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  FREEDOM’S FIRES

  A surprise Russian thermonuclear first strike nearly a century earlier had transformed the United States into a decimated wasteland, its people enslaved by rampaging hordes of brutal Soviet invaders. But one man has refused to allow the flames of freedom to flicker out. The ultimate champion of a lost democracy, he is Ted Rockson—the Doomsday Warrior!

  From the ruined California coast, Rockson and his Freefighters set sail for a remote Pacific island. Rumor has it that the primitive inhabitants worship a strange and deadly idol—a gargantuan instrument of destruction stretching 150 stories into the sky. But now the terrifying weapon is in the clutches of a crazed Soviet officer intent on utilizing it to destroy forever the valiant struggle for America’s freedom.

  Marked for ritual sacrifice by the superstitious islanders, the “Rock Team” must wrest control of the doomsday device from the hands of a bloodthirsty maniac. For if its awesome power is unleashed, the last hope for a reborn America will be trampled into the radioactive dust!

  DOOMSDAY

  WARRIOR

  BLADES OF DEATH!

  The two thick-set samurai were naked to the waist. They drew their glistening swords and shouted a challenge.

  Ted Rockson reached for his shotpistol only to find an empty holster. Lost the damn thing somewhere! There was only one recourse, the long, heavy Katama sword he carried. He pulled it from his scabbard.

  The Doomsday Warrior was not an expert at swordplay. But Chen had taught him a few lessons in the noble art in Century City’s gymnasium. Lessons that would be tested now, Rockson thought grimly, as the two samurai suddenly rushed forward swinging their razor-sharp blades over their heads like deadly twin scythes!

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  475 Park Avenue South

  New York, N.Y. 10016

  ISBN: 0-8217-2338-3

  Copyright © 1988 by Ryder Stacy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  First printing: April 1988

  Printed in the United States of America

  Forward

  America was a strange and often frightening place one hundred and nine years after World War III. Radioactive deserts, killer dog packs and poisonous creeper vines now were the norm in a world gone mad.

  The Red victors of the Nuke War were hard put to maintain their grip on the nation in such conditions. But to the Freefighters, led by a remarkable soldier of survival named Ted Rockson, this bizarre world was home sweet home. Rockson, known as the Doomsday Warrior, was the acknowledged leader of the battle against the Soviets.

  Ted Rockson was six feet two, tan and musclar, and hard. His long, black hair with the mutant’s white streak in the middle was thrown back over his shoulders. His mismatched aqua and ultramarine eyes were steady and keen. He was a born leader and a stubborn go-it-alone individual. And above all, he had a fierce hatred of tyrants.

  Rock, as the Freefighters called him, carried a versatile balisong knife in his belt; there was a twelve-gauge shotpistol in his right holster, and a snub-nosed Liberator submachine gun slung over his arm.

  Operating out of a hidden fortress city in the Rocky Mountains, Rockson led his Rock team on mission after mission against the enemy.

  The team consisted of the cream of the crop of Century City’s awesome fighters for freedom:

  1) Detroit – a bull-necked, ebony man with a pitching arm that could strike out any inter-free-city home run hitter, or eliminate a Red bunker fortification. He carried twenty of his “pineapples” on crisscrossed bandoliers on his chest. Detroit was also an expert anthropologist—a necessary skill in a postnuke America with a thousand bizarre, isolated cultures.

  2) Chen – the pencil-moustached, wirey, Chinese-American martial arts expert. He carried a belt load of shuriken, star-knives, for throwing. Chen often sparred with Rockson, the only man that could win so much as a draw against him. He hated formality and often wore a mocking grin when people spoke but said little himself.

  3) Archer – an immense, black-bearded mountain man. Rockson had found him sinking in a quicksand pool while Rock was out on a mission. He saved the near-mute, and Archer had repaid him in kind many times. Archer preferred isolation to company. He lived deep in the twisting maze of conduits under Century City and was loathe to wear a khaki uniform like the others. Instead, he lived and slept in a bearskin outfit. You could overlook his smell, because Archer had a homemade titanium alloy bow and a set of arrows that could pierce a six-inch armor plate.

