Doomsday Warrior 09 - America’s Zero Hour Read online

With their flashlights lit, they advanced through the mouth of the cave. “You’ll have to be very careful,” Rockson admonished. “Avoid the stalactites and stalagmites. Some of them look damn sharp.”

  It was like an obstacle course. The cave narrowed down and forced them to go single file. Chen spotted a bit of rag from McCaughlin’s jacket on one of the sharp green stalactites. The cave narrowed more and the ceiling lowered; they found themselves crouching.

  Deep inside the winding cave, Rock was the first to notice something peculiar. A smell. Foul, musky. The dogs had sort of a musky scent which he had grown used to, but this was a putrid odor that now assaulted his olfactory sense. Something he had never smelled before. Something like rancid human perspiration, or a thousand sweat socks moldering in gym lockers that had just been opened after a hundred years of sitting idle.

  “That is Sasquatch smell,” gasped out Tinglim.

  Rock led the way as they climbed down into another narrow passageway. From time to time they doused their lights to follow the flickering glow. This new tunnel was not limestone like the other passageways, but seemed carved out of dark rock. Trickles of muddy runoff water ran through the pebbly brown dirt underfoot. They were deep under the mountain now, perhaps a quarter mile in, and still descending. The steep pebbly ground slowed their progress and didn’t do their attempt at being quiet any good. They were almost at their goal: The glow ahead was bright enough to light their way, so they flicked off their flashlights.

  A scream that caused neck hairs to quiver and stand erect, issued from somewhere ahead. It was a scream that sent adrenaline through Rock’s body making his heart pound in his ears—it was a scream that could waken the dead, the sound of an animal in exquisite agony. Slowly, cautiously, Rockson and his team progressed toward that orange light ahead and the source of the scream. The floor of the cave grew smoother, as if worn by the tread of many feet. The ceiling heightened to nine feet or more, and the horrid smell grew overwhelmingly strong.

  Rockson stopped without warning; Chen thudded into him, almost pushing Rockson off a ledge. They were twenty feet above the floor of a high dome-ceilinged circular chamber. As they knelt down to keep out of sight, their eyes beheld a gruesome scene. “Easy, men,” Rockson whispered.

  Robinson, or rather what was left of him, was being roasted on a spit by immense red-haired creatures that resembled orangutans. Five pointy-headed Sasquatch were waiting to taste the flesh of their roasted victim.

  “It must have been Robinson’s scream,” whispered Chen. Rockson nodded. Against the far wall of the chamber lay McCaughlin, bound and gagged, a look of horror on his face as he waited his turn on the barbecue spit.

  McCaughlin’s parka was torn and bloodied, and his neck had a welt—from some sort of rope burn, Rock surmised. Their big friend had to be rescued—now. But to do that, the rescuers would have to do battle. There was no way to get to McCaughlin except through the whole mess of eaters. And the red-furred, pointy-headed things wouldn’t like that at all.

  Rock sized up his opponents. He could see them clearly in the light of the cooking fire. They were sitting on their haunches, yet even in this position they were as tall as a man. “They must be nine feet tall if an inch,” Rock whispered to Chen, who was on the ground alongside him, taking in the gruesome spectacle.

  “Yeah, and each one of those buggers weighs in at four hundred pounds, I’ll bet,” Chen answered uncomfortably. “But a star-knife or two might cut them down to size. If I can just hit the right place.”

  Rock replied, “You do that, Chen. But don’t try it from here. They’re so busy eating, we might be able to get closer. Close enough to use our shotpistols and your star-knives. The closer we get before they spot us, the more likely it is they won’t get a chance to slaughter McCaughlin.”

  With Rockson in the lead, the men moved along the ledge, until they found sufficient roughness to the twenty feet of rockface below to afford them footholds. They descended, quite out in the open. Should any of the Sasquatch have turned from their grim repast, they would have seen them. But the monsters were too busy eating. Rock and his men spread out fast, rushed at the things. When they turned, dropping their burned-human supper, the Freefighters began blasting them. Two fell.

  “Rapid fire,” yelled Rockson, his voice echoing through the subterranean chamber. “Aim for their chests. Don’t let ’em grab ya.”

  The creatures leapt to the fight, having picked up their crude but massive weapons—pikes and axes of the most primitive sort. Chen yelled out, “Rock, here come two more of ’em!”

