He rubbed his hands together. “Cold,” he whispered.
The sun was a watery blur of sickly yellow, dipping behind the range of snow-topped peaks to the west.
Shadows were lengthening across the silent settlement. Somewhere Ryan could just catch the faint sound of a screen door banging on its hinges.
Once he reached the corner of the plaza, he’d be able to see into the square.
The bitter taste of decay lay flat on his tongue, and Ryan hawked and spit in the dust, trying to clear it away. The sharp noise startled half a dozen vultures, which rose heavily into the afternoon sky, from the square, leathery wings flapping, hooked beaks open, shreds of some sort of meat dangling from their jaws.
“Bastards!” Ryan breathed, drawing the blaster, cocking the hammer with a dry click.
Three more steps and he would be able to see into the square of the little town.
Two more.
He started to walk slowly back toward the main street and the warmth and security of the war wags, when his combat-tuned hearing caught a faint rustling sound, like a gentle summer breeze through a grove of aspens, coming from all around him.
Ryan felt the short hair bristling at his nape as he looked around at the square of the dead. The dried-out bodies were moving. Some of them had been lying stretched out, while others seemed to have died curled up into a fetal position, knees huddled to bony chests.
Now, everywhere he looked, there was a restless shifting, fingers creaking open from clenched fists, feet scratching in the frosty dust, teeth clacking in leering jaws, skulls turning blindly from side to side. Ryan drew his blaster, thumbing back the hammer. His senses screamed for him to run from the charnel sight, but his feet felt nailed to the dirt.
Something touched his ankle and he looked down, seeing that the tiny, shrunken hands of the baby with the slit throat were plucking at his ankle. Ryan opened his mouth and started to scream.
Chapter Four
As the mist thickened, making it impossible to see what was happening in the mat-trans unit, the partly open door was the center of a swirling vortex of gray air, peculiarly thick, like gruel. Ryan lay unconscious, face close to the opening, one arm jammed against the door.
The process continued.
The side effects of the malfunctioning jump struck at everybody, but Ryan was nearest to the nodal point of the matter-transfer dischronicity and was, as a consequence, much the worst affected.
His living nightmare was horrific, but the others all shared bizarre sense sensations.
DEAN WAS WANDERING across a bleak and featureless moor, with every up slope coated thick in snow.
The air was so cold that it burned his mouth and throat like living fire, and the inside of his nose was coated with sharp crystals of ice.
He was feeling very tired, overwhelmed with the simple desire to lie down and rest for a while. The boy hadn’t eaten for the better part of a week, and he could feel his backbone rubbing on his belly. The sun was nearly done, throwing his long shadow ahead of him as he staggered weakly eastward.
A tiny bird, like a sparrow, suddenly fell from the sky, landing with the softest of thumps in the snow at his feet, stricken dead by the cold.
Dean dropped to his knees alongside the tiny corpse, picking it up in cupped hands, staring at the dark, sightless eyes. He could just feel the warmth on the feathered body.
Closing his own eyes, the boy lifted the dead bird toward his mouth.
THE BOWL OF RICE PUDDING was rich and creamy, dotted with plump raisins and carrying the scent of honey and cinnamon. It stood on the floor of the wooden shack, steaming in the bitter cold.
J.B. sat cross-legged, looking at it, wondering which of the guards had placed it there while he was sleeping. The irons around his ankles were frozen, scorching his flesh wherever they touched it.
He could hear whispering outside the warped planks. Dimly, against the stark whiteness of the snow that lay thick upon the rocky plateau, he could make out the silhouettes of some of his guards, waiting to snigger at him when he tried to reach the tantalizing dish of food, because they knew that the chain around his throat, secured to a heavy ringbolt in the wall, would leave him short, inches away from the bowl.