Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire (12 page)

For a tense moment, no one moved or spoke. Then Velda stepped forward, eyes blazing. “
I
did it.”

The woman holding Uta’s body lowered it to the ground and went down on one knee. One by one, each of the other women did the same. A low, rhythmic chant swept through the crowd.

The older woman spoke again. Gabriel couldn’t understand the words, but their meaning became apparent when the woman took the oval feather headdress from where it lay on the ground and went over to place it on Velda’s head.

“I am Anika,” the woman said to Velda. “Sister of…greatmother…of Uta. I have only small English, but I…serve you now, my queen.”

“Your queen,” Velda said.

“Yes,” Anika said.

Velda shook her head, almost as though trying to clear her ears. “Leave me. Now.”

“My queen?”

“Now,”Velda said. “Get out.” She pointed to Gabriel. “I wish to be alone with the man. To complete the ritual that Uta began. Leave us.”

Anika nodded and translated to the others. The villagers did as their new queen ordered and as soon as they were gone, Velda grabbed the stone knife and handed it to Gabriel. He made short work of the ropes around his ankles and then limped over to where Rue still lay, bound and gagged.

When she was free, Rue reached up and took the Nazi cap off his head. He hadn’t remembered he still had it on. She scaled it into a corner of the room. “You look better without that particular piece of clothing. Though we’ll need to get you some somewhere.”

“You, too,” Gabriel said. “Both of you.” There was
an uncomfortable moment as they all looked at each other, naked as the day they were born, the old lover and the new, and the man they’d both shared.

And the newest lover, lying dead at their feet.

Velda went to where Gabriel’s kilt lay and picked it up. She handed it to him, unlatching her father’s pocket watch from it first. As Gabriel tied the kilt around his waist, Velda looped the watch chain around her bloody throat, wearing it like a necklace. She opened the watch and stared at the photo inside until tears began to run down her smeared cheeks.

Gabriel went over to her, tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed him away.

“They killed him,” she spat. “They finally killed him.”

“She said he killed himself,” Gabriel said. “Maybe he saw no way out. Under the circumstances…”

“They killed him!”
Velda shouted. “They murdered him, just like they always wanted to. And they’ll pay for it.”

“I don’t think they wanted him dead,” Gabriel said. “And Uta at least has already paid as much as she’s ever going to.” He nodded toward the body.

“Uta?” Velda said. “You think I’m talking about
Uta
?” She pushed the body over with her foot so it was face down in the dirt. “She was nothing. A tool, manipulated by the men who built this machine.” Velda walked over to the steel device on its metal frame, looked with unfettered loathing on the eagle and the hateful symbol in its claws. She spat on it, and her saliva ran down the center of the swastika.

“
They
were the ones who tried to kill him. Sixty years ago they tried. But he beat them. He survived. They killed his entire family—every relative he had, every
single one. His own brother, younger than him, a little child, they killed. Shot in the head. But they didn’t manage to kill my father. Oh, no. He was strong; he lived. And every day he lived was a repudiation of them and everything they tried to do, it was a…” She slapped the side of the machine. It rang like a bell, a low tolling sound. “It was a goddamn miracle. A victory over those bastards, every single goddamn day. But now…They finally got him. They got him, and they killed him. And they’re going to pay for it.”

“You can’t make someone pay,” Gabriel said quietly, “who’s been dead more than half a century.”

“Of course you can,” Velda said, her voice burning like acid. “Of course you can. You can make them pay by destroying what
they
cared about, what
they
loved. Their precious Fatherland, their blessed Aryan people. Two world wars because of those sons of bitches, millions of people killed, and now my
father
, tied down and raped by this Nazi whore—” Velda’s chest was heaving. She crouched beside the machine, looking at the dial Uta had turned. She spun it, and the coordinates went clattering to new settings.

“What are you doing?” Gabriel said.

“What do you think,” Velda said.

“You can’t set off that machine,” Gabriel said.

“I can’t?
I can’t?
Who do you think you’re talking to, Hunt?” She stood. “It’s
my
machine now, isn’t that what they said? I’m their queen and it’s my machine to use any way I want!”

