will himself to stay conscious.

“Ryan, sleep now. Let me take over.”

Ryan could hardly bring himself to assent before letting his eye close and the warmth of sleep begin to envelop him. Jak let him settle into a prone position before hunkering down to take over watch. He frowned as he scanned the darkness beyond the scope of the flashlight beam. There was nothing visible, but it wasn’t like Ryan to see things that weren’t there—fatigue or no fatigue. Yet he couldn’t catch sight of anything.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Jak cast a glance toward the cave entrance. The storm was subsiding, and perhaps by the time they had all rested, and the daylight had come, they would be able to move.

So why couldn’t he shake the feeling that, despite the evidence to the contrary, Ryan had been right when he saw something in the dark maw of the tunnel?

Jak rose to his feet, moving a few yards into the depths of the cave, throwing the flashlight beam farther into the blackness that swallowed it up hungrily. He wouldn’t go farther, leave the sleeping companions unguarded, but he was torn. Something was nagging at him. Something that had no reason but still irritated like an unscratched itch.

Shaking his head, backing up to where they lay, he settled down to keep watch. Eyeing the lightening sky outside, he judged it only a few hours until daybreak. They should be safe…should be.

JAK WAS STILL and silent. Nothing escaped him. Particularly the gradual change in temperature. From deep in the caves the air began to heat up, the strength of the current increasing exponentially. He looked toward the mouth of the cave. The storm had almost subsided, the darkness had almost broken into dawn. Yet it was still night, there was still a squall, and the companions needed rest. Would fate allow them enough time to recover before the volcano a few miles away belched enough hot air—mebbe even lava—to engulf them and make staying here an impossibility?

It was a chance that they couldn’t afford to take. Jak rose swiftly, moving to wake J.B. first, as the Armorer had rested longer than Ryan. It was as Jak crouched over J.B.’s supine form that he froze: there was something else on the air. The heat made the musk all the stronger and it was distant but growing closer with every breath. Dogs. Perhaps those that had strayed from settlements, been driven away from trappers when they had been decimated by nature or the Russians some time back. They’d be wild now, and presumably ended up in the caves seeking shelter from the storm, as had the companions, wandering farther down into the tunnels and caves, seeking the heat.

Now they were being driven back by that very heat as it intensified.

Jak shook J.B. roughly. The Armorer jolted awake, mumbling softly and fumbling for his spectacles.

“What—”

Jak silenced him with a hand across the mouth. “Trouble. Wild dogs. Near. Wake others.” And before J.B. had a chance to fully take in what the albino was saying, he had moved on to Krysty, shaking her in a similar fashion.

There were times when Jak’s use of words verged on the elliptical, but at least at this moment his meaning was clear. As was J.B.’s head, shaking it to clear the fug of sleep before he scrambled to his feet, reaching out to wake Mildred. He whispered a few words to her as she emerged from her slumber. It was as well that she slept lightly, needing as she did to think on her feet.

She had Doc to worry about. The old man was sleeping now, but in his current state there was little difference between Doc asleep and Doc awake. He was in no fit state to defend himself if trouble appeared. She moved over and shook him by the shoulder. His eyes snapped open instantly and he looked directly at her.

“I had hoped that you would have vanished and my terrible dreams would be at an end, but I can see that I am to be further tried by whatever agency deigns to—”

“Can it, Doc,” she snapped, glad to see him less catatonic but in no mood to listen to one of his soliloquies. “Whatever you think I am, just know that you’ve got to defend yourself.”

“I see, I—” This time he cut himself off, aware of the baying and skitter of claws on rock that began to reach the companions from deep in the tunnel. Because of the low roof, there was little echo to the sound and it was hard to tell if the animals were a few yards or a few hundred yards away. The only thing for sure was that the stench of their musk began to grow stronger, permeating their nostrils, lodging in their clothes and that they had to be prepared to fight within seconds.

Doc clammed up as though someone had clamped his jaw shut. Somewhere within his mind, an instinct for defense took over. Whatever space his head was inhabiting at this point in time, it had been pushed to one side by the will to survive.

While Doc was having no trouble adapting, Ryan was experiencing the opposite. Jak shook him hard, pounded at him, but the one-eyed man woke slowly. He had exhausted himself to such an extent that his aching limbs and weary muscles demanded respite, and the warm embrace of sleep refused to unclasp from around his mind. He opened his eye and saw Jak, lit from beneath by the flashlight he was holding so that his pale face looked all the more ghostly, but could not take in what the albino was saying. The words came as a jumble, even though they were sparing. Jak repeated himself, more urgently, but Ryan’s attention was wandering and his eye roamed around the dark cavern, taking in that there was a lot of sudden movement, but not taking in why until he caught a flash of movement beyond the light, shapes shifting in the darkness that made the black move as a sentient beast. That and the smell that filled his lungs, the viscous smell of warm fur and sweating muscle.

That was when the instincts kicked in, the adrenaline flooded through him and, despite the fatigue that had been winning the battle only a few moments before, he scrambled to his feet, pushing Jak aside, reaching for the panga sheathed on his thigh. He had only one thing on his mind now—the shifting black was resolving itself into the shapes, sounds and smells of an attacking pack of wild dogs. Why now, why them? No time to think, only to act.

Ironic, then, that his sudden reaction to danger was to plunge them even further into trouble.

Not fully functioning, Ryan had moved too quickly, too rashly. As he came to his feet, fumbling for the panga sheath, he knocked Jak backward. The albino had excellent balance under usual circumstances, but the speed of Ryan’s reaction, coming from a man who had been almost comatose only a few moments before, had taken him off guard. Jak slipped on the carpet of moss, only for a fraction of a second, but enough for him to shift his grip on the flashlight as he adjusted his balance. His thumb glanced over the switch and the flashlight was extinguished. The cavern was plunged into darkness.

The dogs were now upon them. Crazed with fear by whatever had driven them from the depths of the tunnels, they had no other desire than to escape and would rip to pieces anything that got in their way. Theirs wasn’t the mien of creatures who were on the hunt. Deep within the tunnels and caves, where they had retreated for warmth and shelter, something was happening that had served to terrify them and to drive them out into the cold of the outside world. The sudden increase in the intensity of the air flow and the corresponding rise in heat from deep within the tunnel system suggested that the volcano had begun to spark into life.

