Ice and Fire

Chapter Three

Throughout the Deathlands there were many varieties of genetic mutations, mostly prompted by the effects of intensive radiation, combined with the use of chemical toxins. Ryan had seen some quite appalling examples of human or semihuman muties, sometimes made worse by each succeeding generation. Animals that bred much more frequently had sometimes mutated to a literally unrecognizable degree. And the insects, with their infinitely shorter cycle of life and reproduction...

The first roach dropped from its perch high in the tumbling wreckage of the old ceiling, landing on Jak's shoulders, its clawed feet hooking into the white spray of his hair. There was precious little light in this part of the passage, and Ryan, seeing the "bug" fall, was puzzled rather than worried. The thing was a coppery-blue color and almost a foot in length.

The boy screamed, high and shrill, echoing through the maze of linked passages. "Get the fuck off!" he yelled, beating at the creature, but it was snagged to him.

"Gaia! This is what I saw!" Krysty exclaimed at Ryan's elbow, the disgust dripping from her voice. "There's hundreds."

"Thousands," J.B. contradicted her.

"Millions," was Ryan's own conclusion.

Everywhere he looked he could see the metallic sheen of cockroaches, scuttling across the ceiling and down the walls, a sinuous, undulating wave of scraping, scaly legs and bodies. Eyes on stalks, seeking out the scent and taste of the intruders.

The insects dropped all around the companions, on top of them. Ryan felt one trying to probe beneath his collar and he shuddered at the obscenity of the thing.

Lori was starting to slide into a noisy panic, drawing in harsh, rasping breaths and letting them out in choked mewing noises.

The combination of the darkness and the endless rustling attack was nearly too much for the friends, even for hardened fighters like J.B. and Ryan.

"Hang on! Everyone, keep control!" Their leader's order held off the fear for a few vital beats of the heart.

Each of them was reacting in a different way. Doc was hopping around, crunching the cockroaches beneath his boots, flailing at others with his swordstick, muttering to himself under his breath, trying to get near enough to Lori to help her, as well.

Lori stood still, hunched over, hands clasped over her face, shoulders shaking in terror.

J.B. responded to the mutie insects' attack by running on the spot to prevent any of the roaches from climbing his legs. At the same time he brushed at his hat, shoulders and chest, sloughing off any attached insects. He was keeping amazingly calm.

As the first victim, Jak had suffered the worst shock. His greatest problem was to get the voracious mutie insects out of his long, fine hair. More and more cockroaches landed on him, nipping at the skin of his neck, biting at one another. From behind, it looked to Ryan as though the young boy were wearing a magical, shifting helmet of some mystic coppery material.

Krysty's hair had coiled in on itself at the first presentiment of danger, forming a hard scarlet knot that repelled the attempts of the cockroaches to get a grip on it.

Until he felt a savage bite on the back of his hand, Ryan wasn't sure how much of a threat the giant mutie insects presented. The pain and the spurt of blood brought home to him with a dreadful clarity that they were likely to be utterly overwhelmed by the roaches if they didn't act swiftly.

"Everyone get in line, follow me!" he yelled. "J.B., you got the hat. You come last. Rest keep on knocking the scaly bastards off the guy in front. Let's move it!"

For the rest of his life Ryan Cawdor would remember the ceaseless sound of the cockroaches being cracked apart under their feet as they walked steadily toward an uphill section of the passage. Ryan had glimpsed another closed metal sec door and built his plan around their being able to reach it, open it and get through.

And find no more roaches on the other side.

"Keep going!" he shouted. Krysty was immediately behind him, batting the scrabbling horde off his wiry mat of black hair, beating them to the concrete floor. Lori, weeping loudly, was performing the same service for Krysty. Doc, half carrying her, was pushing next in line, spitting out words with violent fluency in a language that nobody had ever heard.

Jak was just in front of the Armorer, who was plucking the huge insects from the tangled skein of snowy hair, dropping them and splitting them under his boot heels.

They reached the bottom of the slope, moving at a brisk walk. There seemed fewer of the massive roaches as they climbed upward.

Ryan made the mistake of glancing at the dimly visible ceiling. At that precise moment two of the revolting creatures came flopping onto his face.

