Chrono Spasm (4 page)

Back inside the redoubt, J.B. was just bringing himself up off the floor. He had been very near to the explosion when it had gone off, and it had only been his quick thinking that had moved him and the mysterious young woman out of harm’s way.

“Dark night, that was close,” J.B. said as he struggled back to his feet. He had reacted instantly at Krysty’s warning, shoving himself and the young woman to the floor at the speed of thought. The blonde was sprawled on the hard concrete floor, sobbing quietly, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“It’s okay,” J.B. told her. “We’re still alive.”

The young woman looked at him with a tentative smile. “They are gone?” she asked.

“Two of them—both chilled,” the Armorer confirmed.

“Nyet,”
she said, shaking her head rapidly. “There were more of them. More than...twelve, maybe fifteen.” She was fretting immediately, and J.B. had to hold her arm to steady her as she tried to run deeper into the redoubt. “They’re after my father.”

“Hear that, Ryan?” he called.

Ryan nodded grimly. “Then we’d better get moving,” he said.

A moment later, the seven companions and their mysterious new charge exited the redoubt, Ryan tapping in the coded sequence that sealed the door before they made their way out into the snow-speckled night, past the riled-up mutie caribou. The caribou ignored them, their horns locked, too busy engaged in their own squabble to worry themselves with the trifling affairs of the humans.

Chapter Three

“Alaska,” J.B. said, lowering the tiny folding minisextant and putting it into one of his deep pockets. “That’s my best guess, anyways.”

Standing amid the fallen branches, Ryan looked at him. “Best guess?” he probed.

The Armorer shrugged. “Stars are in the right place for sure,” he explained, “but by my calculations we’re farther north than the maps go.”

“The maps could be wrong,” Doc opined, tugging his collar closer to his neck. While the others were well-equipped for cold weather, the old man only had his light frock coat to keep him warm and, ironically, he was the one who felt the cold most. “A lot of changes were wrought unto the landscape with the outbreak of the nukecaust.”

“Doc has a point,” Mildred added, not looking up from where she was examining the blonde. “We know that tectonic plates have been shunted out of their old positions in other parts of the world. No reason it didn’t happen here, wherever here is.”

“Might be Nome,” J.B. said with marked indifference, scanning the vinyl-covered predark map that he had produced from one of his jacket’s capacious pockets.

Krysty laughed. “Sounds more like a creature than a place,” she said. “Gnomes and pixies and little elflings. My mother told me all about them back in Harmonyville.”

“Well, wherever we are, it’s here,” Ryan said with his usual pragmatism. He scanned their surroundings for a moment, eyeing the patchy snow clumping indifferently against the frozen tundra. Having locked the redoubt, the companions had made their way through the thorny bushes that surrounded the entrance, following the path that the tired-looking young woman led them through. She was clearly distraught, mumbling in a language that Ryan couldn’t make sense of. She led them up a frost-carpeted slope to a cluster of trees, well hidden in the moonless night while providing an ideal vantage point of the immediate area.

Ryan had put Jak and Ricky on sentry detail, the latter assuring the one-eyed man that he had finally recovered from the effects of the mat-trans jump. Ryan peered through the trees at the snow-dappled ground all around them. Visibility was poor, but that meant that anyone sneaking up on them would have just as much chance of missing the companions as they did them. Anyway, Ryan figured, there wasn’t much to see. All there was was another pest-hole full of chillers.

“The girl’s calmed down,” Mildred said as Ryan surveyed the area. Beside him, J.B. carefully stowed away his battered map. A chill breeze cut through the trees, tossing the falling snowflakes on the air like dancers at a predark ball.

Ryan nodded, pacing across to where the young woman sat with her back propped against the trunk of a tree. She looked frozen, hugging herself as she tried to keep warm. Mildred had given her a blanket from their supplies and had handed over her spare socks in place of her missing shoes. It wasn’t much, and Mildred felt it was even odds that the young woman might lose a foot before the night was over unless they got her somewhere warmer.

“You okay now?” Ryan asked the shivering woman as he stood before her.

She looked at him, and Ryan eyed her closely for the first time. Behind the smudges of dirt and the messy tangle of hair she was young and quite beautiful. He estimated she was no more than nineteen, but it was hard to tell, given how thin she looked. Probably not much food going spare if the weather’s always like this up here, Ryan realized.

The teenager was staring at Ryan’s eye patch, as if unable to look away. She began to say something, but it was unintelligible to Ryan.

“I think she wants to know why you wear your patch,” Doc suggested.

Ryan nodded solemnly. “You want to know how I got this?” he asked, and the young woman nodded once. “Fight with my brother. You have a brother? Or a sister mebbe?”