“Velda, come on,” Gabriel said, “I know you’re angry, but—”

“Angry? Angry?”
She realized she was shouting and lowered her voice. It was, Gabriel thought with horror, even more frightening when she spoke quietly. “I am
not
angry
, Gabriel. I am merely…vengeful. I’m sure the coordinates for Berlin can be programmed in there somehow. Wonderfully appropriate, don’t you think? That the descendants of the men responsible for my father’s death will…” Her voice caught, and then she smiled, terribly. “Will feel…Unterg’s wrath.”

Gabriel stepped forward, but Velda shouted, “Anika! Guards! Come quick!” A half dozen women charged into the room, spears at the ready.

“Take them,” Velda said, and the women did, one pair grabbing Gabriel’s arms, another Rue’s.

“What do you…wish to do…at these?” Anika said, haltingly.

Velda thought for a moment. “Put the man back in that pit where he was before,” she said. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. But I have to. I can’t let you interfere.”

“Woman too?” Anika said.

“No,”Velda said. “No, not the woman. Rue, you are going to get that plane running again. So we can get out of this godforsaken hellhole.”

“You really think I’d help you?” Rue said.

“If you don’t want your boyfriend there to stay in that pit till he dies of starvation,”Velda said, “I do think so, yes. And you don’t really want to stay here any more than I do, do you?”

“You’re crazy, lady. Completely batshit insane.”

“Rue, Rue, your language,” Velda said. “There are young women present.”Then to Anika: “Take her away. To the plane in the jungle.”

“Plane?” Anika repeated with a quizzical expression.

“The thing that brought your, your mother’s grandfather or what ever the hell it was…the thing that brought the men here from the world above,” Velda said. “The first men.”

“Ah, the Father Bird,” Anika said, nodding.

“The Father Bird,” Velda said. “There you go. Take her to the Father Bird, give her what ever tools or help she asks for—but if she refuses to work or tries to escape…kill her.”

“If you kill me, you’re stuck here,” Rue said, twisting to get out of the guards’ grip. It didn’t work.

“You think you’re the only one who knows anything about airplanes, little Rue? I’ve flown a few in my day myself,” Velda said.

“From nineteen-fucking-forty-four?” Rue said. “Through a narrow hole in a sheet of ice?” Velda didn’t answer and Rue nodded with satisfaction. “You need me, and you know it.”

“Maybe so,” Velda said. “But you only need to be
alive
to fly the plane. You don’t need to be whole. Anika?” The older woman nodded. “Tell the guards to cut off her toes if she disobeys or causes any trouble. Start with the smallest toe on her left foot, then the next, and so on. If you run out of toes, let me know and we can start on Gabriel’s. That’ll make her work.”

“Yes, my queen,”Anika said, her face ashen but obedient. She translated the instructions and the guards began dragging Rue off.

“Are you out of your mind?” Rue shouted as they dragged her away. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Velda, please,” Gabriel said. “Please, think about what you’re doing.”

“I have thought about it,” Velda said. “And it makes me very happy.” She motioned to Anika. “Take him away. And…” She looked down at her nude and filthy body. “And bring some water. And something decent to wear.”

She turned her back on Gabriel. The guard to
his right stuffed a wad of sour-tasting leather into his mouth and strapped it in place with a hank of thick bark rope. Gabriel let out a sound of anger and frustration, but the gag reduced it to a muffled grunt. Surrounded by spear points, Gabriel was led out of the ritual chamber and away from Kahujiu’s new queen.

Outside, Gabriel was marched across the clearing to the pit where he had fought Millie. Where the hell was the big man anyway? Still doing his duty with the other women of the tribe? Looking around, Gabriel could see no sign of him anywhere. But he didn’t have time to wonder for long before being prodded over the edge.

He turned in mid air as he fell and managed to land on his feet, rolling backward and slapping his arms out to either side to dissipate the impact; even so, the jolt from the twenty-five-foot drop was still painful. He sat up as the pain slowly subsided. The pit was just as he’d left it, except that the loose stone he’d used to clobber Millie was gone. The murky half-light, the awful smell, the damp chill, all unchanged. The mossy stone walls just as impossible to climb.

Gabriel fought to remain calm. To think. He had to find a way out, a way to save Rue and stop Velda. There had to be one. But how?

