James Axler - Ice and Fire

The wind brought the heavy odor of gasoline from the greener land that lay ahead of them for the next day.

Ryan fell asleep thinking about a ville that owned so much gas. And so much power. It could be one hell of a place.

Rick Ginsberg dreamed during that second night of his awakening.

During his student days at UCLA, he'd dropped some "farmies," as the new hallucinogenics were known. They took you one step sideways from reality, but you still kept in touch. Unless you got an "oily," as bad trips were called. He couldn't remember why they were known by that name. Something lost in the mists of the past.

Ever since he'd blinked his sticky eyes open in the chemical cold of the cryo center, Rick had felt like he was in the middle of the worst oily that anyone had ever known. His brain simply would not keep still. It had no stability. No sense of what was "then" or "when" or "now." During the brief battle against the huge thrashing snake, it had been like a psycho-dream. The six men and women were now his comrades. Maybe they were his friends. He sure as green earth hadn't ever had any friends like Ryan and the others before, assuming they weren't a figment of his own fervid brain.

That confusion ran through the muddle of his dreams.

A rabbi was talking to him, both of them sitting on bright green transparent chairs that floated in a huge swimming pool, the walls making everything shimmer and echo. The rabbi was fully dressed, but Rick was in a torn suit.

"The question, my son, is this," the rabbi said, smiling with an infinite wisdom. "Are you a man dreaming that you are a butterfly? Or are you a butterfly dreaming that you are a serpent? That is the eternal riddle, wrapped in mystery, shrouded in an enigma. What is the answer, Richard?"

"I am, therefore I stink."

"Wrong. Why do you flagellate me like this? What have I done to deserve it?"

The rabbi segued into his mother, weeping as she leaned on the enormous walnut sideboard that Uncle Maurice had given them.

Rick moaned and rolled over on his back, starting to snore. Ryan reached and nudged him into a half-waking movement, edging him into another dream.

Now he was in a dusty cornfield with his cousin Ruth. But Ruth had a tumbling mane of bright crimson hair, and she was leaning over his naked groin, her lips brushing at his swollen erection. In the background Rick could hear a brass band playing the theme music from Paladin .

"This is biblical evil," he said to Ruth, and she stopped, looking up at him, lips full, ripe and glistening.

"No. It's easily done, Richard. You just pick someone and then you pretend that you've never, ever met."

The freezie sighed, his hand fumbling toward his own cock, but the next dream interrupted him.

He stood outside the big brownstone block where his parents had lived, the one that a famous film star, Marilyn Monroe, had once lived in, they claimed. The sun shone very brilliantly and he could hear traffic on East River Drive, horns sounding and the far-off wailing of a fire siren, like the death wail of a demented dinosaur.

His mother and his father and all four of his grandparents stood in a formal row, all wearing Victorian clothes. Frock coats and frilled gowns. They were all nodding to him and smiling, as if he'd done something very clever.

His grandmother, Agnes Laczinczca, beckoned to him, crooking her finger. The bezel of the intricately cut diamond ring flashed.

"When you go to the store, Richard Neal," she said, "you must make sure you are wearing your overshoes."

"It won't rain," he squeaked.

"Not for the rain, babushka. To stop your feet rad-rotting when the missiles come. They'll kill us all. Mr. Kurtz, he already dead."

"In another country, Grandmama," he said.

"Shut noise and eat self-heat," Jak said, shaking him into a muscle creaking wakefulness.

"Everyone ready to go?" Ryan asked. "Cans buried out of the way? Good."

They didn't tidy up after themselves out of some inherited desire to maintain the environment. There were some kind of muties, particularly packies, that would follow anyone traveling through the Deathlands, trailing their discarded cans or packets.

"I'm feeling a bit better," Rick told them. "Not so stiff."

"You could use some new clothes," Krysty observed, pulling at a loose thread that dangled from the shoulder of the freezie's suit.

"Yeah. My Fifth Avenue's smartest doesn't stand up well to Sierra rocks and desert cactus. Should have bought a heavier duty cloth."

"Mebbe find something in the ville. Find something to trade."

"What's the money in Deathlands? Guess my American Express gold card isn't going to say more about me than dollars ever can. I heard you talk about 'jack.' What's that?"

"Jack changes from ville to ville. Lotta barons stamp their own coins. Print notes. Mostly only used in that ville. Some big barons got together and agreed their jack could be used in each other's villes." The Armorer thought for a moment. "Your times... jack was the same all over the country?"

"Right. A dollar was a dollar. That reminds me. When you found my clothes, did you find a wallet?"

"What's a wallet?" Lori asked.

"A kind of bag for your money, cards and driving license and... And my Filofax? Hell's bloody bells! My Filofax has gone! I can't live without my fax. What am I going to do? Come on, guys."

All of them, even Doc Tanner, gazed blankly at him. Jak asked the question for them all. "What's fullafacts? Some blaster?"

"No. Nobody could live without one in my day. And mine's gone forever."

"What was IT, Rick?" Ryan pressed, fascinated by this glimpse into the lost past.

"Kind of a book that contained the names and addresses of my friends, phone numbers, appointments and all kinds of vital stuff."

"Why did you need a book to be telling you whose your friends are?" Lori asked.

"Because... I guess... I don't rightly remember that, Lori. And since there's now only six friends in the world, I don't need their addresses or names, do I? Guess not."

"Dark night!" J.B. exclaimed. "The smell of gas is getting double-strong. Got to be pumping it. Not just a big dump."

Ryan agreed with him. Faintly, carried on the wind, he thought that he'd caught the sound of drilling rigs. When he'd driven once across the east-west blacktops of what had been Texas, he'd seen the wrecks of the old oil pumps, perched across the dead prairies like the skeletal remains of ancient birds.

Jak, who was scouting at point, called back to them. "Blacktop here. Looks used. Kept good. Safe come on."

It headed in from the northwest, in the rough direction of the Pacific, looping to run eastward, toward where the scent of gasoline was strongest, toward where they could, at last, make out the smudges of buildings.

"There's a sign," Doc observed. "Perhaps we might go to peruse it."

Snakefish. Population two thousand and growing all the time. Gas sold and traded. Outlanders welcome.

Under that last part, someone had added, in a maroon acrylic paint: If they behave good.

"Better make sure we behave good." Rick grinned. "Looks like some things haven't changed. Strangers are fine, as long as they walk the line."

"Wrong," Ryan said. "Not many villes welcome outlanders. Doesn't matter how they behave."

"Xenophobic capital of Deathlands, you mean?"

Ryan didn't understand him, so he didn't bother replying.

"Someone's coming!" Krysty said suddenly. "Wags. That way." She pointed to the east.

They could hear a thin keening, humming sound, which was far off, but approaching fast.

"Air wag?" Jak asked.

"No. Different sound. Some kind of gas wag," Ryan replied, head to one side, considering what their best course of action might be.