Doomsday Warrior 16 - American Overthrow Page 2

  Rock could see the shots tear into the creature’s chest, another in the middle of the neck. Thick greenish blood began oozing out. But not a hell of a lot. And it sure as hell didn’t stop the nightmare from coming.

  “I think we got problems,” Detroit screamed as Rockson came flying toward him. Both of them made a hasty retreat toward their hybrid horses, a dozen of which were tethered some fifty yards away. The two men had been out on a meat gathering expedition as Century City’s supplies were running dangerously low for its population of nearly forty thousand. Eight teams had gone out in different directions to procure the vital protein for the inhabitants of the underground rebel city. Rockson, being the top military field commander of C.C., didn’t have to go. But he had wanted to, seeing it as a chance to unwind, a sort of combination mini-vacation and hunting party. Now he wished he was even back in the Council Chamber arguing with the politicians of the city, instead of out here in the wilds facing something that shouldn’t, couldn’t exist. Only no one had apparently told it.

  The reptile-thing came barreling after them, not even moving at full speed as it was clearly starting to enjoy the chase, a little spice in a routine and boring life. It let out another sound that Rockson swore had overtones of enjoyment, something like “Tally ho,” or “bloody good show,” though he knew it was possible that his fear of being eaten might have colored his perceptions.

  “Let me try a couple of pineapples,” Detroit shouted, as the two Freefighters ran side by side.

  “Do your thing baby,” Rockson shouted back, as he let off a few more blasts from the bucking shotpistol, trying to slow the thing down. Detroit, a barrel-chested black man, one of Rock’s inner team of elite commando fighters, had twin belts of grenades strapped across his chest, weapons that he always wore, some said even in bed. He ripped two of them off, pulled the pins and heaved them at the nightmare some fifty feet behind and gaining fast.

  It moved with a strange gait as if its legs weren’t quite symmetrical. But it moved fast and as the grenades came spinning in, Rock saw that its reflexes were as quick as any creature he had ever encountered. It leaped to the side, dodging one grenade and batting the second one away as it came barreling in. There were two snapping explosions back a few yards and puffs of smoke on each side of the thing. But they didn’t cause any damage other than to worms just below the surface of the cratered soil.

  “I don’t think that helped,” Rockson huffed as the two men looked at each other, starting to get a little nervous. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Men were superior to the animals, they had weapons and brains. But apparently this thing wasn’t cognizant of all that. It just kept coming after them in that crazy lopsided gait, its oversized jaws full of saber teeth dripping with anticipatory saliva at the imminent kill.

  “Maybe we’ll have to sacrifice a few ’brids,” Detroit said, ripping off another grenade from his supply. “If it comes down to it—I’d rather it’s them than us.”

  “Maybe,” Rock shouted back the yard or two that separated the fast-breathing men as they ran at full speed. “But there’s a ’brid shortage back in C.C., since the rhinovirus took out nearly half of them. I don’t want to lose the whole fucking batch if we can help it.” But the creature was gaining fast and even Rock could see that Detroit was right. When it came down to choosing between smelly steeds and his own ass—the choice wasn’t all that hard.

  Suddenly the nightmare stopped and stood up on its hind legs. It looked formidable and even larger than either of the Freefighters had realized.

  “Fucking thing must stand nine feet tall,” Rockson whistled as the two men slowed just a little, their heads turned around to see what they could of their pursuer. It sniffed at the air, the huge red nostrils opening and closing like bellows as the jaws parted wider, the saucer-sized eyes shut for a few seconds.

  “He’s got the scent of the ’brids,” Detroit said, ripping off a second grenade so both hands were full again.

  “Damn, he’s a big mother,” Rockson hissed in both fear and respect. “But that yellow stomach doesn’t look as well armored as the rest of him. Maybe we can do some damage down there.”

