Pilgrimage to Hell

Chapter One

Reacher could smell blood.

It was there in his nostrils, a coppery odor, redolent of death and horror. Then it was gone. It had lasted a microsecond, as it always did, and then there was nothing there at all but the memory of it.

That and the icy chill stroking his spine like skeletal fingers and the blood-red haze that clouded his mind. He shivered, groaned softly, clutched at his brow.

Death was ahead. The warning had been given. The weird antennae of his psyche had fingered the future, told him of blood and destruction. But the how and the why of it, the exact where and when, were never granted, not to him. Reacher was not a true Doomseer; exact details were denied him. He could only perceive the psychic smell of it. And he knew it would be soon, very soon. Within minutes. There was nothing he could do about it, nothing on earth he could do to stop it.

McCandless growled excitedly, "The mutie's got something. He's pickin' something up."

Reacher felt a hand shake him roughly on the shoulder. It broke his concentration, scattered the scarlet fog in his mind. He stumbled forward, dropped to his knees, his hands scraping rock and sharp-edged stones at the side of the old tarmac road.

"C'mon, c'mon!" McCandless's voice rose from a growl to a vicious snarl. "On ya feet, mutie. What is it? Whatya seen? Where's the danger coming from?"

Still half-dazed from the effects of the sudden mind-zap, Reacher struggled to his feet, blinking his eyes rapidly. He stared around him as though seeing the terrain, his surroundings, for the first time, as though waking up from a dream.

A cliff face rose up sheer from the side of the road on his left, its summit lost in the hovering gloom that was split, every few seconds, by fierce jagged traceries of lightning darting surreally about the sky. To his right, beyond the road and the bush-matted strip of verge, was the lip of the gorge that plunged heartstoppingly down to the river racing far below. Ahead was the road, rutted and cracked and potholed, unused for generations, devastated by the angry elements that feuded constantly day and night in these blasted and forsaken mountains, winding steeply, disappearing around craggy bends. Behind, the road snaked downward to the river, through grim foothills, past sick forest and leprous meadow out to an even grimmer plain.

"Reacher, dammit! What the hell do you see?"

Reacher wiped an arm across his face, leaned groggily against the black granite of the sheer cliff, stared sullenly at the three men facing him.

First, McCandless. Always first. The leader. The guy who had brought them together, the guy who had succeeded where everyone else, every mother's son over the past three or four decades, had failed. That was his boast. Black bearded, scarred, glaring eyed, hulking in his furs. McCandless was a brute schemer who let nothing get in his way. He wanted power and he bulldozed opponents, anyone who thought differently or acted differently.

Then Rogan. McCandless's sidekick. Tall, craggy, stupid faced and stupid brained. But handy with his shooter — that had to be admitted. Reacher had seen how handy Rogan could be back in Mocsin when the tall, pea-brained man had shot a guy's nose away. Rogan hadn't liked the way the guy had been badmouthing McCandless, calling him crazy for even thinking of heading up into the Dark Hills. Rogan had shot the tip of the guy's nose off — one slug, swiftly done, almost without thinking about it. Last Reacher knew, the guy was still alive. And why not? All Rogan had done was blow his snout away. Nothing to it.

Then there was Kurt. Kurt was okay. Solidly built, stocky, thick reddish brown hair, watchful eyes. Nothing seemed to worry Kurt. He took things as they came, did the best he could in a bad situation. He, too, was handy with his gun, handier than Rogan and McCandless put together. Which was why he was here, on this rutted road that snaked blindly higher and higher into the Dark Hills. McCandless didn't care much for Kurt, but he cared a lot about the way he handled a gun.

"Reacher, I'm gonna cut your heart out unless you tell us what you seen."

McCandless's voice was now low, thick with rage.

Reacher wearily pushed himself away from the rock-face.

"Don't see anything, McCandless. You know that. I ain't a doomie. I just smell it."

"I oughta get myself a doomie, Reacher. You ain't paying your way."

"You'd never have got a doomie, McCandless. You know that, too. Ain't too many of them guys around and most of 'em keep dark what they got."

Rogan spat at the road. He growled, "Miserable mutie. Yer all the same. Ain't human an' ain't worth shit."

He cringed back as McCandless suddenly turned on him. The leader lashed a gloved fist across Rogan's face. Rogan grunted, staggered back toward the precipice, then tripped, sprawling only inches away from the drop. He glared up at McCandless with red-rimmed eyes.

Around them the wind howled like a dead soul racked in chilly Hell. Lightning flickered crazily; the air seemed charged with electricity. Even though the wind was a cold and icy blast, the atmosphere was heavy, muggy. Reacher felt his bones had been somehow turned to lead. His body was clammy with sweat under the thick fur garments, even as the wind cut at his exposed face like a keen-bladed knife.

Reacher watched Rogan crawl away from the chasm and scramble to his feet. Rogan didn't look at McCandless. He was breathing heavily, fingering his face where the bulky man had struck him. Reacher didn't need his uncanny power to tell him that danger threatened now. Any fool could see that an explosion was only minutes away.

But that was not what Reacher had smelled seconds before. He did not know what had triggered off his psychic alarm, but it was definitely not Rogan going berserk or McCandless cutting loose just for the hell of it.

