When Ryan looked out across the bleak suburbs of Moscow he saw a dusting of snow coating the surrounding roofs and chimneys. A small lake set among trees on the far side of the road was covered by a gray sheet of ice.
While Krysty and Rick sat talking quietly together, Ryan climbed up to the elegant staircase to the top floor of the house and found a small room that faced northeast. The door stuck and he had to set his shoulder to it. The lock snapped as it opened inward.
The corpse that lay on the narrow single bed had almost certainly been there for a hundred years. Untouched and undisturbed, the dry air within the room slowly turned the remains into a leathery, mummified length of brown sinews and pale bone.
Ryan wasn't particularly surprised or even particularly interested. There were millions of houses throughout Deathlands that had remained virtually undamaged by the nukings. The Russians had also been well supplied with neutron-type missiles, which slew the living, but left all structures standing. In his life Ryan had seen uncountable corpses like the one on the bed.
The room contained little: a table in one corner, with a wad of folded paper supporting a broken leg; a few dust-dry Russian paperback books that crumbled in Ryan's fingers when he tried to open them; a vase holding some fragile dried flowers; a wardrobe, door ajar, revealing the ragged remains of the dead person's clothes; and two pairs of boots on the floor. Ryan picked one up, trying to guess whether the corpse had been male or female, but the boots were of an indeterminate middle size. A single golden ring glistened in the gristly remains of the right ear, and a cheap metal digital watch circled the left wrist. The person had been wearing blue jeans and a shirt of some sort.
The skin had dried over the bones, tight, like stretched leather, and the skull lolled to the right, toward the door as if the body waited patiently for a visitor who was a little late.
On the floor on the far side of the bed was a white enamel bowl, stained and crusted, black around its bottom. Again, it was something Ryan Cawdor had seen many times before: a victim of neutron bombing, dying, guts torn, brain reeling, had crawled back to its lair to die. Retching, the victim had brought up blood and dark bile. He had been unable to eat, teeth loosened in bleeding gums; his sight had dimmed and his skin had erupted. The bodily functions all failed.
The empty round bottle of dark green glass clutched in the skeletal fingers and the water glass on the bedside table told their own story of a last and merciful release from the endless suffering.
Ryan looked out the window.
The ground sloped toward what Rick had said was the Moscow River. It marked the inner ring of the old city. Beyond that he could see a haze of smoke, and a variety of buildings looming through it. Ryan tried to open the window, managing only a couple of inches. But the fresh air cleared away the musty smell of old, dry death and replaced it with the scent of hundreds of wood fires as the citizens of the ville fought the last desperate troops of General Winter.
They left the security of the house and began to move slowly through the streets, making sure they were well wrapped in their furs. Everyone else out and about that morning was dressed the same.
Ryan's biggest worry was trying to figure out where they might find the tools they needed.
He'd warned Rick that if the right opportunity came along, the freezie would have to risk his fragile Russian and ask some questions.
By a stroke of good luck, their opportunity did come along in the shape of a stout, middle-aged woman pushing a squeaking baby carriage with odd-sized wheels. As she walked toward the three friends one of the wheels simply rolled off and the carriage lurched to one side, nearly tipping the red-faced infant onto the sidewalk.
Ryan snatched the wheel as it bowled past him, stepping in quickly and smiling reassuringly at the woman. He prayed to himself that Rick was in at his heels to pick up any linguistic fastballs. Ryan saw immediately that a split pin hadn't been inserted properly and it took only a few seconds to carry out the simple repair.
The woman said something to him, but he didn't look up from the job, whistling tunelessly to himself. He heard Rick's voice speaking slow, halting Russian.
Ryan straightened, steadying himself on the freezie's shoulder. "Ask where we can find tools," he hissed.
"Have done," was the reply. "Now shut the fuck up, Ryan."
Ryan did what the man said and stood patiently with Krysty, trying to prevent the woman from seeing his face too clearly without appearing to be actually hiding it.
Eventually, with much nodding and smiling, the woman went on her way, the infant in the carriage gazing solemnly at the three strangers. As soon as she was out of earshot, Ryan and Krysty began to pump the freezie.
"Well?"
"Yeah. Good."
"What'd she say?"
"How the weather had taken a turn for the much colder."
Krysty tapped him warningly on the cheek with her finger. "Come on, Rick. You know what we want to hear."
But he was determined to relish his moment. "She said what pretty hair you had, Krysty. Said she hadn't seen a color like that since..." He broke off when he saw the light of anger beginning to flare in Ryan's eye. "All right, all right. But she was amazed at your stopping to help her with that broken wheel. I said we were strangers on a visit to the great city of Moscow that our fathers and our fathers' fathers had told us so much about. That kind of stuff."
"Good," Ryan said.
"She started off on a long spiel about how in the old days, before what she called the long grayness, Moscow had been the center of the world. Mentioned Yanks and nukes. At least I think that was what she was saying, but she had a heavy accent and I didn't get all of the words. Seems the middle was wasted. Totally. Just rubble. She said rats lived there, but I think she meant something more than rats. And she bitched about gangs of kids running around for the Party and killing anyone they didn't like the look of."
"Yeah," Krysty said quietly.
"I kind of got the feeling that there's sec men all around, the nearer you get to the middle. She used a phrase that means something like thick as blowflies on horse shit. Then I said that the ville I came from needed some good tools, and I asked where we should go."
"And?.. Come on, Rick. She could whisp on us to the next sec man she sees. We gotta get moving away from here."
"Sure, sure. Don't get ink on your ceedee, Ryan. Just take it easy. She says there are places only a quarter mile or so from here. As far as I could understand she says there are places you can kind of hire tools, and one or two where you can buy them. But she said that the price was..." He stopped and rubbed his forehead. "She used some expression that meant, like the sun and the stars came cheaper than some of the prices they charged for these tools."
"Gaia! We already had trouble once over being jack-short," said Krysty. "Looks like we need to get us some rubles."
Ryan shook his head. "Difficult, lover. Way Rick tells it, we'll need some heavy jack. Have to thieve it. Dangerous. Might as well steal the tools. Mebbe less risk."
"Still could use some cash," Rick said. "Buy food and stuff."
Ryan nodded. "Yeah, makes sense. Find someone to roll for small change."
Rick grinned. "That's an expression I haven't heard in an age, Ryan. Small change. That current Deathlands slang?"
"No. Got it from an old song somebody on War Wag One used to sing. Song about someone called Small Change getting himself rained on with his own .38. I always liked it. Remembered the words. Found out they meant a handful of low-jack."
Krysty looked up and down the quiet side street. "Got a feeling, guys. Time to move on from here."