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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
bastards 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."
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"Aw, shit," he said sadly. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"Hell, 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 subbasement.
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
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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 assemblage wanted to
find out, either.
Onward the group traveled, past levels of different colors blue, orange, and red.
Alton tried one stairwell door, and it opened into a wide corridor that led into a
ruined chapel, the stained glass 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-glassed-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
mass of retrofitting that kept automobiles and wags moving along in what passed
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 shiver, 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 hell out. Like open."
"I prefer open spaces myself, Jak," Ryan agreed. "At least you can always see
what's coming."
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"Where are we?" J.B. growled, already annoyed he couldn't deduce their location
for himself without his glasses 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 sturdy mini-sextant 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 space 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
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