McCandless was a psychopath, almost totally unstable. Already he'd gunned down Denning, a man of some education who'd suggested there might be a way into the mountains other than the road, and if there was it might be the wiser route to take. Denning's view, mildly expressed, was that the obvious course of action could often lead to needless danger. The road, he'd said, was too open; cover was negligible. Who knew what dangers lurked hidden, out of sight? Muties, mannies — anything could be up there. On the road you were an easy target. Maybe that was why no one had ever returned from the Dark Hills, though many had set out. Try some other route, Denning had advised; and if there wasn't one, then okay — the road.

It was a reasonable argument, put in a reasonable manner. It made sense. But not to McCandless, who'd not even bothered to debate it. He'd simply pulled out his dented, much used .45 automatic and put a softnose into Denning's face, blowing the rear of his skull out in a spray of blood and pinkish-gray matter. End of argument. McCandless and Rogan had divided up the contents of Denning's backpack, taking gun, ammo, food, other essentials. Then the party had moved on.

No one had argued. Rogan hadn't argued because he knew he'd be sharing the spoils. Wise man. Offing Denning meant at the end of the day that there was one less mouth to feed, one less person to share in the possible treasure at the end of the trail. The fact that it also meant they had one less gun to blow away attackers with did not necessarily occur to him.

Kurt had not argued because he was phlegmatic by nature. He knew he would not get a share of Denning's leavings because he was a hired gun, a blaster pure and simple. Sure, he'd get a share of whatever they found, if anything, up in the hills. But other than that, forget it. He just took orders from McCandless, kept his eyes open for danger, hoped for the best.

Reacher certainly had not argued. He was a survivor. The main reason he'd survived to the age of thirty, give or take a year or three, was that he never argued. With anyone. Especially not with guys who held guns and called the shots.

In any case, his peculiar talent — born out of a blind stew of scrambled genes somewhere back along a kin line a century before — was invaluable to McCandless, however much the bulky man might rage and fume, and unless he went stark out of his mind Reacher would survive yet.

On the other hand, thought Reacher suddenly, the way things were going, the way madness seemed to be encroaching on them all, there was a damned good chance the guy wouldgo stark out of his mind.

McCandless said, "So I ain't got me a doomie, I got me a senser. Why did I get me a senser? To sniff out trouble." His voice dropped menacingly. "And what was the deal? The deal was this senser'd get food and a share of the good stuff when we hit it. That was the bargain. Just so long as he worked his passage." He suddenly screamed, "So what did you see, Reacher?"

Reacher was on the verge of repeating that he hadn't seen anything, that he'd made it perfectly clear to McCandless right at the start that he couldn't see anything, that he never would see anything, that it was a sheer physical impossibility for him to see anything. And then he thought, split-second swiftly, the hell with it: a quibble like that will get me a slug in the skull. Right now McCandless was not interested in word play.

He gestured up the road. "There. Somewhere up there. Waiting for us."

McCandless let his breath out in an exploding snort.

"Right! What?"

"Dunno." Reacher spoke carefully, choosing words that would not touch the bulky man off. "All I get's an impression." He tapped his forehead lightly, not looking at McCandless or the other two.

Trying to explain to men like these was always difficult, and in any case Reacher himself had no real idea why he was the way he was. It was relatively easy to accept the physical aspects of genetic mutation — why some mutants had no mouths, for instance, or three eyes, or scales, or pachydermatous skin. Especially these days. Those who knew about these matters said that the full effects of the Nuke were only just beginning to come to the surface.

But how in hell did you explain something that went on in the mind? Something that was not at all tangible. Something extrasensory. Something that had to do with the emotions. At least that was the way Reacher figured it, if he thought about it at all, which wasn't very often. There were other more pressing problems to think about and try to cope with in this wacko world. Like a lot of muties, Reacher accepted that he was different and kept his head down. There was no percentage in making waves. Again, the guys who knew about these things had actually figured out a very strange scenario: they said that maybe in another two or three generations — if there was anyone left at all in this hell-world — it could be that mutants would exceed normals. That in fact it would be the muties who were the norms, the norms muties. That was a pretty wild mind. Ain't nothing physical, McCandless, but it's never wrong. "Somewhere up the road we got trouble. Could be us, could be guys waiting for us. Could be a rockslide. I dunno. But it's there, and I'm warning you. We have to tread careful, real careful."

"Shit!" McCandless spat at the rutted road, his brow a corrugation of leathery lines. "Ya tellin' me nothin'. We gotta tread real careful where!"

"I'm warning you," repeated Reacher stubbornly. "This is special, whatever it is. This is death."

McCandless's eyes locked onto the mutie's for a microsecond, then flicked away. The bulky man pulled at his beard.

"And it's gonna happen, no matter what?"

Reacher bit his lip.

"It ain't as simple as that. Yeah, it's gonna happen, whatever. Doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna happen to us."

"Ya never wrong, huh?"

Reacher fidgeted, shrugged.

"Niney-nine percent."

McCandless's face split into a grin. Reacher thought he looked more insane than ever.

"Well, okay! That's good enough, Reacher, you mutie!" He stepped forward, thumped Reacher hard across the back. "I'm feelin' lucky today! That one percent is ridin' for me! We're gonna get us the loot and we're all gonna be kings of the mountain! Ain't that right, Rogan?"

Rogan grinned sourly. "Sure is, boss."

McCandless fixed Kurt with his crazed gaze.

"What about the blaster? Whaddya think, Kurt? We ridin' lucky?"

Kurt's face was expressionless, a mask. He was bitterly regretting this whole venture. He had a strong feeling, an unshakable feeling that they were all going to wind up dead. Nastily. Or if not quite that, some disaster was heading their way with no reprieve.

