James Axler - Ritual Chill

Around him the others were beginning to stir. Krysty and Mildred were the sharpest, dragging themselves from their stupor, climbing unsteadily to their feet and checking their weapons and themselves, in that order. J. B. Dix took a little longer, choking slightly as he came around, his unfocused eyes seemingly small and beady without his spectacles, only coming to life when he placed them on his sharp nose.

Which left Doc and Jak, always the last to come around. And, as always, Jak greeted their new surroundings with a spray of vomit, bile spewing from his guts as he tried to adjust himself to being made whole once again. His body shook with the spasms as he braced himself, on all fours, against the floor of the chamber before heaving. Watching him, Ryan wondered how much more of this the albino could take before he was running on empty, with nothing left to do except to spew himself inside out.

But what options did they have? Without this mode of travel, they would have bought the farm long ago. There were too many enemies, too many troubles behind them to stop running, even if it did sometimes seem as though they never actually moved.

Doc muttered to himself, only the odd syllable breaking surface and making sense. Sense in that it was something recognizable, not that there was any kind of logic running through his discourse. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, smearing streaks across the pale skin, a pallor like a man who was already chilled.

Mildred moved across to him, slowly, still feeling her own way out of the jump.

“I don’t know why he’s still with us,” she muttered almost to herself. “By rights, he should have crumbled to dust a long time ago.”

Ryan gave her a skewed grin. “Doc’s got no choice, like all of us. Stay with it or buy the farm. Who’d want to do that by their own choice?”

Eventually, Doc’s eyeballs turned from in on themselves and slowly began to come to terms with the world around him.

“My dear Dr. Wyeth.” His voice sounded husky as Mildred solidified in front of his eyes. “I had the most wonderful dream. That I was free—”

“You’re free now,” Mildred said softly. “At least, you’re with us and you’re okay. And you’re still alive.”

Doc grimaced. “Is that how you define freedom? Does it not occur to you that we seem to be at the mercy of some blind idiot deity who pushes us on, even when we would wish to stop? An entertainment for Olympians who would wish us to fight the same battles once and again, for all eternity? Never resting, never stopping, always being driven on to constant, repeated combat for nothing more than their own gratification.”

“I don’t think I would have put it quite like that,” Mildred mused. “But I do wonder how much more of a battering a body can take before it just gives up. And for what?”

“Staying alive,” Ryan answered. “That’s all. Anything else is—shit, what did that old book say? Gravy.”

Krysty gave him a curious glance. “What kind of an old book was that, and what the hell did it mean?”

Ryan shook his head, regretting it as some of the dizziness returned. “It was just some old book that I found once, but I figured that what it meant was that keeping out of shit was the main thing, and anything else good was extra and should be appreciated.”

“Nice sentiment, strange expression.” Krysty shrugged.

“Yeah. But any kind of words won’t secure this shit, so let’s get to it,” Ryan replied, figuring that it was time to stop thinking and to see where they had landed.

IT WAS A SHOCK. All redoubts followed similar patterns, were designed from the same predark plans that meant the old predark sec forces could move from redoubt to redoubt and familiarize themselves with the layout immediately, know where everything was in the case of a sudden alert. Not that it had done any of them much good when the nukecaust had come, because no matter where you were, you had to surface sooner or later. And if you were sec, you were supposed to be fighting this war.

But within the fantasy world of the twentieth-century military, it all made sense: keep these things to a basic design and U.S. soldiers could live down there for as long as it took.

Which was, ultimately, good news for the companions, who could find their way around any redoubt in which they landed. Except that this time they wouldn’t have to: they already knew it.

There were many similarities, but all the same every redoubt had its differences and unique points. Some of these were to do with the specific function allotted to the base in its predark life. Some were to do with the ravages of time in the period since. It meant that each redoubt that existed, no matter how long it had been silent, still had its own specific character.

This one hadn’t been empty that long. No sooner had Ryan and the companions carried out basic maneuvers and secured the area than the familiarity of this particular redoubt impressed itself upon them.

“Can’t be,” J.B. said. “Hasn’t happened all that often.”

“If you consider that there are only a finite number of these infernal places and that the laws of probability dictate—”

“Doc, shut up.” Mildred cut across him. “Are you saying that we’ve been here before? ’Cause I sure as hell don’t get any bells ringing.”

“You haven’t been here before,” Ryan answered with emphasis. “Neither has Jak. But the rest of us know this place only too well.”

“Only too well indeed,” Doc echoed with a touch of melancholy in his voice. He began to wander down the corridor outside the mat-trans control room. He appeared to know where he was going.

“Safe doing that?” Jak questioned.

“There isn’t anyone here to harm us,” Ryan told him.

“No one, but mebbe a few memories that aren’t so great,” Krysty murmured.

They followed behind Doc, Mildred and Jak exchanging puzzled glances. No one else spoke. They merely followed the old man as he trailed along the maze of corridors, his demeanor showing a definite intent. He passed numerous closed doors and moved up a level, until coming to a closed door.

The companions held back, letting Doc enter the room on his own. They could hear the sounds of lockers being opened, the rustling of clothes and then silence.

Krysty moved forward silently, looking into the room. Doc was on his knees in front of a line of open lockers, among a pile of clothes. There were jackets, short skirts and buckskin boots. He took a yellow silk blouse and held it up to his nose, inhaling deeply before looking at Krysty with an almost infinite sadness.

“They don’t even smell of her. They don’t smell of anything at all. It’s as though she never existed.”

IT HAD BEEN A WHILE. Perhaps not that long, but it was hard to say. So much had happened to them since then that the passage of time seemed impossible to quantify. Finnegan and Hennings were gone. So were Okie and Hunnaker. Doc had been even more of an enigma. Mildred had still been frozen, and Jak still in the bayou. The corpses of Keeper Quint and his sister-wife Rachel were here somewhere, wherever they had dumped them after the firefight that had chilled them—Hunnaker, too. And Lori was lost to them. Quint’s daughter—mebbe Rachel’s, mebbe another chilled wife’s, they’d never been able to work that one out—who had chosen them over the insanity of her inbred family existence and had become Doc’s companion. The clean slate of her untutored mind provided a sounding board for the time-traveler’s tortured psyche until she had been cruelly snatched from him.

The redoubt had continued to function without anyone to trouble its automated systems. Left to the efficiency of the old tech, it had continued to light and heat the underground warren and to maintain a level of operable capability. It hadn’t changed since they had left it.