The dogs were crazed with fear, every animal awareness telling them to flee. And now they were faced with a pack of hostile humans who blocked their way. Humans who were, for the most part, handicapped by the sudden loss of light.

The slavering dogs, dripping at the jaws from panic and the exertion of their flight, were guided more by their olfactory sense than by vision. They could smell the companions as they clustered in the center of the cavern, attempting to find their bearings by touch and smell alone, the sudden descent of the black curtain of darkness leaving them no time to adjust to any kind of wan light or moving shapes within the dark.

These creatures were in the way of the wild pack. They reeked of fear and confusion. They were easy meat.

Snarling and yelping, the dogs flew at the companions. Ryan had by now unsheathed his panga and J.B.’s hand had snaked toward his Tekna knife as soon as the light was extinguished. There was no way that anyone could risk blasterfire in this confined space, and with this lack of light, hand-to-hand combat was the only option…if hand-to-jaw fighting could be called as such.

Ryan and J.B. had weapons and Jak was quick to palm a leaf-bladed knife into each hand so that he could attack on two fronts. But Mildred, Krysty and Doc had no weapons to hand and their only chance was to make defensive moves, to try to prevent the animals from taking chunks from their flesh. Hard enough at the best of times, but made more difficult by the lack of any illumination. Only Jak had any degree of vision, his pigmentless red eyes better suited to the dark. But even he was no match for the wild dogs, guided by their noses rather than eyes.

The pack tore into the middle of the companions, scattering them across the floor of the cave, forcing them back against the walls. In a sense, this worked to their advantage, as their backs were now covered. But for those with weapons, it made it harder to thrust when their elbows were constricted by a sheer rock face, any force to their thrust and parry noticeably curtailed.

With no light, there were only the vaguest outlines of shapes, appearing and disappearing from their restricted lines of vision. A dark bulk would appear from nowhere, slamming into them or rising up above, the sudden flash of a wild yellow eye followed by fetid breath and sprays of rancid saliva. There was little or no indication from where the next shape would loom, and the snapping jaws and sharp claws gouged at any part of the body within reach, scratching and biting at exposed flesh, tearing cloth where the weaponless companions attempted to use their heavy clothing to block the attack.

For those with weapons, the indicator of a hit wasn’t visual, but the jarring at the elbow when a blade stuck in flesh, grated against bone. The warm, sickly sweet smell of blood mixed with the musk of dog glands, yelping noises and cries of pain mixing with the exultation of the yowling attack, tempering the pack as some of their number slumped to the moss-covered floor. Underfoot, blood and urine—the ammonia stench mixing nauseously with the sweetness of the blood—swamped the moss and rock, making it treacherous. To move was to risk slipping, falling beneath the wild animals and leaving yourself open to a chilling attack.

Ryan and J.B. were hitting with roughly every third strike, feeling skin rip and flesh score beneath their blades, smelling the blood flow. Jak was more efficient, almost every strike hitting home, helped by the fact that his vision was slightly better, his aim unimpeded by the lack of light. But was it making the creatures wilder and angrier, feeding a ravenous desire to attack more? Or was it keeping them at bay? It was a difficult call, and there was little the companions could do except to keep striking out.

Ryan cursed heavily when he heard a human scream in among the animals. It was Doc. The voice was unmistakable. One of the creatures had got through the old man’s guard and taken a chunk from him. Would he be able to stay on his feet or would the wound cause him to stumble and fall? There was nothing the one-eyed man could do to expedite the situation. He just had to hope for the best, hope that the spreading pools of blood and urine, the stench of this mixed with fear and confusion in the wounded animals, would persuade the pack to retreat.

In the end, it was something else that forced their hand. From deep within the caves, there was a low rumble and a violent blast of hot air that singed hair and skin, the force of it almost knocking the companions from their feet. Volcanic activity, perhaps the precursor to the main stack blowing.

It was decisive. The heat and noise spread panic among the pack, distracting them from their task. Yelping in fear, the dogs retreated from the fray, heading for the mouth of the cave and the relative safety of the outside world.

So hard was it for the companions to keep upright and overcome heat so strong that none realized, for a moment, that their attackers had fled. Then the blast of hot air, stinking of sulfur strong enough to obscure the blood and urine, dissipated, dropping to a gentle waft of air, the heat becoming more bearable.

Jak realized that the pack had fled before anyone else, and groped among the shapes on the floor for the flashlight, finding it slick with blood. It took three attempts to hit the switch, so slippery was the surface, and he had to clean the bulb of splattered blood, which gave the light a reddish tinge.

Casting the beam around the floor of the cavern, he was able to assess the extent of the carnage. The floor was awash with a lake of fluid, mixed equally of blood and urine. Five dogs lay within it, staring lifelessly, their throats, stomachs and forequarters covered in deep cuts. They were still seeping their precious fluids into the lake. Some looked like huskies, others had a more mixed lineage. If there were five chilled, Jak wondered how many others had limped out with wounds that would later claim them. The mouth of the cave, as he cast the beam farther afield, showed trails of blood that staggered out into the snow beyond. There were at least six of these, maybe more. They were so confused that it was hard to tell. He wondered how large the pack had been, but that no longer mattered. They were gone, and from the blast that had driven them out, it was a safe bet that the companions should follow swiftly.

Throwing the beam around the cavern walls, he could see that Ryan and J.B. were breathing heavily, spattered in blood that wasn’t their own. Both men did, however, have some contusions. Their blades drooped limply in their hands, slick liquid dripping from the tip of each. Seeing their superficial wounds, Jak was aware of a slight stinging on his own face and arms where he had been caught. Best to get these dressed soon, before they became infected.

As for Krysty and Mildred, they seemed to have fared better, in some ways, than the armed members of the party. Keeping their movements to the defensive and not having to expose themselves by attacking, they had escaped anything but the most minor grazes, although the clothing they had wrapped around their forearms to block the dog attacks had been ripped to shreds.