She nodded.
“Tri,”
she said. “
Dve sestry...
end brother.”

“They around?” Ryan asked.

She averted her eyes, looking at the ground as she shook her head.

“I’m Ryan,” he told her. “You have a name?”

“Nyarla,” she said timidly after a moment’s consideration.

Ryan held his empty hands out to her. “You’re okay now,” he told her. “You’re safe.”

Nyarla nodded again, taking his hands for just a moment in gratitude. After that, Ryan stepped back to confer with his companions.

“Any sign from Jak or Ricky?” Ryan asked.

J.B. shook his head. “They’re out there, we’ll know if they spot anything.”

* * *

J
AK
STALKED
through the icy undergrowth with Ricky a few steps behind him. They held their bodies low to create smaller targets. Jak was a natural loner, used to operating alone even while playing his role in Ryan’s hodgepodge team. Having Ricky at his side was new. He liked the kid, had seen and admired the way he handled a blaster when all hell was breaking loose. But it still took some getting used to having the kid at his side like this.

Jak brushed at his collar, smiled momentarily at the snow that had settled across the line of his shoulders, clinging to the sharp shards of glass and metal that were sewn there. In this environment the snow was good—it provided camouflage, helping him and Ricky blend into the surroundings.

Jak was an expert tracker, blessed with enhanced senses far superior to an average person’s. Right now, as the two of them made a circuit around the copse of trees, Jak smelled something. He sniffed again, scenting the air. It was blood, and even with the wind whipping around the trees the way it was, he could tell it wasn’t coming from the direction of the bloodbath at the redoubt. Something else had lost blood out here this night, and Jak wanted to know what.

Ricky saw Jak slow. “What is it, Jak?” he whispered from behind him, hunkering low to the ground. He had never seen weather like this, never felt cold like this. Alaska was a hell of a long way from his home on Monster Island.

Jak’s nose wrinkled, his keen eyes searching the woods. The trees were sprinkled with snow, not thick but enough to line their branches, ice crystals making their leaves glisten in the faint starlight. Little patches of snow littered the ground, too, dotted here and there like some unfinished mosaic, the green shoots of grass clumping between the tiny oases of white.

Jak said nothing, merely gestured to Ricky to indicate that they would keep searching. He hurried on, weaving swiftly between the trees, the Latino youth following in his wake. The smell was getting stronger, a smell like raw meat.

The trees were less dense here, and Jak could see now almost the whole way down the slope on the opposite side to the path they had taken to reach the copse. Down there, where the ground leveled off, he saw a dark shape splayed across the snow. It looked like a snow angel.

Jak stopped suddenly, motioning with one hand for Ricky to do the same. “There,” he said, pointing to the snow angel.

“What is it?” Ricky whispered, narrowing his eyes to see. His hand was automatically reaching for his Webley Mk VI revolver, instinct kicking in.

Jak glanced at the boy’s hand and shook his head. Not yet. He didn’t want any shooting unless necessary, bad enough they had had to chill the two mutie riders at the redoubt’s doors. Why draw more attention unnecessarily?

Jak held his hand up, his pale flesh ghostly in the faint glimmer of distant stars. He motioned toward a snow-sprinkled ridge that ran down between the trees. The ridge was shallow enough to climb down. “Safe way.”

Ricky nodded, following Jak down the slope, his hand still close to the butt of his holstered revolver. In silence, they hurried down the slope, ever alert to the presence of other people or wild animals.

There was a subtle change in the acoustics at the bottom of the slope, one that Ricky noted just momentarily, while Jak seemed much more concerned with it. The snow was light in the air, but it was enough to muffle noise, sufficient that they might be crept up on without noticing.

“Careful,” Jak warned his companion.

Ricky nodded, and then Jak was away, legs and arms pumping as he darted out beyond the edge of the line of trees, keeping his body low as he sprinted to the figure lying in the distance. Ricky followed, his heart pounding at his chest as he hurried to keep up. Ahead of him, Jak was a white blur, the blush of snow across his shoulders and back.

The two stopped. It was a man, naked and nailed down with his stomach opened to the elements. The flesh of his stomach had been pinned back, trails of guts and intestines pulled out from it in bloody coils that turned the snow red.

Ricky gulped, tamping down his urge to throw up. “Who would do this?” he whispered.

The man’s eyes flickered at the noise. He was alive.

“Help me,” the man croaked.

Ricky stepped forward, but Jak stopped him with a gesture. There was something else there, Jak realized, something watching them.

He turned, scanning the snow-spattered trees and bushes, their outlines barely visible in the starlight. And there, prowling among the bushes, was a white-furred mutie wolf, its massive head low to the ground, snout twitching as it sniffed at the air. It, too, had scented the blood and been drawn to it.

