Axler, James - Deathlands 12 - Latitude Zero

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What you done, bitch?' Larry asked.

His hand reached inside his plaid shirt and came out holding a straight-edge razor.

"You're dead, you murdering slut!"

In the confined space, Krysty knew that the man's bulk and raw power could tell

against her.

The steel edge began to weave a lightning pattern of hissing death in front of

Krysty's face, pressing her back a half step at a time. Larry was breathing hard,

sweat glistening on his forehead and around his open mouth.

Mildred was sitting on her bed, ready to use her blaster if things went far enough

against Krysty. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, Krysty saw the black

woman tear open the front of her blouse, revealing her breasts.

"This is for you, boy," she called. Larry Ballinger's gaze wandered to the black

woman's chest. It was the opening that Krysty had been hoping for. Taking

advantage of Larry's inattention, she stepped forward, flexing the powerful

muscles in her thighs. She swung her right foot upward with all of her strength.

Larry Ballinger's numbed fingers released the razor. He opened his mouth to

scream and yellow vomit dribbled down his chin. His hands were reaching for his

groin to try to stem the terrible pain, but the blackness came surging up and

washed him into unconsciousness first.

A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE

TORONTO. NEW YORK • LONDON • PARIS • AMSTERDAM •

STOCKHOLM -HAMBURG

ATHENS • MILAN • TOKYO • SYDNEY

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Latitude Zero

James Axler

I'm grateful every single day for the miraculous luck that brought us together.

Now and for always, this is for Liz.

First edition April 1991 ISBN 0-373-62512-X

LATITUDE ZERO

this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other

means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying

and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden

without the permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill

Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the

author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or

names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown

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to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

® are Trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office

and in other countries.

Printed in U.S.A.

With its notorious extremes of terrain and temperature, the area of southern Texas

known as Big Bend is the only place on earth where one can witness both

Purgatory and Paradise in a single afternoon.

From Water and Stone, by J. McKinley Thompson

Chapter One

BEHIND RYAN CAWDOR and his five companions, the apocalyptic pillar of

swirling red and orange dust rose thousands of feet into the clear sky. The choking

cloud contained the disintegrated ruins of a long-hidden redoubt that had

honeycombed the mountain, the remains of which still towered above the friends.

The complex had been destroyed by a self-terminate device placed there by some

long-dead hand nearly a hundred years ago, before the brief and savage nuclear

war that had ravaged the United States of America, turning it into what was now

simply called Deathlands.

Within the redoubt had been one of the rare mat-trans devices known as gateways,

which would have enabled Ryan and the others to make an instantaneous jump

from that particular redoubt to another, maybe a thousand miles away.

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With its destruction came the bitter awareness that the companions were stranded

in that bleak desert land with little food or water, and no sign of any semblance of

civilization as far as the eye could see.

J. B. Dix, the armorer of the group, was busily checking figures off his micro-

sextant, trying to find out where they were. Ryan wiped grit from his one good

eye and looked around, guessing that they could be somewhere in the Southwest.

But the nuking of the year 2001 had done more than wipe out all the cities and

virtually all the people. It had also produced almost indescribable changes in the

formation of the country. Half of California had slithered into the Pacific;

mountains had fallen and burst up again five hundred miles away; there were

monstrous steaming lagoons filled with water so acidic it would separate flesh

from bone; there were forests where there had been deserts and there were deserts

that had once been rolling acres of fertile grazing land.

"New Mexico, I think. Not all that far from the border with old Texas." J.B. wiped

his wire-rimmed spectacles on his shirtsleeve and looked across at Ryan.

"Don't know this region all that well. We were here with Trader, ten years or more

ago. There's plenty of old hot spots around here."

Out of habit he glanced down at the miniature rad counter buttoned to his coat. It

was showing a pale yellow light that barely shaded above the green of safety. It

showed there was some kind of radiation within twenty miles or so, or a milder

area a little nearer. The rad counters weren't all that accurate or reliable.

Mildred Wyeth had been sitting on the ground, resting her head on her hand.

"Sure is warm after that dank, cold dungeon. I haven't been so cold since they

froze me."

The black woman had been in her midthirties when minor abdominal surgery had

led to complications. She'd been one of the leading experts in the United States on

the relatively new science of cryogenics and cryosurgery, and had been one of a

number of people whose bodies had been frozen in the hope of reviving and

curing them at some unspecified future date. Mildred had been thawed out by

Ryan and the others when they'd found the cryo-center in what had once been

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called Minnesota.

