Part 7 (2/2)
Mildred paused, looking lost and far away for a moment. ”After my father's murder by immolation at the hands of those Klansmen, I wonderedcould cryonics have preserved him until such a time as miraculous regenerative processes would be the norm? I'm sure he might have seen it as an abomination, but I've always wondered. I suppose that curiosity is what continued to carry me into the field. I wanted to go beyond theories and tests. I wanted to be one of the new, innovative thinkers blazing onto new ground”
”So, what happened?” J.B. asked. ”Why did the cryo program go the way of mat-trans units and Operation Chronos and Overproject Whisper and all of the other subtly named covert government projects?”
Mildred chuckled bitterly. ”Believe it or not, what really, truly, undeniably saved the program was government interest and involvement. If the average hardworking American believed cryonic suspension to be the stuff of bad science-fiction novels, so much the better. Grants and equipment were available to the right doctors, and my own profile was high for a number of reasons.”
”How so?”
Mildred counted down the list on her fingers ”I was a woman, I was black, my theories made sense and I was a former Olympic medalist. You couldn't ask for a more suitable candidate. Once I was in the door, I soon discovered that organizations such as the American Cryonics Society and the Alcor Life Extension Foundation were all smoke screens. Only a few dozen people were listed officially as ”being frozen” at the end of the year 2000, with a waiting list of hundreds wanting to join the program.”
”We all know that's a crock,” Dean interjected.
”Of course. In actuality the number stretched into the thousands, with chambers and preparations being made for thousands more in case of war. Cryonic suspension was expensive, too. Only the rich and the powerfulor the very importantgot a seat in the freeze chambers. I made it because of my research and because of the woman who operated on me pulling some strings. She was my friend, and she didn't want me to die on an operating table.”
”So there could be an untold number of freezies waiting to be discovered?” Krysty asked.
”Yeah. I imagine some high-muck-a-muck couldn't resist the idea of a cryo version of Noah's Ark, which means any and all living creatures up to skydark may be safely tucked away somewhere sleeping.”
”How much jack are we talking to freeze somebody?” Ryan asked, his own fascination coming into play. Some of what she was telling the others wasn't unfamiliar to him after what he'd seen going on the Black Hills laboratories of the Anthill. In those frigid chambers, he'd held conversations with men dressed in business suits with wag coolant for blood.
The woman thought for a moment. ”Seems like I recall the official public price as being something along the lines of one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars for a whole-body suspension or, in the case of just wanting to preserve the head in a procedure called neuropreservation, that was around fifty thousand dollars. Pricey, and beyond most people's means.”
Mildred stopped talking and stood. There was nothing much else to say.
The group left the cryo labs quietly.
Outside, the scavie became most distraught, begging Mildred to ”Unchill the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds so we can divvy up the loot.”
”There's no 'loot' to be had, Alton,” she replied tiredly. ”Cryo patients aren't placed inside their capsules wearing rings on their fingers and bells on their toes. This process isn't like preparing the dead for a burial in a coffin with jewelry and their favorite things to take along on their journey into a new life. You go into a freeze tube as naked as the day you were born, with only a sheet to cover your soon-to-be-lifeless body.”
”Aw, s.h.i.+t,” he said sadly. ”Are you sure?”
”Yeah.”
”h.e.l.l, much as it cost to do this, no wonder there's no valuables with these freezies,” J.B. told the man. ”Spent all their loot getting put them in this condition.”
”Lighten up, Adrian,” Ryan said, handing back the glum scavie's captured Colt .45. ”Let's blow this joint before another party of stickies decides to come looking for the batch we chilled.”
Chapter Eight.
The stairwell was pitch-black and cold. Even with the hidden nuke generator that still possessed enough juice to keep the freezies on ice and bring the oddly configured mat-trans room safely online, apparently there was nothing left over for illumination except for the essentials needed back in the subbas.e.m.e.nt.
Alton took out a small pocket flashlight and started rapidly squeezing a trigger over and over. A whirring sound came from the tiny device as a beam of light shot out of the clear plastic end. ”Self-generating. Long as my finger doesn't give out, we got some light,” he said proudly. ”You want me to take the lead?”
”You've got the light. Don't worry, I'll back you up.” Ryan turned back to his own group. ”We go up until we're out. Take it nice and slow, and we should be all right. I don't like traveling practically by feel, but we don't have any other options.”