But it was Doc who caused the most concern. The old man was slumped against the wall of the cavern, sunk to his haunches. His hair hung around a face whose ashen pallor it matched. It was as though the blood seeping from the wounds on his right arm and ribs had drained straight from his shocked, expressionless features. No sooner had Jak’s flashlight highlighted his plight than Mildred was beside him, reaching into a pocket to find something among her medical supplies that would staunch the bleeding.

“Fireblast and fuck it.” Ryan spit. “That was one thing we didn’t need.”

“You mean, the volcano, the dogs or Doc getting bitten?” J.B. asked dryly.

“Shit, all of them,” Ryan muttered, casting a glance toward the dark maw of the tunnel. “Can’t hang around here waiting for that bastard to blow and fry us. We’re gonna have to move out.”

“Not before I’ve treated Doc,” Mildred said over her shoulder, pulling Doc’s frock coat and shirt away from the bite wounds. She examined them, squinting in the half light. “Jak, bring that damn flashlight over where I can see something,” she yelled. As Jak complied, it became obvious that the wounds seemed worse than they really were. Although Doc was bleeding freely, the flesh hadn’t been scored that deeply and some bandaging would staunch the flow. She set about the task while the others cleaned themselves off as best as they could and prepared to leave.

“Anyone else?” she questioned as she slipped a needle from a vacupack and injected the old man with antibiotics. The prepacked and loaded hypos had been in the redoubt’s med bay for more than a century, but there was no reason to believe that they had been tampered with or contaminated in any way. Biggest risk was that the serum within had lost its potency, the chemical makeup breaking down. If that was so, she would have to watch Doc for the first signs of a fever and hit him with another.

Quickly and efficiently she dressed the minor abrasions and contusions that the others had suffered, all the while casting a glance back to Doc, who sat slumped on the floor, seemingly unaware of anything that was going on around him.

Ryan could see that the dawn was breaking beyond the mouth of the cave. Krysty followed his gaze.

“Let’s hope the pack hasn’t decided to stick around to see if they can pick us off when we come out,” she murmured.

“It’s not likely. They were more scared of the heat than pissed at us, and from the look of those, they’ve been feeding well of late,” he added, indicating the corpses on the cave floor. “They’ll be well away from here. Our problem’s gonna be the cold and finding a ville, because I’m wondering just what they’ve been feeding on lately.”

Krysty followed his eye down to the dog carrion. The creatures were well-muscled and their fur, though matted by blood now, showed signs of having been in good condition. So where, in this wasteland, had they found a rich source of food?

The temperature within the cave was rising and deep rumblings from far off suggested that a second expulsion of heat and pressure wasn’t far away. It would be best if they moved sooner rather than later.

“Is Doc ready to go?” Ryan asked Mildred.

“As he’ll ever be.” She helped Doc to his feet. He looked around him, eyes staring but unseeing. He seemed confused, but at least he was able to move under his own propulsion. That would make things easier. “Doc, I hope you can take some of this in, you old buzzard. We’ve got to leave now. Stick close, just keep walking, and tell me if you think you’re running a temperature. You got that?”

He failed to respond, seeming to stare right through her.

“Do you think he understood any of that?” Krysty asked.

“I don’t know,” Mildred replied, shaking her head. “Even if only part of it made sense, that’s better than nothing. We’re just gonna have to keep a real close eye on the old bastard.”

Gathering themselves together, they headed out into the early morning light, the cold hitting them like a hammer as they stepped beyond the bounds of the cave, slipping and sliding their way down the snowbank to the rock beneath. The trail of blood left by the dog pack became less visible on the moss and lichen, petering away to nothing. There was no sign of the animals within view. They had either gone to ground somewhere else or made their way off around the rock ledge and were headed in a direction obscured by the outcrops. Whatever the answer, it left the companions free of at least one worry.

J.B. looked up at the sun. The sky was almost clear of cloud right now, only a few wisps of yellow-tinged cumulus disturbing the purple-tinged blue. The cold was crisp, so much so that it almost froze the breath from their mouths. The winds had dropped in the post-storm lull so that there was no ice or snow swirling around them.

Perfect conditions for the Armorer to determine their position. Taking the minisextant from one of his pockets, he took readings that enabled him to pinpoint where they were currently and where the settlement of Ank Ridge lay in relation to their position. He worked quickly, aware that the sooner they got moving, the quicker they would reach their destination and the sooner they would start to generate some warmth through activity.

“It’s got to be that way, due east,” he said finally, pointing across the plains of rock and ice, away from the volcanic activity. “Hell of a trek by the look of it. Land’s so flat I figure we can see a good ten miles with the naked eye. No sign of anything there, so it’s got to be beyond.”

Mildred sighed. “If that’s the way that it’s got to be, then that’s the way it’s got to be. Sooner we get going, the sooner we find some kind of life, right?”

Ryan shrugged. “If there was a better way…”

Falling into formation, they began to march, not wanting to waste energy on further words. Their options were limited, and the only thing to do was to march and hope, a steady pace to keep warm and make progress, not fast enough to exhaust them but not too slow to arrest that very progress.

As they marched—Ryan at point, J.B. at the rear, with Jak following Ryan, Mildred and Krysty flanking Doc—each had time for his or her own thoughts once more. But unlike their march from the redoubt, there was determination and purpose here. The morbid introspection and melancholy that had run through them like a virus in the redoubt had been banished by the need to focus. Whatever psychological infection had swept through them had been wiped out by the urge to survive.

Across the lichen-covered rock and patches of ice they made good time, keeping a steady pace. There was nothing to distract them. Nothing outside. The only distraction that could possibly cause delay would be internal—and none would fall prey to that.

Except perhaps Doc.

I ALONE. I alone yet tired. If there truly is nothing beyond my own self, then what am I doing to cause myself so much pain? Phantoms that appear as wild beasts. Phantoms that appear as those who have populated my dreams once before. The beasts that tear my flesh as they tear my soul. Yet these people who are my dream companions seek to help me. I know not why, yet feel that if I am to understand why I am dreaming this madness I must follow them. They are my guides.

Perhaps, if I follow, they will reveal the purpose of my dream. Perhaps they are here to lead me from the madness and back to the real world.