  4) Scheransky – a blond Soviet defector, the technical expert. He was the most recent addition to the team. Scheransky carried the standard Liberator, plus a Czar’s bludgeon. He wore a pair of pearl-handled .44 revolvers—a gift from Dr. Schecter, Century City’s chief scientist, for Scheransky’s assistance to him.

  5) McCaughlin – a bear of a man, nearly as bulky as Archer. But in all other ways he was the opposite. He had a neatly trimmed, reddish beard and a crisp uniform. He was talkative and gregarious, with a special penchant for the ladies. The crew-cut fighter was also a passable trail cook and a humorist. He was a must on all missions, for when the going got rough, McCaughlin’s wit got going! Plus he was, like the others, a crack shot.

  There was no stopping these determined men. With Rockson in the lead, surely AMERICA WOULD RISE AGAIN!

  One

  Fog. Endless fog. That was the way it had been for two days now, once the Rock team left the heights of the Sierra Nevada and descended to the barren valley of California. Rockson was hoping they would reach the coast soon. All the men—Archer, Scheransky, McCaughlin, Detroit and even Chen who was noted for his patience—were getting restless. Maybe restless wasn’t the word. They were almost driven crazy now by the monotony, the silence. And the moisture was rotting everything: their clothing, packs, even their well-worn boots. This sullen evenness, this blindness, was worse on the nerves than the shaking and quaking of the “Unstable Lands” of Nevada, which had sent the men’s sturdy ’brid mounts down into suddenly gaping crevasses, along with most of their ammunition. The six men survived to tramp on toward the Pacific waters. Six sullen, sodden men in moods so sour Rockson felt they didn’t need any weapons, they would spit acid at anything that bothered them!

  Most of all, he didn’t like being in fog in unknown territory. In the Rockies there were dangers galore, but he knew the dangers. Here—who knew whether an innocent-looking bush had mutated into a grabbing thing that would yank you off your feet and digest you?

  As he sloshed through inches-deep mud at the head of the column, barely able to see six feet ahead of him, Rockson thought back to how this expedition had begun: He had been deep in Century City’s underground archives. Historical researchers had unearthed a video tape from the nuclear war, and though it was 109 years old, they managed to restore it. It was a recording by Shiela Martin—one of the underground city’s founders. Rockson had placed the tape in an antique VCR and had been watching it for a half hour. Martin, on the tape, was reporting to the third council meeting regarding a drilling operation that had resulted in the second of the many levels of Century City being completed. Rock had been amazed to actually see and hear this woman of legend and was deeply absorbed. Then the annoying interruption came.

  It was old man Rath, the hawk-nosed intelligence chief, who brought word of the faint, garbled radio broadcast from one of the most far-flung groups of Freefighters—the Surfcombers—in California. The message was something about a new weapon about to fall
into Soviet hands. Rath made Rock turn off the precious tape and demanded that Rock “quit this foolishness” and secure that weapon. He produced a document ordering Rock to do so, a resolution by the council.

  Now here he was, his hat brim dripping water in his face, Rock’s expression set in a constant grimace, battling fatigue and rot.

  Rockson’s left boot suddenly touched something gritty; he looked down and saw that there was sand under his feet. He called a halt to the column and stood still, listening to a low roar.

  “What do you make of that?” asked the bullnecked, muscular black man, trying to peer through the dense fog.

  “Detroit,” Rock replied, “I—think it’s the roar of surf!”

  They walked forward slowly, inhaling pungent salt air as the fog parted. They were on a beach. Ahead was the Pacific Ocean, breakers and all.

  McCaughlin came up alongside the Doomsday Warrior.

  “Well I’ll be, Rock. Are we at our destination?”

  “Not sure . . .” Rock replied. “We’re on the coast, obviously, but maybe too far north or south. Chen, take a reading on the geo-locator.”

