The screams hadn't lasted more than fifteen seconds.

"Could try to wade it," Krysty suggested.

"You never knew Bob Duvall, lover," Ryan replied. "We'll go upstream and find a safe place to get us across."

They eventually came to the tumbled remains of a stone bridge, with decorative little arches, some fallen, some still standing. It wasn't difficult to jump over the gaps, though Krysty stumbled as a piece of loose rock rolled from under her boot heel.

They followed a track winding near the edge of the forest. Between the grass and the nearest of the buildings they passed something that looked like a gigantic anthill. If the area held ants at least nine inches in length...

Ryan didn't let his mind dwell too long on that.

Krysty waved an all clear to the hiding trio across the river, receiving a clenched-fist signal in return from J.B.

"Want to go inside?" she asked Ryan.

He shook his head. "Nope. Wait for the others. Scouting ruins like this without taking all the care can bring a load of bloody grief."

They looked around, checking the blind windows and the hidden angles, but nothing moved. The birds had disappeared, as well as the insects.

"Look." Krysty pointed with the muzzle of her blaster.

Ryan took a cautious few steps toward the rectangular stone block that barely protruded above the lush meadow grass. "It's a sign," he called.

"From the Almighty?"

"Come again, lover?"

Krysty grinned. "Let it pass. What kind of sign is it?"

Ryan had knelt in the grass and was cutting vegetation away with his panga. "Looks like the name of the place. Got a shit-lot of moss all over the letters. I'll scrape some of it... Yeah."

The others had crossed the wrecked bridge and stood in a half ring around Ryan, J.B.'s eyes constantly raking the buildings ahead of them and the river and forest behind. Gradually Ryan cleared the top half of the sign: "Wendigo Institute of Botanical Research."

"That's where all of these weird flowers and plants have come from," Krysty said excitedly. "When the nuking came, it must've blown seeds and stuff everywhere. And it's changed the climate in this big valley."

"There's more," Ryan told them. "Incorporating the Blackwood Center for Chemical and Neurological Research, Military Division."

"Germ warfare," Doc spit, anger and contempt fighting in his voice. "Swines. Gas and poisons, and blindness and madness. I've seen the vids. Volunteers that tore out their own eyes and devoured their own ripped genitals. Devils!"

"Sounds like a real good place to move away from," J.B. said finally. "That sort of stuff can hang around a thousand years."

"Make triple-muties," Jake said uneasily, looking around.

"There's another line of letters. Below the rest. Smaller. Grass is hiding them."

Ryan looked where Krysty was pointing. He etched at the lichen with the point of his panga, the steel making a harsh, scratching sound. He sat back on his heels to read the last line.

"With the Shelley Cryonic Institute — Private. This is it! The place Rick mentioned. More freezies are inside there."

Chapter Ten

Ryan's high expectations began to evaporate as soon as they set foot within the ruined complex. The devastation was worse than it had appeared from the outside. Many of the roofs had collapsed under nuke-waves of shock, and rain and humidity had done the rest.

The floors were rotted and slippery, and pools of warm brackish water had accumulated in doorways and at turns of corridors. Broken glass cracked underfoot, from the myriad windows and skylights. The interior had been totally ravaged, probably within the first few weeks of the center's destruction. It crossed Ryan's mind to wonder what kind of appalling chemicals had been set free at that time. The botanical complex had created this bizarre tropical oasis within rural Minnesota. So what could the germs, diseases, nerve gases and hallucinogens have wrought?

The companions picked their way through the linked buildings. The huge pharmacy was ankle deep in a mixture of mossy green sludge and smashed vials and syringes, which had once contained who knew what blasphemous obscenities?

"No freezies around here," Jak stated, shaking his mane of hair.

Ryan wiped sweat from behind his eye patch. "Guess you're right. Still, we know the institute was here once. Let's at least try to dig out where the freezies used to be."

A large hornet buzzed into the room, making straight for Krysty. Her reflexes were good enough to swipe it out of the air. It landed in one of the dirty puddles, swimming and whining in an infinity of crazed desperation. J.B. finally set his boot on it.

"Hope there aren't too many of that," he said. "I don't see many good hiding places around here."

The deeper they walked into the complex, the more the buildings seemed to have suffered. They walked out through a broken wall, facing nothing but dozens of piles of variegated rubble and a windowless rectangular concrete blockhouse, which looked relatively undamaged.

The structure was two stories high, and above the dark green doors they could all read the weathered sign that said: Shelley Cryonic Institute. Private.

Ryan's optimism inched up a few more notches.

The sec doors showed signs of innumerable attacks on their titanium-vanadium steel exterior. Dents, scratches and chips marked the smooth green finish. When J.B. pushed at it, the lock seemed as solid as the day it had been made.

"Better and better," Ryan said quietly, squeezing Krysty on the arm.

"What?"

"If it's still locked and wired into the main nuke-power source of the redoubt, then there could still be freezies down there. Alive."

The woman shuddered. "No, lover."

"You mean you can't feel any life inside? That it?"

"No. I mean, I can't. But that wasn't... I can still remember too well what happened when we tried to thaw out those other poor folk."

"Rick made it."

"Sure. But I kept feeling there were a lot of times that he'd mebbe rather not."

"You think we shouldn't even try?"

She smiled at him. "Course not. I think you always have to try. Just hope it's not as bad as it was the last time."

"Got to get in here first," J.B. said practically.

"You got some fresh plas-ex yesterday?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah. Take a handful to blow this mother out of the way."

"Do it." Ryan took Doc by the arm and led him back among the ruins, to protect him from the blast.

The old man followed him without making any kind of protest.

Several minutes later J.B. joined them unhurriedly, as if he were going for an afternoon's fishing in a trout stream. He glanced at his wrist chron as he crouched at Ryan's side. "Ten seconds to go, if the fuses are still reliable."

Ryan nudged Doc. "Put your hands over your ears, Doc, and open your mouth."

"Why?"

"Save you from the bang. Do it."

The explosion came almost immediately, flat and dulled from being out in the open. Since the Armorer hadn't been able to use the confining force of the plas-ex, he'd been forced to use a lump the size of his fist. As the yellowish smoke cleared away Ryan wondered whether it might have been too much and brought the whole building down.

But J.B. had gotten it just right.

The doors had peeled back on their concealed hinges like wet cardboard. The reinforced concrete had been cracked just above the doors, bringing down the faded sign. But the main structure didn't seem to have been damaged.

"I confess myself somewhat at a loss," Doc said as he peered at the wrecked sec doors in confusion.

"Someone lost key," Jak explained, which seemed to satisfy the old man.

"Worth leaving a guard?" J.B. asked. "Bang like that'd be heard from here to the Lantic and back."