  Detroit pulled back both of his thick linebacker arms and let loose one after another with the pineapples. They flew hard through the air like a pitcher throwing the last strikes of a pennant clincher, and landed within inches of where he had aimed. There were two sharp explosions and pieces of glowing white hot metal ripped into the underside of the thing.

  This time it let out with a real bellow of pain as it flailed around with its thick-clawed arms, its head whipping from side to side. But though they had hurt it, they sure as hell hadn’t stopped it. Its wide red eyes zeroed in on the two humans and the look that it sent to them told them both that if the creature had to follow them to the ends of the earth, their asses were bloody grass. It wasn’t used to getting stung. It didn’t like it.

  “I think we made it mad,” Detroit shouted as they both started running hard again away from the ’brids, the nightmare now galloping after them with its odd gait.

  “You made it angry, you did,” Rock managed to grin for a second as he tore alongside the black Freefighter.

  “What now, Kemo Sabé?” Detroit asked, ripping two more of the grenades off, if only to feel a slight sense of false security from holding them. The ’brids were about a hundred yards to the left; Rockson could see them through some trees. Maybe he would have to sacrifice them and the big load of meat they had already stacked up atop the pack-creatures. This had been their last day of hunting. He needn’t have approached that cave— He should have been satisfied with what they already had. But hindsight is genius. It’s the present that makes a man feel pretty stupid.

  And suddenly Rockson felt a hell of a lot stupider, as he didn’t notice that the ground just ahead was soggy with telltale purple grasses, designating swampy soil. And by the time he looked down he wasn’t moving any more, his boots already sinking in a good six inches with lewd sucking sounds. He tried to pull free as Detroit, several yards to the side and ahead, kept running, skirting the swamp and not even realizing that his commander was knee-deep in the big muddy.

  “Detroit,” the Doomsday Warrior shouted. “I fucked up, pal, I think I’m in trouble.” The black Freefighter screeched to a stop and whirled around. His ebony face turned a little green. He could see instantly that Rockson wasn’t going anywhere. But the nightmare was. It was coming in fast, just forty feet behind.

  Rockson squirmed and pulled with everything he had, but the boots just sank deeper, the motions of his body corkscrewing him down another six inches. He tried to pull free of them but the mud that had seeped inside had formed a vacuum with his feet. They felt cemented inside. He fired madly with the shotpistol, one blasting shell after another, point blank at the thing as it came in.

  But the blasts again did nothing. And he could see in the burning eyes a kind of deep satisfaction that it had trapped the prey. It slowed down a little as it came to the edge of the marsh. It was, after all, smarter than Rockson, he noted with disgust, as it gingerly tested the soil, putting one clawed foot out, then another. But its wide snowshoe-type clawed feet, wider than an elephant’s, were wide enough to support its weight on the giving soil. It started toward him.

  Rockson threw the shotpistol to the side as he ran out of ammo. There was no time to reload, to say the least. His life flashed before his eyes in the apparition of the carnivore which was only yards away. He could smell it now, thick and meaty, like a bear that had been hibernating all winter. And as it closed in he could see that it was far uglier up close, with warts and bumps and knobs all over its body. Its dark reddish mouth opened and poured out a waterfall of steaming digestive fluid.

  “Rock, Rock, airmail man,” he heard Detroit scream, and turned his head to see two grenades coming in one after another straight at him. For a split second of madness he wondered if the black Freefighter had gone completely mad. And then Rockson realized he was being sent
some Christmas presents early. His hands snapped up and he managed to grab them both out of the air as they came spinning in. The nightmare didn’t even notice, it was too busy getting all hungry over the two-hundred-twenty pounds of human it was about to consume.

  The thing stood up just two yards from him as if wanting to intimidate him a final time before chow. Then the claws reached out and the immense jaws opened even wider until they were a yard apart. The thing’s eyes closed instinctively to protect them and it started down for the first course. Rockson ripped the pins from the grenades and, feeling his heart beating as if it would explode, he heaved them straight into the gaping jaws.

