Chapter Thirty-Three

 

 

 

"If Ryan's dead, then we have no choice. If he's alive, out in the snow, we still have to make our own break."

 

"What about Krysty, John?" Mildred asked. "I'm seriously frightened for her. For what those so-called scientist bastards might be doing to her."

 

Jak nodded. "Agree. Morning's much gone. Time get out of this place."

 

Dean had been crying in a corner of the room where they were all imprisoned. But everyone had been tactful about it and pretended not to notice. Now, red-eyed and sniffling, he'd rejoined the council of war.

 

"I reckon Dad'll try and break into this shitter's hole as soon as he gets through the snow," he said. "He and Trader'll need help. We can give it."

 

Abe nodded. "Ace on the fucking line, young'un," he declared. "Anything we can do'll help."

 

Doc cleared his throat portentously. "If I may express my opinion?" he began.

 

"Sure you can, Doc," Mildred told him. "Just so long as you keep it short."

 

"I was merely proposing that if Ryan were here with us he could carefully formulate a proper plan, taking in true military fashion the enemy dispositions as well as calculating our own strengths or weaknesses. He would not be the man to simply leap, winking, into the great unknown. If it is to be done, then it will be well if it can be done quickly. As the justly famous bard of Avon so succinctly put it."

 

"Doc!" Mildred protested. "By the time you get to the end of this, we'll all have passed away of old age. And I hope and pray you'll be the first to go."

 

"Temper, temper, my dearest lady." Doc waved a reproving finger at the woman. "Hope, charity and patience, there abideth these three, Dr. Wyeth. And the greatest of all of these is patience."

 

"So, get on with what you have to say, you pompous old fart."

 

He beamed at Mildred, showing his fine set of perfect teeth. "Then I shall" Doubt clouded his eyes. "If it were not for the sad fact that I have momentarily disremembered what it was. If you allow me a moment or two?"

 

J.B. shook his head. "Enough wooly talk, Doc. Time for a combat plan. I've been thinking about it since they locked us up in here. They got our blasters, but some of us still have weapons. Your sword stick, Doc. Your throwing knives, Jak. So, here's what I suggest we do"

 

 

 

THE SEC FORCES at the institute had all been well trained, skilled at patrolling the perimeter, scouring the isolated valley in the heart of Acadia National Park, picking off any stragglers who had wandered there, though the numbers had decreased over the years.

 

But they had never come across any group of outlanders like Ryan Cawdor and his companions.

 

It had been easy taking the guns away. They were large and easily spotted. Dean's turquoise-hilted knife had been sheathed at his belt, and the guards had removed that. J.B. had surrendered his own blade to them, as had Abe.

 

But they had totally overlooked Doc's Toledo rapier, concealed within the ebony case, and a quick pat-down had missed all of Jak Lauren's hidden throwing knives.

 

Ellison, the sec boss, had been keeping a close personal eye on them, swaggering in, proudly wearing Doc's beloved Le Mat in his belt. The twisted scar at the corner of his mouth curling in derision every time he visited the prisoners.

 

Now, not long before noon, he came into their prison ward, past the two men with their scatterguns who were on watch in the passage outside.

 

"Snow's stopped," he said. "Sure you don't want to break the window and jump out to join your dead friends? One-eye and the old-timer?"

 

Though he didn't know it, that had been one of the options that they'd been discussing only a few minutes earlier, rejecting it mainly on account of the noise it would entail. The glass was very thick, and it would take enormous force to splinter it. Then you had to clear away the loose shards or you'd cut yourself to ribbons going through. A rope of sheets might've reached the ground, but it would have taken at least five minutes for all of them to have gotten away down the face of the building, past the windows of the busily occupied first floor.

 

The chances of being caught were too great.

 

So, they'd selected what seemed to be the best of the alternatives. Or what J.B. had called, quoting Trader, "The least worst option."

 

"We'd like to see Krysty," Mildred said, standing by the window, as far away as possible from the door, gazing mournfully out at the bleak landscape.

