Northstar Rising Page 23

  "This" was a small, heavy egg-shaped object that had a colored band around one end. Jorund, surprised, reached automatically and grabbed it in his right hand, still holding the scattergun in his other.

  Without another word, Ryan threw himself to the ground, pressed his hands over his ears and opened his mouth wide. Hardly any of the Vikings moved, though Erik and two of the younger men reacted quickly enough.

  The karl blinked, bewildered, and brought the object nearer to his eyes to try to work out what it was.

  J.B. had set the fuse on the implode gren, at Ryan's request, to a minimal five seconds.

  "Why do—" Jorund began.

  The gren detonated.

  The force was directed inward, creating a brief but devastating vacuum. Ryan, squinting behind his arms, winced at the effect of the gren. It sucked the skin off the Norseman's face, sucked flesh from bone, sucked eyes, which popped from their sockets, sucked lips from teeth. Arteries and veins were destroyed by the unimaginable force of the small gren, and tendons and ligaments snapped like whipcord.

  Jorund didn't have time to scream. He had barely enough time to die.

  The implode worked over a small area, but its power became translated into a more conventional explosive force. Several of the nearby Vikings went down, yelping in pain, bleeding immediately and profusely from eyes, ears, noses and mouths.

  Ready for the shattering effects, Ryan was up on his feet in a fraction of frozen time, his rifle leveled at his hip. He looked grimly at the horrific sight of Jorund's body, some residual nervous reflex keeping it on its feet and staggering toward the river. His skull was bare bone, streaked with smears of blood and gristle, and one hand was also fleshless. The other still gripped the shotgun, its stock splintered and stripped.

  As Ryan and the surviving Vikings watched, the corpse took a last tottering step and splashed into the muddied water. For a moment it floated there, arms and legs twitching spasmodically. Then there was a flurry in the wide, slow stream, and the water began to boil with a frantic, crimson feeding frenzy. Ryan's fears about swimming in the river were all too graphically justified.

  "Here, brother," J.B. called, appearing from the fringe of the jungle, his Heckler & Koch rifle at the ready. Jak was on one side of him, Krysty on the other. Doc and Mildred stood just behind them.

  Barely a dozen of the Norsemen were on their feet, the others still moaning in pain and shock from the implode. Erik seemed to have assumed command of the ragged remainder.

  "You win, outlander. We are leaderless and quite beaten."

  "Looks that way. I swear I'm sorry there's been so much chilling. It wasn't of our choosing."

  The young man nodded. "I know that, Ryan Cawdor. When the runes of life are cast, then we are but the creatures of the gods in this matter of life."

  "Our quarrel's over?"

  "Aye."

  "So we can pass through?" Krysty asked.

  The young Norseman hesitated. "You know a way to get out from this part of the land?"

  Ryan nodded. "Yeah."

  "Take us. Take us who are left and our women and children, before we all sleep the long darkness from which there is no wakening."

  "Sorry. We can't. Where we go, we go alone. Sorry."

  Mildred stepped to the front of the group. "If you think I'm the wicked witch of the west, then forget all this. But I can truly give you good advice—advice that will save the lives of some of you."

  "Some?"

  She smiled at him, a little sadly. "A few weeks earlier I might have said all of you. Now, there's some with bone-deep sickness, carcinomas breeding away like maggots in rotten fish. But there's still time to save some. Move away down the coast, away from the radiation."

  Erik smiled at her through his broken teeth. "We must go how far?"

  "Fifty miles, at least. And find some good fresh water."

  "And some will live?"

  "Yes, son, yes. Some will live. If you're lucky, then most will live."

  "It shall be." He turned to his comrades. "Come, give help to those who are hurt. Let's say farewell and be away, and meet perhaps some happier day."

  BEFORE MAKING THEIR WAY to the gateway, the companions rested in the redoubt and ate and drank their fill. They took a full day and night to ready themselves for the jump.

  J.B. had taken Mildred into the section of the redoubt where the arms and armaments were stored. He encouraged her to pick out a good, workmanlike blaster for herself.

  She chose a Czech six-shot revolver, the ZKR 551, which was based on designs originating in the Zbrojovka Works at Brno. Specially designed by the Koucky brothers, the ZKR 551 was chambered to take the Smith & Wesson .38 round and had a solid frame side rod ejector and a short fall thumb cocking hammer.

  Mildred picked it because it had been a leading weapon in small-arms shooting competitions, and she liked the balance. And also, as J.B. pointed out, because the blaster was a serious man-stopper.

  EVEN THOUGH they'd been away only a few days, there were clear signs of deterioration within the gateway's main control rooms. Several sections of panel lights were out, and one of the big comp-tape spools had broken.

  It was a manifestation of something Ryan had noticed several times. The gateways, with their reliable nuke-power units, were self-sustaining and had been kept ticking over, unused, for a century. But when a jump was made, it seemed to trigger a process of disintegration within the delicate machinery.

  "Is this going to work, Doc?" Mildred asked as they entered the red-walled chamber.

  "More or less, my dear."

  "More or less! Jesus, didn't any of you guys ever see a movie called The Fly! No? So forget it. Let's go."

  "Everyone sitting down ready?" Ryan asked, glancing around the arma-glass, six-sided room. "This is going to make your head spin, Mildred," he warned.

  "I rode Colossus Three at Magic Mountain, buddy. So this ain't nothing. Shut the door, it's getting too hot in here."

  Ryan slammed the door and sat next to Krysty, resting his head against the cool glass. He stretched his legs in front of him as the metal disks in floor and ceiling began to glow and the faint shreds of white mist began to appear around them.

  "We won again, lover," Krysty whispered, holding his hand in hers.

  "Times like this I'm not sure I can tell the difference between winning and losing anymore," he replied, feeling the first tingling of darkness at the front of his brain.

  "We're alive, lover. And that means we won."

  "Yeah," he agreed. Or thought he did.

  There was blackness.

  Blackness.

  Black.