Return From the Inferno (12 page)

Another tense hour passed. Still there was no sign of the death wagon.

The Death Skull detail had left twenty minutes before, leaving the cemetery unguarded against the looters who were known to sneak in at night and take the meager belongings of the prison camp fatalities. A thunderstorm had passed over and now the sun was dipping quickly in the west.

"No one's, coming now," Kurjan thought. "Maybe no one will ever come again."

But then, just as he was preparing to make a quick, near silent radio call back to the underground's hideout, he saw a distant figure walking down the dusty road.

Kurjan now had his NightScope binoculars up to his eyes, their enhanced optics aiding his vision in the fading light of day. He'd never seen anyone actually walking on the grave road before simply because it was out in the middle of nowhere. The morgue trucks came and went, as did the guards' vehicles. But everyone rode to the cemetery-no one walked.

Yet, here was a man, dressed in ragged shorts and wearing a part of a white sheet around his head like a turban, half-jogging, half-stumbling toward him.

He knew it could simply be another sputnik, wandering free on the edge of the glowing Nazi High City, simply biding his time until the security forces picked him up and turned him over to a slave farm.

Yet, upon closer inspection, this man just did not look like a refugee.

Kurjan watched and waited until the figure reached the crumbling wooden gate to the graveyard. At that point, he collapsed, first going to his knees and then flat-out, face-99

down.

Kurjan bit his lip. His first instinct was to slip out of his hiding place and go down and examine the man. But his training told him better.

Whoever the guy was, he would have to stay unattended.

Until dark.

When Frost woke up, he found that he'd been lying in a putrid mudhole, one that was both oily and stagnant.

He rolled over, every bone, muscle and organ in his body, screaming out in pain, protesting that they had been assaulted.

He had nothing to calm them down; nothing to take away the ache that was pounding away at his cranium with the intensity of a fractured skull. Had he really died and this was Hell? For a few uncertain moments, he wasn't quite sure.

Then it started to come back to him. Ingesting the OD of myx; Jones helping him into his death shroud; the long, incredibly erotic and realistic dream he'd slipped into immediately after going under.

And then, just as he was about to ravage the most beautiful women he'd ever dreamed, the bubble burst. His shroud was lifted and he found himself looking up into the face of his old friend, Mike Fitzgerald.

It was at that point, Frost thought he was dead for sure.

First of all, he was certain that Fitz was dead. Secondly, his departed friend was wearing clothes stolen from the pope. Though the garb was ill-fitting, in that befuddled instant, it was definitely heavenly looking.

What happened next was equally otherworldly.

A top Nazi officer came forth and literally yanked him out of the coffin, admonishing him to stand up straight and be properly amazed that he'd just been raised from the dead. The crowd of troops gathered around him looked damned convinced. Some were simply pale with fear; others were openly weeping.

Through it all, a teenage girl in a frilly white 100

dress was using a thin piece of charcoal to draw his face on a large piece of yellow paper.

Frost endured bouts of tremors at that point-a side effect he'd been warned against should he be aroused from the myx-induced coma too soon. During this spell, he was led to a medical van to be pinched and probed by a squad of absolutely astounded Nazi doctors, one of whom was openly drinking a bottle of either gin or more likely vodka.

More NS officers arrived. It seemed like half of them wanted to touch or poke Frost in some way. The other half stayed as far away from him as possible.

Through it all Frost simply kept his mouth shut.

He was finally rescued from the touchy-feely session by the top Nazi officer on the scene, the man who he'd gathered by now was none other than the high commander of Bummer Four, the huge occupied military district to the north.

Fitzgerald had been whisked away in another limo by this time, the security forces almost genuflecting to him as he walked past. Only a brief look back at Frost told him that his old friend appeared to be as astounded as he at what had just transpired.

The Bummer Four commander then did what might have been the oddest thing of all. After first declaring that Frost was "one of many," he laid his hand on Frost's head and pronounced him "a clean and free man."