Gabriel’s thoughts circled helplessly in his head as he paced the perimeter of the pit. He still felt there had to be a way out—but if there was, he’d made no progress toward finding it.

He had made several failed attempts at scaling the slippery walls, jamming his fingers and toes into the narrow mossy cracks between the stones. Each time he’d barely gotten six or seven feet up before losing his grip. If only he had some basic climbing gear—even a pair of sturdy sticks that he could jam into those cracks and use as handles, like peg climbing back in high school gym class. But there was nothing, not a branch, not a bone.

He was about to try again with his bare hands when he heard a sound from above. The flat, dragging sound of something heavy sliding across the dirt at the edge of the pit. He looked up just in time to see his circular view of the crimson sky blotted out by a bulky shape. Someone else was being shoved into the pit—someone large.

Gabriel hadn’t met too many people that size, and as far as he knew there was only one in this village at the moment. He bent his knees, braced himself against one
wall, and did his best to cushion Millie’s fall, taking some of the impact against his chest and letting the big man roll off onto the ground in a heap.

Nursing his bruised ribs, Gabriel went to where Millie lay, sprawled on his side, moaning softly. He still wore the kilt like get up but it was now quite disheveled, several of the barkcloth slats missing, and the paint on his body was smeared and mostly rubbed away. Gabriel could see one of the feathered knockout darts protruding from Millie’s neck just below his right ear.

“Millie,” Gabriel said, pulling the dart out and tossing it aside. He rubbed the big man’s wrists and slapped his cheeks. “Millie, are you all right?”

No response. At least he was breathing normally and seemed uninjured beyond the various scrapes and bruises sustained on the way down—but there would be no waking him until the drug wore off.

It took the better part of an hour for this to happen, and when it did Gabriel was clinging to the wall some eight feet off the ground, desperately trying for a higher handhold and failing to secure one. He heard a groan from below and let go, dropping to the ground.

Millie groaned again, turning his head from side to side. He moved his hands to touch his neck, feeling for the now absent dart. Then finally his eyelids slowly peeled open, his blurry gaze struggling to focus on Gabriel.

“Christ,” Millie said. “I thought…”

He made a move to roll over and let out a roar of pain. When he rolled, he revealed the leg that had previously been folded beneath him. His ankle was turned at an angle that it wasn’t meant to go.

“Don’t move,” Gabriel said. “Your ankle’s broken.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Millie said. He was starting to
sweat profusely, his face pale. “Damn it, I go to sleep in the arms of three beautiful women and I wake up with you and a broken leg. What the hell happened?”

Gabriel quickly filled Millie in on everything that had taken place from the moment they had been separated.

“Their new queen?” Millie said. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Wish I were,” Gabriel said. “Here, sit up.” He helped Millie to a sitting position, leaning against one wall of the pit. He reached for the waistband of Millie’s kilt.

“Whoa, slow down there, boss,” Millie said. “Just because we’re in this hole together with time to kill—”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Gabriel said. “There’s nothing else down here to splint your ankle with, and we’re not getting out of here if you can’t walk.”

“Why can’t we use your kilt?”

“Yours is bigger,” Gabriel said.

“Well, as long as you admit it,” Millie said, forcing a pained smile. “All right, boss. Do what you’ve got to do.”

Gabriel untied the big man’s kilt, layered the stiff strips of barkcloth on either side of the fractured bone, and cinched the leather waistband tightly around them. Millie grimaced as he pulled the knots snug. “How’s that?”

Millie tested it, gingerly at first and then with more confidence—though he leaned heavily on Gabriel’s shoulder as he did. “Bad. I won’t be clog dancing for a while. But I should be able to hold myself upright.”

“That’s something, anyway,” Gabriel said, looking around once more. He thought about the offhand comment he’d made the first time they’d been down here, about standing on Millie’s shoulders. Between
them they totaled nearly thirteen feet; with his arms outstretched over his head, call it fourteen and a bit. Add the eight feet of free-climbing he’d managed at his most successful and you only got to twenty-two feet—close, but still well short of the top. And that was assuming Millie’s splinted ankle could support not only the big man’s own weight but Gabriel’s hundred eighty pounds on top of it.