  “Damn,” the Doomsday Warrior muttered. The present bunch of opponents was enough trouble! There in the light of the cooking fire, in the smell of human flesh burning, the creatures of the Arctic night and the human invaders faced off.

  Rock was confronted by the biggest of the bunch, who wielded an ax that could have taken a chunk out of a truck. The chipped stone head of the thing, secured to a wooden handle, was the size of a man’s arm. It swished by Rock as he dove to the left and fired up and sideways, catching the man-thing in the rib cage with a burst of hellfire.

  The exploding pellets dug into the Sasquatch and did their work, disintegrating the thing’s torso into spinning bloody chunks that splattered across the chamber. The thing heaved to the ground, half afire. Rock headed toward McCaughlin, to free him.

  Chen hit his target not with a blast of his shotpistol, but with something even more deadly—an exploding star-knife. The martial-arts expert’s whizzing death-dealer caught a Sasquatch in midroar, right in its throat. The roar turned to a gurgle as the five-pointed metal star dug into its vocal cords. Then, when the explosive tips of the star-knife exploded, the huge red-furred head blew off the body of the monster and slammed against the ceiling of the chamber. The headless body of the cave being staggered forward, its huge hairy arms flailing, blood fountaining from its neck. Then it fell with a whump. “Good shot, Chen,” the Doomsday Warrior yelled. But the Freefighters still faced five of the man-eaters. And they were augmented by two more nasty fellows who appeared on the ledge above. Each of the new buddy-boys carried boulders poised over their heads, held by their huge hairy arms. They had every intention of crushing the invaders, and then eating them too.

  Wham! A boulder was tossed, slamming down into the hard dirt just to the left of Rockson. Another boulder momentarily flew above and then crashed right next to Archer. The throwers melted into the shadows.

  Where were they? Rock wondered as he tried to sight up the elusive creatures in the half-light. “Random fire, full automatic,” he yelled, but the Freefighters were already sending out a hail by the time he finished speaking. Rock decided to play hero and shot out from his concealment. He zigzagged thirty yards up the underground chamber, narrowly missing getting caught by a monstrous boulder thrown from above. He dove behind a trapezoid-shaped stalagmite. Rockson rolled out, his shotpistol in hand, and came to a standing position.

  He had found the source of the boulders. There! Twenty feet above him was a grinning Sasquatch. It was beating on its broad chest. It snarled and let out a stream of steam from its nostrils into the cold cavern air. And then it grabbed up a desk-sized boulder and began to throw it. Tinglim threw his harpoon at the creature. It stuck in the broad chest and the thing’s eyes rolled up, its pitch of death altered enough to just miss the Doomsday Warrior.

  The concussion of the shattering boulder shook the cavern as Rock was showered with sharp rock fragments. Then another opponent jumped down. Rockson stood his ground and stared into the red, veiny eyes, as big as coffee mugs.

  The creature stared back. It was the biggest, ten feet tall. This Sasquatch had a thick pelt of orange hair, not red. Its wide skull and flat face ended up in a point, sort of like a dunce cap at the crown of his head. But there was no mistaking it: despite the primitive hunger and hostility in those red eyes, there was another element—intelligence. The thing was doubly dangerous therefore.

  “Greeeffffffffhhhh!” th
e Sasquatch growled, its wet nostrils flaring, its eyes growing wild and impatient. There was a thin trickle of saliva running down that massive red, hairy jaw. Teeth appeared but the sides of the mouth weren’t parted. It was more like hunger than friendship. The thing edged forward and Rock began quick dancing steps backward.

  Suddenly the thing leapt, and Rock did a flip backward, landing on his feet. It would have made Chen proud.

  That seemed to be about enough for the hulking half-human, and it rushed forward trying to engulf the Freefighter in a bear hug to the death. But Rock was too fast, stepping sideways in a Pa-kua movement.

  The Sasquatch was left clutching air. And he got even madder when Rockson delivered a kick to its knee—or what he hoped was its knee. It howled “Frekkkkkk!” Rock thought it might mean “Now I kill and eat you, but first I pluck your arms and legs.”

  It stood and stared at Rockson, becoming absolutely motionless, frozen like a holgraphic snapshot, its every sense of perception focused on the Freefighter. Its red, wide-slitted eyes were a furnace, filled with incendiary flames of anger. The Doomsday Warrior could practically feel the heat emanating from them. A black tongue, thick as a man’s wrist, darted in and out of the open jaw, as if it was tasting Rockson’s scent. And evidently it liked what it tasted. It rested back down on its haunches preparing what Rockson could see was a new leap.

