James Axler – Cold Asylum

A fresh wave of dizziness made Ryan stagger, and he leaned his hand on the cold glass wall. What was happening didn’t hang together for him. How could they all have been in the Florida gateway and then end up in different destinations? Assuming that the others had materialized somewhere else in Deathlands. The idea that they hadn’t was too appalling to entertain.

To try to steady himself, Ryan drew his blaster from its holster. The familiar shape made sense to him, and he lifted it closer to his face to peer at it.

“Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft Sauer.” The trusty SIG-Sauer, Model P-226, that he’d carried for so many years had never let him down.

Ryan took several more slow, deep breaths, reciting the vital statistics of the gun. “Nine millimeter. Fifteen rounds with push-button mag release. Weight twenty-five and a half ounces. Barrel length 4.4 inches. Total length 7.7 inches. Built-in baffle silencer.”

He bolstered the blaster and stopped to pick up the rifle that lay on the floor by his feet. His free hand had been gripping the sling on the Steyr SSG-70 during the jump, which explained why it had come along with him. The bolt action, 10-round blaster fired the uncommon 7.62 mm bullets, and Ryan had intended to try to find some way of changing it for a long gun that used a more standard caliber. Ammunition was a whole lot better than gold in Deathlands. If you didn’t have any, it was almost impossible to obtain. If you had plenty, then you could generally find a way of getting hold of even more.

It had been something that Trader had constantly drummed into every man and woman who rode and fought with him on the lumbering war wags. “No bullets gets you dead” was one of his more succinct and memorable sayings.

Ryan was feeling better.

There were two simple options.

One was to open the door and then close it again. About the only thing that they managed to learn about the lost science of gateways was that this would normally speed you straight back to where you’d been.

But Ryan’s prime guess was that the Florida mat-trans chamber might well now be destroyed, flooded full ten fathoms deep in saltwater.

The other option was to go out and try to find where in Deathlands he’d landed and begin the monstrously difficult quest of trying to track down Krysty, Dean and the others.

Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer in his right hand and reached out with his left toward the control on the door.

Chapter Two

Mildred Wyeth recovered consciousness, doubled-up, a pool of vomit inches from her eyes.

“Don’t remember eating that,” she said, aware that her throat was dry and painful and that her voice hadn’t risen above a hoarse whisper.

Suddenly, like a rush of cold wind across a midnight desert, came the realization that she was alone.

“Bastards. Might’ve waited.” She struggled to sit up, the only sound the tiny clicking of the beads in her plaited hair. The floor and the walls were cool. No, they were cold. Bitingly, icy cold. Mildred jerked her hand away.

The walls of the previous gateway had been a sort of pallid yellow. These were a light greeny-blue. So, the jump had been made successfully, but where were the others?

“John?” she said, coughing as she stood, blinking at the rush of pain behind her eyes. She cleared her throat and tried again. “John?”

The chamber was quiet, and she couldn’t catch any noise from outside the armaglass surround.

In the last-ever Olympic Games, held in Miami in the summer of 1996, Dr. Mildred Wyeth had won the silver medal in the free-shooting pistol. Back in her home town of Lincoln, Nebraska, she had been chairperson of the local shooting club, the first black, and the first woman, to hold the position.

She felt for the butt of the 6-shot target revolver on her hip, the ZKR 551, originating in the Zbrojovka Works in Brno, and designed by the Koucky brothers. The weapon was chambered to take a Smith amp; Wesson .38 caliber bullet.

“John? Ryan? Anyone there?”

Mildred had made enough jumps to be utterly bewildered. She knew that everyone suffered to varying degrees, but there’d never been a situation where someone would be left totally on his or her own by the others.