This feeling had been building up inside him for three days. It had actually started about two seconds after McCandless had first clapped him on the shoulder on the dusty drag outside Joe's Bites in Main Street Mocsin and offered him the blaster's job for an eighth share in whatever they found in the Darks. It was an insane proposition, and McCandless had an insane reputation. The only reason Kurt had agreed to it — instantly and without thinking about it much at all — was that the night before he'd bucked one of Jordan Teague's captains, felled him to the floor in the tawdry casino in the center of the Strip, and he was already making panic plans to get out of Mocsin fast. The only snag was, the next land wagon train wasn't scheduled to leave for at least a week and Kurt did not have the cash or even the creds to buy himself some wheels and the necessary amount of fuel that would take him to the next main center of population two hundred and fifty kilometers to the south. The fact that Teague's captain, an ugly son of a bitch with a walleye named Hagic, had been cheating Kurt — and Kurt had spotted it — made no difference. You didn't screw around with a member of what passed for the law in Jordan Teague's bailiwick. Jordan Teague didn't like it, and he had peculiar ideas on how to avenge insults in his own special brand of law. Kurt had spent most of the night shitting himself in a cross-the-tracks cathouse, a real sleazepit not even the grossest of Teague's minions would touch, before sneaking out to get some food at Joe's — and running into McCandless.

McCandless was in a hurry. A hell of a hurry. He was heading out into the Deathlands there and then. The guy he'd hired as blaster had thought better of it and disappeared and Kurt didn't blame him. The very idea of venturing into the Dark Hills was clearly the product of a diseased imagination, and that about summed up McCandless's mind. Even Jordan Teague had never contemplated an expedition into the Darks. Despite the possibility that something weird and wonderful could be hidden among those brooding peaks, the fact was that over the years many had gone looking for it and only one had ever returned.

Kurt remembered that return very clearly. He had good reason to remember it. His brain switched back, the camera of his memory revealing a scene now nearly two decades old, the screen in his mind showing a crazed, babbling wreck of a human being, brain fried, wild eyed, clothes in rags and tatters, crawling toward him along the dusty apology for a once busy blacktop.

Dolfo Kaler. A man with creds in store, real estate; a power in the land. Or as much of a power as one could ever be under the gross shadow of Jordan Teague. Certainly more power than most in Teague's primitive gold-based miniempire. He had his own satraps, his own bullyboys, a fleet of land wagons, a few good trade routes mainly to the East, and fuel-alcohol supplies if not exactly on tap at least regular. Teague let him be. Kaler had solid contacts in the East, some kind of kin who would only deal with him. Teague knew that if he deeped Kaler those contacts would be lost. He kept an eye on Kaler, just in case Kaler started to dream dreams of empire, but otherwise left him alone; there was a wary truce between the two men.

But the fact was that Kaler was not greedy for what Teague had. He watched his back when Teague was around, but otherwise he was not involved with the man. He had other dreams, sparked by whispers that nagged at his brain, insistent ghostly murmurs that urged him to think the unthinkable.

Somewhere up in that vast range of hills that they called the Darks was... something. Treasure, they said. A fantastic, unbelievable hoard just sitting there, just waiting for a strong man to claim it.

That was what was said. That was what had been whispered for a generation. Two generations. More. Maybe going right back to the Nuke.

Maybe going back to before the Nuke.

So there had to be something there. It was a hand-me-down tale, a story embedded deep in the recent folk memory. Kaler, a sensible man, discounted stories of gold, jewels, fine raiments, all that stuff. It was so much crap, so much useless crap. Who needed it? So okay, Jordan Teague was starting to create an economy, a life-style, on the gold he was digging out of the seams exposed by the Nuke, forgotten through the Chill — just like everythinghad been forgotten — and rediscovered only a few years back. Teague was moving the stuff very gingerly to the East, and guys out there were sniffing at it, pondering its possibilities, wondering if it would do them any good. And maybe in another ten years gold would be back in fashion, but ten years was a long time and right now the only worthwhile way of doing things was barter, trade, credit. Sure, coin was coming back; it was useful. But thus far it sure as hell didn't beat fresh food, canned food, animals — as long as they were reasonably pure — weapons, ammo.

Especially it didn't beat ammo.

And that was what Dolfo Kaler figured was up there in the Darks. No fairy-tale hoard of goodies, but a Stockpile — a major Stockpile, maybe far bigger than any of the ones that had been unearthed so far.

Anybody who was anybody now knew that, before the Nuke, the government of the day, a government that had ruled the whole land, north to south, west to east, had been rumored to have squirreled away stuff in deep-cast ferroconcrete bunkers. Now it was an established fact. Some had been discovered, opened up. There was a guy who called himself the Trader who'd found two and turned them into a business. He'd started off by chugging around the Deathlands in steam trucks a couple of years before, but now he was using gasoline. Gasoline! And trading guns in every direction. He was heavily weaponed himself too, as guys who'd tried to hijack him had discovered to their cost.

The shit was there if you could find it, but from what Dolfo Kaler had learned, the Stockpiles found up to now were small. The nagging suspicion he had was that if there really was something up in the Darks — and if it was a Stockpile — it was a big one. And that was why he didn't give a fart about Jordan Teague's little fiefdom. If what he suspected was true, and if he could get his hands on it, he could turn himself into king of the known world.