Apart from the column of dust slowly drifting away, the sky was clear of any

threatening chem clouds. Ryan glanced once at the battered comm dish—covered

in stones and boulders—that had saved their lives when the self-destruct blew out

the redoubt. The area for several hundred yards around was scattered with similar

rocks, most no bigger than a baseball, a few of them the size of a house.

Jak Lauren, the albino teenager, caught Ryan's look. "Fucked without dish," he

said, trying to brush the thick dust from his mane of pure white hair.

"We'd have been in serious trouble if it'd run away with the spoon, wouldn't we?"

said Krysty Wroth, grinning.

"What spoon?"

The woman's grin broadened. "Didn't anyone ever tell you rhymes when you were

young, Jak? Mother Sonja told me that poem when I was a young girl in Harmony

ville."

"Never young," the boy replied.

"I recall it," Doc Tanner boomed in his rich, mellow voice. "The dish running off

with the spoon and the cat playing upon a violin and a heifer leaping across the

lunar landscape. A diminutive canine that found the entire subject fit for

considerable merriment. Ah, yes. I do remember it well, Krysty."

Doc Tanner was, in some ways, the oldest member of the group of friends.

He was born Theophilus Algernon Tanner in South Strafford, Vermont, on

February 14, 1868, and married Emily Chandler on June 17,1891. They had two

children—Rachel and Jolyon.

In November of 1896, Doc Tanner was trawled forward as part of an experiment

in time travel-Operation Cerberus, part of Overproject Whisper, which was itself a

key segment of the Totality Concept. The efforts to use gateways for chron jumps

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were horrendously and cruelly unsuccessful. Their targets included a leading

judge and a famous writer, each of whom vanished in mysterious circumstances.

Subjects Crater and Bierce, as they were known on the files of Cerberus, failed to

make it to the twentieth century. Though Doc's brains were sometimes a little

scrambled, he arrived safely in 1998.

But he didn't prove to be a sufficiently docile guinea pig for the scientists.

Eventually, to remove the disruptive Victorian, they sent him forward, pushing

him nearly a hundred years into the future.

There, after some peculiarly unpleasant adventures, Doc was rescued by Ryan

Cawdor, and had been traveling with him ever since.

He looked to be close to seventy, with straggling silver hair and a lined face, and

wore the same old-fashioned clothes that he'd been wearing when trawled.

Ryan and Krysty had once tried to work out with Doc just how old he really was.

By one count he was only in his midthirties, about the same age as Ryan and J.B.

By another count he was somewhere around two hundred and twenty years old.

"Not surprising my mind becomes somewhat addled at times," he'd commented.

"North?" J.B. queried. "Looks like some more mountains. But the land should get

greener up to the north."

"East's acid lagoons and swamps," Jak informed them. "And East's what was

home."

Ryan spoke quietly. "South."

"Why, lover?" Krysty asked. "South looks like a lot more heat and sand."

"Remember what Rick said about there being two cryo-centers that he knew

about?"

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"One was where you defrosted me," Mildred said.

"The other was supposed to be someplace in the south of Texas near the Grandee.

Rick called it Big Bend."

Doc coughed and tapped on the dry earth with the ferrule of his sword stick.

"I know something about Big Bend. When I was living in the nineties, I met a fine

girl, Galadriel Okie, a reporter. She was a great one for what was called

backpacking. She visited Big Bend several times and said it was one of the

quietest of the national parks."

"South Texas, Doc?" Ryan asked.

"Indeed, my dear fellow, indeed. I recall that it took its nomenclature from the

large loop of the Rio Grande, what you now call the Grandee. She also was much

incensed when the government took over some of the parks in the nineties and

closed them for purposes of national security."

"Including Big Bend, Doc?" Krysty queried.

"I believe so. Yes, I'm sure. Galadriel wrote an article for the Washington Post on

the subject. 'Save Big Mac.' No! I mean, Big Bend. It did scant good, I fear."

"It fits," J.B. said quietly. "Want to go freezie hunting again?"

"Why not? Mildred worked out well, didn't she? Could strike lucky again."

Ryan was conscious that his itch to talk to survivors from the past wasn't logical,

but it still nagged at him in the waking hours of the night to wonder why a

civilized and reasonably affluent world would allow itself to be blown apart.

Maybe someone, somewhere, would one day be able to provide the answer.

