James Axler - Deathlands 43 - Dark Emblem Page 6

  Then came the large tub, made of metal, fabric and naugahide.

  Then the underwater pump and the distribution system.

  Mildred recognized the system other cryo special- ists had coined "Squid." After a person was placed inside the tub, a couple of hundred pounds of ice were added along with numerous buckets of water- then with a flip of the switch the squid would start circulating the water very rapidly around the body. The process dropped the temperature much more quickly than just packing a person in blocks of ice.

  The IV lines already in her arm for the surgery on the cyst were now being used again, this time to assist in the cryo preparation process. That much Mildred recognized from the procedure she had carried out on others personally. An assortment of medications were being dumped into her bloodstream: first heparin to prevent blood clots; potassium chloride or phenobarbital of some kind; other chemicals to depress the brain metabolism so that the cells could stay alive in a less active state; something to keep the acidity level of the pH proper; calcium channel blockers to prevent calcium from traveling into the cells and starting a number of chemical reactions that typically do a lot of brain damage.

  "God Almighty," Mildred thought, reeling, her heart pounding in terror as she recognized the procedure she was beginning to endure. Why was she still awake?

  When the scalpel fell on her leg, the pain was excruciating. The clinical part of her doctor's mind noted her friends were doing a femoral bypass, opening up the femoral artery and vein in the leg and hooking up a pump to flush her entire vascular system. Victoria Blue was still with her, but new cast members were being added to the operating stage, one by one. First, a thoracic surgeon came in, leading a team of twelve with carts of instruments and med gear. The surgeon looked down and without any warning shoved a scalpel into her chest.

  Bach was playing on the sound system in the room as he proceeded to do a textbook example of open-heart surgery while the paralyzed and helpless Mildred Wyeth watched herself be sliced open.

  She knew why. The point was to get tight control of the circulation. This was to make sure if any clots developed around her heart, there was still control to get the fluid to the brain. She also knew what was coming next, as all of the water in her body was replaced with a glycerol-based mix of fluids to prevent damage from occurring during the freezing process.

  For obviously, in cryo storage, any water or moisture turned to ice.

  After the perfusion with glycerol was complete Mildred was lifted and placed in a chilled bath of silicone oil. The oil was pumped through dry ice, and once she was secure they left her, returning after her body had dropped to the temperature of the ice. She was placed in a special tank wrapped in a sleeping bag and in an aluminum pod for protection. Liquid nitrogen was sprayed in, and she dropped to minus 196 degrees C.

  Then she was tucked away in a stainless-steel tank, vacuum insulated, and held in limbo, her mind still screaming, suspended at that temperature until science caught up someday.

  But the subjects weren't supposed to be conscious, more alive than dead, seeing yet not dreaming. A single tear crept from her left eye and froze a shining trail on her cheek. If Mildred had been able to see her face, she knew the color of the tear would be blue.

  DEAN WAS DREAMING. He was back in the bucking hold of a boat, caught in the center of a violent storm. He could look at the bulkheads, and he knew he'd been there before and something triple-bad was going to happen, but there wasn't a thing he could do about it except sit, wait and watch, hoping the events wouldn't follow their earlier pattern; that above, his father and J.B. would be able to steer clear of the danger, the coming danger that Krysty was now warning.

  The redhead could feel it coming, she was saying, just like she'd said the first time.

  "Something's wrong, something's bad wrong. Got to warn Ryan. There's danger."

  Loud crashes of thunder kept drowning out Krysty's voice, but Dean could still read her lips, and he knew already what she was telling them.

  Then came a final crash of thunder, and everyone in the crowded section was thrown back, and then heaved forward as the yacht yawed from the impact. And this time when the explosion went off and the front half of the nose of The Patch was nigh high- vaporized, bringing in a crushing flood of blue-black seawater, he didn't manage to scramble his way to the upper deck and safety.

  This time, Mildred didn't grab a handful of the boy's shirttail and pull him upright.

  This time, like Krysty, who'd been thrown off her booted feet and hurled into the thrashing waters, and like Jak, who'd been tossed forward down the narrow passageway and directly into the newly created hole in the bulkhead, Dean also went tumbling like a dropped bit of refuse into the ocean blue.

  Dean took blank note of how one of the toe tips of Krysty's cowboy boots caught the light and flickered like a faraway star, a pale wink of blue and gone before he fell into deep oblivion.

  J.B. WAS DREAMING. He was on an elevated mountain peak somewhere in Colorado, the air crisp in his lungs. When he exhaled, small clouds of steam puffed out. His glasses were slightly misted over with condensation from the heat of his body and the cool of the air, but when he reached to wipe them clean he was perplexed to find he wasn't wearing his specs.

  The misty covering on his eyes that obscured his vision was coming from inside his own body. Triple-strange to overheat from the inside. He'd have to ask Mildred about that. He might be getting sick, and even the mildest of infections could prove fatal in the uninhabitable Deathlands.

  "Hey, J.B.," Trader said.