If this is a test, from a deity or from some evil genius who seeks to test me for their own end, then I must stay the course. But every step becomes so hard. It is so cold, and yet I feel so hot, as though the very blood that courses through my veins is liquid fire.

THEY HAD BEEN MARCHING for hours, thinking of nothing but the task at hand. Krysty and Mildred had stayed close to Doc. He remained silent, distant from them. There was little indication that he could even acknowledge their existence. But he was still marching, keeping pace. Something was driving him onward.

Mildred frowned as she looked back at him. Was she wrong, or were there red patches flaring over his cheekbones, barely visible against the pallor of his gaunt visage? Was his gait getting a little stiff compared to when she had looked back a few minutes before?

She dropped back, so that she could keep pace beside him.

“Doc. Doc, can you hear me?” she asked gently. He showed no signs of registering her words.

She took his wrist and felt his pulse. He didn’t seem to notice her do this. It was fast. Even allowing for the pace they were setting, it was still a little more than she would expect. She put her hand up to his forehead, half expecting him to brush it away.

“Mildred, what’s wrong?” Krysty asked from just behind them.

Mildred withdrew her hand in surprise. Doc’s forehead was slick with sweat, his skin burning beneath the veneer of perspiration.

This was just what she had feared.

Chapter Four

“We can’t stop now—look around you. There’s no shelter, the cold is starting to bite into me just like it is you, and we need to find food and shelter before the next storm blows up.”

“So that’s a no, then,” Mildred said quietly.

Ryan failed to respond. “I can’t see why we can’t just rig something to carry Doc. It won’t be the first time. There’s no immediate danger.”

“I’m not saying we can’t do that, just that we need to stop awhile. I need to examine him properly, see if his wounds are infected, or if this is something in his blood. I can’t give him another shot until I know what’s going on with him. It won’t take that long, Ryan.”

She looked back to where Krysty was helping the old man along. His gait was stiffer than before and he was trembling. There was little doubt that it would only be a matter of half an hour—perhaps not even that—before they had to carry him. But if she waited until that was forced on them, it could make all the difference between treating his fever successfully or leaving him too far down the road to the farm.

Ryan kept walking, narrowing his eye to take in the horizon. At the edge there were a few objects that may be croppings or may be the first signs of a settlement. Maybe another hour’s march if they could force the pace. But Ryan felt the ice seep into his marrow, was still tired from lack of sleep and exertion; the only thing keeping him going was sheer will. He was scared. If he stopped, would he be able to start again?

Then he looked back for the first time. Resolutely he had kept his eyes ahead while they marched, not wanting to turn back to check Doc when Mildred caught up to him. He knew that if he did, he would probably agree with her assessment. That was something he didn’t want to do. He wanted to press on, for his own sake, but knew that his sense of duty to those he led would make him stop.

As it did when he saw the condition that Doc was now in. The old man had never looked so frail. Ryan didn’t even want to consider what the fever was doing to his already fractured mind.

Wearily, and with a sense of resignation that he could not hide, he slowed and held up his hand. “Okay, okay, we stop and check Doc. But you’d better make it quick for his sake as much as ours. There isn’t much shelter out here, and we can’t make much.”

“I don’t need long, believe me,” Mildred said, hurrying back to where Krysty had gently lowered Doc onto the cold rock floor of the plain. He was unresponsive, lost in his own world.

Needing no direction, Jak and J.B. joined Ryan in using what they could spare of their own outer clothing to form an improvised barrier against the winds that blew around the prone figure. They had traveled light and there was nothing across this arid expanse of rock and ice to use as a windbreak. Shedding an outer layer meant exposure to the elements themselves, but it was playing percentages. If Mildred could be as quick as she had said, then they may just avoid exposure.

Working quickly, Mildred was on her knees. Krysty pulled away Doc’s fur coat, the frock coat beneath and the tattered remnants of his shirt, the bloodied edges of which had already been trimmed to allow Mildred access to his wounds in the cave. The Titian-haired woman also maneuvered her body so that it formed an extra barrier between the prone Doc and the direction of the winds.

Mildred knew that she could count in seconds, rather than minutes, the time she would have to make her examination before Doc’s exposed flesh wound succumbed to the elements and before those who had sacrificed their own warmth to provide cover would begin, equally, to succumb.

The area uncovered was around his ribs. The wounds on the arm could be dealt with swiftly and would not need him to be so protected. But the torso was another matter. Krysty had contrived to expose as little of the old man as possible, and Mildred had just enough area in which to work. She removed the dressings she had placed earlier and could see that the wounds showed no signs of infection. The flesh was healthy, if still raw.

Fumbling with the cold, she redressed the wound and Krysty dextrously reclothed Doc while Mildred looked up at the men standing over them.

“You can get covered again, guys. There’s enough slack to just roll up his sleeve.”

While J.B., Ryan and Jak gratefully replaced their heavy coats and hugged themselves into the materials to try to suck warmth from them, Mildred jacked up the layers of sleeve on Doc’s arm, thanking whatever deity she thought may still exist that the old man’s wounds had been on the forearm. It saved a whole lot of hassle. Having to strip him to examine the upper arm would have taken precious time and probably finish him off by itself.

Removing the dressings and checking the wounds, she could see that these, too, were clean.

Replacing the dressing, her mind raced. No infection visible, so it had to be something that acted quickly in the bloodstream. Why hadn’t that antibiotic shot worked? No one else who had needed a shot was feverish…but then, their wounds had been the lesser. It had to be that just one of the hypos was a dud. She’d have to try another and hope that it worked.

“I’m going to give him another shot and hope it works. Meantime, we’re going to have to help him until we can find some shelter, because he won’t be strong enough to stand alone until we can get some rest.”

“No problem. We’ll take it in turns. I’ll take first—”

“No.” Mildred cut him off. “You don’t look so hot yourself. Let me or John do it.”

Ryan looked her in the eye. He could see that she had been studying him as they had marched and knew that he had his own battle with fatigue. He nodded briefly. “Okay.”

Pulling Doc to his feet, Mildred and J.B. supported him between them. Jak took the rear defensive position in line and Krysty dropped in behind Ryan.

“Fifteen minutes, then we swap,” Ryan said, checking his wrist chron. “That way we try to stay fresh.”