 

"Sure you would, lady."

 

"When can we?"

 

It was said so quietly that the sec boss took a couple of steps across the room toward her.

 

"What?"

 

Mildred looked away from him, muttering something in an undertone.

 

Ellison was aggrieved. "Can't you fucking outlanders speak up?" He walked to stand right by her, grabbing her by the shoulder. "Can't you do anything properly?"

 

Jak stood in the center of the room. "Do chilling properly," he stated.

 

As Ellison turned, the albino hurled the leaf-bladed, weighted knife from his right hand, with a crisp snap of the wrist. At a range of less than twelve feet, with a stationary target, he couldn't miss.

 

Jak's target had been the red-veined right eye of the senior sec man, bulging in instant shock as he saw his death slicing toward him.

 

The honed steel thudded wetly home, bursting the right eye open in a flourish of clear liquid, followed instantly by a wave of bright blood. The taped hilt of the thrown knife protruded from the ruptured socket like some obscene ornament, the ultimate in facial decoration.

 

Ellison gasped in pain, letting go of the Mossberg. Dean was right at his side, prepared for that, and grabbed the blaster before it could clatter to the tiles. As the sec man's mouth opened, ready to scream,

 

Mildred moved from behind him and clamped both hands over his mouth, shutting off the cry.

 

The point of the knife had searched out the front part of Ellison's brain, and he was dying.

 

As his strength failed, Mildred and Abe supported him, laying him gently on the floor. One foot was jerking, beating out a rhythmic tattoo for several seconds, before Jak himself knelt down and held the leg still.

 

"Done," J.R said.

 

"One of them down, and only five or six dozen more to go," Doc added, stooping to pluck his Le Mat from the dead man's belt. "Mine, I think."

 

The scarred mouth was twisted in a rictus of horror, the one good eye staring blankly at the ceiling.

 

"The end of friend Ellison." Mildred looked down at him. "Ugly son of a bitch, wasn't he?"

 

Precisely at that moment the door of their room was flung open and in strode the sec boss, Ellison. He slammed the door shut behind him and walked toward the group of friends, their bodies hiding the corpse on the floor from him.

 

"What're you" he began, the great curved cicatrix that disfigured the corner of his mouth tugging the lips into a parody of a smile.

 

"Dark night!" J.B. breathed, for once knocked completely off balance.

 

There was Ellison, stone dead at their feet, Jak's knife still rammed into the weeping eye socket.

 

And there was Ellison, alive as could be, standing less than six feet away from his own corpse.

 

The only one of them who reacted to the bizarre situation with any sense was Doc. He walked quickly from his place in the circle and stepped right up to Ellison, the Le Mat concealed behind his back.

 

Ellison stopped and stared suspiciously at him. "What the fuck do you want, you old goat?"

 

"I want only to speed you along to meet the dark ferryman, Charon of the Styx."

 

He pressed the .63-caliber, gold-embossed shotgun barrel of the revolver into the sec man's midriff as hard as be could and squeezed the gold-plated trigger.

 

Ellison's body absorbed much of the noise of the blaster, muffling it. The charge ripped through the man's belly, tearing his intestines to bloody rags of sinew, pulverized a section of his spine, completely blowing away four vertebrae into tiny white shards of bone. The spent slugs scattered bloodily into the wall behind Ellison, spraying it with dappled crimson.

 

Doc stepped quickly back, tutting as blood gushed over the toes of his cracked knee boots. He allowed the body of the sec man to stagger three broken steps backward, before dropping to the floor.

 

"His twin?" Abe suggested.

 

Mildred shook her head. "No. Dean, remember you thought you heard that dying man whisper a word? Said it sounded like 'coning' to you?"

 

"Sure."

 

"It wasn't 'coning,' Dean. It was 'cloning.' I know it. The twin dogs. That's what the sick bastards are doing here. They're cloning, copying people. One of these would be the original Ellison, and the other is a copy of him, perfect in virtually every detail. Probably genetically engineered and matched from a DNA sample." She took a deep breath. "My God, friends. We should find Krysty and all get out of here as fast as we can. There's true evil here."

