He spat out the two words as if they soiled his lips. Pechal nodded. "And they will chase us down. Then we shall kill them." He clenched his hand, soft as a woman's, yet with long, curved nails of horn. "Fool."
"What?"
"You are a fool. These will not be puking peasants like this old shit here on the bed. They will have good guns. No. It is best that we run."
Bizabraznia came staggering in, beer running down her chins, over her open blouse, trickling across her huge, veined breasts. In one hand she held a great smoking haunch of meat, the outside charred and black, blood leaking from its center.
She sniggered at Ivan Ivanovich. "Can I have some sport with him?"
"No. Pechal will cut his neck open outside, and then I can get some sleep. We must all sleep. We have a dawn start tomorrow."
"Then we run from these militia boys, eh?"
Uchitel nodded. "Aye. Lead them far enough, and they'll give up the chase. Then we can return to our hunting grounds once more."
"Where do we run?" asked Urach, standing in the doorway.
"That way," replied Uchitel, pointing east.
"There is nothing there but the frozen sea."
He smiled. "We shall cross it where the strait is narrowest, no more than ninety kilometers wide."
"To the other side?" said Urach, wonderingly.
"Yes, brother. On the morrow we head for America."
Chapter Five
"Could fuckin' stay here forever," said Hunaker on their third day in the huge redoubt.
It was more than just a redoubt. J.B. Dix and Ryan Cawdor had twice revisited the gateway, making sure of the route in case they needed it. They had also drawn a plan of the labyrinthine, rambling corridors, readying themselves for any eventuality. Near the gateway, high on a wall, they'd seen a small notice like the one they'd seen in the redoubt in the Darks: Entry Absolutely Forbidden To All But B12 Cleared Personnel. Mat-Trans.
The red paint was as bright as if it had only been lettered a day ago.
The place, with its incorporated stockpile, was the biggest building that Ryan Cawdor had ever laid eyes on. It was bigger by far than any ville he'd seen, vastly more imposing than any barony out East. The stockpile alone was more than a mile in length and a quarter-mile in breadth, with a maze of interconnecting passages and storerooms, reminding him of pictures he'd once seen in some old, crumbling mags from before the Chill.
It reminded him of what had once been called a "shopping mall."
During the three days, Ryan ordered his party to station themselves anywhere they could in the redoubt. Quint and his wives, Rachel and Lori, kept mainly to themselves, eating in their own quarters.
Ryan's group had their own dormitory: a long room with forty beds, each with a locker. There were showers and latrine facilities, a dining room and a kitchen, with all the plates and pots and cutlery they could need. It was obvious that the place had been designed as a post-holocaust living-space for a couple of hundred people. The air-conditioning kept everything free from dust and dirt.
Most of the complex was open to them, though Quint warned them against trying to force open any locked doors.
"Keeper wouldn't like that," he'd quavered.
Their relationship was odd. Quint and his women, who went everywhere with their Heckler & Koch sub-MGs, made no objection when Ryan and his party retrieved their weapons. If they'd wanted, they could have iced the Keeper and both his wives. Okie and Finnegan wanted to do this, but Ryan and J.B. opposed them.
"No reason. They don't seem a threat. Watch 'em carefully. Could be useful." As ever, the Armorer was brief and to the point.
As far as they could determine, there were only two entrances to the redoubt. One was a huge vanadium-steel doorway like the one back in the Darks, but without a manual control on the inside. Ryan believed it had never been opened since the long winter. It possessed no windows or ob slits anywhere.
One important thing happened during those three days.
J.B. Dix managed to find out where the redoubt was. After what Doc had said to them about complexes containing both a stockpile and a redoubt having been built in strategic locations, it wasn't too much of a surprise.
Near a small exit was a room that held some charts. Conn, the navigator whom they'd left in charge of War Wag One, would have given his right arm for them. They were the best-preserved maps that any of them had ever seen. Though they were frail and tended to crack when they were unfolded, their colors were unfaded. Since Quint wasn't around, J.B. took several and stuffed them in his pack.
One map, which was pinned to a corkboard, showed the area around the redoubt in considerable detail, and Ryan and J.B. studied it with interest.
"Alaska," said the Armorer.
"Yeah," agreed Ryan. "That's where Fairbanks was. And Anchorage. That's the strait. Heard some talk years ago that it was all frozen over here. The winter never moved after the Chill. And there, on the left side, a few miles west..."
"Russia," said J.B., nodding.
"Close," said Ryan.
Members of the group spent time in ways that interested them, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs or threes.
Ryan was with J.B. a lot, and with Krysty Wroth the rest of the time. In the hectic days since they'd first made love, it seemed as if an eternity had come and gone. Now, at last, they found some hours to be alone together.
There was a whole suite of rooms filled with weights, rowing equipment, a small swimming pool, exercise cycles and a whirlpool bath with the name Jacuzzi on it. Green metal lockers held clothes, towels, leotards, trunks and wraps. Krysty peeled off her stained overalls and pulled on a tight red leotard with white flashes down the arms. Ryan smiled at her enthusiasm.
"Get stripped for action," she called, sitting astride the white saddle of a stationary bike, tucking her bare feet under the straps and beginning to pedal.
The temperature throughout the redoubt and stockpile was sixty degrees. Monitors on a small console in the living quarters showed that outside it was an average of minus forty during the day and minus ninety during the night. A driving northerly wind that sometimes exceeded a hundred miles an hour made it likely that an unprotected human would freeze to death within minutes. Even with the best thermals on, at night or when the wind rose, life would be precarious after more than a couple of hours in the open.
Ryan peeled off his favorite long coat, with its white fur trim, and put it carefully on the padded floor. The SIG-Sauer P-226 9 mm and the three spare ammo packs followed; then the LAPA 5.56 mm and the heavy steel panga, its eighteen-inch blade sheathed in soft, oiled leather. Finally he took his white scarf of fine silk from around his neck and put it neatly by the weapons. It made a soft clunking sound. Hearing the noise, Krysty looked curiously at him.
"What's in that, Ryan?"
"In the scarf?"
"Yeah."
"Couple of bits of lead."
She paused in her frantic pedaling. "What's that for, Ryan?"
He shook his head. "Mebbe one day I'll tell you. Mebbe one day I'll show you."
He peeled his coveralls and his thermal vest and pants, laying them by the weapons. Stripped, he was aware of his own stink.
"Fireblast!" he exclaimed.
"What?"
"I smell like a stickie's armpit. Got to have a bath and clean up. Never noticed it."
"Use that bath. Looks good. There's instructions on the side."