They found a bed in the other dorm, and she held him tight, her long hair brushing against his shoulders. 'How do you feel about Hun?' she asked.
'Like I lost my blaster,' he replied.
'No feeling?'
He shook his head. 'No. Hun was good. But she got iced. Maybe you tomorrow, me the next day. Start feelin' sorry and it doesn't never stop.'
'Doesn't
'Sure.'
'If it had been me?'
He leaned over her, his single eye glittering in the dim light. 'You're different, Krysty. You know that.'
'You're sort of special, too.'
Before dawn they fell asleep, tangled in each other's arms, having made love three times.
After they'd driven the buggies onto the small gale-swept plateau beside the redoubt, they gathered for a last word from Ryan.
'We've got radios, so let's keep in touch. We're Buggy One. J.B.'s Two and Henn's Three. Use the radio only if you have to. Should be able to keep in visual touch. J.B.'s got the maps. We're heading toward where the town of Anchorage was. Should get close by evening.'
As he spoke, the ground trembled under their feet and some powdery snow came cascading from the cliff above the redoubt's entrance. 'Only a little quake,' said J.B. 'Plenty of those mothers where you've got volcanoes. Taste the sulfur on your tongue.'
The gale was gathering force, and Doc nearly lost his tall stovepipe hat; he secured it with an elastic beneath his chin. 'This hurricane puts me in mind of a jest I was once told,' he said, half-shouting to be heard above the wind.
'A jest? You mean a joke?' asked Krysty. 'I recall Peter Maritza back in Harmony using that word for somethin' funny. Said it was a word his grandfather used and he kind of remembered it.'
Doc nodded, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. 'This damned wind! It appears that many, many years ago, back in Kansas, there was a herd of longhorn cattle.'
'Was longhorns some sort of muties?' asked Finnegan, curiously.
'Not really, young man. They were grazing out on the open grasslands when a dreadful gale arose. A positive typhoon, it was. And it began to blow ever more strongly toward these cattle.'
'Get to the fuckin' point, Doc. I'm freezin' my fuckin' tits off,' moaned Okie, huddling against the chill.
'My apologies, madam, though I hardly feel that my style of discourse merits such foul language from such pretty lips. I will proceed. The wind eventually blew with such ferocity that the entire group of cows were lifted from their feet and whisked away over the horizon. They became known forever after as the herd shot round the world.'
It was obviously the punchline, so everyone laughed appreciatively. As they climbed into their buggies, Krysty tugged at Ryan's sleeve. 'You get that joke of Doc's, lover?'
He grinned at her. 'No. Couldn't understand it.' Once everyone was aboard, they set off toward the city of Anchorage.
Chapter Twelve
The Narodniki were on the right road. They knew that because the mutie woman had told them before they used and abused her, finally spilling her tripe in the snow with the curved blade of the bayonet of a Kalashnikov.
'Ank Ridge?' had been the question from Uchitel. 'Stoppile and Ank Ridge.'
She'd responded to the latter name, gesturing to the south. Her mouth was so misshapen, with only a residual tongue, that she could do no more than nod and point.
So they moved on: a long line of people, heavily furred against the bitter nuclear winter, heeling their ponies and horses toward the rising sun, rifles slung across shoulders, food and ammo weighing down the pack animals. Their eyes were cold as ice, and many of them wore clothes splattered with dried blood.
So far they had seen no signs of the legendary dangers that had for so long prevented anyone from the Russian side crossing the frozen strait. There had been no sign of flaming hot spots or of giant muties fifty feet tall with eyes of fire and claws of steel. Nor was the land utterly barren. Here and there were patches of earth free of snow, pocked and dappled with dark green mosses and stubbly grass.
They had met little opposition to their plans to drive inland. Apart from the loss of Nul, and Stena's unfortunate shoulder wound, there had been few casualties on this trip, and they had lost only two men, both to a single rifleman a day back. The sniper had ridden on a slope overlooking the hamlet they were ravaging and had shot down both men from cover. Then, as the angry guerrillas charged him, he had put a bullet through his own skull.
Two dead, three if he counted the absent Nul, Uchitel thought. Only one injured, two if he allowed for the three toes that Britva had self-amputated.
Their journey to Stoppile was taking much longer than Uchitel had been led to expect. After a two-week southeasterly trek across the Alaskan interior, they'd encountered an impossible mountain range. Changing their course to the northeast, they'd eventually found a trail that led south through the mountains. Unknown to the Narodniki, they were traveling along the earthquake-riven remains of what had once been the main highway linking Anchorage and Fairbanks.
Now that they were finally drawing close to Ank Ridge and Stoppile, Uchitel was well pleased with himself, and as they rode along, he sang an old, old ballad about the stars being the sentinels for mankind. He liked the verse about the importance of order over chaos. It appealed to his sense of the rightness of things.
Far off to the left he glimpsed the skulking shapes of a pack of mutie wolves, their bellies flat to the tundra, shadowing the party. They must be disappointed, thought Uchitel, that there were no weak stragglers in his band as there might be in a herd of caribou — stragglers that they could drag down and rend apart.
There were no weak stragglers in the Narodniki.
Toward evening the ground shook with one of the worst quakes since they'd crossed into Alaska. Rocks on a slope of ice-bound boulders ahead of them broke free and cascaded down noisily, nearly blocking the trail. The horses were frightened, and several riders, including the massive Bizabraznia, were unseated. Angered by the mocking laughter, she grabbed her animal's bridle and delivered a fearsome punch to the horse's head, knocking it to its knees. Then she kicked and lashed it with her whip until it returned to its feet. As she remounted, she was rewarded with cheers from her fellows.
Uchitel touched the cold hilt of his saber, remembering the good feeling of decapitating an enemy. He wanted to capture more enemies so that he could use the sword once more. Perhaps in the town of Ank Ridge there would be plenty of chances.
When the wind shifted to the south he caught the bitter taste of salt on his tongue, in addition to the ever-present sulfur from the surrounding volcanoes. The salt meant the sea could not be far away, which meant that Ank Ridge must also be close.
Grom, their explosives expert, reined in his horse alongside Uchitel. 'That would make a fine show for my toys,' he shouted. Grom was almost stone deaf and shouted all the time.
Grom pointed to a large dam with towers, set across a valley to their left. It dominated the valley where they rode, silhouetted against the amber sky, which was splashed with streaks of vivid green lightning.
'The water will be frozen, Grom,' he called, facing him so Grom could read his lips.
'No, Uchitel! See ahead, there is a river that flows and there is green to its sides. Away beyond that dam you see the smoking cone of a volcano. It heats the water so that it flows. Let me burst it and wash all away down here. It would be a fine sight, I swear.'
'Not now, brother. Perhaps another day, but not yet. Not now!'