  The Armorer turned to take in the old man. The

  Trader looked good. Damn good. Last time J.B. had seen his former mentor, the Trader was showing his age and then some. Now, he looked as healthy and robust as the day J.B. and he had first met, all those years ago outside J.B.'s boyhood home of Cripple Creek near the Rockies.

  The Trader's grizzled salt-and-pepper hair stood on his scalp like an angry porcupine, and his big cigar was firmly clamped between his teeth. J.B. could smell the pungent scent of burning tobacco and that, too, helped assure him of his friend's identity, for the Trader had always smoked the same putrid weed.

  The older man's red-brown complexion was visible under the days of stubble across his broad face. His powerful build was unstooped by disease or age, and his trusty Armalite rifle was slung over his shoulder in a casual manner, but ready to be unlimbered and fired in an instant if needed.

  J.B. was glad to see him. "Hey, Trader," he said. "What brings you over?"

  "Got something for you," Trader rumbled, his voice like a misfiring diesel engine. He reached into a coat pocket, his own long coat lined with even more hiding places than J.B.'s scuffed leather jacket. "Found them back on War Wag One. Thought you could use a pair."

  He held out a small box covered in black felt about the size of the palm of his hand. The hinged lid was closed. A golden line where top met bottom glinted in the sunlight.

  "Didn't have to do that," J.B. said warily. He wasn't a man who liked to owe favors, not even to the Trader.

  "No, I didn't, but I did," Trader replied, his gruff voice colored with annoyance. "Now show some respect and say thank-you."

  "Thanks. I think. What is it?" J.B. asked.

  "Go ahead," Trader urged. "Open the box."

  The Armorer reached out and took the package, holding it in his left hand while using a dirty fingernail of his right to flip open the top.

  "Dark night!" he bellowed in shock. J.B. wasn't the sort to startle at a prank, but the Trader had certainly put a scare into him with the contents of the innocuous little box.

  Inside the case were two human eyes, eyelids attached, severed at the optic nerves. One eye was light blue, the other nearly cobalt. Some stray drops of red had splattered on the interior pink lining of the box. Gory, yes, but what had elicited the bellow from J.B. was that both of the eyes shifted and peered up at him.

  "Goddammit! What kind of shit are you trying to pull, Tr
ader?" J.B. demanded in a loud voice. He looked up to find the larger man had miraculously vanished. He slammed the small container shut, locking away the dismembered eyeballs in their twin puddles of grue.

  A small scrap of paper had fallen from the box when J.B. opened it. He leaned down and picked it up from the dirt.

  "/'// be keeping an eye out for you," the message read.

  J.B. wasn't amused.

  "So," Trader said from behind, "you ready to fly?"

  The Armorer turned to find the Trader standing next to a sky wag, a great wooden and canvas bird with biwings and single propeller. "You like her?" the older man asked, before going into a series of hacking coughs. He cleared his throat and hawked up a mouthful of blood and phlegm, spirting it off to one side.

  "No way. Get up in that thing, hit a hell-wind and it'll dump you out on your ass," J.B. replied, walking away. "Thanks for the present."

  "Good day for flying," Trader called back to J.B. "Not a cloud in the sky."

  He was right. The sky was as open as a traveling gaudy's front door-and in J.B.'s mind, about as uninviting.

  "Step in, we'll go for a spin," Trader said, appearing in front of the Armorer.

  "You're no pilot," J.B. said, starting to back away.

  "The hell you say!"

  J.B. continued to back up, and pushed against something. He spun and damn if he wasn't seated in the plane now, the Trader in the second seat behind him with the controls.

  And the sky went from sky blue to electric, crackling with lightning. The hell-winds J.B. had men- tioned came sweeping in, the upper atmosphere of much of the world permanently damaged in the nuclear battle between the superpowers.

  "Guess we'd better bail," Trader said mildly, standing in his seat and giving J.B. a two-fingered salute.

  "Bail?"

  The Trader pointed to his back. "Parachute. Insurance policy. That's predark slang for covering your ass."

  The big man leaped out, clearing the plane. Even as the craft began to shudder in the bucking winds, uncontrolled, J.B. peered down and watched the chute open, jerking the Trader's hanging body in a spastic movement.

  The Armorer reached into a pocket and took out a cigar, biting down hard on the end.

  Hell of a way to die.

  J.B. fell, plunging to his doom, surrounded by blue.

  Chapter Five

  Doc Tanner had started the mat-trans jump with a clear mind and a level head. As far as he could determine, he wasn't dreaming. If he had been awake, he would undoubtedly have remarked on this as being "most unusual." Traditionally during a mat-trans jaunt, Doc was cursed with Stygian nightmares of such dire calamities he could hardly withstand the mental assault. When he eventually returned to consciousness, his entire body always ached from thrashing on the floor of the chamber in semiremembered agony.

  This time was different.

  This time, he was happy to note, he slumbered peacefully.

  Doc lay in a feather bed with a sweet-smelling pillow stuffed with fresh straw under his head and a second one gripped in his hands. A smiling crescent moon shone down on him through an open bedroom window, and a gentle summer breeze wafted over his slumbering form, cooling him as he slept.

  Then he heard a voice. A woman's voice.

