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the looks of it,” Mildred said as she made her way to the doorway. A blackened crater marred the floor where the grenade had gone off.
    Doc was at the doorway now with Mildred at his side, scanning the bleak landscape for Jak. Two mutated caribous were butting heads in a smear of blood and pulp, while Jak, with considerable aplomb, crouched in the snow to pick up his discarded Colt Python while still watching the fight. The albino looked like a kid who had snuck into a prize fight.
    Back inside the redoubt, J.B. was just bringing himself up off the floor. He had been very near to the explosion when it had gone off, and it had only been his quick thinking that had moved him and the mysterious young woman out of harm’s way.
    “Dark night, that was close,” J.B. said as he struggled back to his feet. He had reacted instantly at Krysty’s warning, shoving himself and the young woman to the floor at the speed of thought. The blonde was sprawled on the hard concrete floor, sobbing quietly, tears streaming down her cheeks.
    “It’s okay,” J.B. told her. “We’re still alive.”
    The young woman looked at him with a tentative smile. “They are gone?” she asked.
    “Two of them—both chilled,” the Armorer confirmed.
    “Nyet,” she said, shaking her head rapidly. “There were more of them. More than...twelve, maybe fifteen.” She was fretting immediately, and J.B. had to hold her arm to steady her as she tried to run deeper into the redoubt. “They’re after my father.”
    “Hear that, Ryan?” he called.
    Ryan nodded grimly. “Then we’d better get moving,” he said.
    A moment later, the seven companions and their mysterious new charge exited the redoubt, Ryan tapping in the coded sequence that sealed the door before they made their way out into the snow-speckled night, past the riled-up mutie caribou. The caribou ignored them, their horns locked, too busy engaged in their own squabble to worry themselves with the trifling affairs of the humans.

Chapter Three
    “Alaska,” J.B. said, lowering the tiny folding minisextant and putting it into one of his deep pockets. “That’s my best guess, anyways.”
    Standing amid the fallen branches, Ryan looked at him. “Best guess?” he probed.
    The Armorer shrugged. “Stars are in the right place for sure,” he explained, “but by my calculations we’re farther north than the maps go.”
    “The maps could be wrong,” Doc opined, tugging his collar closer to his neck. While the others were well-equipped for cold weather, the old man only had his light frock coat to keep him warm and, ironically, he was the one who felt the cold most. “A lot of changes were wrought unto the landscape with the outbreak of the nukecaust.”
    “Doc has a point,” Mildred added, not looking up from where she was examining the blonde. “We know that tectonic plates have been shunted out of their old positions in other parts of the world. No reason it didn’t happen here, wherever here is.”
    “Might be Nome,” J.B. said with marked indifference, scanning the vinyl-covered predark map that he had produced from one of his jacket’s capacious pockets.
    Krysty laughed. “Sounds more like a creature than a place,” she said. “Gnomes and pixies and little elflings. My mother told me all about them back in Harmonyville.”
    “Well, wherever we are, it’s here,” Ryan said with his usual pragmatism. He scanned their surroundings for a moment, eyeing the patchy snow clumping indifferently against the frozen tundra. Having locked the redoubt, the companions had made their way through the thorny bushes that surrounded the entrance, following the path that the tired-looking young woman led them through. She was clearly distraught, mumbling in a language that Ryan couldn’t make sense of. She led them up a frost-carpeted slope to a cluster of trees, well hidden in the moonless night while providing an ideal vantage point of the immediate area.
    Ryan had put Jak and Ricky on