For Ryan Cawdor, the night was both busy and memorable. After their razor-edged escape from the museum, their flight had taken the companions around the rear of one of the single-story industrial units only a couple of blocks away. With the wails of sirens already ripping at the air, Ryan hadn't hesitated in setting his shoulder to the bolted door, springing the lock and knocking it back on rusting hinges.
It had only taken moments for all three of them to slip inside, wedging the door closed again. There, in the cold, damp darkness, they waited until they were sure the search had passed them by.
"Move at around one in the morning. Lift the tools and then..."
"And the flag."
"Sure, Rick. And the flag. If we can get away with it. Return here. They'll be looking for us to make a clean break. Might not search this close. Best plan I got. Then a couple of days later we lift a wag and head out for the gateway. You fix the door, Rick, and we all make the jump. How's that sound to you two? Good?"
"Better than good, lover," Krysty agreed. "If it works it sounds miraculous. If it doesn't, we all get to buy the farm together."
Rick fell asleep quickly, lying on one side, curled up like a young child, arms wrapped around himself. The streetlights outside the building came on with the night, and they cast a feeble glow through the cobwebbed glass. Krysty stood looking down at the slumbering man.
"Gaia! He's so ill, Ryan."
"I know it. Can you feel how bad he is?"
She knelt and touched him very softly on the forehead, her long gray fur coat sweeping the floor.
Krysty looked up at Ryan. "I think the shadow is closing in fast," she said quietly.
Rick stirred in his sleep, swallowing hard. His lips moved, but neither Ryan nor Krysty could make out any words.
"Soon?" Ryan asked.
She straightened, shaking her head. "Depends on what 'soon' means, lover. If you mean in the next hour... or if you mean in the next week or so."
"Let's take the next week or so."
She nodded. "Think so. Could be his sickness might go into remission again. But it looks to me like he's near the wire."
"If he loses the race before we get the door of the gateway fixed..." He didn't need to complete the sentence.
"Then we get to live what's left here in Moscow. I know that. So we best get those tools tonight and try and make sure Rick's fit enough for the journey back."
"And the flag," Ryan added.
"Oh yeah." Krysty smiled. "And the flag."
Rick had a kind of fit around midnight. He began to moan loudly, until Ryan found a length of cotton rag and jammed it between his jaws to silence him. This time they'd been able to distinguish words. Sentences. Rick had been babbling about his parents who had lived in the ville of New York, on what had been known as the Lower East Side.
"Jack can't bring home the beef and Naomi hates the street gangs. Fears all fears. The subway and Central Park, mugging and dark places and being alone among millions, and shadows and sudden noises. Rats and roaches and Republicans. Porn houses and there goes the neighborhood. Serial butchers and men who pulled out..."
That was when Ryan finally shut him up, fearful that his echoing screams would penetrate into the dark ville beyond.
But Rick wasn't done.
His body suddenly flexed and tensed, his legs jerking spasmodically, heels beating a rattling tattoo on the concrete floor.
"Hold him!" Ryan called. "Fireblast! Keep him quiet, Krysty!"
Despite Ryan's great strength and the freezie's exhausted frailty, the man was still proving too much of a handful. His arms thrashed, catching Ryan a glancing blow on the side of the face, making his teeth ring. Another punch hit him on the upper arm, numbing the muscle.
Rick's eyes were wide open, seeming to float in blood-filled pits, staring up sightlessly at the damp-stained ceiling. He kept rolling his head, trying to dislodge the gag. Bubbling, muffled screams tried to burst from his throat.
Ryan clung to him, keeping him pinned, coughing as their struggle kicked up clouds of acrid dust. Krysty stood for a moment, looking down at the two thrashing, tangled figures, trying to work out how best to help Ryan.
"What can?.." she began.
"Put him out," Ryan panted. "Quick. Out!"
Krysty didn't hesitate. She balanced on her left foot and swung back the right, kicking with a careful aim and considered force at the freezie. The toe of her dark blue leather boot hit him just behind the ear with a soft, dull thud.
He immediately went limp, allowing Ryan to roll away from him. "Thanks." He 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 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 under... 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 ruined house, southwest of here."
"Keep outta sight. Sure. Outta sight, man. Right on. Too much." He turned away, voice breaking. "Too fucking much."
The guard was an old man, closing in toward sixty, married 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 seething 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. Nobody 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 everbroken 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 vulnerable 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 drapes, but his nostrils suddenly filled with the stink of sweat and stale tobacco. 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 fumbling 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. Regardless 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, 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 handle and catch opened easily at a touch.
There'd been a number of discarded sacks and bags in the abandoned workshop where they'd left Rick. Ryan had brought one of the strongest, tucking it inside his long fur-trimmed coat. Now he loaded it with the various tools that the freezie had managed to point out to them. He placed them inside the bag one at a time, trying to avoid making any noise.
"Ready?" Krysty whispered.
"Nearly. Hear something?"
"Two of them. Don't think they're coming this way. Sounds like they're mebbe a floor above us."
"Done," he said, carefully snapping the case shut.
"The flag."
"Sure. Through here. Keep to the side of the halls, in the shadows."
"I know."
"I know you know." He grinned at her in the dim light, teeth gleaming.
Ryan had an almost perfect memory for places and directions. He could recall most of the villes he'd ever visited, and what the trails were like, in and out. Despite the twisting corridors and linked rooms and stairs, he led the way with unerring skill to the huge chamber where the flag was kept.
Before moving to the center of the room, he waited with Krysty in the pools of darkness that floated beneath the overhanging balconies, studying the glass case carefully.
"Can't seen any sec men," he whispered.
"Me neither."
The glass case wasn't locked and he opened it, wincing at the unpleasant stickiness of the slimed glass on his fingers. The material on the precious banner was dry and dusty as he touched it, lifting it off its pedestal.
He heard the faint click too late, the click that triggered the lights and the klaxons.