Red Holocaust

Chapter Fourteen

"Noooooo!"

Ryan's yell of rage was probably the only thing that could have checked the falling blade.

There was no time to fire a gun to save Henn, no time to blast open the door and ice the crazed priest. But the shout made Herne hesitate, and the blade slid past Henn's naked chest.

"Krysty, quick!" said Ryan.

The girl didn't need encouragement. Ryan's response had been so electric that it meant instant action.

With long, slender fingers, she gripped the edge of the door where the frame was warped by the cold. Her eyes closed and her lips tightened. Through gritted teeth she whispered the incantation to enable her to draw on her hidden power.

"Mother, Earth Mother, help me. Help me... now!" The last word sounded as if it were torn from her heart.

Metal screeched and wood splintered and daylight burst into their room around the shattered door. Ryan was first out, followed immediately by Okie, then J.B., all of them opening fire on the murderous group.

Ryan's new G-12 was set on three-round bursts, giving him a lethal firing rate. The caseless bullets tore through the black-robed women standing around Hennings. Herne dropped to his hands and knees behind the altar, scuttling toward cover like an insect uncovered beneath a rock.

J.B. and Okie both fired their Mini-Uzis, handling the small guns almost as easily as if they were just pistols. Bodies spun and danced, carried by the streams of lead, tumbling to the chill stone tangled in frozen embraces.

During the firefight, time disappeared. Hours became minutes and minutes became seconds; seconds became shards of broken time. And one of those tiny shards stretched to a hundred lifetimes.

Ryan took his finger off the trigger, and looked around the open area between the buildings. Apart from four or five of the crazies who were moaning and crying for help, it was over.

"I'll take them," said Okie, stalking among the corpses, her boots splashing in blood. She set her blaster on single shot and, stooping and firing, put a round through the necks of all the wounded.

"Lori," ordered Ryan, "get Hennings untied and dressed. His clothes must be over there. Doc, go with her and keep watch. Might still be some of them around, and... That tall bastard, Herne, he's gone!"

"That way," said Krysty, her voice weak and strained. He spun around to see her leaning on the frame of the ruined door, her face as pale as parchment, a tiny thread of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

"Where? You all right?"

"Sure. Just... I heard him run. Like a rat in a cellar. That way, behind the cross on the wall."

A burst of fire made Ryan duck, but it was only J.B., wasting an elderly man who'd come tottering out of a hut, waving a great cleaver with a chipped edge.

"I will not stay here. This place is now soiled with blood. I shall lead my children from this valley of dark abomination into the plain of lightness."

The apostle, Ezekiel Herne, had appeared from behind a tumbledown wall, his hands stretched out, one of them gripping the obsidian knife. His eyes were blank and staring. A hideous parody of a smile hung on his lips.

Doc was on the far side of the altar, getting ready to cut Henn loose, and was directly in the line of fire, blocking Okie, J.B. and Ryan from shooting down the madman.

"Hit him, Doc," called Ryan.

"Use your cannon," added J.B.

"As I go, surely shall I not go alone," said Herne, drawing nearer to the old-timer. "This sacrifice shall be not maimed nor worthless."

"Do it, now," urged Okie.

"Bust him!" said Ryan quietly.

Like someone waking from a long dream, Doc Tanner began to fumble with the flap of the holster attached to his broad leather belt. But his fingers — were cold, and it seemed to take an eternity.

Herne was so close in line that none of the others could take him out without risking Doc's life. Had the skeletal man been holding a blaster, none of them would have hesitated, even if it meant wiping Doc out at the same time. But a knife was a close-range threat.

The antique Le Mat; was so heavy that Doc nearly dropped it as he clumsily thumbed the hammer back.

Herne was almost on top of him, already raising the gleaming midnight blade just as he had when he'd been about to rip the living heart from Henn's body.

The pistol was adjusted to fire its .63-caliber shotgun round. Holding the pistol in both hands, Doc squeezed the trigger. There was a great burst of powder smoke and a boom like a stun gren exploding, Ryan saw the way that the Le Mat kicked high in the old man's grip, but at that range, with that sort of charge, he really couldn't miss.