  Now that the sun shone palely through the clouds, the mini-sextant-gyrocompass device could be set down on its tripod in the sand to determine their position. That was exactly what the martial-arts expert proceeded to do. When he threw the switch, there were a few beeps, and a red readout appeared on the globular six-inch device.

  “We’re twelve miles too far north—not bad,” Chen reported.

  “Well, let’s get trekking then,” their leader said.

  Chen scooped up the geo-locator, snapped its tripod shut and put it back in his rucksack. The weary men, buoyed by being so near their goal, walked down the beach with a bit of their old spirit.

  After a while, Rock looked back. One man was missing. “Hold it,” he ordered. “Let’s go back, Archer’s disappeared.”

  They found him way down the beach, bending over.

  “Archer, stop picking up seashells,” Rock admonished. “We can’t carry those around!”

  “Pretty!” the giant replied sheepishly. “Meee liike!”

  “Oh, all right, but just the small ones.”

  Rockson smiled, remembering when he first had laid eyes on the near-mute mountain man. He had dragged Archer from a quicksand pit, and that was the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship. The mountain man’s home-made steel arrows were a good complement to the other men’s special abilities. Archer had gotten them out of many scrapes with his mighty bow, but the man was . . . unpredictable.

  Speaking of scrapes, Rock thought. He was feeling a prickle on the back of his neck. His mutant senses were picking up danger.

  “Archer, drop those things, and keep your arrows ready. Men, get on full alert!”

  “Is something up?” asked Scheransky, the blond was cross-drawing his new silver .44s from his pair of embossed leather holsters.

  “Maybe . . . maybe not.”

  They listened for a while. Nothing but the wind and surf and an eerie silence beyond. No bird noises—nothing.

  Rock finally said, “Must be a false alarm—let’s get moving.”

  Still, as they walked in the slate-colored light, Rock could feel the electricity in the air.

  A sound—a noise like the muttering of mad children—arose from the fog. The sound coalesced into shouts of at least a dozen men. Indescipherable, but angry.

  “Get down!” Rock yelled, taking out the fog-piercing infrared binocs as he hit the sand. He trained them down the beach toward the ruckus. But he didn’t need the lenses!

  They were right on the Freefighters now, six snarling, drooling cavemen, spinning bola-like weapons overhead, which they proceeded to throw. Most of the swirling rope-and-rocks missed. But Archer, who was slow to hit the sand, got entangled in the sticky weblike things. Then, as the Freefighters raised their weapons, they were pounced on by the huge animal-skin-clad, red-eyed attackers.

  A knife flashed down at Rock, but the caveman’s blade never met the mark. The beast-man who pounced on the Doomsday Warrior was met by sixteen explosive pellets of his shotpistol. He flew back from Rockson, the burning X-pattern of holes in the thing’s chest trailing smoke.

  Rockson sat up and spun the pistol toward Archer who, trussed in a caveman’s ropes, was having a hard time fending off his attacker. Once again Rock fired, careful to aim wide. Half the pattern of explosive pellets impacted on the caveman. He fell away from Archer, his face like raw hamburger. Archer snapped the ropes and pulled his shotpistol, taking down one more. Very quickly, the primitives were shot stone-dead. The only Freefighter injury was a knife cut on Detroit’s left upper arm.

  But the battle wasn’t over. A second group, ten immense fur-clad prehistoric men, was down the beach, just watching. Perhaps they had meant to join the attack but now were wary. Their eyes glinted grey in the smeary light of the pale sun, looking like dead, cold rocks filled with only a vacuum, not any soul.

  They crouched down and looked at one another, as if considering whether to attack or flee. Meanwhile, the embattled Freefighters clambered to their feet. The 8 foot tall man-creatures seemed to study the spilled bodies of their compatriots on the red-stained sands of the beach. Rockson expected them to retreat.

  Instead, one of the primitives made a decision for the whole group. With a snarl he raced forward, raising his huge stone adze on high. His speed was staggering, and Rockson yelled, “Fire!” as he let a whole clip of “X” pellets blast from his shotpistol.

