Ryan whistled softly between his teeth, trying to control his own disappointment. To spend all this time and to hope that there might be something of value from before the long winters... and to find a crazed, dying old woman!
"What can we do, Doc?"
"Put a bullet through her brain. Stop her suffering, Ryan Cawdor."
The screaming continued, unrelenting in its panting harshness.
"If you don't chill her, Ryan, then I will," Krysty warned.
Inside the capsule, the woman was becoming more and more restless, her hands reaching up to pluck at the empty air, the tubes straining from her yellowed flesh.
"Yeah," Ryan agreed, blinking his one good eye. He drew the P-226 blaster from its holster, pausing for a moment. Then he leaned around the open door, reached in and touched the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer to the shaved side of the woman's skull. He squeezed the trigger once.
With a frisson of almost supernatural horror, Ryan saw the head kick sideways, a chunk of bone exploding on the padded pillow, releasing a flood of watery blood and pinkish brains. The eyes stayed open and the screams continued.
"How can?.." he began, feeling a thrill of something that was close to fear until common sense reasserted itself. The noise of the screams was from behind him, not from the twitching corpse in the cryogenic cubicle.
"Triple fucking crazie!" Jak shouted. "Look what's doing himself!"
Krysty was still at the console, this time trying to punch up information on capsule number 3. "Henderson Otis. Age twenty-seven. Auto crash-up. Major brain damage."
Ryan, J.B., Doc and Lori joined the white-haired teenager in front of the chamber, standing paralyzed by the dreadful sight inside. Fortunately the sec lock hadn't yet sprung open and Henderson Otis couldn't get at them.
But that didn't stop him from trying.
He had clawed his way upright, tottering on shaky legs that were seamed with fresh scars, wrapped in moldering bandages. The wrap-sheet had been torn and kicked away, lying in a crumpled, bloodied heap on the floor.
All of the feeder and drainer tubes had been ripped from the man's flesh, each one leaving a crimson mouth that dribbled fresh blood. But it was the face that face and the expression smeared upon it that held the attention of the five silent watchers.
The accident that had led to Henderson Otis being frozen against the false hope of a better tomorrow had obviously done hideous damage to his skull. Now his face was pressed right against the glass of the door, disfigured with a slobbering leer of bestial hatred. Almost without realizing it, everyone had drawn their handguns, knowing that if the creature succeeded in liberating itself from the armaglass confines, it would surely attempt to rend them all limb from bloodied limb.
The teeth were mostly broken off in jagged stumps, and half of the protruding tongue had been sheared away in the crash. The left side of the skull had been stoved in above the ear, above where the ear had once been. The pale skin showed bruises, deep purple, yellowing at the edges. The left eye was closed, invisible behind a slab of puffy flesh.
As the man scratched at the door, fingernails bent and broken, he made a feline hissing sound through his gnawed lips.
"Another mercy killing?" Ryan said, hand on the butt of his pistol.
"I think there is no possible option for us," Doc agreed.
"Waste of time... recovering a freezie," J.B. commented, shaking his head at the gibbering apparition in front of them.
"Only about a minute before the armadoor opens," Krysty warned. "Best get ready."
But Henderson Otis took matters into his own hands, turning away from them, some rudimentary remnant of intelligence making him realize he couldn't get at the six watchers. Picking up one of the sharp-ended glass syringes that had been either nourishing him or drawing off the preserving liquids, he lifted it clumsily in his hands and glanced over his shoulder at the door, half smiling.
"Thanks, but no thanks," the freezie said, the words quite clear.
With an inflexible determination Otis lifted the syringe and drove it into his own right eye. Ryan winced, Lori shrieked in horror and Doc gasped. The others were silent.
A clear fluid spurted, with the faintest subtle tint of pink. Otis grunted, drawing the spike out and ramming it into the bloodied socket once more. The tendons in the wrists stood out with the effort of pushing it clean through the back of the eye into the brain.
The second attempt was successful. The arms flung wide as though some invisible force was crucifying him. His head snapped forward on the chest, and the corpse slithered to the floor of the chamber. Almost simultaneously there was a loud click of the sec lock opening.
"Rest in peace," Doc said, bowing his head over his locked fingers.
"Amen to that," Krysty whispered. "Come on, lover. Let's all get the fuck out of this bastard bone-yard."
Ryan stood quiet, looking down at the wreckage of what had once been a healthy young man, trying to imagine the long darkness of a hundred years that Henderson Otis had endured, against the hope of being awakened, being resurrected and made hale and complete once more. Had there been consciousness at all? Had any part of the brain remained functioning? Or had it been the dim red glow of smoldering insanity?
"We'll never know," he said, answering his own question.
"We going?" Jak asked, shuffling nervously from foot to foot.
"I want to see sky and trees," Lori said her face as pale as milk.
"Sounds good to me," Krysty agreed. "Nothing to keep us here."
"What about the other pods?" J.B. asked. "There's another six or so opening."
"Leave 'em," Ryan said, more loudly than he'd intended. "I don't want to see any more things like that in there."
"Could be that we could do another kindness... if any of them are in need of help in passing," Doc suggested.
The stillness was interrupted by the clicking of another sec lock, which made everyone spin around to be greeted by the weak but steady voice.
"What's the year? And who... who am I?"
Chapter Nine
"Richard Neal Ginsberg, born March 22, 1970. Occupation..." Krysty turned away from the VDT screen. "Just says that his job was listed and sec-coded with a high B classification. That's all we know."
The freezie was around five-ten in height and seemed to be around 160 pounds. His hair was very dark, cut short, with tight curls. Ryan noticed that his muscle tone was very poor, which could indicate some side effect of the cryogenic treatment, or it could show that Richard Ginsberg had worked in a sedentary job and rarely took much exercise.
He had been sitting up in his polished capsule, peering out through the glass door. Other than the two short questions, he'd said nothing. He simply lay down again as the six friends moved toward him. Then he fell into what seemed a natural and peaceful sleep.
Ryan and Jak had lifted him out, winding the crackling sheet of plastic off his naked body. They lowered him carefully onto the floor and covered him with some blankets that Krysty had discovered in a wall closet. In the cubicle, in a green locker, J.B. found what they guessed must have been the freezie's own clothes laundered underclothes, a gray shirt with a trim collar, a suit in a darker gray material, light fawn socks and tan shoes in imitation leather. The only other item in the locker was a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.
Now that they'd actually got themselves a live one, none of the group quite knew what to do with him. In the end they agreed it was best to let him rest peacefully for a while, so that he could sleep off his hundred years of sleep.
"Wish there was more in the computer about him," Ryan said. "Name, age and a secret job. Not much to go on."