the Darks. Be seein’ you, Cohn.”
“Good luck, Ryan. Give the bastards broken teeth.” The two men shook hands and
the main entry port slid open, letting in a flurry of snow and a biting wind.
Ryan pulled up his goggles and exited with a jump, waving for the others to
follow him. Ice crunched beneath his boots. While he waited he glanced down,
seeing the mark on the right toe where a rabid dog had tried to bite his foot
off. It had taken a 3-round burst from the LAPA to blow the mongrel away.
Between his feet, in a small hollow sheltered among some scattered pebbles, he
noticed a tiny bunch of flowers. White petals, with a heart yellow as butter.
Surviving in one of the least hospitable places on earth. For a reason that he
couldn’t explain, the sight of the frail plant lifted his spirits.
He tucked the weighted silk scarf around his neck, trying to fill the chinks
where the wind was thrusting icy water. He took a quick finger count to make
sure the group was all there. Nine. With J. B. Dix bringing up the rear as ten.
After fifty paces Ryan turned around, bracing himself against the driving gale,
squinting back at where he knew the war wag was. But it had already disappeared
in the general whiteout. Without a compass he knew that they had absolutely no
chance of ever finding it again.
The track was very rough, often barely visible, and the weather was worse than
he had anticipated. But after a half hour they rounded the massive corner of an
overhanging bluff and the wind dropped dramatically.
“Way Kurt called it, there’s a half day’s walk to get to where the fog was
waitin’.”
“I am of the decided opinion that the fog will still be here and waiting for all
comers, Mr. Cawdor,” said Doc. His cheeks were almost blue from the biting cold
of the wind, yet beads of perspiration hung in the deep furrows of his cheeks,
glistening in the stubble on his chin.
“You know that?” asked J.B.
“It is an axiom of some veracity that a good guard dog never sleeps. Cerberus
was assuredly of the best, Mr. Dix.”
“Every piece cocked,” instructed Ryan. “Round under the pin. Fingers—”
“On triggers,” finished Okie, unsmiling. “We know that, Ryan.”
They went on.
The road, if that’s what it had once been, wound and twisted like a
broken-backed adder, clinging to the edge of the ice-sheeted cliffs, a dizzy
abyss plunging away to their left. At one bend Ryan held up a gloved fist,
halting the party, waving them forward.
“What do you see?” asked Hennings, his dark skin pallid against the black fur
hood.
“Down there,” replied Ryan, pointing to where the tumbling waters of a river in
flood tore over gray boulders. Visible now and again through the gusted clouds
of snow were the red and brown metal bones of several vehicles. Torn and
twisted, spotted with ice and blown spume. It was impossible to make out what
they might once have been, but there could have been three or four of them. One
large rusting chunk of iron might have been the rear suspension members of a
large truck.
“Someone didn’t make the turn,” said Finnegan.
“Dolfo Kaler,” suggested J.B. “Kurt talked about broken trucks an’ all. They’re
what’s left of Kaler’s expedition after the Redoubt up here.”
“Which means the fog that has teeth and claws is around just a couple more
corners,” said Krysty Wroth. She stood close against Ryan, shivering at the
cold.
She was nearly right.
It was only one corner.
Waiting, quiet and immense. As Ryan cautiously waved the others forward to his
side, the words of Doc came back to him. It was like some gigantic, patient
guard dog. Crouched on the rutted surface of the track, among the snow-filled
pits and hollows, it throbbed.
“There is Cerberus,” whispered Doc. Behind them the wind still howled and the
air was still filled with needled chips of ice swirling from the leaden sky. But
on this stretch the wind was gone, echoing behind them but not before. Here it