The skinny preacher was thrown back by the impact. His black coat disappeared into tatters and rags, and a great fountain of blood sprayed out from him. He landed flat on his back, his knife flying high in the bright morning air. The shot had hit him in the center of the chest, pulping ribs, driving the razored splinters of bone into his heart and lungs, killing him instantly.

Some of his blood splashed onto the broken wall behind him. Ryan looked up at the tortured figure of the Christ on the cross. Its midnight sheen was now dappled with fresh crimson that ran down the anguished face, the thighs, the ankle stumps.

"Got the ace on the fuckin' line with that one, Doc," said Okie, grinning appreciatively.

The old man bolstered the smoking pistol and turned away without saying a word.

Henn was almost gray with exposure, and it took a great blazing fire and much effort to bring some life back into his limbs. The shooting had awakened Finnegan, who came lurching outside just after Doc iced the leader of the crazies. Wiping the sleep from his bleary eyes, he asked, "What the fuck is goin' on?"

Henn eventually recovered, though there were numerous scratches and bites on his body, particularly around his thighs and the lower part of his belly. And his penis was scabbed and bloody from what looked like severe friction burns on it.

As soon as he was coherent and dressed, Ryan ordered everyone back to the buggies, ready to move.

Doc had walked off on his own and returned only now, when he heard the roar of the engines. He looked pale. Ryan took him to one side.

"Yon feelin'... you know, Doc? You did what you had to. That bastard would have opened you from?.."

"Thorax to pubis, Ryan. Yes, I know, but killing does not come easy to me."

"It's a craft you have to learn, Doc. Just like any other."

"Then I confess I will do my best. Ah..."

"What?"

"While walking there alone with my contemplations, I recalled something I had forgotten. I mentioned the word craterbrought back memories. I have now managed to remember it."

"Go on."

"Chron-jumps."

"What the?.."

Doc looked around to make sure the others were not within hearing distance. "The gateways. You know they're mat-trans ports. You get in and instantly you're carried somewhere else."

"Yeah. Look, I'm fuckin' freezin' to the bone out here, Doc. Can't we?.."

"It won't take much longer, sir. I said that there had been some dreadful accidents. I didn't tell you because I couldn't remember it, but the gateways have also been used for other experiments. Chron-jumps. Time travel. It does work."

"Never. Come on, Doc. You know you get confused sometimes."

"Most of the time, my dear Mr. Cawdor. But here is a moment of crystal clarity. I know that time travel is a reality — I know better than any living soul, believe me. But they tried other times. Once, and once only it nearly worked."

Either Doc Tanner had completely lost all his creds, or he was telling the truth. Ryan shook his head, resisting the temptation to slap himself to see if he was dreaming all this.

"It is passing strange how I can fail to know even my right hand from my left and still recall some fragments of the past in such clarity. It was the sixth day of August in the year 1930. Seventy-one years before Armageddon. A man of great distinction got into a cab in what was called Manhattan, in old New York. He waved to a friend and disappeared forever."

"What's this got to do with talkin' about volcanoes and craters?"

"Wait. The men who ran the Gateway and the Cerberus projects were evil. Oh, such wickedness and misery! My dear, dear Emily! They were trawling and they picked up this man. I was there when he came through, or when what was left of him came through."

Ryan had enough sense not to interrupt Doc to ask who Emily was. That might have been enough to throw his memory off the subject forever.

"It nearly, so nearly proved a success. A justice of the supreme court. It would have... I can still see what came."

"Go on, Doc." Behind Ryan, the rest of the group had boarded the ice buggies and were watching curiously from the ob slits.

"A shirt with a high collar. I remember the shoes were very sharply pointed, which was the fashion of the time, and were polished like twin mirrors. The suit was double-breasted, a brown pinstripe. That was the expression, pinstripe. That torn suit — with the label of the tailor still neatly sewn within it."

Doc's voice was becoming quieter. The early sun had long gone and the day was turning colder and bleaker. Gray clouds streaked with a dull purple were gathering over the giant mountain behind them, and already the first flakes of threatening snow were blowing.

