Ritual Chill

“Didn’t get there last time we were in these parts, but it’s supposed to be the only ville in these Gaia-forsaken parts,” Krysty explained. “Got to be better than what we’ve seen so far.”

“Not hard.” Jak shrugged.

Conversation fizzled out. They were too tired for anything other than basics. Mildred and Krysty tended to Doc. After a short while, he seemed to become a little more aware of his surroundings. Although still silent and staring unseeing around him, he responded to touch and allowed them to seat him upright to tend to the abrasions and cuts he had suffered during the flight from the storm.

Ryan, J.B. and Jak marked out territory, examining the mouth of the cave and venturing a few hundred yards down the dark abyss of the tunnel. It seemed to stay at a constant height after a certain point and showed no signs of harboring dangers.

“Where does it go?” J.B. asked. It was a rhetorical question, but Ryan answered, as much to confirm his ideas to himself as anything else.

“Figure it goes back to that big volcano we saw about two miles from here. When it got thrown up, I’d guess that this was formed by some kind of pressure blow-out, like a safety valve of some kind. That’d explain the hot air.”

“Then let’s just hope that the bastard doesn’t want to blow itself before the storm blows out, otherwise we get boiled or frozen,” J.B. muttered darkly.

Having marked out their parameters, the three men returned to where Doc was being tended by Krysty and Mildred.

“How’s he doing?”

“Better physically, but as for the rest…” Mildred shook her head sadly. “Wherever he is, it sure isn’t here.”

They set camp where Doc was resting. With nothing in the cave to make a fire, they used some of the few self-heats they had left, some from the last remains of the food stores in the redoubt and some that they had been carrying with them. The food was foul-tasting, but had the necessary nutrition. They were all too exhausted to care about anything except restoring some nourishment and getting some sleep, eating in silence, Mildred feeding Doc. The old man took some of the food, but most of it dribbled down his slack chin, his eyes moving from side to side without seeing.

I. ONLY I. HOW CAN I be taking sustenance when there is nothing but myself, and I know that I am not the one feeding me. There is only one answer. Whoever is feeding me does not exist, and I am not really eating. The food and the feeder are nothing more than mere illusions sent to torture me, to take me back to the hell from whence I have only recently managed to flee. But I shall not return. If that was sanity, then I wish nothing more than insanity. If it was insanity, then whatever truth sanity holds for me cannot surpass the horror of the mad places.

There is only I.

I… But who am I?

THEY TOOK TURNS SLEEPING, Ryan electing to take first watch as leader, allowing the others to rest. He kept one flashlight going, using the one that was beginning to fail until the flickering beam cast light no farther than a couple of yards past where they rested. He switched to the flashlight J.B. had given him, using it to sweep the area to the rear of the cave and to light the area at the mouth. All the same, he was careful to dip the beam so that it hit the rock immediately in front of the opening and didn’t shine out into the wastes beyond. It was unlikely there was anything out there to notice a sudden sweep of light should it appear, but he sure wasn’t about to take that chance.

A perverse aspect of this storm was that it seemed to have swept through them and burned out the melancholy and apathy that had permeated their bodies. Say what you like about the adrenaline rush of danger, and how much you’d like to avoid it, but it put things into perspective. Survival pissed all over introspection every time. It was just a shame that it had taken this storm and nearly buying the farm to wake them up.

Wake them up. Wake him up. Ryan was suddenly aware that his reverie had been the beginning of a descent into sleep. Jerking his head up, blinking heavily, he realized that he hadn’t been as aware as he would have liked. Outside, the sound of the howling wind had dropped and the snow shone white in the darkness of the night, the storm slowly subsiding and the blanket of white becoming a dappled curtain. Deceptively pretty to the eye, especially the eye that was trying to stay wakeful.

Ryan swept the area with the flashlight, the beam extending into the dark.

There was something that made him stop and flash back over the area he had already covered.

There was nothing. Something. Nothing… Was it his imagination, some hallucination brought on by his need to sleep?

“Ryan, what going on?” Jak raised his head, disturbed by the beam that had wavered and hit him as it passed over the ground. He was alert, having snapped into consciousness immediately. He frowned as he saw the torpor on Ryan’s face.

“Not sure… Thought I saw something,” Ryan said haltingly. “It was back there, but…”

Jak scrambled to his feet. He could see that Ryan was almost losing consciousness as he tried to speak. The one-eyed man had pushed himself to the limit and beyond, and it was now catching up with him.

Jak took the flashlight as Ryan let it droop. Now that Jak was awake, every fiber of his being was telling him he could rest, even though he was trying to will himself to stay conscious.

“Ryan, sleep now. Let me take over.”

Ryan could hardly bring himself to assent before letting his eye close and the warmth of sleep begin to envelop him. Jak let him settle into a prone position before hunkering down to take over watch. He frowned as he scanned the darkness beyond the scope of the flashlight beam. There was nothing visible, but it wasn’t like Ryan to see things that weren’t there—fatigue or no fatigue. Yet he couldn’t catch sight of anything.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Jak cast a glance toward the cave entrance. The storm was subsiding, and perhaps by the time they had all rested, and the daylight had come, they would be able to move.

So why couldn’t he shake the feeling that, despite the evidence to the contrary, Ryan had been right when he saw something in the dark maw of the tunnel?

Jak rose to his feet, moving a few yards into the depths of the cave, throwing the flashlight beam farther into the blackness that swallowed it up hungrily. He wouldn’t go farther, leave the sleeping companions unguarded, but he was torn. Something was nagging at him. Something that had no reason but still irritated like an unscratched itch.

Shaking his head, backing up to where they lay, he settled down to keep watch. Eyeing the lightening sky outside, he judged it only a few hours until daybreak. They should be safe…should be.