Mildred was running her fingers through the tiny, tight plaits on the top of her

head. "Glad you think I worked out well, Ryan. Thanks, man. Praise indeed!

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Maybe next semester I'll get an even higher grade from you."

"Sorry, Mildred. You know what I mean. Just seems that if we aren't that far off

from Big Bend, we should go down and take a look. Anyone else got any feelings

on it?"

Jak was occupied with picking up small pebbles, flicking them in the air, and

jabbing at them with the hardened edge of his palm. He caught Ryan's question

and glanced sideways, shrugging his shoulders. "Don't give fuck. There's same as

here."

"Guess he's right," Krysty agreed. "Long as we can get food and drink, I'll go

along to Big Bend with everyone else. Like the sound of the name."

Doc also shrugged. "I was going to the store for cigarettes, but I'll go to Big

Bend."

Mildred sniffed. "In some ways I'd kind of like to go back home to Lincoln,

Nebraska. But… everyone's long, long dead. Children of friends are dead.

Grandchildren gone. Cemeteries brimming with the descendants of folks I knew.

No…never can go home like that. Sure. I'll go to Big Bend, Ryan. Thaw out a

freezie and I'll have someone who can talk to me about television, books and stuff

like that."

She grinned up at Ryan, but he could also see tears brimming in her dark eyes.

J.B. was the only one who didn't answer.

"We got five votes," Ryan said. "Want to make it six J.B.?"

"No."

Ryan was surprised. He and the Armorer had known each other for so long—from

the early days with the Trader—that their judgment on situations was almost

always the same.

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The others waited for J.B. to expand on his decision. He brushed a small, buzzing

insect away from his lips before speaking.

"Little food and water. Doesn't look much in that direction. Krysty, you got the

best eyes of any of us. You see anything?"

Krysty hopped agilely onto a large crimson boulder, its bright color almost

identical to her fiery mane of hair. She shaded her eyes and stared across the

wilderness, concentrating for a very long time before jumping down again.

"Dust. Could be the wind, but it doesn't look like it. More like animals, maybe

horses. And I thought I saw a building close by, but can't be sure. It's a long ways

off."

"But there's something?" Ryan asked. He shaded his good eye with his hand and

looked into the distance. Though he prided himself on his keen sight, it was

nothing compared to Krysty's.

"Yeah. Something."

J.B. wasn't convinced. "Gotta be close to three hundred miles, Ryan. No wags to

hitch along on, no cattle to butcher, no crystal streams to wet your lips at."

"Three hundred. We'll move mainly in the dark, and there must be water along the

blacktops. Soon as we find a blacktop, that is. It'll take us ten days to two weeks

on foot. I just can't believe we won't find people and transport somewhere."

The Armorer nodded. "Could be you're right. Then we'll be fine." He paused and

half smiled. "Then again, could be you're wrong. Still, I heard say that getting

chilled from heat and thirst wasn't all that bad."

A half hour later the six friends began to walk south.

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Chapter Two

THE RAD COUNTER FADED into a steady green once they were a couple of

miles away from the ruins of the redoubt.

The sun burned down from sky that was tinted the palest of pinks in the far west

and a fiery orange in the east. Once or twice they heard the distant rumble of

thunder from a chem storm over the hills off to the north.

"Gotta be way over a hundred," Mildred said, pausing to lever a pebble from her

white sneakers.

"Yeah," Ryan agreed.

"We're losing body moisture at close on a pint every hour," she said. "Medical

fact."

"No," Jak disagreed, overhearing her. "Not sweating."

"Wrong, son. In such dry heat the sweat's evaporating the moment it gets on the

outside. Feels like you aren't sweating. That's the danger. If you dehydrate your

mind goes, and it takes your body down the line with it."

"The building you thought you saw, Krysty? It should mean water."

In his heart Ryan had a nagging doubt that they'd taken the wrong option by

heading south. But when you made a plan you stuck to it—unless there was some

big reason to change. The Trader always used to tell him that.

"Maybe not. This trail's taking us down into dead ground. Can't make anything out

from down here."

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d16Whatyoudone,bitch?'Larryasked.Hishandreachedinsidehisplaidshirtandcameoutholdingastraight-\edgerazor."You'redead,youmurderingslut!"Intheconfinedspace,Krystyknewthattheman'sbulkandrawpowercou\ldtellagainsther.Thesteeledgebegantoweavealightningpatternofhissingdeathinfr\ontofKrysty'sface,pressingher...

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Axler, James - Deathlands 12 - Latitude Zero

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