Dolfo Kaler's mind lovingly dwelt on boxes of guns in their original greased wraps, pristine fresh, never used. Crates of grenades. Heavy armament. Trucks. Tanks. Oceans of oil.

Power.

So he went out. He took fifty men, all of them hand-picked from his own garrison mixed in with others from his contacts in the East. Hard-bitten dog soldiers. Didn't give a nuke's hot ass about anything or anyone.

It was a mighty expedition. Seeing it, even Jordan Teague got broody. But then it had to be, because others had heard the summons — the siren call that drifted into men's minds from the Darks. Others had hit the road on the hundred-klick or so journey under the sulphuric skies, across the parched earth, through the leprous forests that grew around the foothills of the Darks.

And none had ever come back.

Which meant there must have been a strong contingent of maniacal muties barring the way to it.

Dolfo Kaler knew how to deal with crazies. Blow 'em away. He bartered, he finagled, he called in every long-term debt he had out, and in the end every man jack of his team had an automatic rifle of some description and a stack of rounds. He also acquired seven MGs, four flamethrowers and a supply of precious fuel and two bazookas. Not to mention a box of grenades and a launcher.

And then he set out.

There were six big steam trucks, snorting and grinding and belching black smoke, and they shifted butt one fine spring morning when the skies were not as yellow as usual and a hazy red fireball of a sun was doing pretty well in its struggle to penetrate the haze. There must have been half of Mocsin on the edge of town to see them off, waving crudely fashioned flags and whooping and hollering fit to burst. Maybe three thousand souls to watch the biggest thing to happen to the town in decades.

Kurt remembered it. He remembered it very well. It had happened on his birthday, and his ma and pa had taken him to see the cavalcade as a birthday treat. Kurt remembered yelling with the rest of them. He didn't really know what he was yelling for, except that just seeing those huge, lumbering steam trucks lurching out of town was exciting enough — the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. And the guys in the trucks, yelling, too, caught up in the glamour of it all, waving their pieces above their heads, all clearly itching to fire a few shots to finish the celebration off but not daring to because ammo was ammo then, and you didn't waste one single round of it.

And Kurt remembered the payoff. The horror of that day, maybe four months later, with the late summer sun blistering down through the haze, a light wind whipping up the dust into the heavy air in thin spirals — and the single raggedy man crawling toward him, blind eyes staring out of a gaunt and blackened face, one desiccated hand clawing and twitching in the air like a mummified insect come to dreadful life. A human skeleton, his clothes in rags and tatters, inching his way laboriously along the ruined blacktop. Muttering and mumbling to himself as his knees and bony legs scraped faintly along the dusty road, he pulled himself wearily forward with the sound of old parchment being gently squeezed.

Dolfo Kaler, a man of considerable will.

Kurt remembered turning and running in blind panic back into town, his bare feet hammering at the hot, dusty ground. He remembered the confused aftermath, the deputation of eight armed men, led by Jordan Teague himself carrying a pump-action, Teague striding out of town toward the blackened, sticklike figure rustling its way along the rutted blacktop. He remembered how they kept their distance from Kaler, well out of reach in a half circle, watching him drag himself slowly toward them. How they glanced at each other, shook their heads, faces showing a mix of horror, boredom, grim ruthlessness. How they all, as one, each of the eight, lifted their pieces and fired.

Kurt remembered that, all right.

He remembered it was Jordan Teague who aimed at the head and blew it off with an ear-cracking roar of sound, automatic fire and pistol single-shot clattering in echo, rounds jerking and smashing the stick man up and down and back along the blacktop in a flailing scramble of limbs and blood and flesh chunks.

They said they had to do it because it was a stone-cold cinch that Kaler was contaminated in some way; maybe he had the Plague itself. That was a popular theory because guys who caught the Plague found themselves driven to the limits of their endurance and beyond before they finally fell apart.

But Kurt knew the sun-crisped ruin of a man did not have the Plague. Even at the age of ten he knew that. Knew for sure. A classic symptom of Plague was that you could not talk, could not articulate words, you could only gargle and growl and foam at the mouth. And Kaler might have been mumbling and muttering when Kurt found him, but there were words coming out of his mouth: most were garbled, incomprehensible; a few were chillingly intelligible.

Kurt could hear the rasping croak now, the words creaking out through those blackened lips: "Fog...fog devils... tear you... apart..."

McCandless's voice cut through his dark musings.

"I said, what do you think, Kurt? You listenin' to me?"

And now there he was, trekking through this savage land at McCandless's heels, following Dolfo Kaler's trail and the trail of all those other poor bastards who had never made it back to Mocsin. Never made it back to anywhere.

Sure he was mad. But come to think of it, not half as mad as Jordan Teague would have been if Teague had gotten his fat hands on him. Hiring on with McCandless had been the perfect escape — except of course for McCandless's lousy rep and McCandless's lousy destination. If only he'd headed off elsewhere on the road to the Darks, managed to sneak away on foot or stolen the truck. If only. But there'd been no time, no opportunity. McCandless had already been able to claw some gas from somewhere, enough to fill the tank of the beat-up, rickety truck that had only just managed to get them here before seizing up completely in the foothills. That was where McCandless had iced the fifth member of the party, Denning, and that was where they'd bedded down for the night, and that was where, burn it all to Hell, he should have split.

But he hadn't. And he still wasn't entirely sure why.

