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.