He distinctly felt the saw-edged mandibles snap shut on the patch over his blinded left eye, while the other clawed at his lips, trying to wriggle into his half-open mouth. He dropped the G-12, letting it dangle from its sling, and tore at the glittering, hard carapaces of the roaches. The light was less faint, and he could see the eyes on their wobbling stalks, rolling at him on the elongated skulls.

The one on the upper part of his face was easily dislodged, and Ryan heaved it against the wall, seeing it split open, the two halves trailing slime down the pale concrete. But the insect by his mouth was stronger and more persistent, and he feared it might pull off a chunk of his flesh if he tried to rip it from his face.

On an impulse, Ryan opened his mouth wider, luring the roach to scrabble with its feelers, jutting its teeth toward the tempting target of the man's fleshy tongue.

Snapping his teeth shut, Ryan felt the brittle crispness of the cockroach's neck yield between his jaws. Somewhere down in what used to be Alabama, Ryan had once rested in a field containing fresh, morning-cold celery. Now that same sensation came back to him.

He spit out the severed head, feeling the body fall away, its legs twitching in a residual and belated state of panic.

An acidic fluid burned Ryan's palate, and he spit several times to try to clear the bitter taste. He longed for a goblet of crystal water to rinse away the flavor.

Krysty shook her head at what he'd done, whistling softly between her teeth in admiration. Doc was the only other one in the group to have witnessed the mutie insect's death throes. His lined face grew pale, and his eyes narrowed in revolted horror.

"By the three Kennedys! I think that I have never been so close to giving the notorious rainbow yawn."

The attacks eased, and they all managed to reach the top of the steepening slope free of the scuttling creatures. One clung tenaciously to the back of J.B.'s jacket, but Jak knocked it away and stamped on it, bursting the shiny body, leaving a smear of stinking slime.

The evidence of earth-shifting was less obvious in this section of the redoubt. There were more lights, and the walls and ceiling were solid and unmarked. They opened and closed the next steel-shuttered door and passed through into a place where several passages came together. Krysty operated the control level, dropping the door shut behind them.

"Looks like none of our insect friends have found their way into this section."

"I'm hungry," Lori said, dropping again into her little-girl-lost voice.

"Me too," Doc added. "And Ryan there looks like he's about ready to devour another tender young roach."

One of the genuine dangers in a building complex the size of most redoubts was of becoming lost. And possibly even starving to death. Many of the secret military bases had corridors that rambled, twined and interconnected for miles. Fortunately, in the redoubts that had been hastily evacuated, there were generally plenty of colored maps of the "You Are Here" variety.

Once they'd found the first of these locators it was easy to work out their orientation and to seek out which sections of the great fortress had been damaged by the nukings.

"Main food stores were down where the roaches had taken over," J.B. said, pointing at the section colored dark blue. "And the mat-trans gateway is down that long spur, marked off Restricted. There. Looks like it's the lower, western sections that slipped. By the main exits. Getting out of here could be kind of tough."

"What's that?" Krysty asked, pointing at a section tinted light blue. It was marked Cryo Restricted and lay at the northern edge of the complex, close to a set of emergency exits.

"Cryo?" Ryan repeated. "Can't remember ever coming across that in any other redoubt. You seen it before, J.B.?"

"Nope."

"Means freezing," Doc told them.

"Freezing cold?" Lori shuddered theatrically, hanging on to the old man's arm.

"Freezing what?" Jak asked, still struggling to free the tangles from his hair.

"Not what," Doc replied. "More like who. Around the time I was given the big time-push forward, there was a team trying to freeze folks just before or just after they died. The idea was that the future might have advanced medical methods that could cure whatever it was killing them. Advanced! Hah!"

"Who'd they freeze, Doc?" Ryan asked.

"The good, the bad and the... can't remember the last bit. The rich and the famous and the important. Mostly the rich and important. Politicians were tops, because... Which reminds me. Ugly. That was it. The freezing units and the good, the bad and the downright ugly."

"Like to go see that cryo place," J.B. said thoughtfully.

Ryan agreed with the Armorer. "Sure. But first we go eat, and I could do with catching up on my sleep for a few hours."

"Days," Jak added.

"Let's head for the living quarters, then," Krysty suggested.

"Carried unanimously," Doc said, grinning with a wolfish good humor. "And we'll go on the morrow and see if any icemen cometh. Not that they will. Not after all these years."