Then he informed Frost that he was free to go. After a few moments of indecision, Frost decided that he'd best take advantage of the situation and started walking. Down the deserted street, and up and around the highway overpass, eyes straight ahead, never looking back.

It took him almost ten hours in the hot sun to find the place called Mass Grave #1.

Now as he lolled in the mud on his stomach, he felt a sudden nudge on his shoulder. He froze, his confused synapses telling him to play dead. Suddenly a hand was thrust up onto his face, and two fingers squeezed his nose like a vise.

He immediately half coughed, half sneezed and then jerked 101

the intruding hand away.

That was when he turned over and saw a man wearing a large bush and a black painted face smiling down at him.

"Don't worry," this man said. "You're back from the dead."

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Not exactly anyway.

The large body of water to his right was Lake Erie, the dozens of abandoned rusting buildings to his left probably the old Gary, Indiana USX steel works.

Behind him were thirty or so miles of the railroad tracks he'd been walking alongside for what seemed to be forever. In front of him, many more miles of tracks before he reached his destination. Something from his childhood made him think that when lost following a railroad track was a good idea.

Eventually you'll wind up somewhere.

Still he was uncomfortable not knowing his exact position. Spending the past few years in the cockpit of his long-gone fighter had spoiled him. He was no longer a land animal. If he'd been looking at this same piece of ground from the air, he was confident that he'd know exactly where he was.

Still, he knew that eventually he'd wind up in New Chicago, his ultimate destination. All rail beds in this area wound up in New Chicago eventually.

All he had to do was keep walking west.

It had been six days since his frightening experience with the mysterious commandos, but the incident was still burning in his mind, especially the vision of the W's written across the sky. Itchy knew he was lucky. He just didn't know why. Who were those guys who captured him, drugged him, and then let him go? What kind of soldiers these days would do that? A bullet in the head was a much simpler solution, humane even, when 103

compared to what he and his fellow air pirates had done to some of their unlucky victims in the past.

He had to laugh when he thought of those soldiers. They had no qualms about directing an air strike against some big city, but when it came to offing someone like him, they just wouldn't-or couldn't-do it. Did they really think that by sparing his life the world would be a little less evil? If so, the joke was on them. If anything, he knew his salvation would make the world that much worse.

What a bunch of saps, he thought.

It was getting dark, and he had to begin searching for a place to sleep.

Preferring bugs to rats, he selected a small patch of still green weeds located near the edge of a filthy, rust water run-off stream, and laid out the remains of his parachute as a bedroll.

Once he was settled, he devoured two survival pack candy bars and one third of a canteen of water, Then he smoked half of his second-to-last cigarette, carefully extinguishing it after-exactly six puffs. After another sip of water, he lay back and stared up at the imposing rusting hulk of a gigantic coal crane towering over him.

Should he or shouldn't he?

It was a question he'd been asking himself for the past six days. It would have been easier to decide if he knew exactly where he was. If this place was near the old city of Gary, Indiana, then it would only take a couple more days for him to reach New Chicago and rejoin his unit.

Go ahead. Do it. You deserve it.

It had been six long days of walking and eating candy bars. Maybe he deserved a little reward. If only for fighting off the temptation for so long.

Fuck it. Go ahead. What harm will it do?

He reached deep into the crotch of his flight suit pants and pulled out a small wax bag. Carefully pulling off the binding rubber bands, he wet the tips of two fingers and slowly dipped them into the bag.

He could feel the two fingers go pleasantly numb as he withdrew the few tiny drops of the sticky thick substance and studied it for a moment. It was just a little, stolen from the batch he'd given to the Nazis in Bummer Four. But it was more than enough for him. Closing his eyes, he dabbed his fingers on his tongue and then sucked off every last possible residue of the myx. When he opened his eyes ten seconds later, the dark rusting crane overhanging him was gleaming as if it was made of pure gold.

When Itchy came to two and a half hours later, his pants were sopping wet.