JAK WAS STILL and silent. Nothing escaped him. Particularly the gradual change in temperature. From deep in the caves the air began to heat up, the strength of the current increasing exponentially. He looked toward the mouth of the cave. The storm had almost subsided, the darkness had almost broken into dawn. Yet it was still night, there was still a squall, and the companions needed rest. Would fate allow them enough time to recover before the volcano a few miles away belched enough hot air—mebbe even lava—to engulf them and make staying here an impossibility?

It was a chance that they couldn’t afford to take. Jak rose swiftly, moving to wake J.B. first, as the Armorer had rested longer than Ryan. It was as Jak crouched over J.B.’s supine form that he froze: there was something else on the air. The heat made the musk all the stronger and it was distant but growing closer with every breath. Dogs. Perhaps those that had strayed from settlements, been driven away from trappers when they had been decimated by nature or the Russians some time back. They’d be wild now, and presumably ended up in the caves seeking shelter from the storm, as had the companions, wandering farther down into the tunnels and caves, seeking the heat.

Now they were being driven back by that very heat as it intensified.

Jak shook J.B. roughly. The Armorer jolted awake, mumbling softly and fumbling for his spectacles.

“What—”

Jak silenced him with a hand across the mouth. “Trouble. Wild dogs. Near. Wake others.” And before J.B. had a chance to fully take in what the albino was saying, he had moved on to Krysty, shaking her in a similar fashion.

There were times when Jak’s use of words verged on the elliptical, but at least at this moment his meaning was clear. As was J.B.’s head, shaking it to clear the fug of sleep before he scrambled to his feet, reaching out to wake Mildred. He whispered a few words to her as she emerged from her slumber. It was as well that she slept lightly, needing as she did to think on her feet.

She had Doc to worry about. The old man was sleeping now, but in his current state there was little difference between Doc asleep and Doc awake. He was in no fit state to defend himself if trouble appeared. She moved over and shook him by the shoulder. His eyes snapped open instantly and he looked directly at her.

“I had hoped that you would have vanished and my terrible dreams would be at an end, but I can see that I am to be further tried by whatever agency deigns to—”

“Can it, Doc,” she snapped, glad to see him less catatonic but in no mood to listen to one of his soliloquies. “Whatever you think I am, just know that you’ve got to defend yourself.”

“I see, I—” This time he cut himself off, aware of the baying and skitter of claws on rock that began to reach the companions from deep in the tunnel. Because of the low roof, there was little echo to the sound and it was hard to tell if the animals were a few yards or a few hundred yards away. The only thing for sure was that the stench of their musk began to grow stronger, permeating their nostrils, lodging in their clothes and that they had to be prepared to fight within seconds.

Doc clammed up as though someone had clamped his jaw shut. Somewhere within his mind, an instinct for defense took over. Whatever space his head was inhabiting at this point in time, it had been pushed to one side by the will to survive.

While Doc was having no trouble adapting, Ryan was experiencing the opposite. Jak shook him hard, pounded at him, but the one-eyed man woke slowly. He had exhausted himself to such an extent that his aching limbs and weary muscles demanded respite, and the warm embrace of sleep refused to unclasp from around his mind. He opened his eye and saw Jak, lit from beneath by the flashlight he was holding so that his pale face looked all the more ghostly, but could not take in what the albino was saying. The words came as a jumble, even though they were sparing. Jak repeated himself, more urgently, but Ryan’s attention was wandering and his eye roamed around the dark cavern, taking in that there was a lot of sudden movement, but not taking in why until he caught a flash of movement beyond the light, shapes shifting in the darkness that made the black move as a sentient beast. That and the smell that filled his lungs, the viscous smell of warm fur and sweating muscle.

That was when the instincts kicked in, the adrenaline flooded through him and, despite the fatigue that had been winning the battle only a few moments before, he scrambled to his feet, pushing Jak aside, reaching for the panga sheathed on his thigh. He had only one thing on his mind now—the shifting black was resolving itself into the shapes, sounds and smells of an attacking pack of wild dogs. Why now, why them? No time to think, only to act.

Ironic, then, that his sudden reaction to danger was to plunge them even further into trouble.

Not fully functioning, Ryan had moved too quickly, too rashly. As he came to his feet, fumbling for the panga sheath, he knocked Jak backward. The albino had excellent balance under usual circumstances, but the speed of Ryan’s reaction, coming from a man who had been almost comatose only a few moments before, had taken him off guard. Jak slipped on the carpet of moss, only for a fraction of a second, but enough for him to shift his grip on the flashlight as he adjusted his balance. His thumb glanced over the switch and the flashlight was extinguished. The cavern was plunged into darkness.

The dogs were now upon them. Crazed with fear by whatever had driven them from the depths of the tunnels, they had no other desire than to escape and would rip to pieces anything that got in their way. Theirs wasn’t the mien of creatures who were on the hunt. Deep within the tunnels and caves, where they had retreated for warmth and shelter, something was happening that had served to terrify them and to drive them out into the cold of the outside world. The sudden increase in the intensity of the air flow and the corresponding rise in heat from deep within the tunnel system suggested that the volcano had begun to spark into life.

The dogs were crazed with fear, every animal awareness telling them to flee. And now they were faced with a pack of hostile humans who blocked their way. Humans who were, for the most part, handicapped by the sudden loss of light.

The slavering dogs, dripping at the jaws from panic and the exertion of their flight, were guided more by their olfactory sense than by vision. They could smell the companions as they clustered in the center of the cavern, attempting to find their bearings by touch and smell alone, the sudden descent of the black curtain of darkness leaving them no time to adjust to any kind of wan light or moving shapes within the dark.