Maybe the vision of riches or weaponry beyond his wildest imaginings had held him to this course: an infatuation with power.

Maybe it, was just as simple as a belief that when the chips were down he could get shot of McCandless and Rogan and maybe Reacher, too — but maybe not Reacher; Kurt felt a vague kinship with Reacher — and take what was there all for himself. Simple greed. Maybe that was it.

Kurt shrugged, his face still masklike.

"Yeah."

"Yeah what?" rasped McCandless. "Yeah, ya listenin' to me, or yeah, we're all gonna get lucky?"

The thought struck Kurt anew that there was no way McCandless was going to share with him if they struck it lucky. Or with anyone. He had in fact been aware of that all along, right from the start, right from the moment when McCandless had grabbed him.

McCandless — sharing? Even an eighth? Fat chance.

He said, his voice lifeless, his mind filled with the sudden image of Denning with just a bloody mush were the back of his head had once been, "Both."

"Fine," said McCandless, with a grin. "So let's do it. Let's move, huh? Let's get us some of that good fortune."

They stumbled up the road, Reacher in front, McCandless next, then Rogan. Kurt took up the tail.

He gripped his old Armalite auto-rifle with both gloved hands, left under the stock, right around the trigger guard. Every so often he glanced back, but there was no one there. They'd seen no one since they'd left Mocsin. No muties, no mannies, no norms. Nor had they seen much fauna, come to that. The odd snake, nothing much else, nothing that looked at all as if it could wipe out a party of fifty men and all the men who had gone before.

Nor had they seen any sign of the steam trucks. No rusted hulks, no nothing. So unless the area they still had to reach, the high side of the mountains, was inhabited, it looked as if the only thing that could have dealt death to all those pilgrims of the past was the fog.

The fog that Dolfo Kaler had babbled about.

Fog devils, he'd said. Tear you apart, he'd said.

A fog with claws.

The wind was getting wilder, a banshee wail that echoed and reechoed around them. The four men had to fight to keep their balance, to stop from being plucked into the air and hurled over the edge of the precipice. They hugged the granite wall, stumbling and staggering onward, holding on to rocks with their gloved hands.

Kurt had to sling his rifle, a thing he did not care to do in a situation in which a second's delay in pulling it off his shoulder might be all the difference between life and death. But it was either that or be buffeted by the howling gale across the road and over into the black abyss the other side.

Suddenly it was colder. Much colder. Kurt stared upward, saw snow sweeping in from afar, a blizzard of ice and sleet hurled across the wilderness straight at them.

Yet still the lightning flickered and flared, exploding the blackness every few seconds with an unnatural radiance.

Head down, Kurt cursed through gritted teeth as the whirling maelstrom of ice chips exploded over them, battered them like hammers. Blindly he groped in his furs, tugged out heavy-duty Snospex, somehow managed to pull them over his head. He pulled the hood of his furs down hard, then crouched, gripping chunks of rock for dear life as another blast of wind hammered across the road with a demon's roar.

The wind died as suddenly as it had risen. It disappeared as though it had never been. Fat snowflakes softly feathered down through the air.

Breathing hard, Kurt clambered to his feet and unslung his rifle. He stared around, fearful that something might have snuck up on them while the gale had kept them flattened to the rock wall.

Nothing. The lightning cast a cyanic glow over the mountainscape. McCandless turned, stumbled back down toward him.

"Blasted nukeshit storm. Ain't seen nothin' like it. Ain't natural."

Kurt said, "Ain't nothing natural in the whole nuke-shittin' world, McCandless. Not since the Nuke."

"Shit," spat the big man, "yer a philosopher, Kurt." He turned back disgustedly. "C'mon! Move it! Let's go!"

They trudged onward, snow still drifting down from the lightning-slashed blackness all around them. It was hot again, humid. Clammy. Kurt could almost taste the electricity in the air, like a sharp razor flicking at his tongue. He shrugged irritably.

He watched Rogan ahead of him. Rogan, too, had pulled his parka hood over his face, but was now shoving it back up again. The gesture, the movement somehow angered Kurt. He sniffed the air, wondered idly how Rogan would take it if he suddenly cut loose with his piece and blew his head off. Kurt chuckled darkly to himself. Not very well, he thought. Not very well at all. It was so nuke-blasted hot.

He took a bead on Rogan as he silently swore. Rogan's head filled the sight. Kurt dropped by a millimeter or so. Now the stupid clown's neck. A round in there at this distance would plunge through skin and tissue, shatter the cervical vertebrae, punch out the thyroid cartilage, send the whole head spinning off sideways. In his mind's eye he could clearly see it sailing through the snowflakes, blood spraying out from the torn underside.

Suddenly there was a flurry of movement in the sight, a yell of outrage exploding from the target. Kurt let the rifle down slowly as Rogan's own piece jerked up.

Rogan screamed, "What the hell you doin'?"

Kurt held his rifle loosely and grinned. "Thought I saw a movement."

"Where? On my head?" Rogan's face was red with fury.

"Yeah. Flea or something. Maybe a louse. Who knows?" Kurt was now impassive.

"What's with this stupe? He out of his mind?"

McCandless glared at Rogan.

"Shut it. You want the whole mountain to hear you?"

"He was tryin' to kill me!"

Kurt said, "He's overreacting, McCandless. I think he's gone wacko."

Rogan took a step toward him, the rifle jabbing out. There was a crazed expression on his face. Kurt's own gun was raised again, aimed at Rogan's heart.