The wolf looked up, twin tusks jutting sharply from its bottom jaw, its pale eyes fixing on Jak’s. The albino watched as the wolf’s nose twitched again and its black lips curled back to reveal a fearsome set of teeth. Then it charged them.

* * *

W
ITHIN
THE
COPSE
, Krysty spoke gently with Nyarla in a quiet voice while Ryan conferred with the other members of his crew.

“Must have come from somewhere,” Ryan said quietly. “She isn’t dressed for this climate.”

“What language is she speaking?” J.B. asked. “It didn’t sound completely like English to me.”

“She’s using English words,” Ryan said, “but there’s an accent. Thick accent.”

“Sounded Russian,” Mildred suggested.

“That’d make sense,” J.B. said. “According to the maps, Alaska is close to the border with the Russkies. Easy enough to sail that distance. Little extra ice and you could probably walk it.”

“She has a family,” Ryan said.

Doc cleared his throat. “Let me voice what is doubtless primary on all of our minds,” he said. “That the girl there is a slave of some kind, mayhap transported from the west and kept for entertainment.”

Mildred looked unconvinced. “You’re making some big assumptions. Huge ones.”

Doc inclined his head. “And yet we have seen such scenarios played out time and again, Mildred. The girl’s demeanor, and her cries for help, infer that she was running from our two friends back there. Would you not agree?”

“Yeah.” J.B. nodded. “That’s a given. You reckon they’re this
Pomoshch
fella she was shoutin’ about, Doc?”

“I feel it may be more simple than that, John Barrymore,” Doc said. “
Pomoshch
is likely Russian for help.”

Sitting with Nyarla beside the thick trunk of a conifer, Krysty was trying to find out what she could.

“It’s cold, isn’t it?” Krysty said. When Nyarla didn’t answer, she continued on. “How did you end up out here dressed like that?”

Nyarla looked introspective, her eyes focused in the middle distance. “Run,” she said in her heavily accented English. “I run.”

“From whom?” Krysty asked gently.

“They want me to dance for them,” Nyarla replied. “To do dancing.” She looked disgusted, and Krysty suspected that by “dancing” she actually meant something more intimate.

“Who?” Krysty asked. “Who wanted you to dance?”

“They live in ice,” Nyarla replied, her head turning toward the north. “My father says it freeze their hearts, that is why they so
kholodnyi...
so cold.” She pulled the blanket closer, snuggling into its warming embrace.

“Is your father there now?” Krysty asked.

Biting her bottom lip, Nyarla nodded uncertainly. “He run. With Elya.”

“It’s okay,” Krysty said. “You’re safe now.”

“Nyet,”
Nyarla replied, her eyes suddenly fierce. “They come. They always come.”

“Who do?” Ryan demanded, having overheard the last of Krysty’s conversation with the troubled young woman.

“The frozen men,” Nyarla said. “From
Yego Kraski Sada—
the fields where time stands still.”

* * *

T
HE
MUTIE
WOLF
unleashed a howl as it charged down the slope toward Jak and Ricky, where the naked man lay sprawled in the snow. Fast-thinking Ricky had his Webley Mk VI revolver out of its holster and in his hand in an instant. The weapon featured no safety and had been rechambered to fire .45 Automatic Colt Pistol bullets. But Jak warned him back, stepping directly into the path of the wolf as it thundered toward them.

“Just want meal,” Jak said gently.

The huge wolf emerged from the bushes, and Ricky gasped. Even on all fours, the mutant creature was almost four feet tall, and its muscular body was closer in size to a pony’s than a canine. Perfectly camouflaged for the snow, the beast had dappled gray-white fur and pale blue eyes that seemed full of intelligence. Jak held its stare, fixing it with his own.

The wolf stopped in place, eyeing Jak warily. “We all hungry,” Jak reassured the creature. “Not enough food to go ’round. Not out here.”

On the ground, the naked man was whimpering, wrestling against the staked ties that held him by wrists and ankles to the ground. His extremities had turned a lifeless shade of gray, with white stripes where the ropes chafed against him.

Ricky took a step toward the man and leaned down to examine the ropes. Tied to the man, each rope was a foot long and brutally nailed into the ground through a wooden stake. The stakes looked impossible to pull free, but Ricky was sure he could untie the knots given a minute or two. What good it would do the man gutted the way he was, he couldn’t imagine.

A few feet away, the wolf stared at Jak as the albino stood his ground. It snarled again, lips pulling back from its vicious teeth. Each tooth was four inches long and looked as sharp as a knife.

“No dinner today,” Jak stated. “Not here.”