The steady climb upwards was uneventful, except for a brief moment of chaos when Dean inadvertently stepped on something small and alive, losing his footing and falling backward into an unprepared Doc Tanner. Other than a boomed ”By the Three Kennedys!” exclamation from the surprised Doc, there were no injuries.
No one knew what Dean's foot had found, and none of the a.s.semblage wanted to find out, either.
Onward the group traveled, past levels of different colorsblue, orange, and red. Alton tried one stairwell door, and it opened into a wide corridor that led into a ruined chapel, the stained gla.s.s shattered, the pews ripped up from the flooring and removed. The light beam coming from the hand-powered flashlight picked out brief images of the desecration before Alton closed the door. ”Wrong floor,” he said.
The next level proved to be correct, depositing them first in a once-gla.s.sed-in corridor that was now nothing more than some empty framework that led out to a parking deck.
Rusting frames of automobiles lined the sides of the deck. Some of the designated slots were empty, but most still housed the remains of their former tenants of rubber, chrome and steel. A Cadillac Seville over here, a Chevrolet Lumina over there. Any part of value had been long since scavenged, leaving gaping holes beneath the hoods and inside the interiors. Engine blocks were MIA, along with head- and tail-lights and any other instruments that could be used elsewhere in the ma.s.s of retrofitting that kept automobiles and wags moving along in what pa.s.sed for the society of Deathlands. All that was left of the cars and trucks housed in the deck were the frames and the metal wheels.
”Triple cold in here,” Dean said with a s.h.i.+ver, hugging his jacket close to his body.
”Nothing around us but concrete. Walls. Floor. Ceiling. Feels damp,” Krysty said.
”Not like,” Jak said quietly. ”Get h.e.l.l out. Like open.”
”I prefer open s.p.a.ces myself, Jak,” Ryan agreed. ”At least you can always see what's coming.”
”Where are we?” J.B. growled, already annoyed he couldn't deduce their location for himself without his gla.s.ses and proper vision.
”Carolina. The northern part, near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Go up about fifty miles or so, and you'll be in the lower part of Virginia,” Alton replied.
”The South rises yet again,” Doc murmured.
At least with having the scavie along, there was no need for J.B. to take out his small but st.u.r.dy mini-s.e.xtant and take a reading to determine their location. At one time, the Armorer had access to one of the finest collections of predark maps and atlases in the country, thanks to the supply the Trader had collected and kept aboard his own vehicle over the years.
Now, without the Storage s.p.a.ce provided by the fleet of war wags the Trader had maintained, J.B. had to rely on his memory. There was no room in his pack for heavy books and maps. A man on the move had to travel as light as possible, with the weight he carried devoted to ammunition and essential supplies.
Luckily J.B. possessed a near photographic memory, and he had managed the feat of retaining thousands upon thousands of roads, borders, star charts and anything else of use in the fine art of navigation. When his own internal library of information was combined with the reading he could retrieve from the minis.e.xtant, J.B. could almost always tell his friends with a fair degree of accuracy what part of Deathlands they ended up in.
”This area doesn't look all that rural,” Krysty observed, leaning out over the railing of the deck and into the afternoon suns.h.i.+ne, which cascaded beautifully off her red hair. ”Looks more like a city.”
”It is. It was. This is Winston-Salem, one of the bigger metro areas of old Carolina. Made cigarettes here. You can see what's left of the downtown over there,” Alton said, pointing out a cl.u.s.ter of skysc.r.a.pers beyond the tall redhead. ”I don't recommend going there for a sight-seeing tour.”
”Why's that?” Krysty asked.
”Stickies,” the bearded man replied. ”Downtown belongs to them. For a long stretch of time, there's been an unspoken truce between the Carolina norms who live in this region and the mutiesstay away from the claimed grounds and there'll be no fighting or retribution.”
Doc had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. ”And do tell, where does this hospital fall?”
The scavenger smiled. ”No-man's-land. Stickies are technically closer, but since anything of conceivable practical use had been long taken out, I was gambling there would be no reason for them to be in here.”
”Only a fool gambles with a r.e.t.a.r.ded deck of cards, and any group of stickies is full of jokers and deuces,” Ryan said. ”There is no rhyme or reason as to what they do and when they do it. Crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”
”Amen, brother,” Alton agreed. ”Still, we could be in worse shape. We're in the middle of what used to be called Medical Row. Go along Hawthorne for about two miles until you hit what's left of Silas Creek Parkway and Highway 40. Nothing in between but a few residential sections and rows upon rows of doctors' offices. Had a doc for any ailment that plagued you back then.”
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