J.B. took one of Mildred's hands and squeezed it tight. "Millie, those people in those chambers died over a hundred years ago. Not a d.a.m.n thing could be done for them then, or now."

"Any idea who they were?" Ryan asked.

Mildred went back and starting tapping keys on the keyboard. "From what I can tell, this place was designed with one purpose in mind. Preserve some of the finest leadership and military minds until the conflict was over. It's not the worst plan I ever heard, but as usual the x-factor came stomping in and trod all over the best-laid plans of mice and men."

Mildred stood, gesturing toward the units housed inside the gla.s.sed-in area.

"At some point in time, the power here must've gone off-line. I'd say it happened within days after the bombs fell. Could've been a fluke, but my guess is a techie took particular offense at being left behind to die in the brave new world once the bombs actually started falling, and he or she sabotaged the chambers. Once the damage was done, he turned the systems back on to cover his actions, or perhaps a fail-safe device came online and reactivated. Either way, the end result was the same. I suppose, in retrospect, I should be grateful the same thing didn't happen to me."

"h.e.l.l of a way to die," Ryan said, peering inside the sterile room. "You think you're going to take a long nap and pull a cheat and, boom, you die a second time in your sleep."

"Well, no matter how you look at it, half of them were dead the minute the war broke out," Mildred replied enigmatically. Ryan turned to look at her. "How so?"

"Doc, you were asking about those smaller containers, the barrel-shaped ones?"

"Yes. What is the concept behind those?" he replied.

"In those casks are twelve more cryo subjects."

"I don't get you," Ryan said, perplexed. "The twelve smaller tanks held human heads, Ryan, awaiting possible future transplant onto new bodies."

Chapter Seven.

Mildred sat in the swivel chair behind the main comp bank and began to type at the keyboard once more, pausing only to move the mouse to click onto new screens of information.

"You know what they used to call freezies back in my day?" she mused aloud. "The 'frozen chosen.' Like you were saying, Ryan, we were the ones lucky enough to cheat death and waggle our fingers bye-bye at man's final frontier. We were being put on ice to await the coming of the new technologies, capable of saving our dying a.s.ses."

A screen blinked and a set of tiny speakers beeped, indicating the search of the data bank Mildred has asked for was finished.

"No wonder health care was so expensive in my day," she said. "Most of the people in that room who underwent the cryo process weren't even sick. I'm talking about the ones with bodies, not the headless hors.e.m.e.n. I see three senators, a governor, four millionaires and some other names and rankings I don't recognize here listed as being put into the program within hours after skydark." Doc slowly shook his head. "More madness."

"Not true," Mildred replied. "You forget, Doc. I was one of the whitecoats involved in cryo research. Cryonics was a complex, controversial medical procedure that stored either the whole body or just the head of a clinically dead person in liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of minus 196 degrees Celsius. After the big chill, a suspension team prepared the body for its icy descent into a large Dewar flask, where it was stored until time for revival. Doing so took some effort to mount."

Mildred turned from the screen and ran her fingers through her long beaded hair. She looked very sad as she started to remember, and to speak.

"We were all mavericks in cryo research back then, driven by an insatiable urge to stop time and restart it on a schedule we dictated, not the predetermined one set by fate or nature. Looking back, I guess I was considered one of the tamer pract.i.tioners. Others, like Saul Kent, one of the founders of the Cryonics Society of New York, had his own mother decapitated and frozen in the hope that she could be reanimated sometime in the future."

"Geez, he chopped off his own mom's head?" Dean asked. "Gross."

"Who better? I mean, let's face it. The prospect of immortality inspires the unusual. He loved his mother, she loved her son, ergo, she willed her body to science and upon her death, he decided to test his theories. If it had worked out, he could have saved her life. Brought her back from death as we understood it."

"I cannot help but comment that all of this sounds most grotesque, Dr. Wyeth," Doc said with an exaggerated shudder. "The removal of the head and brains and dropping them into cold storage puts me in the mind of the most outlandish of Lovecraftian horror."

