Ritual Chill

Chapter Three

Within seconds the air around them became an impenetrable mass of ice and snow, whipped to a ferocious speed by the sudden squalls of wind. The lightly numbing sensation of ice on the skin became the pinprick whiplash of seemingly solid particles hurled against the face and hands with venom by the elements. Where they had been able to see in front, to the back and sides, to identify where the others stood, now they were all alone, each of them lost in the sudden blanket of white that the storm threw up around them.

Ryan cursed to himself, screwing up his good eye against the constant flurry of razor-sharp icicles that threatened to blind him, the empty socket of his rendered eye now gnawing with a dull ache as the cold penetrated through to the bone, bypassing even the flayed nerve-endings around the old wound. If they didn’t find cover soon, then they would be lost forever. If they didn’t find one another, then all hope should be abandoned now.

Taking a moment, dragging a breath as deep as he dare without taking the freezing snow into his lungs and turning them to ice, Ryan calmed himself. Panic was the real chiller in such situations. If he could keep calm, move with economy, then there was a chance.

He hadn’t changed direction since the storm suddenly hit, so he knew roughly where the others had to be in relation to him. He could only hope that they, too, had been able to stay calm and not make any sudden, panicked movements. Normally he would stake his life on it, but since they had landed in the redoubt there had been a mood that made nothing as certain as it had been before. He knew how much he had been affected and had seen the others change similarly.

There was only one way to know for sure. In the pockets and concealed storage flaps on his coat, he had a length of nylon rope. Tough, fibrous and waxed to insure that it would run smoothly through the hands, it had lain unused since before skydark. What had made him pick it up, he couldn’t say, but he was glad now that he had. He couldn’t tell how long it was in total, so—unwilling to waste too much of the length—he opted to tie it around one sinewed wrist rather than his waist. Looping and tightening the knot, he payed out a short length and took slow, deliberate strides toward the last position he had seen Krysty.

He remained silent. There was no point shouting, as any cries would have been carried away on the winds, buried beneath the howling of the storm. To risk expelling air and inhaling the snows was another drawback. Better to try to use energy wisely.

Underfoot was becoming treacherous. They had been on a rock surface that grew slippery with the settling of the snow and ice. Ryan took each step carefully, trying to control the urge to move quickly lest he completely lose his way. The slow-motion feel was enhanced by the blanket of snow formed by the storm, making it seem as though he was standing still, even though he knew his feet were actually moving.

Then, so suddenly that it made him almost start in surprise, a shape loomed out of the white; a dark patch in the blizzard resolving itself into a head of wild red curls surmounting a heavy, snow-sodden fur. Krysty was looking around, wary, as though she were too cautious to move.

Without words, she moved toward Ryan. Although visibility was impaired by the whirling snow and ice, she could see the rope and she knew what she had to do. Tying herself on, she beckoned Ryan to the position where she had last seen Jak.

The albino was also noticeable by his fur, forming another dark shape that loomed out of the whiteness. He was waiting patiently, as though expecting them.

Forming a train, attached by the umbilical of the waxed rope, the three of them moved through the storm, trying to keep bearings on where their companions had been stationed when the storm descended. All could feel the cold begin to seep into their bones, aching that gave way to a comforting numbness, making them feel drowsy. Just lying down where they stood and falling into a deep sleep would feel so good—a sleep so deep that they knew, individually and without having to affirm this with the others, that they would never awaken.

Time was on a delicate balance. They had to find the others and then find some kind of shelter before the cold claimed them. One of the two was hard enough, given that they had to act swiftly and yet were hampered by conditions. To do both was almost asking the impossible. Yet they had no option: to think of either success or failure was to invite despair and to waste time. They could only act, not think.

Dogged movements through the opaque blanket of white took them to J.B. The Armorer met them halfway, his own plan being to try to move toward them. His keen sense of direction had stood him in good stead among the whiteout chaos. Mildred was with him, having been close enough to catch up to him before the snows had become too obscuring.

Which left Doc.

