James Axler - Ritual Chill

Like everything, it was shrouded in a mist of confusion. Even his very being seemed to be nebulous, hidden even from himself. How did he know that everything he had seen and experienced had been true? He remembered his Descartes and the Frenchman’s espousal of an idea that it was possible that all he saw was not true, just something placed in front of his eyes by an evil genius who sought to deceive him.

On first reading this, he had thought it a clever conceit and had argued with friends and colleagues on the inherent absurdity of the idea. But now he wasn’t so sure. As the door finally closed, who was not to say that it wasn’t merely another shutter in a long procession of such; a curtain brought down on a stage while the scenery was changed, ready for the next act.

“Doc, are you listening?”

The old man turned to find Mildred looking back at him, her face almost obscured by the hood of her padded coat, the snorkel design taking it over her features and hiding her expression.

“Sorry, I—” Doc tried to make himself function, but all he could think was, What if she is not real? The ambiguity paralyzed him. He knew that if all this were genuine, then he had to move, keep up just to survive. But if not, then…

“What the hell is wrong with you? It’s just as well I thought to look back, otherwise we would have lost you already. We haven’t even got more than a hundred yards from the redoubt and you’ve already nearly vanished on us.” Her tone was sharp, betraying her own unease and shortness of temper.

“My dear Doctor, I cannot apologize. I have not been myself.” Then who are you? asked a voice in his head. “I shall try to, as you would say, snap out of it.”

Mildred’s expression, still partially obscured by her hood, softened. “We all felt weird in there, Doc. Even me, and I wasn’t here before. It’s okay, we can just walk away.”

She beckoned to him and waited until Doc had walked a few steps toward her before turning and continuing after the others.

Doc Tanner followed, words and thoughts still racing in his mind, tumbling over one another. There may be situations you can walk away from, times and places. But if it is yourself from which you seek to escape? How can you ever walk away from yourself?

THE FROZEN WASTELAND was much as they remembered it, those who had been here before. The sky was tinged yellow with sulfur, the same that got down into their throats and lungs, making breathing difficult as it scraped at the membrane, making each of them want to choke. Breathing was best if taken in shallow gasps. Deep lungfuls of air made them cough, sucking in more air so that the urge to cough became greater, the circle harder to break. The chem clouds above them tinged the skies with yellow, the heavy banks of gray and yellow scudding across the expanse of sky with a rapidity that spoke of the intensity of the wind currents, the sudden changes in direction for the tumbling clouds making them all the more ominous, as though they were about to lose their abrasive contents upon the earth below.

The terrain was much as they remembered. Banks of snow, meters deep, were driven and formed against sheer rock by the force of the winds, the loose snow on top treacherous, the ice banked beneath waiting to trap them. Against this were the exposed walls and inclines of rock, slippery with long strings and trails of moss and lichen that had been allowed to grow and prosper as the snows were scoured from them. All around, the earth had been broken by the shifting of the rock beds, new inclines, small mountainous ranges and recently formed volcanoes spewing the sulfur into the air, peppering the landscape to the horizon.

It was a harsh terrain to cross and an even harsher environment in which to live. There was little sign of any life that made its home in this unwelcoming terrain, and yet Ryan clearly recalled being attacked by dwarf muties and encountering wild bears on his first excursion into the wastes. There had also been some small communities and isolated trappers who had fallen prey to the Russian bandits. It was doubtful whether their deserted settlements would have been reclaimed by others. Even so, Ryan was still intent on keeping his people focused for any dangers that may be lying in wait.

The floods caused by the breaking of the dam had done little to change this section of the Alaskan tundra. It would be another half-day’s march through the oppressive weather conditions before they reached that spot. In the meantime, each could be lost in their own thoughts. Although they remained alert and aware, the atmosphere of the redoubt still weighed heavily on all of them.

MILDRED LOOKED BACK to check that Doc was still following. The black figure, stark against the landscape, trudged through the snow, head held erect against the winds, eyes seemingly—although surely this was a trick of the obscured light—unblinking and wide, regardless of the wind and ice.

Mildred was concerned about the old man. More than the others, she had some kind of grasp of what he had to be feeling. She, too, was out of time and in a world for which she had been ill-prepared. The others had been born to this, it was all that they had ever known. She, on the other hand, had been living in relative affluence and comfort in the late twentieth century before being put out for a routine operation. If all had been well, a few days and she would have been recuperating at home, catching up on soaps and developing couch potato habits, before resuming work. Instead she had awakened to a nightmare that was all the more terrifying for being real.

Since that first moment it had been fear, adrenaline, constant movement and action. Living on the brink of death. Perhaps life was always like that, but it wasn’t something that the late 1990s had prepared her for; the stark choices of this new world were often not choices at all, but imperatives. Act first, ask questions later.

What had her life become? These people with whom she traveled were closer to her than anyone she had ever known. They had bonded with her in a way that no one else ever had. J.B., particularly. In many ways she knew them as well as she knew herself. Yet they were as alien to her as…as she was to them.

She frowned, keeping her eyes on the terrain, scanning constantly for any movement that might betoken danger. What the hell had made her feel that way? These were things she had never thought about before, and things that were, in many ways, pointless to consider. There had been downtime before, time in which they could stop and smell the roses—although, come to think of it, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen anything resembling a rose—but it had never led to her feeling this way. It was something she had caught from the others; particularly from Doc. A kind of melancholy that had spread over them.

It was dangerous. If any of the others were still thinking like this, then they could be at less than triple red. God alone knew what could survive in conditions like this, but sure as hell something could. And it probably wouldn’t like them intruding on its territory.

AS RYAN LED THE COMPANIONS, things nagged at him in a way they hadn’t before. Since his early days in Front Royal, he had been brought up as befitted a baron’s son, albeit not the firstborn. He had been taught to be a man of action, a man who could make snap decisions and be sure of his judgment. There were times when he had to think about what he was doing, when there were many arguments to weigh up, but for the most part he had to trust his gut instinct, honed by years of experience, and act accordingly.

But right now he wasn’t sure what that instinct was telling him. A feeling of unease had settled over him like a shroud. Take what they were doing now. He knew, as most of them did, what the terrain and the weather conditions were like out here. In fact, they couldn’t wait to get away last time they had landed in this pesthole. And yet, rather than jump immediately, he had decided to lead them out into the wasteland to try to head for the nearest settlement. Was he actually afraid of the mattrans? The things that had flashed through his mind during the jump were little more than fleeting impressions, vanishing like dreams, like the tendrils of mist that remained after a jump. And yet they had triggered something within him. An unease at how much more of the mat-trans they could take. That had to have influenced his decision, as had the emotions stirred by landing back in a redoubt where they had experienced friends buying the farm.