“Yeah, sounds good to me,” Mildred muttered, feeling Doc’s weight sag in time with each step.

They would be slower now, but as Ryan fixed his gaze on the shapes littering the horizon, he felt that they could still make the settlement within a couple of hours. Assuming that those shapes were buildings. Assuming they could withstand the bone-chilling cold. Assuming that no storms blew up from nowhere.

Best not to think. Best to just concentrate on putting one foot in front of another, on ignoring the stench of sulfur searing their lungs with every breath, the jarring of foot on rock that made the ankles turn to jelly with every step.

There was little they could do until they reached shelter. And if the distant shapes didn’t represent that shelter, then they would just have to hope….

THE PHANTOMS now lift me up like angels, e’en though they may be devils of the foulest kind. They support me so that I am as light as air.

They take me toward the horizon, as though in search of something. But does not the horizon retreat in proportion to the distance you travel? Better to travel hopefully than to arrive… Why does that come to mind, where have I heard it before?

I can see them all now, as though I am on a procession. A parade, like those on Independence Day, when the children played in the fields and bobbed for apples while we drank beer and brandy, and talked of the wonders of the age. Then to return to our frame houses where, by the light of the oil lamp, Emily would lay our children down to rest before coming to me, disrobing and joining me in the conjugal bed. I miss the smell of her hair, the touch of her skin. Perhaps, when I have shed this madness and I once more can take my place in the world, I will feel, smell and taste her once again.

But there is another… She comes toward me now. Golden hair flowing like the corn in summer over her shoulders. Long, lean limbs that stretch to infinity and beyond. Eyes wide open and innocent, trusting of me and asking only that I trust her in return. Of course I do, my love. You and Emily are equal in my heart. You always will be. You showed me that there could be a path to goodness in this bedlam of the soul.

She holds out her hand. There is a reason why I have returned to this place of other dreams, other times. I have purpose.

Tell me, Lori, tell me…

She holds out her hand. I want to take it, but I am constrained by those who would wish to be my protectors.

“It’s okay, Doc. You can do it. You can do anything here.”

She is right. I am the I who controls my own dreams. I disentangle my arms from those who support me and step out of myself to walk toward her. I reach out and take her hand, pulling her to me. We embrace and once more I feel the warmth of another being close to me.

“You have to listen, Doc. I can’t be here long, but I have something to tell you.”

“No, you must stay. You cannot leave me again, not after so long.”

She steps back, smiles. Those eyes light with joy, pull me into her very being.

“I wish I could stay, or take you with me. I can’t. Got to tell you this. You must know. You have been chosen. You have followed the others for too long. They lead you in circles that take you nowhere. If you are ever to escape this place, then you must assert your right to lead. The chance will come to you soon. You must take it. Seize the day and you will be free once more. Stay silent and you will be trapped forever.”

I consider her words. But while I do she begins to slip away from me. I want to call out to her, but I know she must go, and there is nothing I can do to prevent her taking her leave. Sadly I watch her recede into the distance, just as I feel myself drawn back to the arms of those angels who support me, stop me falling to the ground once more.

Sweet, sweet Lori. So wise. So true.

I must wait, bide my time, take my chance…

“DON’T STOP NOW, Ryan. We’re so close that I can manage a little longer,” Krysty said as the one-eyed man dropped back to take his turn at assisting Doc. He smiled gratefully. Truth to tell, he was about ready to drop just carrying himself. If Krysty and Jak could take the burden just a little longer, he was in no condition to complain.

Turning back, he could see what had once been indistinct shapes had now resolved themselves into identifiable blocks of huts and shacks, log cabins and metal-sheeted shelters from the weather.

Yet it was too quiet. The hairs at the base of his neck prickled.

“Something’s not right. Triple red, people,” he said softly, bringing a blaster to hand for the first time since leaving the cave.

“There should be more signs of life when weather’s this stable. Where the hell are all the people?”

Chapter Five

Carnage. That was the only way to describe what they had stumbled into: the result of a bitter battle.

The buildings were empty. The windows in most had been shattered, allowing the elements to rend what had been within. Snow and ice covered clothing, tables, bed and chairs that had had been ripped, smashed and scattered by the winds and by some other agency. Doors hung open, some almost ripped from their hinges, others broken as though rammed. Wood had been splintered by the violence of battle, and those walls that were of corrugated metal, or reinforced by sheeting, showed signs of being bent out of shape. The few that were of cinder block remained intact apart from shattered windows, their lack of damage delineating the limits of the violence. The snow had fallen and settled on the paths between the huts, a light covering that obscured some of what lay beneath. But there were patches of ice, clear enough to show the blood and the churned mud beneath the glassy surface.

And there were the remains. Nothing more than carrion now. Shreds of clothing identifying them as people, but little else that could act as an indicator. There were detached limbs, torsos and crushed bone that may have once been skull. Whatever had whipped through the settlement like a hurricane of violence had made good work of the people living here. Stripped of most of the flesh, no skin remaining with only a few red lumps of flesh and gristle hanging on what had once been rib cages, and mauled out of shape, these were the few remnants of what had once been a community.

“Dark night, what could have done this?” J.B. whispered as he bent to examine something that looked as though it may have been a pelvis. Nearby, a hank of hair with some scalp still attached lay discarded in the mud.

That was odd: mud. The Armorer rose to his feet and walked along the path, noting the churned-up patches under ice. There was little in the way of soil in these parts, little more than rock and ice. Any soil that did manage to exist lay on the upland rock formations to the west.

Around back of one of the cinder block huts he found an answer: log troughs that had held earth two feet deep had been torn apart, the splintered wood littering the immediate area, the remains of some vegetable matter coaxed from the unyielding earth crushed underfoot. Tarpaulins, ripped into shreds, were scattered farther afield.

He heard a noise behind him and whirled, bringing up his mini-Uzi, trigger finger flexing minutely as his nerves tightened.

“There’s nobody here but us chickens, John. Relax.” Mildred stepped around the back of the cinder block building to join him, surveying the decimated troughs. “Crops? Out here?”