THE WHITENESS. Comforting. Like the blankets that covered me when I was young. Perhaps I should lay down now and sleep as I once slept beneath a counterpane this hue. Feel cold and yet warm. The outside will try to suck the heat from within me. Who am I to resist? There is nothing now but the white: the blank sheet of my mind, wiped clear of all extraneous matter. This is the state to which I should aspire, the state from which all madness shall recede. I shall be whole again. To sleep perchance to dream. But what if I no longer wish to dream? What if I just wish to sleep and never wake? Or to sleep and then, when finally I am wrested from the arms of Morpheus to find myself back in the realms of sanity and the warm embrace of my beloved and our children?

Now there is little to do but sink into the embrace of the light. It keeps away the phantoms that have so tortured me, making it a matter of simply resting my weary bones before blessed oblivion…

MILDRED INDICATED where last she had seen Doc. Unwilling to say anything in the teeth of the gale, to waste breath and energy, she pointed to where the shambling figure of Doc had last been located.

Roped together, as quickly as they dared in the uncertain and treacherous conditions, the five of them moved in a close line through the blinding hail of ice and snow. Stumbling on the rock and ice beneath, one almost dragging the others down with every other step, they continued toward the area where Doc had last been seen.

Mildred let out an involuntary curse as her feet hit a soft yet unyielding object. There was nothing in front of her eyes except the white of the storm, and the sudden obstruction caused her to pitch forward, dragging J.B. behind her. Although Mildred went down, the Armorer struggled to keep his footing. The last thing they needed in such conditions was to tangle themselves by all hitting the ground. Feeling him pull on them, the others braced and held their footing until equilibrium was restored.

Mildred, meanwhile, had recovered herself enough to be in a kneeling position and to know that the obstruction that had caused her to fall was the prone body of Doc Tanner. He lay on his side, curled up in a fetal ball, eyes wide and unseeing. For a moment she feared that he might have bought the farm, but as she put her palm in front of his face she could feel the heat of his breath.

It was as though he had given up and lay down to die.

By this time, the others had gathered. Mildred looked up and from her expression they knew that he was alive, despite their first impression.

Now they were together; the first part of their task had been achieved. But with each passing second the blazing storm sucked the heat from them, despite the thickness of their garb. The snow and ice stung the skin, the constant wet and cold causing the skin to chafe and split on the faces, their eyes streaming as the water was driven relentlessly into the fragile membrane. Stiffness crept into their every limb, making movement harder with every moment.

They had to move, to find shelter. But where? Wordlessly, Ryan moved so that he could help Mildred lift Doc to his feet. The old man was unhelpful but not obstructive. It was as though he had no notion of what they were doing, his body a deadweight, a neutral presence.

Jak indicated that they should move to the left, and took the lead. Ryan had no idea where the albino was headed, but trusted the hunter’s sharp instincts to have spotted some possible shelter before the storm had made the landscape a featureless blank.

Jak always kept himself open to the environment, no matter how it may be constituted, which was how he had managed to hone his hunting instincts in earlier days. It was how he was able to survive now. Even though thoughts other than the immediate surroundings had been racing through his mind while they had marched, still a part of his attention had been focused on the area through which they traveled, searching out any places where fresh game may be found and where dangers may lie. As a result, he had spotted an area almost hidden behind a snowbank, where the rock had risen from the earth and formed a shelf. The snow had banked and gathered beneath it, but at one end it tailed away. There seemed to be no apparent reason for this, and Jak had figured that some passing fauna had burrowed it out or else it had failed to take because of a vein of heat.

The nearest volcanic mass was about half-hour’s march from where they now stood. That didn’t mean that a shift in the earth and a fissure in the rock hadn’t formed a tunnel through which some of the heat from the mass could escape.

Unerringly, not thinking but trusting to instincts that had rarely set him wrong, Jak led them toward the area where he had seen the break in the snowbank.

It was impossible to tell how near or far they may be until they were upon it. The ice beneath their feet grew less slippery, but the snows deeper, sucking at them with every step, trying to pull them down, making forward progress harder with every movement.

