"Is there anything else, Comrade Major-Commissar?" she asked.
"A thread or some cotton."
He waited until she reappeared, giving him a length of dark blue cotton. He tied it neatly around the most southerly flag, looped it around the next one and the next then adjusted it around the last little flag. The line wasn't straight, but it definitely showed an unmistakable progression. Zimyanin extended the remains of the thread in the same direction and nodded to the girl.
"Yes. See, Alicia Andreyinichna. Whoever they are, they are coming our way. We must prepare to greet them."
Chapter Seventeen
Back at the big house the three men waited for the others to return. In their planning discussions Ryan had suggested that if all went very well, they might possibly return within a week or so.
The same meals of smoked fish and dried meat began to get very boring after the first day, and with the rise in temperatures the food began to smell. So Jak took Doc on hunting expeditions along the trail by the side of the stream to scavenge around the edges of the small hamlet in the trees.
They went out either early in the morning or late in the evening. J.B. would watch them move off into the half light as he leaned against the empty window frame on the second floor, the slight figure of the boy, his stark white hair flowing about his narrow shoulders like living spray and Doc, stumping along after him, the ferrule of his sword-stick rapping on the stones of the path.
While they were gone, the Armorer would sometimes climb to the ruined loft and slip through the hidden door and go down the spiral staircase. He'd wander silent and alone through the chattering consoles, pausing to wonder at the supernatural strength that had enabled Krysty Wroth to devastate the lock. It had saved their lives by freeing the gateway door, but also trapped them in the middle of a hostile continent.
By the time he returned to the first floor, Jak and Doc would be on their way back from the miserable ville.
To steal from a small community was always dangerous. If too much was taken, the locals would take the trouble to hunt you down.
Jak was very clever at it. He'd returned to the house with a sack containing eggs, potatoes and other root vegetables. A few slices of meat hacked off a ham dangling in a barn helped to complement their meals.
Doc kept smiling at the boy's cunning.
"Upon my soul, he is such a rapscallion. When we took the meat and the eggs, he stole more than we have brought with us and left a clear trail to an outlying cabin, deliberately dropping a couple of eggs and a slice of ham so the owner would follow the tracks and suspect his neighbor. And we would thus escape quite free of any taint."
J.B. was pleased with that. But the arrival of Jak and Doc the following evening with a small dog in their sack didn't please him. Not at all.
"Give it to me and I'll break its neck. Quick and easy. Won't hurt it."
Doc held the shivering little animal against his chest, looking down at the damp nose and worried eyes. "I regret, my dear John Barrymore, that I would attempt to prevent you from doing that."
"What?"
"I believe that you heard me clearly."
"Stop me?"
"Yes."
J.B. shook his head. "Doc, you are one double-cute old bastard. Stop me! Fine. Keep the mongrel. But if there's a moment that the dog risks us, I'll chill it soon as look at it. Your responsibility, Doc. Yours."
"Let us help you. Fireblast!" Ryan's temper was beginning to flare out of control. Rick's wallowing self-pity put them all in danger. If one of the many sec patrols saw them, they'd stop. Rick was in no shape to try to speak Russian to them, and that would be that for them all. "Get up or I'll hurt you."
"Kick a man when he's down, eh, Ryan? Come on, man. Leave me. We're in the bottom of the ninth. Seconds to the gun. Near the tape. One last free throw." He stopped and shook his head, the tiredness overwhelming him, the pettish anger gone. "Bend down, Ryan, and listen."
"What?"
"Bend down. Please, Ryan. Krysty?"
"Yeah?"
"Give us a minute, will you?"
"Sure." She walked a few steps away, looking up and down the tree-lined avenue, finding it almost unbelievable that this was Russia. This was Moscow. These houses had been homes in the year 2001, filled with families. Then the nukes had come, coughing out their neutron sleep. And the world had died. Behind her, Ryan had knelt in the dusty road, head down, listening to Rick Ginsberg.
"Go on, Ryan," the freezie whispered, breathing hoarsely.
"Gonna tell me why?"
"I'm sort of... ashamed."
Ryan couldn't hide his surprise. "Why? What have you?.."
"My sickness. When I'm real tired like now and I lose control of my muscles and... Hell's bells, Ryan! Can't you guess? I've shit myself. Couldn't help it. Gotta clean myself. Won't take that long. Find a house and look for me. I'll make it."
"If I had a handful of jack for every man and woman I know that shit themselves, I'd be the richest baron in the Deathlands. Sure. Go ahead, Rick. We'll wait for you up there."
"Don't tell Krysty."
"Sure."
But he told her anyway. Why not?
Major-Commissar Zimyanin wasn't the happiest of sec men. The message was unequivocal, signed in red ink with a scrawled, testy signature that had creased and nearly torn the paper: Marshal of Internal Security, Josef J. Siraksi, one of the top-ranking officers within the Party and a man tipped, when his turn came around and he lived long enough, for the supreme position of leader.
Request denied. Insufficient evidence of any security risk. Int-Sec forces will maintain normal holding and patrol patterns. If felt necessary, then descriptions of the three suspects (the word was heavily underlined) may be circulated on condition yellow. But no higher.
There was a postscript in the marshal's own hand. "Do not look for terrorists beneath every stone, Comrade Major-Commissar. Moscow is not the Kamchatka."
"Your advice is much appreciated, my dear sir, and I shall follow it to the letter," Zimyanin said, having first checked the phrase he wanted in his battered phrase book.
He made sure that the door was firmly closed between his office and that of Alicia Andreyinichna. Then he stood up, face tight with anger, and walked to the window to look out over the bleak prospect, toward the shapeless worm of the Moscow River. He pressed his lips to the glass, whispering his rage.
"May rad cancer rot them all. May their wives fuck pigs. May they fall with their asses bleeding fire. May their noses rot and..." That brought him to another idea. "Aliev," he murmured.
The tracker could hunt a flea through a sandstorm.
"I want Aliev on twenty-four-hour standby!" he shouted at the closed door, and heard the young woman's muffled squeak of assent.
He looked out the window again. "Get my wag ready from transport requisition. I'm tired of this stuffy office. I'm going out to taste the air and see what I can see."
Chapter Eighteen
Rick had recovered a little after a decent night's sleep. The twitching of the muscles in his arms and legs had eased, but he still complained of a pins-and-needles sensation in his fingers and toes. And as they ate sparingly of their shrinking food supplies, he was clearly having problems swallowing. Twice he gagged on the strips of dried meat, reaching for the canteen to wash the blockage out. He managed a weak smile.
"Sorry, guys. One of the problems with ALS is that it eventually hits all of your muscles. That includes the ones that do the swallowing for you." His voice was croaking, the words slightly slurred and stretched. Rick was also conscious of that. "Speaking gets tougher, too. Once I'm warmed up I shouldn't be so bad."
It would take some time for any of them to become warm. During the night the temperature had dropped sharply, and there was ice on the insides of the few unbroken windows in the house where they'd slept.