Red Equinox

Chapter Thirty-Nine

O say can you see by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming,

Doc Tanner's voice started light and nervous, barely audible. Slowly it began to gather volume and richness. Rick held the pyrotab in his right hand, the shaking fingers of his left gripping the hem of the scorched flag. His lips moved silently in unison with the old man's singing.

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous night,

O'er the ramparts we watch'd were so gallantly streaming?

Powerful and moving, the thrilling words filled the small, low-ceilinged room. Krysty found herself suddenly on the brink of helpless tears. Rick lay pale and sickly among his only friends, a single tear easing from the corner of his right eye. Doc was unashamedly weeping as he sang the old song of patriotism.

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there

Then, on the last two lines, they all joined in, all of them, even Jak Lauren, discovering that they did, after all, know the swelling climax. The gateway control unit was filled with the sound of their singing.

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Ryan rubbed at his good eye, conscious that some smoke or grit had gotten into it. He smiled down at Rick and knelt to shake his hand. "Good send-off, friend. Now all..."

He stopped, then gently laid Rick's hand across his chest, carefully closing his sightless eyes. Ryan stood to face the others.

"That it?" Krysty asked.

"Yeah, lover. That's it. He's gone."

"How 'bout fire?" Jak asked.

"Sounds like they're through the door at the top," J.B. warned.

"Then let's go." He bent and took the pyrotab from the unresisting fingers. "Jak, spread the gas. I'll light this at the last moment before shutting the chamber door. Be a blast, then a steady fire. Better than a shit grave for Rick."

"Like a Viking chieftain," Doc added. "I do believe he would have liked that."

"Hope the jump works," Krysty said quietly. "If it doesn't, we're roast meat."

Zimyanin's heart was in his throat with the fresh excitement. Who knew what amazing secrets might be hidden behind the door? There was obviously a long-lost staircase within the central chimney of the dacha, something that had clearly been there since before the long grayness.

Something that was cunningly concealed, and therefore valuable.

At last the door crashed open and they could all see the top of some metal steps. For a surreal moment Zimyanin imagined that he had heard the sound of far-off singing, but it stopped and there was only a great silence.

"Come on!" he called to his men.

Doc tripped the reactivate button outside the actual gateway chamber. He picked up the trembling Zorro, and stuffed him inside his fur cloak and stepped quickly into the hexagonal room.

The air was heavy with the fumes of gasoline. Jak had sprinkled it everywhere he could — around the bottom of the stairs, and all over the main control room, soaking the pile of old cloth and furs where the corpse of Rick Ginsberg lay.

The albino boy heaved the empty cans into a corner and joined Doc Tanner, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"Go on, lover," Ryan urged. "They're on their way down." Krysty smiled and stepped in.

J.B. darted to the bottom of the stairs and fired off a dozen rounds, spraying the bullets upwards. Then he moved quickly into the gateway.

Ryan glanced a last time around the small complex and hoped that igniting the gas wouldn't blow any of the mat-trans circuits before the friends were well on their way with the jump.

Footsteps were pounding closer and he heard the voice of Zimyanin, urging his men onward.

Other than Ryan, everyone was in the chamber, sitting on the metal disks set into the floor. The walls of thick armaglass would protect them from the fireball or Russian bullets. For long enough.

"Ready?" Ryan asked. He stood in the open door of the chamber, his finger on the flip top of the pyrotab. He pulled the door half-shut. Once it was closed the jump procedure would begin.

Ryan ignited the tab, threw it outside and slammed the door.

Zimyanin was at the bottom of the stairs, having pushed his way to the front of the frightened sec men by sheer brute strength. The ricocheting bullets had slowed down the pursuit, leaving half a dozen men injured. But it hadn't slowed Gregori Zimyanin.

A small control room of some sort confronted him, filled with all manner of arcane mechanical devices that chattered to themselves while tiny colored lights danced and flickered. Zimyanin had seen books from before sky-dark in the ruins of the big library in Yakutsk, with pictures of installations like this. But to see them here... and working...

"I was right," he shouted.

At that moment a hand reached around a door and threw something into the room. And Zimyanin realized that he was surrounded by the thick smell of...

"Gasoline," he whispered.

Ryan heard the crump of the explosion, and then the roaring of flames. He sat down next to Krysty and faced the closed door, watching the shimmering fire through the thick glass walls. The disks started to glow, and the familiar humming sound began. Ryan became aware of the beginnings of the awful feeling of his brain being sucked out, and he knew that the darkness would soon descend over them all. For a moment he thought of Rick Ginsberg and the burning flag.

"We made it again," Krysty said, holding his hand. "We won through, lover."

Zimyanin had dived for cover behind a bench as the huge roar of the gas combustion passed over and around him. The fireball exploded out of the room and soared up the chimney of the staircase, instantly incinerating most of his force. Apart from slightly scorched hair and clothes, the Russian sec chief was unhurt.

Fire danced all around him, lapping at the control consoles. The door through which the American had vanished was closed, a thick glass door, with a light glowing inside it. And above the noise of the flames and the screams of the doomed and dying, was an insistent humming sound.

The Russian holstered his Makarov and powered himself through the fire, holding his breath. He reached the glass door. Out of the corner of his eye he saw what looked like a body, wreathed in flames. In a bizarre fraction of blazing time, Zimyanin thought that he could also see an American flag, with its stripes and its stars, burning across the corpse.

He touched the door handle, wincing at its heat against his bare flesh.

Doc and Jak had already slipped into unconsciousness. J.B. was relaxed, his glasses neatly folded in a pocket, eyes closed.

"See you back... in... Deathlands," Krysty muttered.

As the blackness forced its way behind her eyes and into her mind, she had the momentary illusion that the door of the gateway chamber had opened and someone had come in. But the jump was too far advanced, and she took that fantasy with her into the infinite night.

Ryan was the strongest of the group, and the effects of the mat-trans process overtook him last of all. His eye was still open, though the inner vision was clouding. But he saw the door swing open. A bulky figure entered, kicking the entrance closed behind him.

A smell of burned cloth and hair.

Circle of silver and bald head.

Pocked skin.

A voice breathed in Ryan's ear. "You who are about to die..." The rest disappeared. Hands, like clamps of high-tension steel, jammed around his throat.

Breathing became difficult. Ryan wanted to struggle, but the jump had sucked away all his power to resist.

Someone laughed, the hands on his throat remorselessly strong.

Laughter.

Blackness.

Blackness.

Black.