Breath came in short gasps, lactic acid building in muscle and making their limbs feel heavy and useless, stumbling and almost falling, dragging one another down. Ryan and Mildred suffered most, with Doc propped between them, his arms over their shoulders, their own supporting his weight. He moved his legs mechanically, almost as if unaware of what he was doing, his weight shifting unpredictably as his feet lost purchase and he slipped first one way, then another. It was difficult for Ryan and Mildred to keep him—and themselves—from falling face-first into the snowbank. Strength of will, stubbornness, a need to survive—those were the only things that could account for dragging one leaden foot after another, thigh muscles knotting in white-hot agony, so hot that they felt as though they could melt the snow and ice surrounding…

And then they were out of the storm. Without even realizing, they passed from light to dark, white to black. From numbing cold to something a little warmer that was at first ineffective, but gradually began to thaw the cold in their bones, the numbness turning to the pain of frozen skin and muscle before easing into something approaching normal. Pins and needles running through their extremities, a maddening itch inside their skin that couldn’t be scratched.

The floor was solid rock, uneven and with a layer of moss that gave it an almost soft, carpeted feel. Inside their heavy clothing, even with the moisture the materials had absorbed, they felt circulation begin to return. They were thankful that Jak’s ability to study and analyze his surroundings without even thinking about it had led him here. A thankfulness that they couldn’t share with one another, as they gasped in the warm air, able now to breathe more easily without freezing their throats and lungs, yet still unable to speak.

After the bright white of the outside world, the cavern in which they found themselves was, at first, pitchblack. A little light filtered in from the narrow opening to the outside world, marked by some moisture where the storm intruded, the cold air battling in swirls with the warm air expelled from the cave. Gradually, as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the light—such as it was—enabled them to discern dimly outlined shapes. Even Jak, whose red pigmentless eyes preferred the gloom to the brilliance of strong light, found the conditions hard to read.

They found themselves in a cavern that had a roof a little over ten feet in height. Recovered sufficiently to do more than hunker on his hands and knees gasping for breath and allowing his muscles to relax, for the seizing up of his body to gradually yield, Ryan withdrew a flashlight from one of his pockets and switched it on. The battery was still working, although not at full power. It barely illuminated the roof at the highest point, but showed the companions that they were in the center of the largest section of the cavern. It was narrow at the mouth through which they had passed, barely five feet in height, and rose to the ten-foot limit at which they found themselves, before sloping to less than the circumference at the opening. Down to about four feet, it seemed to tail off into an endless tunnel, the beam of the flashlight not reaching far enough into the gloom to make the far wall visible—if indeed, there was a far wall and they were not at one end of an indefinite tunnel. The constant flow of warm air made this likely.

“Thank heavens for that,” Mildred gasped, the first to speak. “I don’t think any of us would have lasted much longer out there.”

“Some less than others,” Krysty added, dragging herself over to where Doc lay unmoving and seemingly oblivious to his surroundings. “How’s he doing?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Mildred shrugged. “It’s more than just the blizzard that’s got to him. The physical symptoms I can treat, but the rest of it…” She trailed off with a shrug.

“We’ll worry about that later.” Ryan spoke with a note of concern in his voice. The flashlight was flickering, the beam failing. He hit the base, hoping that it was a connection rather than the battery that was causing the problem. J.B. delved into his own supplies and produced another.

“Always have a contingency plan,” he commented wryly as he handed it to Ryan. “Millie’s got one, as well, right?” he added, turning to her for confirmation.

Before answering, she rummaged through her own storage capacity to check that it was still on her person. “Check,” she affirmed as she found it. “At least that should keep us going for a while.”

“Storm pass soon,” Jak speculated, casting an eye at the mouth of the cave. “Too fierce last, mebbe blow out.”

“Figure it might. If and when, we need to have some definite plan. We’ve been wandering like a bunch of stupes. Nearly bought us the farm…can’t let that happen again.” Ryan gasped between sentences, the warm air still hurting in lungs that had breathed too much ice to clear quickly.