McCandless jumped forward, banged his left hand down on Rogan's rifle, clamped it tightly. He shoved the piece downward.

"Ya both crazy! Do I blast ya both?"

Kurt dropped his rifle and yawned deliberately.

"Dunno what's eating him. I was just sighting, that's all. Seems to me, McCandless, you want to keep an eye on your buddy or he's liable to do us all in."

"Listen..." Rogan's voice was thick with rage. One gloved hand jerked up, forefinger stabbing toward Kurt. "You listen to me..."

"Youlisten!" McCandless heaved himself at the man, swung him around. He now had his automatic pistol out and was jabbing it at Rogan's face, the muzzle inches from the man's left eye. "Shut it! Just shut it!" McCandless's eyes bugged and Kurt's hands tightened on his own piece. Any moment now, he thought, any moment... "Hey!"

Reacher. Up front. Kurt's eyes shifted from the two men in front of him and refocused on the senser mutie up the trail. Reacher was standing beside a bend in the road, waving an arm, gesturing frantically. McCandless's grip on Rogan loosened. The .45 slowly dropped. Reacher was shouting, "Round here. Quick." McCandless lumbered up the road toward him, still gripping the pistol. Rogan shot Kurt a black look, then followed. On Kurt's face was a dark smile, the eyes narrowed, the lips a thin curved line. Kurt shivered slightly, then wiped an arm across his brow. He was still hot. He moved on up the road, keeping to the left side even though the wind had dropped and was no longer sweeping across in violent gusts.

At the bend he stopped. Reacher was now beside the precipice, pointing. Kurt stepped to his side and stared down.

"Caught sight of 'em," the mutie said. "I was backing away, thought McCandless and Rogan were going to go berserk. Then I'm on the edge and I look down."

"Yeah." Kurt gazed at what the flickering lightning revealed far down into the plunging abyss — heaps of twisted wreckage, rusty metal skeletons, parts scattered far and wide along the narrow rock bank of the raging river. Beside him, McCandless, on his knees, stared down, too.

"So that's where they ended up."

"Yeah." Kurt swung around, to look at the winding road. It narrowed, curved around the rock wall to the left. A blind corner. But there was no one, nothing, no hidden cave mouth from which might erupt a horde of shrieking muties.

He sniffed the air. A strong smell of ozone drifted into his nostrils, sharp and heady. He noticed that the lightning had become forked, crackling with blue-tinged flares, tiny explosions that added eeriness to the already strange lighting effect. The sweat was pouring off his brow and he wiped at it with his sleeve again, inhaling the strong fur smell as if to ward off that other alien and unnerving odor.

"I don't like this," he muttered, turning back to the abyss.

McCandless grunted as he got to his feet.

"They must've been blown off the road. The wind just lifted the whole pack of 'em, threw 'em down."

"Steam trucks?" Kurt raised an eyebrow.

"Sure," snapped McCandless. "It happens."

"All six of 'em?"

"It happens!" The big man scowled at the rusty wrecks far below. Then he glanced at Kurt warily. "How come you know so much about what kinda traction those guys had?"

"I remember when Dolfo Kaler went out. It was only a couple of decades back. I was a kid, but I remember it."

"Yeah?" McCandless's voice was thick with suspicion.

"Sure. So what?"

"So nothing," growled McCandless, his eyes flicking back to the scene below. "See any stiffs?"

"Well, I guess they'd be picked bones by now." Kurt stared up at the towering peaks that soared above them, black and ominous. He gazed down again, noting the smoothness of the cliff face below, pierced here and there by tough-looking bushes that sprouted from unseen cracks and crevices.

"The acids would eat 'em up," Rogan put in, staring moodily downward.

"Ain't no acids round here," sneered McCandless. "Look at the rock, stupe. All round ya. Ain't eaten away. Smooth. Look at the road. Acids would tear all that up, dissolve the surface cover." He spat contemptuously into the sullen void below.

Kurt hitched his pack to loosen the straps. McCandless turned away from the brink of the precipice.

"Let's go. We gotta deal of trekkin' to do before we reach the top."

Rogan snarled at Kurt. "Don't you go pointin' that piece at me again, blaster. You hear me?"

Kurt did not bother to reply. He checked his gun, checked above, checked behind. He watched Reacher head toward the next bend, then moved on up the road himself, the ozone smell very strong in his nostrils now, an ugly, steely stink. He thought about the trucks and knew it would need a fantastic blast of wind to hurl them all over, all at once.

No wind, however fierce, had hurled them over into the abyss.

"McCandless!"

Kurt's head jerked up. Reacher was now at the bend, looking beyond it. His voice was not a yell but a hiss of alarm, incomprehension. There was tension there. Kurt began running. He passed both McCandless and Rogan, his gun held in both hands, his boots thudding on the road's hard surface. He reached the senser. He stared up beyond him at what lay ahead.

Fog.

A thick, sullen wall of it, gray-white, impenetrable. And huge. It blotted out the sky above them, loomed hideously high like an immense barrier across the road — a barrier that seemed to be alive, for it quivered and heaved gently. Thick tendrils stirred and inched out along the road's surface at its lower edge, like questing fingers, then retreated into the main mass. A dull, eerie glow emanated from its heart, blue tinged, somberly highlighting the immediate area.