  Without turning, Rock sensed the presence of another—a human—to his right side.

  “Move real slow, Chen,” Rock whispered. “This thing’s looking dinner right in the eye. I don’t think it’s going to watch you too hard. Circle to the left.”

  “I’ll take a shot at it. I think my star-knife can do the trick,” the Freefighter said. Chen moved almost imperceptibly to the side, out of the direct striking range of the thing.

  “Not yet,” Rock said as he moved ever so slowly to the opposite side. He moved with trained fighting instincts, honed down over the years. Rockson was a pure fighting machine, a survivor. The Doomsday Warrior had withstood all that the cruel Post-Nuke world could hurl at him. But he knew in his heart that someday something would come at him that would be too powerful—and he would die. This might be that day.

  But Rock didn’t feel like taking an endless snooze in the Arctic today. This monster was going to have to die, not him. He kept his eyes directly on the creature’s own burning saucers, looking for the sudden flicker that meant attack. But the Sasquatch was in no hurry. Its hunting instincts had taken over, and it stood frozen, its big mitt-sized hands raised up, its apelike snout pointing like a hunting dog straight at the Doomsday Warrior. The red eyes followed Rockson as he moved, letting Chen lift the star-knife and prepare to hurl it . . . The Sasquatch grew impatient, sprang into the air uncoiling those enormous legs, and headed straight toward Rockson’s throat. The hairy hands tried to close around the Doomsday Warrior’s neck in one swift grab. Chen couldn’t throw for fear of hitting Rock.

  Rock sensed the Sasquatch’s attack just a split second before it came. He dove sideways, flying through the icy cavern, landing flat on his stomach ten feet away. The thing’s hairy hands squeezed shut on the spot where the Doomsday Warrior had been standing.

  It snarled in frustration, its eyes setting again on its target. The immense mouth opened, emitting a howl of fury. The Sasquatch came bearing down on Rock again.

  “Now, Chen!” Rock yelled, jumping aside as Chen threw his weapon. The star-knife flew accurately into the thing’s bowels, which exploded in a rain of red guts.

  Three other Sasquatch ran in, letting out with a chorus of bellowing roars that echoed and reverberated in the Freefighters’ ears. But from behind the new looming red-haired figures came a black form with a fire—something Sasquatch-sized and mean—Archer! A flaming arrow shot from his crossbow caught the closest Sasquatch squarely in the belly. It sank in deep, and set the thing’s thick hair on fire. The Sasquatch tried to pull the hook-tipped arrow out but every time it yanked, the serrated hook-tip made it scream in pain. The thing ran around ablaze, slamming against the rock walls, its burning, smoking flesh brightening the scene.

  “Meeee goood!” said Archer, removing yet a second self-igniting steel arrow from the quiver on his back and notching it onto his taut crossbow string. But before Archer could finish, another still-active monster was upon him, swinging a huge ax—sharp edge forward—at the human giant. Archer deflected the first two blows, but the third swing smashed into his hair-matted skull and splashed red all over his face. The ax stuck there, and Archer slid to the floor gurgling up a red paste. His eyes rolled upward.

  Rock took to the air, using a two-legged kick against the icy rock wall to hurl his body forward, somersaulting into the Sasquatch’s huge form. It was as if seeing Archer fall had driven Rock to new heights of anger-energy. The Sasquatch actually was staggered by Rock’s blow. Chen, for his part, capitalized on its stunned condition by raising his Liberator and letting out a stream of slugs—the last of his clip. The bullets bit into the half-human, cutting a bloody seam up the center of his chest like a pair of scissors. It fell and rolled away along the cavern’s floor and out of sight.

  Rockson raised his hunting knife—not much of a weapon—as one of the remaining attackers shot forward like a meteor and slammed Rock to the ground. The big knife spiraled through the air like a wounded bird and fell in the frozen dirt yards away. Pedersen poured out the hot lead from his shotpistol, though, and took the creature down.

