Chapter Six
'How do the wolves survive, Uchitel?' asked Bochka, the Barrel, astride the largest horse in the party.
'They eat the weak.'
'If there are no weak, brother?'
Uchitel peered through the gap between his hood and the scarf around his nose and mouth. 'Then they eat each other, Bochka.' Raising his voice so the others could hear him, he added, 'And if we fall on evil times and must devour each other, I take the leader's right of roasting Bochka all for myself.'
A ripple of laughter ran back along the column until it vanished in the murk of wind-blown snow. Since the raiders had left Ozhbarchik two days back, the weather had been deteriorating. Three times Uchitel had ordered emergency shelters to be dug in the packed snow; they used the long-bladed saws that they carried for just such a purpose. It took less than five minutes to throw up a wall of large snow bricks six feet high to protect them all from the lethal wind. During the rare calms, Uchitel had gazed back, trying to spot any sign of pursuit. Away to the north, he could make out the smoke-tipped cone of one of the many new volcanoes that had appeared at the time of the wars. The snow around it was tinted gold from the sulfur fumes, and there was no sign of any living thing in all that dreadful wilderness. Nothing except the huge mutated white bears that occasionally loomed from the blizzard, threatening the column.
The bears... and the wolves — lean gray shapes with slavering jaws and thrusting muzzles, slinking at the corners of a man's vision. Several times over the years they had lost men to the wolves. It was one of the reasons that everyone feared becoming a straggler.
Only the day before a man had gotten left behind. It had happened to Nul, a quiet, gray-haired man whose nickname was Zero because it often seemed as though he wasn't there. His pony had stumbled over a twisted piece of metal; it was a large mortar shell with tail fins intact, a relic of the missile testing that had once occurred in that area, which was just across the frozen expanse of the Bering Strait from North America. A deep gash in the pony's right foreleg had exposed the tendons, making the pony limp badly. Nul knew the rules as well as anyone. Move slower than the group, and you stayed behind. But there was always a chance of catching up. A man riding alone moved farther and faster than a party.
There was always a chance of catching up again. All he'd have to do was stay alive.
'Fucking bastard! Cocksucking shit-swallowing bastard fucker!'
Nul punched the stumbling pony on the side of the head, making it stagger and nearly fall again. Blood was drying on the streaked flanks where he'd lashed the pony with the buckle end of his belt. He'd hoped that by now he'd be rejoining the band. But the shaggy animal seemed to go slower and slower. Now darkness was less than an hour off, and the band was at least five kilometers ahead. If Uchitel persisted with his plan to cross the ice and invade what had once been America, they could begin crossing the strait in less than a week, maybe in only four or five days. At this rate, Nul figured he'd be more than a day behind by the time they reached the strait.
It was time to stop, build a shelter and get a fire going. Their pyrotabs were often the difference between living and dying. Once lit, one of them would generate enough heat to burn brightly for three hours. Nul had about forty of them in his saddlebags.
That should be enough. If he didn't catch up with the others before they crossed the ice, then he might as well kiss the barrel of the 9 mm Makarov goodbye.
Urach squatted by his leader in the lee of the big snow wall. The flames of the fires fought bravely against the swirling sleet. From beyond the circle of light, they heard the keening of the wolves.
'Feedin' on Nul?' he said.
'That's the cry of hunger. When that stops, then maybe they will have found Nul.'
'Britva will lose toes after falling through that pool this morning.'
'He can use his own razor. It'll teach the imbecile a lesson. Trying to gallop when there is no trail! There may even be live mines this close to the ocean. I have read how they sowed these hills. MZDs and AKSs all over the place.'
'What if the Americans are waiting for us, Uchitel? Then?..'
The reply was a silent smile.
'You think there is no danger?' asked Urach, holding out his hands to the flames.
'I know there is no danger. If they were a powerful country, do you not think they would have overrun this land by now?'
'I suppose...'
'Of course. Brother, go and fetch me some of that fine meat we took from that dung heap of a village. I am hungered.' Then, as Urach was leaving, Uchitel added, 'The Communists have gone from this country, Urach. And the Fascists have gone from over there.' He pointed to the east. 'They have lost, as they always will. Only we remain. As we always will.' And he began to laugh.
The pony was growing weaker rather than stronger. It was impossible to ride it, and Nul plodded alongside, cursing in an endless monotone. Like Uchitel, he carried a Kalashnikov AKM and every couple of hours he was forced to fire off a short burst to chase a pack of wolves away.
But they returned, circling closer, bellies low to the ground, their gray-white coats melding with the sulfur- stained ice.
The snow had eased, and the wind had also died down. At least he was no longer in immediate danger of freezing to death. The middle-aged man trudged relentlessly eastward, his face set to the ground, one foot following the other, trailing the rest of the party. Every step left him a little farther behind.
Apart from checking the endlessly weaving pattern of the wolves, Nul never looked back.
High cliffs stood like jagged teeth above the packed gray-green ice of the Bering Strait. The sea was covered in a dense mist, overlaid with volcanic fumes. The air was heavy and caught at the back of the throat, producing coughs and reddened eyes.
Somewhere beyond them was what had once been called Alaska. Now it had no name at all.
In the year 2000, half a million people had been scattered over the six hundred thousand square miles of this inhospitable land. Now there were less than a couple of thousand people in the whole barren waste. To Uchitel and his band, the country that lay hidden in the acrid fog was the promised land, containing legendary treasures and riches. The books all said so.
'We go that way, Narodniki,' shouted Uchitel, waving his Kalashnikov above his head like a crusader's sword.
There was a bellow of support from the men and women at his heels, the Narodniki.
Uchitel had found the name in the ruins of what had been the central library of the Communist Party amid the wreckage of nuked Yakutsk. He had come across a passage about the populist movement in old Russia. Over two hundred years before, in the late eighteen hundreds, there were terrorist and guerrilla organizations with names like Black Repartition, and Land and Liberty. But the parent of them all was the Narodniki.
It was a name that came to mean terror and blood, a name that appealed to the dark side of Uchitel's nature, which truly had no light side.
'We camp here in the cleft of the rocks that will keep us from the worst of the wind.' Above him there was a deafening crack of thunder that made some of the ponies rear and whinny. There was a searing glow of deepest purple from chem clouds that raced hundreds of miles high.
'And tomorrow?' asked Bizabraznia, lashing at her horse with a whip of braided wires.
'Down there, and across into the land of the brave and the home of many, many dead.'
Nul was feeling happier. The pony's fetlock was mending, and in the last twenty-four hours he'd made better time than he had for days. A biting fog had come down from the direction of the icy sea, making progress difficult, but from the fog's salty taste, he guessed that he couldn't be too far off.