Kurt gazed at it, his mouth suddenly dry. His eyes automatically took in the fact that it only extended to just beyond the edge of the precipice; there it seemed to fade away to become tattered shreds of whiteness hanging in the air. That somehow made it all the more unnatural, all the more terrifying. It seemed to Kurt to be not at all atmospherically created; not at all strange and random, in the way that much of the weather in the Deathlands seemed bizarrely random, in the way that here and now there was snow, heat, wild winds, periods of sullen stillness.

He whispered, "The fog..."

A hand grasped his shoulder and tugged at it. He half turned to face McCandless's glaring eyes.

"What the hell is this, Kurt? What the hell d'you know about this?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know anything."

"The fog, the fog'!" mimicked the big man savagely. "Ya knew this was waitin' for us. Ya knew it. How come, huh? How come ya know so much about this? What else ya got up ya sleeve, blaster?"

Kurt pulled himself away from the leader's grasp. He snarled, "I tell you I don't know anything. Dolfo Kaler talked about the fog, that's all."

"Dolfo Kaler was shot to shreds while he was still crawlin' into town. Even I know that, Kurt."

McCandless's .45 automatic was in the big man's hands, pointing at Kurt's face. McCandless held it two fisted, unwaveringly, his face behind the gun a mad, glaring mask. Kurt's own gun was held right-handed; he knew he didn't have a hope of jerking it up in time to blow McCandless away before the big man had sent a magful into him.

"McCandless, I told you, I was a kid at the time. I was the kid that found him." The words came tumbling out of his mouth. "He was mumbling something about a fog. That's it. That's all. It didn't make sense then, doesn't make sense now. Except there it is, the fog. All we have to do is walk through it."

McCandless's eyes narrowed. Sweat coursed down his face. He lowered the automatic slowly, almost grudgingly. Kurt breathed out hard.

"That's it," he repeated, his voice hoarse.

"Don't look like no fog I ever saw," muttered Rogan. He shot a scowl at Kurt. "He knows somethin' else, boss, you bet."

"Shut it," snapped McCandless.

The big man moved slowly up the road toward the eddying wall. Above, lightning flickered fitfully.

"Don't smell like fog," sniffed McCandless. "Rogan, take a walk."

The tall, craggy man took a step forward, then hesitated and stayed where he was. He stared at the rippling, gray-white wall, his mouth open.

He said, "Hell, boss, send the blaster. Or the mutie."

"The blaster I need, the mutie I need. Get in there."

Rogan backed away. "I ain't goin' in there. You go."

McCandless exploded, "Ya piece of nukeshit, Rogan, get in there!"

Rogan was beside Reacher now. He suddenly grabbed the mutie senser and pushed him, flung him toward the fog. Reacher stumbled. He hit the road and rolled to one side, yelling. McCandless jumped at Rogan, huge gloved hands outstretched, but the tall man evaded him, swinging his rifle and savagely clubbing McCandless's face. The barrel's sight ripped at the big man's right eye, tearing into flesh. McCandless screamed and reeled away. He clutched his head.

Kurt thought, this is it.

He swung his ancient Armalite up but Rogan had danced away toward the senser, who was scrambling to his feet. Rogan's rifle roared twice, on single shot, the bullets slamming into Reacher as a freak gust of wind suddenly roared up the pass. Reacher was bowled over by the impact of the rounds hitting him. Muzzle-flash sparked from Rogan's piece again and with a wail of pain and terror, Reacher jackknifed and sailed backward over the edge of the abyss. His shriek died in the wind's howl.

Laughing crazily, Rogan backed away from Kurt, covering him. He backed toward the fog, seemingly oblivious of its presence. He backed toward a tendril that shimmied out to him like a groping finger.

It touched him.

There was a spark, a flash of angry blue light, and Rogan pitched forward into a somersault, yelling as he spun. He smacked into the road, whinnying in terror.

But he still held his gun.

Kurt sent a shot at him, the Armalite bucking in his hands, but the round ricocheted off rock into the howling, lightning-lit darkness. Before he could center on the tall man again, muzzle-flash flared and an invisible fist pounded at Kurt's shoulder, jolting him backward, cracking his head against the cliff face.

He could feel nothing except the chill of the wind, a sudden cold wetness on his face. He opened his eyes and saw huge snowflakes whirling down again, driven by the wind. His shoulder throbbed and he stared at it, seeing nothing in the thick fur but knowing he had a bullet somewhere in his upper arm or chest. He found he'd lost his rifle. He was cold and hot at the same time, the sweat freezing on his face. He felt he could stay there forever, propped up against the rock. Focusing on the road, he registered that McCandless now had only one eye.

The big man was wrestling with Rogan, bare-handed, roaring like an angry bull. Rogan had a rock in one hand and was trying to smash it down on McCandless's unprotected head. Where the big man's right eye had been was a red mush that was streaked down his cheek and into his beard, runny with sweat and snow. He was roaring insanely, clawing at Rogan's face. Snowflakes, hard driven, blurred the scene and gave it the quality of nightmare. To Kurt, they seemed like shadow figures backlit by the lightning, their cries torn from them by the driving wind.

Rogan clubbed down with the rock, smacking it into McCandless's head. More blood. The big man staggered and fell to his knees. Both hands now clutched at his face. Rogan lifted the rock once more, then yelled in agony as McCandless head-butted him in the groin. Rogan lost hold of the rock to clutch at himself, his mouth wide, a soundless howl erupting from it.