  The last three Sasquatch stepped forward in the semidarkness, flickers of the declining cooking fire lighting their ugly faces. One seemed to snicker, like a human does when he’s just pulled a royal flush in a poker game. Rock was picking himself up slowly; dazed, vulnerable. It evidently thought Rock was about to cash in his chips—and so did the Doomsday Warrior. It came forward, a crude ax raised in its hair-covered hand. Rock groggily rolled to the side to avoid the blow but the thing was good at axing—it whipped the ax in an arc, striking backhand at Rock. The side of the stone blade caught the Doomsday Warrior just on the side of the skull and he fell backward, staggering, almost falling unconscious. His eyes were spinning around in his head like balls on a roulette wheel, and he could feel a stream of blood flowing down his neck. He blinked, trying to regain his vision. He couldn’t go under—not with that hairy man-beast coming at him. Suddenly it was McCaughlin to the rescue. He had been cut free by Chen. “I got him, Rock,” the Scotsman yelled. He struck out with a roundhouse kick that could demolish a cinder-block wall—and had, in several practice sessions back at Century City. The blow was aimed at the wrist of the ax-holding hand. The ax spun loose and Rock caught it. Before the Sasquatch could take a step, Rock swung down with both arms and buried the sharp end into the forehead of the Sasquatch with every ounce of strength he possessed. Its eyes flew out in a gush of yellow fluid as it fell to its knees. Pieces of bone and flesh scattered all over the killing field. Its head was split in two. The last two Sasquatch alive hightailed it.

  Rock’s lungs hurt more than his body. The pain of sucking in the icy air as he fought, the pain of his many injuries, were now the dictator of his numb world. The Doomsday Warrior tried to stay on his feet and started walking toward the blood-soaked figure of Archer. His vision clouded. He felt the throbbing pain in his skull from the ax blow turn into a hammering whirlpool of blackness—and he fell into it.

  Seventeen

  Rock awoke several hours later, and realized he was moving. The pale Arctic sun on the horizon let him see that he was on the sled again, this time lying under a mound of blankets and pelts. The driver of the sled was McCaughlin. “Where?” Rock asked.

  “We’re through the woods and on our way to Ice City,” McCaughlin answered cheerfully. “As far as we can tell, you’re in one piece,” he went on. “You might want to move around a bit to see if any bones are broken. You took quite a blow—but you’ll live. Thanks for the rescue, buddy!”

  Rock carefully moved an inch under the blanket. He felt soreness but no sti
nging pains. Arms, legs, fingers, toes—all were in good working order.

  “Archer . . . is he? . . .”

  “No, he’s alive—but barely,” McCaughlin said with concern. “We bandaged up his skull, pushing the bone together, and sealed it with plasti-salve. But I don’t know—the ax entered his brain.”

  “Maybe,” Rock said, “he can be helped at Ice City.”

  “Don’t talk . . . Here, sip some of this Foxmeat broth—the Sasquatch just threw it aside: they preferred human meat. Robinson caught the fox just before we were captured. You’ve been unconscious for hours. I skinned it and cooked up a stew. We’ve all had some.”

  “Thanks,” Rock murmured as he pushed the cup to his lips. He didn’t care what the hell it had in it. He needed some energy. He sipped the cup of tepid brew down and half swallowed, half chewed the bits of meat in it. When he’d finished he asked, “What was the total damage?”

  “Everyone except Archer is okay. Of course, Robinson was—”

  “I know,” said Rock. “What else?”

  “The damned Sasquatch that survived ran out of the cave and found our sleds. They took three sleds complete with dog teams when they hightailed it.”

  “How far to the Ice City?”

  “I’m not sure,” admitted McCaughlin.

  Rock tried to sit up, and managed. His face was cold. He wrapped the flaps of the huge furry hood closer around his face, only letting his nose and eyes show. “Where’s the map?”

  “Under the blanket. Near where your right hand was.” Rock groped around until he found the bundle, drew it out from under the blanket and unrolled it in his lap. He quickly found the edge of the Sasquatch Forest and, doing a little figuring based on McCaughlin’s compass reading and the number of hours they had traveled, decided they were only ten miles or so from Ice City.

  They sped through the snow-covered forest of dark majestic evergreens with trunks as huge as the redwoods of California. It wasn’t long till the party began traveling steadily upward. They must have gradually ascended a few thousand feet, when the forest stopped abruptly and they were on a plateau of snow and ice—entering a mist. They moved ahead, slowly, hardly able to see. Suddenly the mist cleared, and the small band stared down at the most fantastic sight any of them had ever seen.