  "Emily?" he asked.

  "No, Krysty," came the reply.

  For brief seconds, Doc was confused-was he in bed with another woman? "Howling calamities!" he said in disbelief, fearing for his marriage.

  "Right, Doc," Krysty replied, but he couldn't hear the words.

  "You must speak up," he said impatiently. "I cannot hear you."

  "Where's Lori?" the Titian-haired beauty yelled in reply, but again, even with raising her voice and calling out as loudly as possible, Doc could barely hear her voice. The words were faint, as if she were standing far, far away on a distant mountain peak and calling into a valley.

  "What?" Doc answered, in a sane, calm, rational speaking voice. "What did you say?"

  "Lori! Where is she?" Krysty was closer now. Doc could see her flushed face, smell her sweat. She had been running, or involved in some sort of physical activity. A guilty flash of lust crept through his loins, for after all, he was in his bedchamber and dressed only in a nightshirt, and one of the most ravishing and sexy women he'd ever laid eyes on was standing right next to his bed, wearing a skintight shut and breathing heavily.

  "Snap out of it, Doc. Your mind's wandering again."

  "Um, my apologies."

  "Where's Lori?" she asked again.

  "I...I do not know, my dear," he replied lamely, feeling ashamed of himself for looking at Krysty in an unpure manner and eager to shift blame for his own feelings of guilt. "We-we got separated."

  "Well, she's a big girl now. Hope she can look after herself!" Krysty cried, punching Doc easily in the shoulder with a left jab, and then she turned, her long hair fanning out behind as she ran away from the coming storm flashing softly on the horizon.

  The bedroom was gone. No walls, no windows. No smiling cartoon moon looking down.

  Doc was alone once more.

  Doc was dreaming.

  Yes, a dream. Despite his earlier beliefs to the contrary, that was the only answer. Yes. Logic dictated his conscious mind was sleeping while his unconscious plundered his brain, skirting the damaged areas marked Do Not Enter and Condemned and Warning! DANGER! for a change, and, instead, pulling out pieces of memory long in storage, kept there if needed, locked away if not.

  Lori, young Lori. Despite the dream Krysty's assurances, Doc knew Lori wasn't a big girl. In fact, despite the strip-queen body and the mounds of antagonism she routinely spouted, she was even more immature than young Dean.

  Dean had never met Lori. She had passed on before Doc made Ryan's son's acquaintance.

  So.

  Damn the philosophy lesson and the code he knew he was trying to make sense of-instead, he would try to deal with the stone-hard facts. Doc knew he was in the middle of a jump dream, his memories of the past unbottled and poured into his skull in a vol- atile mix courtesy of the blender provided by the frightening forces of the mat-trans experience.

  Ignore it, he finally decided. Go back to sleep.

  Doc closed his eyes and nodded his head and was surprised to find his eyelids weren't functioning- either that or he could see right through them, since he was looking down at his hands instead of the back of his eyelids.

  "No, not mine," he whispered, for Doc was flabbergasted to find his hands were young again, and the veins were bold and purple and the muscles underneath the taut skin were pulsating within their fleshy outer covering, muscles that now enabled him to have a bold strong grip, as if modified with tensile cables of steel. The liver spots of artificial age thrust cruelly upon his weathered skin had vanished. His threadbare garments-trousers, shirt, coat-all were also whole and new. The felt of his black frock coat was brushed and unfrayed. The leather of his boots crinkled like new brown paper and shone like wet vinyl in the flickering flames.

  Flames?

  A tall stovepipe hat stood erect on his head, though Doc couldn't recall wearing such a chapeau more than once or twice, and even then, only because the headgear was a gift, and he'd never liked the thing, feeling that it made a mockery of him and goodness, but wasn't it terribly hot in this latest splotch of mind vomit.

  The shock of returned youth fell away as Doc realized he was surrounded by fire.

  "By the Three Kennedys!" he boomed, and the voice in his ears was like freshly thrown thunder. He'd have to speak loud and plain to be heard here; a chem storm was brewing, flashing pink lightning against the darkness of the night sky. The air smelled acidic and alien, like the laboratories of his college days.

  And then, he knew. He remembered this place. It was Snakefish, California, a mere scrap of a once prosperous state decimated by the sub-launched nuclear missiles from Soviet submarines off the West Coast. It was the home of Baron Edgar Brennan, who'd either taken or been given the comical
name of a long-dead folksy cowboy actor, according to Mildred Wyeth. The physician had heard of Edgar and his strange ville secondhand, since she was still in cryo sleep during the time of that adventure, but Doc had assured her she hadn't missed much.

  Baron Brennan had set himself up in high style thanks to a hidden cache of gasoline...but he was an old man, and in a tale as ancient as the world, youth overtook age. His subjects in Snakefish had turned against him. Ultimately he died with his face in the dirt, shot in the back by a sawed-off shotgun, a double-barreled charge of death that nearly cut him in two, chilling him messily, if not instantly.

  Way of the world. A baron fell, another rose to take his place. Like a well-swung scythe aimed at tall stalks of wheat in the field, if they were cut down, more would come back.