He booted out at McCandless and rocked the big man backward. He followed this up with another savage, jolting kick. McCandless was on his back, clawing for and then wrenching out a knife. As Rogan grasped hold of the rock again, McCandless stabbed out at the other's nearest leg. The blade sank home; this time Kurt saw blood sluice out through the rent in Rogan's pants, just above the top of his boot. Rogan collapsed onto his adversary, smashing the rock down sickeningly. For a second they lay still, Rogan atop McCandless, then Rogan pulled himself up into a straddling position, brought the rock down a second time onto McCandless's head. Then a third time. A fourth. Kurt could hear nothing, just the insane shriek of the gale, but he knew that labored gasps were heaved out of Rogan with every smashing blow as he pounded away at the big man.

McCandless lay unmoving. Rogan finally collapsed onto him. The two figures began to blur with the snow that thickly distributed itself across the scene, piling up, whipped into low drifts by the wind.

The fog still quivered and heaved as though alive, the blizzard not affecting it, the snow around it.

Kurt tried to get to his feet but he was still dazed by the crack to the back of his head. His boots slipped on the snow-slick ground; it was too much of an effort to do anything but lie there, go to sleep, drift off into eternity.

A sudden movement caught his eye: Rogan rolling off the body of the big man, staggering to his feet in a flurry of snow. Rogan was not steady on his feet, but this did not seem to worry him. He was cackling insanely.

Kurt watched as Rogan leaned forward and dragged at the snow-covered lump on the road. Snow came off McCandless in a small avalanche as Rogan shook him violently, like a dog with a rat. McCandless had no face, just a red ruin. The wind tore at it, rinsing it with snow, but nothing could wash all the blood away, nothing in the world could clean it up.

Rogan dragged the body to the edge of the precipice. The wind had died yet again. Crazy weather, muttered Kurt, dully watching the snowflakes die until there were just a few big ones tumbling silently down, floating gently out of the lightning-shredded blackness. He saw Rogan heave the dead meat that once had been a man over the edge. And now the bastard's coming for me for sure, he thought.

He watched Rogan limp across the snowy road toward him, watched him suddenly stoop, grab something. The Armalite. So that's where it had landed.

"Hey, blaster! Gonna blast ya!" Rogan seemed cheerful. "Maybe I oughta shoot ya around a little," he added, triggering a round.

Kurt heard the sharp crack of the shot, heard himself yell as it hammered into the rock inches from his face, showering him with rock shards as it whined away.

"You thought you was gonna grab it all!" yelled Rogan. "Ol’ Rogan, he wasn't gonna get nothin'."

Again the rifle barrel flamed, again a round tore into the rock face, then careered off into the night.

What a way to die.

The mutie had been right, dead right. Death had been lurking only just around the corner. Their own deaths.

Then he noticed that the fog was on the move.

At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks. Perhaps it was just the effect of the fog's contraction-expansion motion, the breathing movement that made it seem alive. Then he realized the stuff was actually inching its way down the road, in bulk, the whole huge quaking gray-white mass sliding forward with a rippling motion, tendrils of the misty muck questing out along the blacktop.

"It's moving," he croaked.

"You stupe," crowed Rogan derisively. "You ain't gonna get nothin'. You hear me, blaster? Nothin'. All you're gonna get is a load of lead in your innards. Me, I'm gonna get what's up there, up the top of the mountain. All for me. No share-out. Especially no share-out with that prick McCandless. He thought he was the flaming emperor, but he ended up carcass. Just like you, Kurt. A carcass." He let out a wild, echoing guffaw.

Kurt watched as the advancing fog sent out its gray-white feelers toward the tall man. He couldn't figure it out at all, didn't know what in hell the stuff was, couldn't imagine its origin.

Something to do with the Nuke; something left over, maybe? That had to be it, had to be the answer. He chuckled to himself as he watched the foggy tentacles reaching out for Rogan, not at all blindly but purposefully, as though the very sound of the tall man's harsh, jeering voice constituted its target. Like thick cables, three tendrils snaked through the air to clutch Rogan's body and curl around it.

Sparks erupted fizzingly, half blinding Kurt. Rogan shrieked aloud. He writhed helplessly as though gripped by a giant's fist. He was wrapped in a huge amorphous cloud that solidified around him... then it snatched him up into the air.

Rogan was shrieking with shock and agony, still writhing in its clutch. He had been gathered up in some sort of twister. But this was no mere tornado that sucked objects up capriciously, then blew them all over the landscape. This thing had claws.

Fog devils... tear you apart...

A jolting, destructive, naked power lurked at the fog's heart. It had a mind of its own.

The tentacle that gripped Rogan swung high, long sparks crackling from it, playing around the struggling, yelling figure. Rogan was haloed in fire. With a last despairing shriek, the tall man disappeared into the center of a white wall.

The fog still advanced. Slowly. Inexorably.

Kurt's gloved fingers scrabbled at the rock for a firm handhold. He shoved himself forward and sideways, scrambling to his feet, staring at the advancing mass. More fog tendrils were extending out of it, groping in his direction, questing around. Kurt backed away from them, their acid stink almost overpowering him.

Lightning flared and crackled, revealing the mountain-tops ranged all around him as grimly frowning peaks. Kurt glanced over his shoulder, back down the ruined road.

The wall of fog shifted onward relentlessly.

Kurt let out a mewing croak of terror, turned, one hand clutching at his shoulder where now blood seeped through the fur. He began to stagger like a drunken man down the rutted road, back toward the Deathlands.