J.B. scratched his forehead, pushing back his fedora. “Strange one. Mebbe they couldn’t find as much wildlife as they needed to trap. Must’ve had some kind of trading route set up, though. No way they went and got this much soil for themselves, not as far as it is to the nearest supply. Must have bartered it for something.”

“So, other communities hereabouts,” Mildred concluded.

J.B. nodded. “Which means we can’t be all that far from them. Mebbe press on a little.”

“Not stay here, rest up?” she questioned.

J.B. shrugged. “Depends if we want to stick around to see if whoever or whatever did this turns up again,” he said mildly.

“Not likely. Everyone here bought the farm at least a week back, by the look of what’s left. And most of the damage to that has come from critters making the most of an easy meal.”

“Okay. Figure Doc needs to rest up and Ryan looks like he could do with some, too. Hasn’t had the chance while the rest of us have been grabbing some sleep. Let’s get back and clue them in. And one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

J.B. grinned. “Don’t sneak up behind me like that again. I’m getting more and more jumpy as I get older.”

Mildred raised an eyebrow. “I’ll remember that.”

THE OTHERS WERE WAITING for them a quarter mile off, having found some scant cover among rock formations that had been chipped away by the settlement dwellers for their own use. Where rock had been taken to build walls and reinforce hut defenses, a hollow had been made in which Krysty and Jak had been able to secure Doc. Ryan waited with them, feeling relieved that they had been able to help Doc walk and not have to rig up some kind of carrier, after all. This cover was scant enough, without the extra space a stretcher would demand. That, at least, was one small piece of luck. Maybe there would be others. Nonetheless, he felt uneasy the whole time that Mildred and J.B. were gone. He should be taking the chances, scouting the area. That was part of his responsibility. Besides which, movement would keep him warmer than he felt right now.

“That Ank Ridge you talk about?” Jak murmured, indicating the settlement as they watched J.B. and Mildred approach, spread out and with weapons to hand. They had to approach head-on, with no cover to make use of, and Ryan was too distracted to initially assimilate Jak’s question. It was only when the albino repeated himself that Ryan realized what had been said.

“Can’t be,” he answered tersely. “Ank Ridge was a port, as far as we could make out. End of the river we opened up again when we blew the dam. This is just a little ville that—I hope—is on the way.”

“Why we not follow river when leave redoubt?” Jak asked with a frown.

“Set off in the wrong direction. No reason why we shouldn’t have gone that route. Everything was wrong when we got out of there, and by the time J.B. took direction and set us right, we’d somehow ended up wide of the river.” He shook his head. “Dammit, should have got that right.”

“Shit happens,” Krysty said softly. “None of us were thinking right in that place, it was bound to screw us up. Thing to do is not let it screw us up any more.”

Ryan agreed. “Shitload of things to put right, though. First thing is to see if we can get some proper rest and see to Doc. Fireblast, what’s taking them so long?”

He felt impatient waiting for J.B. and Mildred to reappear. Part of him nagged that he should be doing it. There was something wrong with the settlement. It shouldn’t be that quiet unless it was deserted, and if it was, then why? He wasn’t used to having to sit around doing nothing. It rankled, made him feel irritable.

So it was with a sense of relief that he saw J.B. and Mildred come into view as they trekked back the quarter mile to where the others lay in wait. From the ease with which they traversed the distance, he could see that there was little danger. But what had they found?

When they reached the spot where the other companions were hidden, J.B. told Ryan of everything they had discovered while Mildred checked Doc. He hadn’t deteriorated, but at the same time any progress was being checked by the conditions. She looked up to the sky. Clouds were beginning to gather again, giving the light a yellow tinge. The sooner they could move, the better.

J.B. finished his report. Ryan looked at the others. “Sounds safe enough if we get there quickly, secure one of the huts for ourselves. Whatever hit them will do us more damage out here if it catches us than if we’ve got some kind of cover. And whatever wildlife stripped those carcasses will find us easier pickings here than behind wood or cinder block.”

“You won’t find any complaints from me on that,” Mildred asserted. “And we really need to get Doc under cover.”

With Ryan and J.B. taking their turn in supporting the ailing Doc, the companions came out of cover and headed for the settlement. They made rapid progress, knowing that—at least for now—the territory was safe, and within half an hour had selected one of the cinder block huts as their shelter. Dragging the least-damaged bedding from the other huts, Krysty and Jak cleared out the selected hut and put the bedding down. There was a wood-burning stove set in the middle of the hut, its metal piping chimney into the roof still intact. They selected the driest wood they could find from the damage caused in the settlement, selecting some debris from the troughs and from wooden huts as well as the driest of the wood from the stores that had been ripped open, their contents strewed, at the back of the cinder block hut. The windows had been smashed, so Jak and Ryan foraged for metal sheeting or wooden shutters intact enough to be taken from other huts and placed over the glassless gaps.

While they did this, Mildred settled Doc into one corner of the room and went in search of blankets and clothing that was salvageable from the wreckage of the settlement. She came back with very little, but enough to give Doc a few extra layers of warmth. Searching through her med supplies, she was able to find some sedatives to calm him while the fever raged.

On her search, she also looked for food and water. There were still some water supplies left—each home in the settlement having its own supply tanks which had to have been refilled regularly by the inhabitants—but, as she had suspected, any food had been scavenged by the predators who had stripped the corpses. She reported this to the others when they had completed their tasks and were miserably forcing down more of the self-heats, thus depleting their own supplies, while warming in front of the stove.

“How many huts did you count?” she asked when she had finished detailing her findings.

“Not sure—eight, mebbe nine.” Ryan frowned.

“There are eleven. I counted as I searched them,” Mildred affirmed. “Most of them looked like they had at least two people in them, so there were about twenty-five, thirty people here.”

“Okay,” Ryan said slowly. “So whatever came through here had enough force to take on that many people. We need to be triple red on this, but—”

Mildred shook her head. “That’s not really the point I wanted to make. I know the carrion out there was pretty badly mauled, but how many actual people do you reckon there were scattered around?”

“Hard to say,” Ryan mused. “They were ripped up, scattered about, stripped—”

“But not enough to be all,” Jak interjected, nodding slowly to himself. “Few bones, even if some taken by animals.”

