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the most curious-looking fellows I ever seen around here. The stories Abe told
me didn't say you had such weird coloration."
Doc cackled. "I take it you are in awe of their dusky pigmentation."
"Say what?" Alton asked.
"Their skin, man! You are talking about their skin!" Doc replied.
"Yeah. Take the lady doctor here," Alton said, gesturing to Mildred, who was
busy applying the bandages she'd found to the coin-sized flesh wounds on
J.B.'s face. "She's beautiful. Don't get me wrong. Skin color don't mean shit
to me.
Attractive is attractive. And the rest of you look like any other poor white
bucks running around Deathlands, even the albino."
Jak glared in way of response. The teen wasn't sure if he trusted Alton yet or
not, and as a newcomer the man invited and deserved extra scrutiny.
"But I never seen men with skin color like Ryan's and J.B.'s," Alton
continued. "It looks, well, it don't look natural. Looks kind of funny."
"Well, it isn't. We got into a scrape a while back and had to dye our faces
and
J.B.'s hair. Long story, but we got out alive," Ryan replied. "You should have
seen us right after the deed was done."
"Man does anything to stay alive," Alton agreed, not pushing further.
Curiosity could get a man chilled triple fast, and the bearded man had escaped
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death already for the day. He believed in playing the odds and not causing
problems. Whatever had forced Ryan Cawdor to dye himself a new skin tone was
the one-eyed man's business, and since there was no offer of volunteering to
explain what had
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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_41_-_Freedom_Lost happened, it would remain a
mystery.
"Good thing most of the dye has worn off, lover," Krysty said. "I was starting
to get used to your new look until our new acquaintance pointed it out."
"Here we are," Alton said, gesturing toward the door of the cryo laboratory.
He'd been very close to entering the actual lab. His chosen hiding place was
outside the main doorway in the air lock, with the contents behind him kept
sealed by a single steel door. He'd peeked inside through a small round
window, but had gone no farther. Again, as in most of the lab complex except
for the gateway, there were no codes or secrets for full access and entry,
just a simple Admit button to cycle the air lock.
"Ready?" Mildred asked, an anxious tone in her voice as she stood in front of
the doorway, clenching and unclenching her hands.
Ryan waved her on, and the woman stuck out a stocky finger and pushed the
button. The air lock hummed, then opened with a sigh, and the pressure quickly
equalized, allowing easy entry to a pair of double swing doors hanging on the
far wall inside.
Mildred stepped through, followed closely by the others.
Ryan held out an arm, stopping the newest addition to the group. "Why don't
you and Jak stay out here," he said, nodding toward the waiting albino. "A
pair of jacks to back up our hand once we're in."
Blocked by Ryan's arm, the scavenger's eyes narrowed and his face took on a
suspicious look. "I've played straight with you and your group. You're not
looking to cheat me, are you, Cawdor?" he asked.
"Not much you could do about it if I was, is there?" Ryan asked.
"No, but "
"I was just thinking we needed some men outside in case another band of
stickies
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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_41_-_Freedom_Lost came calling. Don't worry, we'll
protect your interest."
The scavie looked dubious and glanced at Jak.
"Okay, Cawdor. I owe you anyway. I guess you know best."
"Be here," Jak added. "Come running if hear shots."
"Like the wind," Ryan said, stepping into the cryo facility and sealing the
door to the air lock behind him.
"OUR FRIEND'S OUTSIDE with Jak. Told them to watch out for muties."
"Good idea," Mildred said. "We can talk more freely."
As in other cryo centers, the layout was elementary: a control room filled
with comp panels dominated by a mammoth central unit in the center and a long
side wall of clear glass. However, the difference came from behind the glass.
There, angled on a raised platform, were a dozen silver capsules, and recessed
farther into the wall on metal shelving behind the capsules were an additional
twelve smaller cylinders.
"I confess, I have seen the larger cryo beds, but what are the little
containers for?"
Doc asked, his face reflecting his confusion.
"I don't know. Midgets?" Dean guessed.
"Little people," Mildred retorted. "And no, there are no little people in
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those casks."
"What do you think?" Ryan asked, looking at Krysty. "Anybody in there still
alive?"
"No, I don't think so. Feels wrong," the crimson-haired woman replied, her
voice
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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_41_-_Freedom_Lost whispery as she struggled to
concentrate and expand her consciousness outward.
"Feels empty."
"How so?" Mildred asked as she continued to inspect the room's equipment.
"Not like when we found you," the green-eyed beauty said in response as she
blinked and tried to focus a second time. "Or Rick."
"Rick" was Richard Neal Ginsberg, born March 22, 1970. Ryan and his
band before Mildred and Dean had joined them had discovered the man housed
within one of the cryo chambers inside a military redoubt in California.
An expert in the operation of the mat-trans units and the gateways, Rick had
been frozen to halt the spread of the disease that was slowly killing him,
waiting in the hopes of being revived when a cure was available.
Suffering from an advanced case of Lou Gehrig's disease, he'd been a companion
for only a short time before determining that the disease was still
relentlessly killing him. When the opportunity arose for a valiant sacrifice
to save his new friends, Ginsberg had made the gesture.
Like Ginsberg, Mildred had also been placed in cryo sleep, but her problem was
different from a life-threatening disease. Instead, the doctor had been
hospitalized to undergo abdominal surgery for a possible ovarian cyst when an
unexpected and completely idiosyncratic reaction to the anesthetic plunged her
into a coma.
As Mildred's life signs plummeted, her personal physician as well as her best
professional colleague had chosen to take the step of placing the then dying
Dr.
Wyeth in cryo suspension in order to save the woman's life. In an ironic
twist, some of the tech used to preserve her fading vital signs had been
invented by
Mildred herself, but the sleeping physician was in no condition to appreciate
the irony.
When Ryan and company had reawakened the woman from her deep sleep, her
life-threatening symptoms and coma had miraculously vanished during the long
years she'd been under. "Must've been like a healing trance," she'd later
decided.
"I'm not getting any sort of vibe, lover," Krysty finally said, putting her
hands to
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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_41_-_Freedom_Lost her forehead and massaging her
temples. "Usually with freezies, I get a strange, creepy-crawly feeling.
Alive, but not alive. Dead, but not dead. A suspended-in-
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