 

 

 

THE SOUND OF THE SHOT hadn't penetrated through the soundproof door to the guards in the corridor.

 

J.B. had taken one of the pair of matched silver Mossberg scatterguns, tossing the second one to Abe. Jak had retrieved his knife from the eye of the first Ellison, replacing it in its hidden sheath.

 

Doc reloaded the spent .63-caliber shell from one of his deep pockets. Mildred and Dean each took a knife from the bodies.

 

"Right," the Armorer said. "Take the sec men from outside now, as quick and quiet as we can. Bring them in here like we talked about."

 

"Chill them." Jak's voice didn't leave room for very much discussion.

 

"Yeah," J.B. agreed. "We chill them."

 

Mildred looked at him. "Can't we tie them and leave them here, John?"

 

"If this was an old predark fic vid, then sure we could, easily. But this is real life, Mildred. Real Deathlands living and dying. Only takes one to get loose or someone to come by while we're wasting all that time and" He drew his index finger across his throat.

 

She nodded. "Then we try to find a way across the top of the atrium at this level. Into the research wing and look for Krysty. Then out and run for it. Hope Ryan and Trader eventually link up with us?"

 

"That is indeed the plan, Dr. Wyeth," Doc said. "You sound just a tad dubious about the possibilities of its success. Of course, if you have invented a better option, then I am sure we would all be delighted to hear it."

 

"Fuck you, Doc. The least worst option, isn't it? And so far, so good. Let's carry on the killing."

 

Jak went to the door and opened it a little way, calling out for the guards to come inside the room.

 

 

 

J.B. DISCONNECTED a sec alarm that would have closed off the aerial walkway that spidered high over the central atrium. Then they were all able to pick their way, in single file, over what had obviously once been a maintenance catwalk, with ventilation ducts and electrical conduits opening off it.

 

Far below they could see the white of the scientists' coats, and the bustling sec men.

 

Once they were all safely over, Dean commented that the scene below looked like a nest of snow ants, disturbed by a hungry bear.

 

J.B. agreed with the boy. "Somethings got up their asses, that's for sure."

 

They had to work their way through a maze of narrow passages, then descend through a trapdoor into a deserted service corridor. J.B. led them along the hall and down an iron staircase onto the first floor.

 

Mildred took over the job of guiding them, using the experience of her previous recce.

 

"The operating rooms and main research labs are down here," she informed them, "but we need to sneak across toward the outer passage that runs behind the rooms."

 

That was easier said than done with the whole institute buzzing. Twice they had to cut into side rooms, luckily finding them empty, while sec patrols jogged by.

 

They were nearing the farther end of the wing, where Mildred had spotted the poor ruined victims of the scientists' crazed research, when they all heard the sound of clicking heels approaching from a side corridor.

 

"One person," Jak said.

 

"Take him quietly," J.B. warned.

 

The last two side doors had been locked and bolted, so there was nowhere to run and hide. The only option was to stand and fight.

 

"Take him with one of your knives, Jak," the Armorer ordered, "first moment he appears."

 

The noise of the feet was growing louder, closer, echoing and distorted.

 

Jak reached behind his back, under the ragged jacket, feeling for his concealed blade. Beneath the stark overhead lighting his white hair seemed like a veil of blazing magnesium, his eyes glinting like tiny rubies. He gripped the hilt tight between finger and thumb.

 

Doc whispered to the Armorer. "Might it not be a risk worth the taking to try to capture this person alive? Then we can question him concerning the whereabouts of our three missing companions."

 

J.B. shook his head. "No, Doc. Too risky. Just a quick clean chill."

 

Now the sound of boots was almost on top of them, right around the nearest corner.

 

The moment the figure appeared, Jak sent his knife spinning through the air, aimed toward the throat of his intended victimKrysty Wroth!