“So what happened to the rest of them?” Millie asked rhetorically. “Whatever hit this ville, it took a lot of them away, live or chilled. What the fuck does that, and why?”

There was a silence while they all considered this. Finally, Jak spoke. “Not matter. If comes back, be ready fight. If doesn’t, then not matter.”

The albino teen made sense. To worry over the unknown would do them no good. All they could do was mount a guard through the night and try to rest up before moving on to the next ville. Maybe do some hunting along the way. At least they knew there was game in the area, thanks to the dogs.

Ryan organized a guard, with Jak and J.B. taking first watch, before gratefully sinking into sleep. Mildred stayed by Doc. His fever showed signs of peaking and the sedatives at least enabled him to get some rest. But she wanted to be close in case it worsened and he needed immediate attention. Krysty curled up near Ryan, but found it hard to sleep. She knew she had to, as she was on next watch and it would be advisable to grab some rest now. But something was worrying her. Her hair rustled and moved of its own volition as she tossed and turned. It was nothing immediate; all the same, she knew that whatever had decimated this settlement was out there somewhere and there was a good chance they would walk right into it.

The cinder block hut was lit by a small oil lamp that Mildred had found in one of the buildings. As with everything else, most of the lighting had been smashed during whatever battle had taken place. Only this one item had survived, along with just enough tallow oil to run it for the night. It meant that they could save the batteries on the remaining working flashlights they carried, although the glow it cast was small and the smell of the oil was caustic if any were fool enough to stand too close.

Most of the hut was in shadow. The lamp illuminated the area where the sentry stood his or her guard, the rest of the hut in a pleasant semidarkness to facilitate sleep. As the others settled, some less easily than others, Jak and J.B. stood silently, occasionally moving from one covered window to another to check the outside.

The hut had four windows: two at the front on either side of the entrance and two at the back, evenly spaced. These were the long walls on the rectangular building, with the shorter walls being devoid of space. And there was only the single door. It had the advantage that there were only five entry points to guard, and the corresponding disadvantage that there were, equally, only the five exit points should they need to evacuate quickly.

When they had reinforced the hut’s security for the night, they had made sure that one window on each side of the hut had a shutter that could be opened from the inside to facilitate the need to survey the area. Added to this, one of the two on watch would patrol the outside, returning at intervals, signaling to be admitted and then replaced by the other. The night temperature was bitingly cold, so it was advisable to spend as little time as possible on the outside.

A simple sec system, and one that worked well for the first hour of watch, with no event. But as they slipped into the second hour, things began to change. It was J.B. who first noticed, on his third stint on patrol.

As the Armorer was admitted after rapping out the prearranged tattoo, Jak could see from his expression that all was not well.

“Something coming down from cover, up a mile or so where the rocks rise.”

Jak nodded. It hadn’t escaped his notice that the area to the west, where the beginnings of the volcanic regions housed some growth of flora in the otherwise barren rocks, would provide cover for anyone—or anything—that would care to bide its time before attack.

J.B. continued. “Ain’t people…animals of some kind, moving pretty quick, too. About a dozen, mebbe more. Look like bears to me, though all I could see were big bastard shapes moving onto the plain.”

“Take look,” Jak murmured. “How big?”

“Big—five-hundred-pounders to show at that distance.”

Jak’s impassive visage showed nothing, but the Armorer knew what was running through his mind. If a pack of bears in search of food had come across this settlement before, then that could account for what had happened. And from the havoc they had found here, it could mean big trouble.

Jak indicated to J.B. that he would be back soon and slipped out the door.

THREE QUARTER MOON. No surprise that J.B. had been able to make such a good assessment, as the sky was devoid of cloud and the light from the wan, yellow-tinged satellite spread over the bare expanse of rock, showing the crops of moss and lichens as black against the slate gray of the plain. To the west, the rising lands with ash, soil and small gatherings of shrub and forestation showed as indistinguishable shapes that took on a malevolent mien with the knowledge of that which they had sheltered.

But not, perhaps, as malevolent as the shuffling pack of dark shapes that moved across the gray rocks. Jak judged the distance. At their current speed, it would take them about fifteen to twenty minutes to traverse the distance to the settlement. Their ambling gait was deceptive. They were moving at a rapid rate, knowing that now was the time to hunt. Jak wondered if they had got the scent of fresh prey across such a great distance, borne on the winds, or if they were only returning to scavenge what little carrion was left.

They were moving as a tight pack, making it hard to pick off individuals as they moved, one obscuring another so that you found it hard to tell if two were three, or three were four. Jak figured that J.B.’s initial assessment was about right. But it wouldn’t do any harm to take a closer look.

The albino youth moved out to meet the pack, moving across the plain, using whatever cover he could find. There was little, but that didn’t really matter. The bears knew he was there, just as he knew they were. All he needed was a clearer look before racing back to prepare a defense.

One of the creatures at the front of the pack got wind of him, perhaps sight, but more likely smell. It rose on its hind legs and roared: a warning to him, a rallying call to its fellows. If J.B. hadn’t already awakened the others, this would sure as hell suffice. Meanwhile, Jak assessed the creature.

J.B. was wide of the mark. This evil-looking bastard was at least six, maybe seven hundred pounds. Its fur was matted and bare in some places, dark markings on its skin under the moon glow looking like sores or scars. Even in the pale, yellow-tinged light it was possible to see the strings of mucus and saliva that extended the length of the jaws, dangling off the sharp incisors and catching the light to gleam dully their threat. The tiny eyes, buried in the folds of muscle and fur, were dark specks that betrayed no hint of what may be going through that primeval mind.

Jak was pretty sure, though. He had slipped his Colt Python into his palm as he made his way forward. But even the briefest of visual assessments told him that the weapon would be next to useless unless he could get a direct hit in a vulnerable area. For a .357 Magnum bullet to be so ineffective meant that they would have to use some serious blasterfire against this pack.

Jak turned and ran, knowing that the movement would cause the bears to increase their own speed, to give chase, but knowing that he had the speed and head start to get back to the cinder block hut with time to spare.

As he approached, J.B. threw the door open. The Armorer had been watching and was ready.

