In among the endless rows of conifers, Ryan ran and dodged, never once looking back. The trees were so close together that his shoulders brushed on both sides as he twisted and turned. On either flank, just a little behind, he was aware of Krysty and J.B., following his headlong dash.
Ryan had reacted so quickly that not a single shot was fired from the men in the jeep. By the time the Russians clambered down from the vehicle and ran to the place where the trio had vanished, there was no sign of them.
The woods were lonely, dark and deep.
"We got miles to go," Ryan said, crouching against the bole of a dead spruce tree.
"Back to the house?" Krysty panted, throwing off her furs, wiping sweat from her forehead.
"No choice. If the freezie'd been with us we could have bluffed our way. I heard one warning shout from the guys in the jeep. Once you stop, you're dead. Mebbe they'll think we don't hear too good. Or we're scared by the way they appeared."
J.B. was trying to clean his glasses on a kerchief from one of his capacious pockets. "Yeah. We have to go back. Be stupid to get holed up like that. Now we know they got sec men out. See the badge?"
Ryan shook his head. "No."
"Like you described those troops up in the snows. The Russkies. Single silver circle. No doubt about it."
"If they're regular soldiers then they could have radio communications. Call up reinforcements. Sooner we get away from here the better. That door to the gateway's well hidden, but not good enough if we finished up trapped in there. Few pounds of ex-plas'll bring the place on our necks."
"Back to the trail?" J.B. queried. "Figure it's the only way. We try and circle around and we're in trouble deep."
"They could be waiting," Krysty said, replacing her pistol in its belt holster.
"This wood's so thick that we could get close enough to chill 'em from cover," J.B. suggested. "Long gun like those Kalashnikovs... great in the open. Useless in here. Can't see more than six feet in any direction. Knife's more use."
"Time's wasting," Ryan said. "Longer we wait, the more they got to cut us off. Let's go."
The approach of evening brought a return to the colder weather. But it was not nearly as lethally chill as it had been the previous day. The temperature slithered down toward freezing, but the mixture of mud and thawing snow remained semiliquid. It was difficult and treacherous to walk through.
There was no sign of the jeep along the track, though a set of double wheel marks showed it had driven as far along as the miserable little ville, and then returned in the general direction of Moscow.
Ryan led the way around the hamlet, taking care to keep out of sight, guessing that the sec men could have given some sort of warning about strangers in the area.
The dog's corpse had been dragged away from the killground.
"Going to be a struggle to get to the house before full dark," J.B. warned. "Still a good few miles to go."
"No point trying to hole up. It's the best place we got," Ryan replied.
They heard the wolves when they were within the last mile, far off, almost at the edge of hearing. The howl was a susurrating ghost of a sound, rising and falling, like the keening of a mother for her dead child. Across a distant valley, the noise echoed back from unseen hills, making it difficult to judge where the pack was running. Ryan put the direction some way behind them and to the south. But the noise was coming closer. Louder.
In the century since doomsday, many wild creatures had come back from the brink of extinction: cougars and rattlers, grizzlies and wolves. During the tired embers of the 1990s the creatures had been illegally poached and hunted into the remote high country and the desert fastnesses.
It hadn't taken long for them to realize that their most bitter enemy, man, was all but gone from the land. So they returned. And they bred and they flourished. And, in some cases, they also mutated.
"How far away, lover?" Ryan asked.
"Five miles. Getting nearer."
"Hunting pack?"
Krysty nodded. "Sure. Moves around fifteen to twenty miles in an hour if they're on a warm scent. And if they're hungry. If it's been, a bleak winter in these parts, they could be real hungry."
The sun was long gone, with only the palest hint of its passing tinting the western sky. A three-quarter moon was sailing calmly through tattered relics of cloud. During the warmth of the day a surprising amount of the snow had melted away, patches of white remaining only in hollows and shadowed places.
"Don't want to lead them to the others," Ryan said.
"Can keep 'em out easy of that place. There was shutters against the broken windows on the first floor. Doors were sound."
Ryan agreed with the Armorer. "Sure. But if they set outside for a while, it could kind of attract some attention to us."
"If we were closer to the hut we could have cut some flesh off the giant mutie. That would have sidetracked them."
J.B.'s suggestion was a good one, but the loping wolves could be on top of them within fifteen minutes. Ryan looked at the narrow stream, at that point less than a dozen feet in width.
"Come on," he said, wading in, gasping at the coldness as it soaked instantly through his breeches. It was nearly waist deep on him, and came up over the belt of J. B. Dix, who took off his fur coat and removed the blaster before stepping into the fast-flowing stream. Krysty Wroth came last, whistling between her teeth at the biting shock.
"Gaia! All I need. Perfect end to a fruitful, perfect day."
"Tomorrow we do it again with Rick to field the questions. Crazy to think about doing it this way," J.B. panted.
"Long as the freezie don't die on us," Ryan added, stepping cautiously over a submerged branch.
The old trick worked. Without it they could have found themselves fighting the wolves off from the very steps of the American country dacha. They heard the high, nerve-rending cry of the hunting pack drawing closer, the animals running at an easy pace, devouring the miles on their wide-padded paws.
Just as Ryan and the other two reached the grounds of the mansion, they heard the sound of the wolves change suddenly. From eager anticipation to confusion. The note became lower, individual animals howling this way and that as they scoured the swift stream for some sign of where their prey had gone.
"Nice one, lover," Krysty murmured, smiling at Ryan in the moonlight and squeezing his arm.
"Hope they're gone by the time we set out again tomorrow."
"Right," J.B. agreed fervently.
The others were surprised to see them back the same evening. Rick had already gone to bed. Doc was sitting near him, tending the small fire in the open hearth. Jak was on watch, patrolling the second floor of the rambling building. He spotted Ryan and the others as soon as they broke cover and ran down to the main doors to greet them.
"Freezie's ill," he said, speaking, as he nearly always did, only to Ryan. He virtually ignored the other two.
"Bad?"
"Fucking tired."
"See anyone, Jak?"
The albino boy shook his head. "No. Heard wolves. After you?"
"Yeah. We sidetracked them. Doc okay?"
"Sure. Happy. Forget Lori."
Krysty spoke for the first time. "Maybe not forgotten, Jak. Just put away into one of those back rooms in our mind where we store things we don't care to think on too much."
He considered that. "Could be. Yeah. Could be right." Krysty smiled. It was as near as she got to praise from the teenager.
They didn't bother to wake Rick to tell him he was traveling the next morning. Time enough for that.
Chapter Fourteen
"No way, Ryan."
"No choice, Rick."
"Go and piss up a rope, you monocular son of a bitch!"
"Sure. But you still have to come with us. There's no..."