"Why not? Lovecraft was predicting this sort of thing in many of his short stories. Course, I didn't read them until when I was in college," she replied. "No, my interest in this branch of science came early. I was in an accelerated program in school and had an adult's library card with full access to all of the closed stacks. I guess that's where I first found Professor Robert Ettinger's book called The Prospect of Immortality . That book came to be considered the flashpoint of the concept of life-extension technology. He believed in it so strongly, he froze his mother, as wellin fact I guess he was the first."

"Entire generations suspended in time. Barbaric." Doc declared.

"I thought it was marvelous, although some of my more religious kin didn't find the suggestion of avoiding the hereafter by sticking your body in a freezer a proper way of following the plans of the Lord."

"Your father was a preacher," Krysty said. "I'd say he had trouble accepting some of the more fantastic theories you were spouting off."

"Actually my father wasn't the problem. He didn't care for the idea, but he let me be. Most of my grief came from two meddling aunts, the old biddies. They were always coming to him as his concerned sisters, worrying about my welfare. My brother, Josh, after he became a minister like our father, also showed more compa.s.sion and understanding of my chosen career."

"Yeah, relatives can make your life a living h.e.l.l, b.a.s.t.a.r.d quick," Ryan observed, thinking of his own corrupted family ties.

"Professor Ettinger's book suggested that people could be frozen in 'suspended death' until medical technology was able to cure what killed them and breathe new life into their bodies. No big deal to us now, but at the time, it was considered all-out voodoo," Mildred mused. "See, his problem was, his attempt to achieve immortality conflicted with some of the most conventional truths modern science had been built upon up to that point, including the premise that death is final in a world of mortals."

"Nothing is absolute," Ryan said reflectively. "Trader used to say that."

"Correction, my dear Ryan. One thing is absolute, and that is if there is a cliche for the occasion, the good Trader was wont to have uttered it," Doc muttered as he slumped down like a weary scarecrow into one of the free chairs near Mildred.

"You're just jealous, Doc," Krysty said.

"Pray explain," Doc said with mock severity.

"Trader's the only man in the Deathlands with more arcane sayings than you."

Doc sniffed. "The mantle of Trader is not a t.i.tle I envy."

"In Ettinger's book, I remember his saying that mankind had been conditioned to accept death for thousands of years. However, he grew up in a new world expecting that one day old age would be preventable and reversible. And the man practiced what he preached. Ettinger was a pioneer and helped in the formation of cryonics."

"Pardon me, but I thought the term was cryogenics." Doc said, unable to pa.s.s up the opportunity to correct Mildred in her own branch of science.

Mildred shook her head and smiled wistfully. "No, Doc. Common mistake. Cryonics was, and is, a more radical branch of cryogenicscryogenics being really nothing more than the recognized field of cold-temperature medicine. You know, research contributing to the aging process, the best way to preserve human organs for transplant, bloodless surgery. Nothing half-baked or hidden about it."

"Cryogenics. Like the swapping of organs for the tech Lars h.e.l.lstrom was so fond of back at Helskel."

"Exactly, but with more humane intent. But cryonics went further in design. Cryonics were designed to slow and eventually halt the process of death. In my case, putting me under saved my life until I was found and awakened by all of you."

"Sounds good to me," Dean remarked, entranced by the story Mildred was telling. "Who wouldn't want to live forever?"

"Out of the mouths of babes," Krysty said, winking at Ryan.

"Indeed," Doc added. "Trust me, young Cawdor. As a man who has spent over two hundred years bouncing around this mortal coil, I can say that immortality always comes with a price."

"Yeah, but you're old," Dean protested.

"Not as old as you think, young man."

Mildred grinned at Dean. "In a discussion like we're having, the idea of beating death does sound promising. It's when you start putting such ideas into motion that people get nervous. The world was different in my time. In the mid-1960s, cryonics advocates were a small fringe group. The structure of some organizations was rocked by scandal, sometimes at the hands of incompetent people and equipment, and other times because of sensational media coverage."

"Media?" the boy asked.

"Newspapers. Video. Tabloids. The media. They broke all of the news stories that made people nervous stories such as how in the early days of the programs, scientists were having to make do with storing bodies in the surplus wingtip fuel tanks of Air Force jets. No big deal, until it got out that the tanks weren't 'one size fits all,' and when they had people too obese to fit, they'd chainsaw their arms off and stick them in that way."

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 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 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 sunshine, 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."