The carriage had just bounced to a stop, a few feet clear of the last stair. The baby was still strapped in place, shocked but alive. The turnips were all gone, tumbled to the four winds.
Half a dozen of the bullets from the Kalashnikov exploded into the carriage, shattering its hood and sides, killing the child instantly.
Ryan clutched his empty blaster and sprinted away from his pursuers.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The news took a half hour to reach Major-Commissar Zimyanin. He'd been working out that evening in the seedy gymnasium beneath the monolithic building that housed the ville's principal sec offices. He hadn't left word where he'd gone, as he intended to be out of his room for only a few minutes. But the weights had beckoned to him, and he'd been pushing himself harder and harder. He added more disks of iron to the polished bar, pressing greater and greater poundage, his muscular body streaming with sweat, veins throbbing at his temple.
A young clerk eventually tracked him down, peeping cautiously into the weight-lifting room.
"Comrade Major-Commissar Zimyanin?"
At that moment the officer was struggling to bench-press 120 kilos, straining to raise the heavy bar. His teeth gritted in determination, he hardly even heard the muttered, nervous query.
"Comrade Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin?" the clerk said a little louder.
"Yes!" The word was spit out with a ferocious venom that nearly sent the young man rushing off down the ill-lit passage.
"Message... There's a... Sir, a message for... for you."
Zimyanin eased the bar back onto its rests and slid out from under it. He sat up and wiped himself with a clean towel. "What message? The Americans? What is it?"
"The man with one eye, Comrade Major-Commissar. He has been seen."
Zimyanin's face didn't change expression, and he kept his voice flat and neutral as he turned to look at the clerk. "How many dead, Comrade?"
"Dead?"
"Dead! How many?"
"How did you know there were people killed, Comrade Major-Commissar? The news has only just reached the office and..."
"I have met this man once before. I know that where he sets his foot, flowers die. Where he breathes, the little bird drops out of the sky. So, how many dead?"
"Nineteen, Comrade Major-Commissar."
Despite his steel self-control, Zimyanin couldn't quite conceal his surprise at the total. "Nineteen! On his own? No companions with him? Nineteen dead? With a Stechkin machine pistol? With a grenade of some?.. No?" The young man had shaken his head. "With a broken stick, Comrade?"
"A single-shot handgun, they said. The dead include sec men, a woman of eighty winters and an unweaned baby."
Slowly, very slowly, Zimyanin stood, stretching like a great cat until his muscles creaked. He sighed and shook his head. "And he escaped?"
"In a way, Comrade Major-Commissar."
"In a way? In a way! What does that mean, you slavering imbecile?"
"Yes. Yes, he escaped. Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar. I am very sorry, but he escaped."
Zimyanin smiled. "You have no need to be sorry, boy. It was not your fault. If it had been I would have hung you from that beam there, taken out a very thin knife and peeled the skin from your entire body, beginning at your heels and finishing with your pretty little face." He threw the towel to the floor, suddenly impatient to be moving. "I shall be in my office in four minutes and thirty seconds. I will read the full report then."
"Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar." The man vanished through the wing doors, reappearing at Zimyanin's bellow. "Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar?"
"Make sure that Tracker Aliev is ready to move immediately."
"A crystal prism used to hang in the front window of my Aunt Zelda's apartment in the South Bronx. Funny the way that became the place to live in the 1990s. Just before that it'd been like Pits City. Anyway, this crystal prism used to hang there, and it would catch the sun. When I was a kid I'd sit and watch it like it was magic. The colors would all streak the white ceiling. Aunt Zelda would say it was a wizard's paintbrush." Rick smiled at the gentle memory. "God Almighty, Ryan, those were such good days. I was around twelve. I never had such good days as when I was twelve. Does anyone?"
"Twelve wasn't a happy time for me," Ryan replied. "Not with my brother."
"I'd killed a man by the time I was twelve," J.B. pondered.
"I'd killed 'bout fifteen," Jak said. "Mebbe twenty. Couldn't count good."
Rick lay back on his makeshift mattress, eyes closed.
Ryan looked at him, trying to remember how the freezie looked when they'd first seen him, trying to read the hollows around the eyes and the deep lines carved around the dry-lipped mouth. The genetic spillage from the nukings a century ago still meant a very high mortality rate from disease throughout the Deathlands. It wasn't unusual to see people dying of illness. Ryan must have seen thousands in his life. Once the Reaper laid his talons upon a shoulder, the signs were unmistakable, and Rick carried all of those signs.
J.B. caught Ryan's eye. He looked down at the dozing freezie and shook his head, motioning for Ryan to join him on the far side of the building, near where the corpses of the two thieves were already beginning to ripen and smell.
"Have to be tonight. And that could be too late for him," he said. "I never saw many a man so close to death who was still breathing." He shook his head. "But the Russkie bastards'll be as thick as flies on horse shit."
"Yeah. Gotta try for it. Least there's the chance of better food at the old house." Ryan glanced around at Rick. "No tools, no hope of mending the door. Even with him alive. We get there with the tools and Rick goes into the valley... least we have an outside chance of repairing it. We have to go, and real soon."
Jak Lauren was a prince of thieves. Covering his white hair with a fur hood, he sneaked out into the night, to scavenge and recce around. He returned in less than a half hour with news, good and bad.
"Seen wag. Easy steal. Two sec bastards. Chill 'em easy. Close by."
That was the good.
"Triple-hot. Sec bastards everyplace. Hundreds. Starting fucking scan-search. Roads blocked. Saw big sec man, bald and mustached. Shouting and pointing. Real grim fucker."
"Zimyanin," Ryan said quietly.
That was the bad.
Just before midnight J.B. and Ryan stood on either side of Rick, ready to support him. The Stars and Stripes had been peeled off the metal stanchion, and the freezie had insisted on carrying it himself. He wrapped it carefully around his middle, using the leather belt on his coat to keep it snug. Ryan and J.B. had divided the tools between themselves, leaving Jak free to scout on ahead of them and take out the sec men.
"Time to go," Ryan announced.
Rick looked around the empty building that had been home for a couple of days. "Goodbye to our freeway retreat," he said, lifting his hand in a mock salute. "I shall return. No way I will."
The albino teenager went out first, glanced all around and beckoned to the other three to follow him into the cool, damp night.
Aliev was excited, grunting and snuffling, on hands and knees, scampering around like a hunting dog, face to the ground, head twitching from side to side.
The rest of the sec men had drawn back into a cautious circle and watched the Mongolian tracker with a mixture of religious fear and rank disgust. Most of them were appalled and frightened by the sight of the little man.