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eased the unconscious freezie onto his right side and removed the hunk of
cotton from his mouth so that the man wouldn't choke. "Hope you haven't
chilled him, lover."
"Little poke with my toe? He'll be fine. Well, I don't suppose he'll be fine."
She bent down and began to run her hands along Rick's arms and legs, probing
at the
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Axler,_James_-_DeathLands_9_Red_Equinox layers of sinew that coursed beneath
his pale skin. Krysty shook her head as she straightened. "Tone's real bad.
Seems like the muscles are plain giving up. I can feel fluttering un-der& kind
of like everything going into spasm. Bad."
Rick blinked and his eyes twitched open. He looked from face to face,
unfocused.
A thin trickle of blood dripped out of a corner of his mouth. He blinked
again.
"Oh, hi guys," he said. "What happened?" His fingers explored the lump behind
his ear. "Ow! Did I fall?"
"I kicked you in the head," Krysty told him. "You went jolt-wild. Couldn't
hold you, and you were making a lot of noise."
"I see. I recall the doctors saying that I might lose some control when it
came to& you know. Sorry, guys. I'm fine now. Truly. We ready to rescue Old
Glory?"
"Not 'we,' Rick," Ryan corrected. "I am and Krysty is. You pointed out the
tools we have to get."
"But& " the freezie began, until Krysty stopped him with an angry stare.
"You got an excuse for being sick," she said. "Doesn't give you a reason for
being double-stupe, does it?"
With an effort he managed to heave himself to his feet, sniffing and wiping
away the blood with his sleeve. He finally met Krysty's eyes. "No. Guess it
doesn't, does it? Gimp like me'd slow you and Ryan down."
"Yeah," Ryan agreed. "So you stay here. Keep outta sight and wait for us. If
we don't make it back by sunset tomorrow, you're on your own. Try for the
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ruined house, southwest of here."
"Keep outta sight. Sure. Outta sight, man. Right on. Too much." He turned
away, voice breaking. "Too fucking much."
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Axler,_James_-_DeathLands_9_Red_Equinox
THE GUARD WAS an old man, closing in toward sixty, mar-ried with three
children and eleven grandchildren. The youngest had been keeping him awake for
the past week, and he was desperately tired.
Dmitri Olgarchev, the senior museum orderly, had passed by on his rounds an
hour ago, with his usual admonition to keep a careful watch on everything, in
case the Americans came in to thieve. Every night for the past twenty-three
years he'd said that. Sometimes Sergei wanted to strangle him. But this
particular night, with the whole ville a seeth-ing nest of rumors about
American spies, Dmitri hadn't said it. He'd just nodded curtly and gone on his
way.
Sergei didn't believe anyone would ever break in. No-body had ever broken in,
in all the years he'd worked there. As far as he knew, nobody in the history
of the world had ever broken in.
Why should they?
He'd found his usual spot in the corner of the narrow gallery that had dummies
hanging from sets of gallows-each was dressed like some hero revered by the
Americans. There was an alcove beneath a window that opened onto a rusting
iron flight of steps. Sergei had been told that it had been built to help
people escape if there was a fire. Now it was so corroded and fragile that it
would probably collapse if three men got on it at once. Under the window was a
pile of material, drapes that had long fallen from the wooden poles.
Sergei curled up and fell instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.
THE LADDER HAD CREAKED alarmingly as Ryan led Krysty up the rungs, but the
main securing bolts seemed solid enough under the red lace of thick rust.
Heckler & Koch in hand, the one-eyed man had darted from shadow to shadow,
around the back of the towering mausoleum to the place he'd spotted during
their propaganda tour a vul-nerable window above a quiet alcove, filled with a
bundle of material.
Ryan had figured it would provide them with a soft, quiet landing when they
jumped down off the windowsill. He landed like a cat on the pile of discarded
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Axler,_James_-_DeathLands_9_Red_Equinox drapes, but his nostrils suddenly
filled with the stink of sweat and stale to-bacco.
As he began to move down to the floor he tripped over the old man, and dropped
his pistol.
It was too quick to be called a fight, more like a fum-bling scuffle. Ryan
knew immediately that he was up against a frail old man whose heart had leaped
into his throat with terror, nearly choking him.
In some predark vids, Ryan and his friends had been amused to see the way that
enemies were treated. Regard-less of what kind of threat they might pose, they
were generally left unconscious or tied up. Either way, they often escaped.
Things usually didn't happen that way in the Deathlands.
The old man was an enemy whose muffled yell could be enough to put a noose
around Ryan's and Krysty's necks.
As Sergei fought for survival, breath rattling in his throat like water down a
drain, Ryan clubbed him on the side of the head with his forearm, stunning
him. He locked the scrawny throat into the angle of his arm and used his other
hand to apply the strangling pressure. After thirty seconds he felt the body
jerk to stillness, the pulse that fluttered against his wrist halting,
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starting again for a handful of beats, and stopping.
"Ryan? You all right, lover?"
"Yeah. Got us another Russkie."
"Can't hear anyone else," she whispered, picking her way through the darkness
to stand beside Ryan. "You?"
He laughed quietly. "You know bastard well that if you can't hear anything I'm
not going to hear anything either."
To their surprise, the glass cases that held the American equipment and tools
weren't even locked. The simple han-dle and catch opened easily at a touch.
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