Fine. If they couldn’t go up, how about down? Gabriel bent to the task of inspecting the ground at the bottom of the pit, peering closely at every crevice and declivity in the dirt.

“What in god’s name are you doing?”

“Wasting precious time,” Gabriel said as he completed the survey. He stood up and worked the circulation back into his cramped thighs. “But I had to try. Last time I needed to get out of an underground trap, there was a secret tunnel with a hidden entrance you could barely see unless you knew it was there.”

“Boss, if you’re looking for a tunnel down here, you don’t need to go searching so hard,” Millie said. “There’s one right there.” And he pointed toward the drainage hole.

Gabriel looked at it. The opening was much too narrow for either man to fit through—but Millie was right, there was presumably a tunnel of some sort behind it. The villagers would sluice water down into the pit to wash away blood that had collected, along with other detritus, and the water had to come out somewhere, maybe in the stream they’d seen near the waterfall.

Could the channel behind this opening be wider than the opening itself? If they’d had to dig it without modern boring tools, it would have been easier to make it
wider—specifically, the width of the person doing the digging—rather than narrower.

He bent to look at the space where the stone they’d knocked out used to be. On the other side he didn’t see more stone, he just saw blackness.

“I don’t suppose you could kick out any more of those stones,” Gabriel said.

“Not with this foot,” Millie said, slapping one thigh. “But with the other…? I could give it the old college try.”

He lay on his back, taking all pressure off his broken ankle, then aimed the tough, calloused sole of his other foot at the wall. He slammed it home. The first kick didn’t do much—but by the time he’d dealt out a half dozen thunderous blows, another stone was coming loose. Gabriel dug around its edges with his fingers and pried the heavy block of stone free. He laid it on the ground.

“More,” he said.

In all, they managed to remove four stones before Millie let his leg drop and lay back, exhausted. “I’m shot,” he said. “That enough?”

The hole was wider now—just wide enough, Gabriel thought, to admit his broad shoulders. No way Millie could fit, but one person would be enough. If he made it out, he could come back for Millie. “I’m going in,” Gabriel said.

“You sure?”

“Didn’t we go over that already?” Gabriel said. He squeezed into the opening before Millie could respond.

Inside, it was dark, except for the slight glow of bioluminescent moss faintly outlining the walls. It was narrow, too, the stone ceiling no more than two feet above the damp dirt floor. And it looked like it got narrower as
it went—the people who’d dug it had presumably been young women, not six-foot-tall men. But maybe if he hunched down and was willing to lose a bit of skin on his shoulders—

He cocked his head. There was a low scrabbling sound coming from the darkness in front of him, like the scratching of claws. Animals of some sort—scavengers, perhaps. Then he heard a louder sound: a thumping, as of a paw, or perhaps a tail, batting against the ground.

He reached ahead of him with one hand, sweeping it back and forth along the dirt. He felt the air stir as something darted out of the path of his arm.

His fingers brushed along something hard lying half-buried in the ground. A bone? He grabbed it, wrenched it out of the dirt—and as he did, he felt a pair of sharp teeth sink into the flesh of his arm.

He swung the arm up and against the tunnel wall beside him, heard a squeal as the animal released its hold and dropped off. But the clattering of claws was louder now, and it sounded like it was all around him, as though the animals were somehow emerging from the walls of the tunnel itself. A furry flank slammed against the side of his face and he felt sharp claws scrape across his cheek. Another animal leapt over his shoulder and bit down hard on the back of his neck.

“Millie! Get me out of he—” His open mouth was suddenly filled with warm and greasy fur. He felt it wriggling back and forth and realized the narrow squirming thing probing inside his mouth was an animal’s head. He bit down hard and spat the thing out just as he felt a pair of strong hands clamp down on his ankles and forcefully pull him out of the tunnel.

He emerged into the light with Millie on his knees beside him. The big man hauled two of the animals off his back and slammed their heads together, then threw them aside. Gabriel himself took care of the one clinging to his throat, knocking it off with the thing in his hand—which did turn out to be a bone: a scraped-clean femur that looked distressingly human.

Gabriel swept the bone along his chest and legs, knocking more of the animals to the ground. But more still were pouring out of the drainage hole, maybe attracted by their fellows’ distress, or maybe just by the prospect of fresh meat.