"Holy shit," he whispered, just then realizing that he was emerging from an incredible »y>x-intoxicated state.

"All those girls," he breathed. His body was weary as if he'd actually romped with a roomful of costumed nymphets for two hours. "All those lovely fucking girls. . . ."

He immediately wrapped up his parachute bedding and prepared for a hasty leave. Just why he was doing this, he wasn't sure. It was still hours before dawn, and only a fool would walk this countryside at night. But his mind was telling him to get up and get going, and when one was under the influence of myx, they really had no other choice. Or so it seemed.

Still he couldn't help but wonder why. What was driving him at this point?

Maybe it was his brain telling him that the sooner he got going, the sooner he'd reach New Chicago and the sooner he'd be able to cop some more myx and do the wet dream all over again. This time with some real nubile girls.

Or could it be that something else was calling him to walk the tracks?

He was moving west again within minutes. The last of the myx was still coursing its way through his system. He knew this because everything seemed to either be glowing like gold on its own or bright with illumination from nearby objects. He also felt the overwhelming conviction that he was damn near invulnerable. That was typical of most myx encounters.

If I'm lucky, this might last until noon, he mused.

His mind began to wander as he continued the rhythmical march of a railroad bed, alternately stepping on a tie, then

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gravel then another tie and so on. Back when he was still captured, when he'd seen all those Ws written across the sky, the incident had provided him with one clue as to who his captors were.

He'd never met up against the Wingman while flying with his air pirate gang.

If he had, he would have been dust long ago. No, he knew only of the famous Hawk Hunter through the stories told by the older guys in the Cherrybusters.

Itchy discounted ninety percent of their tales about the Wingman as being pure bullshit-supposedly he was in a dogfight alone against one hundred Soviet fighters and shot down every single one. Itchy was smart enough to know that the remaining ten percent probably had to be true, and that was a frightening thought.

How could a fighter pilot be that good?

But it made no difference now. The Wingman was dead. Everyone was damned sure of that, All those Ws were probably executed by the last of his buddies, running water hoses out the ass-end of their airplanes, just to get the big white spread.

Those guys could skywrite across the entire country, he thought with a laugh.

It still wouldn't bring their hero back.

His thoughts drifted back to what he'd do when he finally reached New Chicago.

He didn't have any money and he was sure his squadron commander would not loan him any. But this was not a problem. He would simply go downtown and rob someone, most likely killing the victim in the process. Then if it was enough money, he'd get some more myx, and probably some crack or heroin too. Once he started in on this combination, he knew he would feel a real spree coming on.

Rape. Pillage. Mayhem. Maybe a thrill killing, if he was high enough.

The myx-induced thoughts of all this made him smile so hard he almost hurt his face.

Those saps should have killed me when they had a chance.

Suddenly he looked down and he saw his own shadow.

This was strange. Dawn was still at least two hours away. He blinked once, thinking it may be the myx. But it wasn't. Staring down at the tracks, he could definitely see his silhouette against the ties and rails.

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He spun around and found himself staring full into the brightest light he'd ever seen.

It was hovering over him, no more than twenty feet above his head.

"Jesus!" he cried. "What the . . ."

He fell to his knees. The light was so bright. It was burning his corneas. But he could not look away.

"Please let this be the myx!" he screamed, terrified.

Then the sound came. It was an explosion of mechanical screaming. So loud, so sudden, he felt his eardrums pop like gunshots in a quick one-two succession.

Now he went down to all fours, his eyes burning, his ears stinging, his knees weak. The light moved directly over him and when it did, he could feel twin blasts of heat, so intense, they burned his hair. There was smoke too. Smelly, like exhaust, it was thick enough to blacken his teeth.

I'm dead, he thought. And this is the beginning of Hell.

Or maybe not.

After what seemed like an eternity, the airborne light slowly began to move away. With it went the ear-splitting thunder and the waves of smoke and heat.