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file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/James%20Axler%20-%20Deathlands%20015
%20-%20Chill%20Factor.html disappearance, clearly dying, might have been
contrived. It wasn't possible. Ryan knew that. Yet nothing was impossible with
the Trader.
"Over, under or around," Ryan said, shaking his head and smiling at what had
been one of the Trader's favorite sayings. Perhaps that had been how he'd
treated death.
Something that you found a way of defeating.
"No." That was foolishness. He knew it. Still, it couldn't be denied that the
strange whisper that the Trader could be alive had made his own heart race.
Ryan thought back to redoubts.
Not all of them held gateways. He knew that from experience. But since they'd
first discovered how to make jumps, back in the Darks, he seemed to have moved
only through the mat-trans system.
Ahead of him, the wide passage was dividing, some fallen slabs of reinforced
concrete showing what was probably old nuke damage, either direct from missile
hits or indirect from earth shifts.
It felt strange to be on his own, with nobody to consult, no Krysty to ask
what she
"felt" around them, no J.B. to check his opinion.
He decided to check out the corridor that wound upward. The snow was thicker,
drifted into neat piles against the walls, and it creaked under his boots. He
stopped to wind his scarf over his nose and mouth. It was so cold that ice was
forming in his nostrils, making breathing uncomfortable.
Ryan found more and more evidence of positive nuking damage. This redoubt had
suffered some extreme prejudice at enemy hands, meaning it was probably a
particularly important establishment. It clearly hadn't been neutron bombing,
either, taking out life and leaving buildings. These must have been
old-fashioned nukes that simply knocked the shit out of everything and
everyone.
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Walls were scarred, bare metal supports showing through in places, rust red.
Huge chunks of ceiling had fallen, making it hard to scramble by. At one point
a large arrow was daubed on the wall, pointing into the deeps of the complex.
The light grew stronger.
Ryan glanced at his wrist chron. It had been early morning when they'd left
the
New Mexico homestead. It took less than two hours to make the jump that had
brought them to this frozen place, another hour or so on recovering and on the
fight with the cuddlies. It should be close to midday.
"Fourteen hundred," Ryan said. Somewhere along the line a couple of hours had
somehow gone missing. There were so many things about the mat-trans system
that were inexplicable.
Less than a hundred paces farther on, Ryan found himself out in the open. He
hesitated, keeping within the shadowed mouth of the cavern. Here the damage
was total. There wasn't any way of being sure, but it looked to Ryan as though
the redoubt had once extended a good deal farther. But there'd obviously been
a number of direct hits by nukes, hitting the sec doors and demolishing them
in explosions of almost unbelievable intensity.
Page 20
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Outside there was a day of fierce dullness. A leaden sky squatted over the
surrounding mountains, leaking occasional random flakes of uncertain snow.
Ryan was high above a valley. A steep trail picked its cautious way down the
flank of the mountain toward a frozen river at the bottom. Layers of mist
sliced into each other, rendering it difficult to make out what was happening
at the lower end of the narrow roadway.
There appeared to be some kind of industrial complex, with a broad highway
running parallel to the river, and dark tunnels that vanished into the steep
crags opposite.
Ryan shaded his eye with his hand, peering into the sighing depths two
thousand feet below him, trying to make out what was happening. It looked like
a mine, with several shafts. There was a number of buildings, some with smoke
or steam billowing from them.
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Close by the river there was what could be a spoil tip, covered in snow, but
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