“Soon as it passes, I’ll work out exactly where we’ve ended up and head us toward Ank Ridge,” J.B. stated. Ryan agreed. A glance at Krysty told him that she was agreeable.

“What Ank Ridge got?” Jak asked. It wasn’t a question of dissent, rather one of curiosity.

“Didn’t get there last time we were in these parts, but it’s supposed to be the only ville in these Gaia-forsaken parts,” Krysty explained. “Got to be better than what we’ve seen so far.”

“Not hard.” Jak shrugged.

Conversation fizzled out. They were too tired for anything other than basics. Mildred and Krysty tended to Doc. After a short while, he seemed to become a little more aware of his surroundings. Although still silent and staring unseeing around him, he responded to touch and allowed them to seat him upright to tend to the abrasions and cuts he had suffered during the flight from the storm.

Ryan, J.B. and Jak marked out territory, examining the mouth of the cave and venturing a few hundred yards down the dark abyss of the tunnel. It seemed to stay at a constant height after a certain point and showed no signs of harboring dangers.

“Where does it go?” J.B. asked. It was a rhetorical question, but Ryan answered, as much to confirm his ideas to himself as anything else.

“Figure it goes back to that big volcano we saw about two miles from here. When it got thrown up, I’d guess that this was formed by some kind of pressure blow-out, like a safety valve of some kind. That’d explain the hot air.”

“Then let’s just hope that the bastard doesn’t want to blow itself before the storm blows out, otherwise we get boiled or frozen,” J.B. muttered darkly.

Having marked out their parameters, the three men returned to where Doc was being tended by Krysty and Mildred.

“How’s he doing?”

“Better physically, but as for the rest…” Mildred shook her head sadly. “Wherever he is, it sure isn’t here.”

They set camp where Doc was resting. With nothing in the cave to make a fire, they used some of the few self-heats they had left, some from the last remains of the food stores in the redoubt and some that they had been carrying with them. The food was foul-tasting, but had the necessary nutrition. They were all too exhausted to care about anything except restoring some nourishment and getting some sleep, eating in silence, Mildred feeding Doc. The old man took some of the food, but most of it dribbled down his slack chin, his eyes moving from side to side without seeing.

I. ONLY I. HOW CAN I be taking sustenance when there is nothing but myself, and I know that I am not the one feeding me. There is only one answer. Whoever is feeding me does not exist, and I am not really eating. The food and the feeder are nothing more than mere illusions sent to torture me, to take me back to the hell from whence I have only recently managed to flee. But I shall not return. If that was sanity, then I wish nothing more than insanity. If it was insanity, then whatever truth sanity holds for me cannot surpass the horror of the mad places.

There is only I.

I… But who am I?

THEY TOOK TURNS SLEEPING, Ryan electing to take first watch as leader, allowing the others to rest. He kept one flashlight going, using the one that was beginning to fail until the flickering beam cast light no farther than a couple of yards past where they rested. He switched to the flashlight J.B. had given him, using it to sweep the area to the rear of the cave and to light the area at the mouth. All the same, he was careful to dip the beam so that it hit the rock immediately in front of the opening and didn’t shine out into the wastes beyond. It was unlikely there was anything out there to notice a sudden sweep of light should it appear, but he sure wasn’t about to take that chance.

A perverse aspect of this storm was that it seemed to have swept through them and burned out the melancholy and apathy that had permeated their bodies. Say what you like about the adrenaline rush of danger, and how much you’d like to avoid it, but it put things into perspective. Survival pissed all over introspection every time. It was just a shame that it had taken this storm and nearly buying the farm to wake them up.

Wake them up. Wake him up. Ryan was suddenly aware that his reverie had been the beginning of a descent into sleep. Jerking his head up, blinking heavily, he realized that he hadn’t been as aware as he would have liked. Outside, the sound of the howling wind had dropped and the snow shone white in the darkness of the night, the storm slowly subsiding and the blanket of white becoming a dappled curtain. Deceptively pretty to the eye, especially the eye that was trying to stay wakeful.