  The other Freefighters also laid down a withering pattern of hot lead with their .9mm Liberator submachine guns or their hand-held deathdealers. The cavemen-types were hit five, six, seven times each, and fell in crazy rag-doll fashion only a few feet away.

  Then only silence. The wind. The breakers.

  Was that it? Rock sure hoped so. Then Rockson sensed something—and whirled. Just in time.

  The primitive attackers, it appeared, could be very stealthy as well as fast. Some more of them had come around in the fog, outflanking the Freefighters. There were at least fifty of the bastards creeping from less than ten yards away. They had moved silently, as if they had cats’ paws, not hairy human feet.

  “By Lenin,” whispered Scheransky. “How many of the suckers are there?”

  “Don’t waste talk, just shoot them,” Rock ordered.

  Again they laid down a pattern of intense fire. But this bunch had something new—flatstone shields! Even the armor-piercing bullets of the Freefighter’s Liberator rifles pinged off crude but effective barriers.

  “Oh-oh,” Chen commented, “time for more than bullets!”

  Rock picked up on Chen’s suggestion, saying, “Shoot your arrows, Archer! Chen—use the explosive star-knives! Detroit—hit ’em with the grenades!”

  Archer had already pulled an arrow from his quiver and notched it into the steel bow’s string. He fired the explosive-tipped arrow almost straight up. Rockson, for a second, feared the arrow would catch on the wind and fall right back on them. But it didn’t. It impacted on the sand just behind the center of the advancing group of smelly beast-men and exploded with a sizeable concussion.

  The metal shields collapsed forward from the blast, and those primitives that weren’t taken down by the explosion, were blasted by the star-knives and grenades which were now lobbed at the exposed attackers.

  “Let ’em have it with the Liberators!” Rock commanded.

  The remaining attackers rushed forward waving heavy stone mallets but fell like wheat before a scythe in the .9mm death-storm.

  Again, silence, except for one fallen caveman, who twitched and groaned from time to time. The Doomsday Warrior thought it was over at last.

  Then came the sound of more than a hundred garbled voices screaming something like “Vengeance—vengeance—vengeance!”

  The sun had burned off more of the fog, and Rockson could faintly see the high, rolling dunes along this particular stretch of beach. And pouring over
the dunes were hordes of monster-sized fur-clad attackers.

  It didn’t look good. Their ammo was nearly gone, and the army of cave people was running at them with axes and knives and bludgeons held on high, screaming bloody murder.

  Now there was another noise, this time from out on the waves. More voices, but not jabbering. The new voices were shouting, “Doom for Invaders. Doom! Doom!”

  Were the Freefighters being hit from sea as well as land?

  The cavemen, hearing the voices from the sea, froze in position and sniffed the air. Rockson was puzzled. Who was coming from the sea—and how? He still saw nothing but breakers.

  Then, from out over the surf, a set of flaming golden tridents flashed overhead and into the cavemen’s ranks. One struck off a leather-clad primitive’s head and another golden trident solidly pierced through the chest of another attacker. The strange weapons fizzled, and Rock could smell burning skin.

  The second caveman still stood, the glowing-hot trident buried in his chest. He staggered forward as his eyes rolled up. Blood came out of his nose and ears. He gurgled some startled words and lifted his crude ax to strike. But Rockson kicked his legs out from under him and delivered a coup-de-grace from his shotpistol.

  As a dozen more golden tridents flew over the Rock team at the cavemen, the man-creatures turned and fled for their lives, abandoning their dead and wounded.

  The unseen friends behind the breakers now came flashing forward on the whitecaps, riding silver surfboards toward the Freefighters at amazing speed. In all, there were seven muscular, bronze-skinned men on long tapered surfboards. A strange throwing device was still held up in one hand of each surfer while the other arm balanced the ride on the waves.

  Rockson said, “Well I’ll be! These guys must be the Surfcombers that sent the message for us to come see them—”

  “Kriiiyah!” one bronze man yelled and hurled a trident straight at Rockson. He dove to the side, rolled and pointed his pistol seaward.