The creatures looked like a cross between shrews and rats, only larger than any of either Gabriel had ever seen. Each was more than a foot long and had a pair of sharp prognathic tusks protruding from below an elongated snout. And they were more aggressive than any rats he’d encountered, even in New York, jumping on him and Millie with no regard for their own safety, no fear.

Gabriel batted them away as they came, while Millie fell back against one wall and did the best he could while balancing on his good leg.

“Jesus Christ,” Millie said, picking one off his thigh before it could make the leap it was attempting onto his unprotected crotch. “What
are
these things?”

What ever they were, a dozen more were boiling out of the hole in the wall. They were all over Gabriel in an instant, screeching, clawing and biting even as Gabriel swung and kicked out blindly in all directions. As soon as he got hold of one to smash it against the pit wall, three others seemed to take its place. The hot, musky stench of the creatures was nearly unbearable and their sharp teeth and claws were everywhere he turned,
tearing into his flesh. In the frenzy, he lost track of Millie but he could hear him somewhere behind him, shouting and flinging the furry attackers aside.

“We’ve got to block up that hole,” Gabriel said, dropping to his knees by one of the large blocks of stone they’d so painstakingly moved aside. He hauled it up in both arms as one of the animals leaped over the stone and onto the back of his hand. With a grunt, Gabriel pressed the stone into place at the bottom of the drainage hole. It did little to stop the flow of angry shrews—they just kept coming.

“Get over here, damn it,” Gabriel shouted, plucking a shrew off his upper arm, where it had begun to make a meal of his triceps. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Millie lumber over and bend to lift another of the stone blocks. He shoved it on top of the one Gabriel had placed. Gabriel himself lifted the third of the stones and jammed it into place as soon as Millie’s hands were out of the way, and then Millie was there with the fourth.

The fit was far from airtight—hell, it wasn’t even shrewtight, as evidenced by the continuing appearance of furry snouts between the stones. But the fit was tight enough to be a squeeze for any but the skinniest of the animals and the constant flow subsided, enabling Gabriel to pick off the ones that remained in the pit, first two or three at a time and then one by one as their numbers dropped. Millie, meanwhile, grabbed up bodies of fallen shrews by the fistful and shoved them into the spaces between the stones like so much fleshy mortar.

“Sweet Jesus,” Millie said, finally, lowering himself exhaustedly to a patch of ground from which he’d
swept a layer of bloody animal corpses. Gabriel sat beside him, sore all over from bites and scratches and the bruises and abrasions he’d sustained in bashing the creatures against the rock. He felt weak and wanted desperately to lie down and sleep, even just for a little bit. But he knew that with the sun beating down and nothing to eat or drink, he’d only feel weaker when he woke—assuming he didn’t find himself waking with more of the animals somehow chewing on his jugular.

Getting up, he kicked aside the bodies before him and bent to retrieve the bone he’d taken out of the tunnel. It
was
human, the leg bone of some previous visitor unfortunate enough to find himself fighting for his life in this pit. Well, it was too late to do the bone’s original owner any good—but he might be able to do them some.

Gabriel handed the bone to Millie, who turned it over in his hands and looked up at Gabriel quizzically. “Can you break it?” Gabriel said. “Two pieces, equal length would be best.”

“You don’t ask for much, do you,” Millie said. He took one end of the bone in each hand, then thought better of it and reset his grip closer to the center.

“Careful,” Gabriel said.

“Why do you want a broken bone?” Millie asked.

“I don’t,” Gabriel said. “I want a pair of titanium climbing pegs. But I’ll settle for a broken bone.”

Millie gripped tighter, the veins standing out along his thick forearms. The bone bent in a narrow arc, then a bit farther, and then snapped in two, one piece just slightly longer than the other. He held the pieces out to Gabriel, who looked at the angled edges where the bone had broken. Nice and sharp—but all the same, he began
working them back and forth against the face of one of the rougher stones, like a knife against a whetstone. The bones needed to go in smooth and come out the same way, and penetrate as deeply as possible into the cracks between the stones, and that meant taking off any rough edges or protrusions and sharpening them even more.