Ryan swept the area with the flashlight, the beam extending into the dark.

There was something that made him stop and flash back over the area he had already covered.

There was nothing. Something. Nothing… Was it his imagination, some hallucination brought on by his need to sleep?

“Ryan, what going on?” Jak raised his head, disturbed by the beam that had wavered and hit him as it passed over the ground. He was alert, having snapped into consciousness immediately. He frowned as he saw the torpor on Ryan’s face.

“Not sure… Thought I saw something,” Ryan said haltingly. “It was back there, but…”

Jak scrambled to his feet. He could see that Ryan was almost losing consciousness as he tried to speak. The one-eyed man had pushed himself to the limit and beyond, and it was now catching up with him.

Jak took the flashlight as Ryan let it droop. Now that Jak was awake, every fiber of his being was telling him he could rest, even though he was trying to will himself to stay conscious.

“Ryan, sleep now. Let me take over.”

Ryan could hardly bring himself to assent before letting his eye close and the warmth of sleep begin to envelop him. Jak let him settle into a prone position before hunkering down to take over watch. He frowned as he scanned the darkness beyond the scope of the flashlight beam. There was nothing visible, but it wasn’t like Ryan to see things that weren’t there—fatigue or no fatigue. Yet he couldn’t catch sight of anything.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Jak cast a glance toward the cave entrance. The storm was subsiding, and perhaps by the time they had all rested, and the daylight had come, they would be able to move.

So why couldn’t he shake the feeling that, despite the evidence to the contrary, Ryan had been right when he saw something in the dark maw of the tunnel?

Jak rose to his feet, moving a few yards into the depths of the cave, throwing the flashlight beam farther into the blackness that swallowed it up hungrily. He wouldn’t go farther, leave the sleeping companions unguarded, but he was torn. Something was nagging at him. Something that had no reason but still irritated like an unscratched itch.

Shaking his head, backing up to where they lay, he settled down to keep watch. Eyeing the lightening sky outside, he judged it only a few hours until daybreak. They should be safe…should be.

JAK WAS STILL and silent. Nothing escaped him. Particularly the gradual change in temperature. From deep in the caves the air began to heat up, the strength of the current increasing exponentially. He looked toward the mouth of the cave. The storm had almost subsided, the darkness had almost broken into dawn. Yet it was still night, there was still a squall, and the companions needed rest. Would fate allow them enough time to recover before the volcano a few miles away belched enough hot air—mebbe even lava—to engulf them and make staying here an impossibility?

It was a chance that they couldn’t afford to take. Jak rose swiftly, moving to wake J.B. first, as the Armorer had rested longer than Ryan. It was as Jak crouched over J.B.’s supine form that he froze: there was something else on the air. The heat made the musk all the stronger and it was distant but growing closer with every breath. Dogs. Perhaps those that had strayed from settlements, been driven away from trappers when they had been decimated by nature or the Russians some time back. They’d be wild now, and presumably ended up in the caves seeking shelter from the storm, as had the companions, wandering farther down into the tunnels and caves, seeking the heat.

Now they were being driven back by that very heat as it intensified.

Jak shook J.B. roughly. The Armorer jolted awake, mumbling softly and fumbling for his spectacles.

“What—”

Jak silenced him with a hand across the mouth. “Trouble. Wild dogs. Near. Wake others.” And before J.B. had a chance to fully take in what the albino was saying, he had moved on to Krysty, shaking her in a similar fashion.

There were times when Jak’s use of words verged on the elliptical, but at least at this moment his meaning was clear. As was J.B.’s head, shaking it to clear the fug of sleep before he scrambled to his feet, reaching out to wake Mildred. He whispered a few words to her as she emerged from her slumber. It was as well that she slept lightly, needing as she did to think on her feet.

She had Doc to worry about. The old man was sleeping now, but in his current state there was little difference between Doc asleep and Doc awake. He was in no fit state to defend himself if trouble appeared. She moved over and shook him by the shoulder. His eyes snapped open instantly and he looked directly at her.