As were the others. Ryan, Mildred and Krysty were on their feet. Only Doc remained supine. He was awake, but weak—in passing, Jak noted that Doc was looking around him and seemed to be aware of his surroundings, which was an improvement on before, though was still too ill to join them.

“More than twelve, and more than five hundred pounds. Need gren take ’em out,” Jak gasped as he entered the hut.

J.B. turned to Mildred. “How good’s your throwing arm, Millie?”

“I used to pitch in the junior leagues.” She shrugged, adding, when she saw his blank expression, “I can throw pretty good, though it’s been a while.”

“You’ve got a good eye, that’s what matters. Come with me.” He glanced across at Ryan, knowing that he had assumed command of the situation without deferring to the head man.

Ryan nodded briefly. “You go and do it. We’ll get this place secured.”

J.B. and Mildred slipped out into the night, while Ryan took a look around. There was nothing in the cinder-block hut to use to shore up the windows and door. They would have to rely on standing guard and using their blasters to keep the bears at bay, maybe pick them off. The walls of the hut had withstood the previous attack, but the windows and door had been damaged. Dammit, he wished they had something solid to reinforce those vulnerable spots…

Doc was out of the picture. There were five vantage points, and five of them when—if—Mildred and J.B. returned. He assigned Jak and Krysty a window on each side. One with a shutter so that they could keep a lookout on the action and be prepared. He would take the door.

“Check your blasters, and remember we need to make every shot count if we’re to stand a chance.”

Grimly they checked their weapons, making sure they were fully loaded and spare ammo was easily to hand for swift reloading. Jak had his Colt Python, Krysty her Smith & Wesson .38 Model 640. Both were good handblasters, but would need real accuracy on a vulnerable spot to make a hole in the enemy forces. Ryan favored his Steyr. Its range and accuracy as a rifle would also help him provide covering fire, to try to pick off the bears as Mildred and J.B. made their way back to the hut.

He opened the door a crack and looked out. Under the moon, he could see the duo advance on the bears, J.B. handed Mildred a clutch of grens, then the two of them part in separate directions to get a better angle of throw.

Showtime.

J.B. COUNTED THE FRAG GRENS he carried with him as he and Mildred made their way forward at the double. Enough for four each. At this distance—even getting a little closer—it was a matter of balancing the damage against wasting precious weapons.

“You head to the left, I’ll go to the right. Take it about twenty yards, count ten, then aim for the center of the pack. When they scatter, try and pick at groups with the other three grens. Now go.”

Mildred needed no second bidding. Her heart raced, feeling as though it was going to burst through her rib cage. And despite the cold, she was covered in a film of sweat. She could see her breath frosting on the night air, but it seemed incongruous to her. She ran steadily, judging twenty yards, then turning. She hadn’t dared look at the pack as she ran, concentrating instead on keeping her footing on the treacherous rock surface. A quick glance told her where the pack was and J.B.’s position. He, too, had reached his goal. She counted to ten, then pulled the pin on the first gren, letting go of the spoon and arcing the deadly pitch high into the center of the pack.

It was a fine judgment call. The pack was still advancing and some of the bears were interested in breaking off and following the prey in their eyeline. As such, the grens failed to fall exactly in the middle, landing at the rear of the pack.

But it was close enough to inflict severe damage. The two grens exploded almost simultaneously, sounding as one long roar, drowning out the cries of anger and pain from those bears in line for the fragments of white-hot metal that were scattered in the wake of detonation.

Three were hit full-on by the double blast. Their fur, flesh and a shower of blood splattered over the rock floor and over the other bears. One was severed, the front half mewling in agony as the blood and intestines imploded under a hail of metal, its life ending less than a heartbeat later as its organs were pulped by hot metal. The other two were reduced to a steaming mass of fur and splintered bone, not even knowing what hit them.

Their mass absorbed the brunt of the blast, protecting those in front of them to a degree. There were fewer fragments and their speed was impaired, but they still managed to rip into at least four of the other bears, lacerating flesh and scorching fur, causing the creatures to rear up in agony. They were confused, lashing out in blind terror and fury, their razored claws scratching at the animals in front of them.

For a second, it seemed as though the bears would turn on one another, fighting among themselves and forgetting their prey, clustering in a way that would make them an easy target.

But it wasn’t to be that simple. As both J.B. and Mildred prepared for a second throw, a brace of the creatures broke away. One headed toward J.B., but at an angle that would take him past the Armorer and away from the settlement. The other turned and headed straight for Mildred, though it was doubtful that it registered her presence at that moment. Not that she was going to take the chance. Judging her pitch, she pulled the pin on another gren and threw the bomb in a curve that would take it almost level to the head of the charging bear. Instinctively as the gren flew toward it, the bear raised its head, opened its jaws and lifted itself to catch the gren, as though it were a bird in flight that would provide a light repast.

Mildred hit the ground as the great jaws snapped shut. She didn’t see the gren explode, the bear’s head suddenly disappearing in a riotous explosion of bone, brain and fur. But she felt the jellied fragments of the bear’s head as the outer edges of the resultant rain hit her, carrying with them fragments from the gren that were, thankfully, now dissipated of lethal force.

While this was happening, J.B. opted to deal with his own runaway. The reasoning was simple: the others were still clustered in a group, occupied with themselves. This gave a few moments” respite before they demanded attention. He pulled the pin, let loose the spoon and arced the gren in the direction of the runaway. It hit the bear on the side, rebounding a couple of feet from the soft fur before detonating, the force of the blast driving the creature sideways while obliterating one side of fur, flesh, blood and bone.

J.B. hit the ground to shield himself from the outer reaches of the blast. Only to find, when he scrambled once more to his feet, that the double blast had stopped the bears from fighting among themselves and called their attention to the direction of the source.

Already, the bears were almost on them. To stay and throw more grens would be to risk getting caught by the angered animals. J.B. yelled something incoherent at Mildred and she needed no explanation.

They turned tail and raced for the cinder-block hut as fast as they could run.

RYAN SWORE SOFTLY as he saw them approach. They were making good progress, but the bears’ loping gait was taking them a greater distance with each stride. It would be close, but there was something they could do to help. He directed Jak and Krysty to fire over J.B. and Mildred, toward the oncoming creatures.

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