"Those clothes. And... most of his trousers were missing. All but the lower jaw of the head was gone. That row of white teeth, everything sliced clean as a razor, and very little blood. The right hand was there, perfect, the fingers still curling, but the left was hewn away by some unknown and unimagined power. The voice mewed like a kitten. I think that was the worst of it — that little, little mewing voice. Lord forgive us for what was done in the name of science and progress! Progress! That poor relic of a man, plucked from the past to end... who knows where? Or when?"

"But what's this got to do with craters, Doc? I don't see the connection."

Doc's veiled eyes turned to him, unblinking. "The name of..."

J.B.'s shout interrupted them. "It's droppin' fast, Ryan. If we're goin', we should move. Goin' to be bad weather soon."

"Sure, sure. Go on, Doc."

"For... what? Go on? Ah, I comprehend you, Mr. Cawdor, indeed I do. Go on and get into those infernal internal combustion machines. Of course."

It had gone. The call from the Armorer had been enough to tip Doc's mind back over the edge, from sanity into utter confusion. But even the few coherent sentences that Doc had managed gave Ryan plenty to think about. Time travel! Maybe the gateways could be used for time travel. That was something else.

The small barometer in the cab of Buggy One told its own tale. The pointer moved down and down as they drove, roughly maintaining a heading that would take them toward Fairbanks. But the land had undergone massive upheavals and distortions. Also, they were driving in one of the worst blizzards that Ryan had ever seen: worse than anything he'd ever experienced in the Deathlands. Visibility was falling toward zero, and winds rocked the heavy vehicles.

In the end there was nothing to do but halt. In Buggy Two, J.B. was having problems with the ignition system, which was coughing and cutting out. With a wind-chill factor that lowered the temperature outside to around minus one hundred and thirty, there was no hope of getting out to do repairs.

During a brief lull in the blizzard, Ryan saw a geodesic dome to the left, with buildings and an old radar dish scattered around it. "Part of what they called the DEW line," he said to Krysty, pointing it out. "Early defense system."

"Did 'em a lot of good, lover."

"Yeah. And it looks like a dam up at the head of that valley." But the storm came screaming back again and visibility fell to zero.

In midafternoon the storm began to ease, with the wind fading away to a mere fifty miles an hour, and the snow stopping altogether. The barometer rose from the depths and the watery sun peeked through the chem clouds.

"Buggy One to Two and Three. You read?"

Both came back affirmative.

"Map shows steep valley a few miles ahead. We'll go on and check it out. Keep in contact. If you can't fix the ignition, J.B., then call us, and we'll return, or you can all pack into Buggy Three. Is there room?"

"Sure, Ryan. No sweat. We'll meet up in the opening to that canyon. Keep in touch."

As he was about to press the gas pedal, Ryan had a second thought and switched the radio back on. "Mebbe better if you come with us, J.B. Henn's the engine expert, and he's got Finn to help him out. Six in one of these babies could be too much. You come with us."

"How about taking Lori?"

"No. If we meet trouble ahead, I'd rather have you along, providin' you don't smoke one of your bastard cheroots in here."

So the transfer was made, and the ailing buggy was left in the charge of Henn and Finnegan, who were both now recovered from the effects of the drugged punch. Despite intermittent snow flurries, visibility was generally fair.

"We should be near that valley," said J.B., holding a handgrip to steady himself against the rocking and lurching of the buggy.

"How far'll we go?" asked Krysty.

"Far as it takes. Looks like what's left up here is a big round zero," said Ryan. "Mebbe go back to the redoubt in a day or so and try movin' to warmer places. That the way you figure it, J.B.?"

"Sure."

The bazooka shell exploded near enough to the vehicle that it stopped dead, tipping up and over. The concussion was shocking, sending the three occupants toppling into instant darkness.

Ryan Cawdor was first to recover. He blinked and opened his eye, aware of a shattering ache in his head. He could feel blood crusted around his ears from the force of the shell.

Someone was looming over him; a man, well built. He wore some sort of silver band around his forehead, with a large red stone at its center. And his eyes were a peculiar golden color.

"Has the agony somewhat abated?" asked Uchitel, pronouncing the words carefully.