  The nightmare paused for just a second, its eyes opening again with a look of surprise on them. It made a burping sound as it gulped hard, and the two steel balls slid down into the top of its throat. Then it started forward again, deciding whatever it was it had swallowed wasn’t worth worrying about.

  Rockson dove to the side, his boots still locked in place and slammed chest and face flat down into the marsh. He felt the hot air of the thing on the back of his neck and closed his eyes, readying himself for the first tearing bite.

  Suddenly there was a loud roar and he could feel heat along his head and back. Then there was a flood of liquid and slime which fell all over him. Followed almost instantly by the six-hundred-pound body of the nightmare which crashed down onto his back. Rockson tensed as he waited for death to take him down, after all these years. He tried to relax, to be ready for the inevitable. And he waited. And waited. And after a good five seconds he realized that perhaps the end wasn’t as near as he thought.

  He tried to move, and couldn’t as he was pinned beneath the dead weight of the nightmare and sucking in more muck than air. But he was able to shift his head and saw that the thing above him had no head of its own. The grenades had gone off just at throat level and severed the entire head and neck, which now lay several feet away smoking like fresh barbecue, oozing a thick green liquid.

  “Rock, Rock, thank God,” the Doomsday Warrior heard Detroit shouting with joy—and amazement—in his voice. Then the Freefighter was pulling him by his legs out of the muck, then standing over him looking down at the man and beast almost melted together in the coating of slime and blood. He couldn’t resist letting out a laugh as he stood there for just a second. “With that ugly face blown off, it looks like it’s got your head on, pal. Plastic surgery, grenade style.”

  “Detroit Green, if you don’t get this fucking thing off me in about two seconds,” Rock snarled, “I’m going to find this one’s mother and introduce her to you.”

  “Easy, chiefie,” the barrel-chested Freefighter said as he reached down for the tail and began tugging hard. “And as they say in the dentist’s office, ‘don’t move, ’cause this is going to hurt you more than me’.”

  Three

  It took Detroit a good ten minutes to first drag the huge carnivore off Rockson and another five to get him and his boots totally out of the swamp. At last the Doomsday Warrior’s feet came free out of the swamp ground with an obscene sound and he fell backward onto dry land. He just lay there for a few moments breathing hard, looking up at the pink sun and thanking whatever gods were up there that he had survived.

  “You shouldn’t even be alive after that one, pal,” Detroit said, as he kneeled down and rested his hand on Rockson’s shoulder. “You okay, man?”

  “My body’s okay, my heart and brain’s having a few problems,” Rock replied with a wry smile. He sat up feeling around himself to make sure he was all still in relatively one piece, and got to his feet. He looked Detroit squarely in the eyes. “Thanks, man, that was some fast thinking and some good pitching. Thank God you have those old major league baseball genes still floating around in your blood.”

  “You kidding, Rock? You’ve saved this ol’ ass more times than I dare think about. That was just interest on the repayment.” They both stared down at the thing which lay a few yards away, now that they had a chance to take it in without fear. Even in death it made them feel something deep and dark in the pits of their stomachs.

  “I think the nuke-mutations are getting a little uglier each year,” Rock said softly.

  “I was going to say the same thing about you, mister,” Detroit deadpanned as he checked the remaining dozen grenades that were attached to his bandoliers, making sure none of them had been loosened in all the excitement.

  “I wonder if that sucker’s tasty,” Rockson suddenly spoke up with a twinkle in his eyes. “I mean it’s only fair, he tried to eat us, maybe we should return the favor.” He took out his long custom synth Bowie knife, razor sharp, and reached down toward the still throbbing nightmare lying on the ground. It took several minutes of slicing to cut a nice thick piece out of the tail and then off one of the flanks.

  “All that death-defying sure as hell works up an appetite,” the Doomsday Warrior said, standing up with his two slabs of thick greenish red meat. They headed the hundred yards back to the ’brids to make sure they were okay. Then they got a small fire going in the center of the rocky circle that had been their campsite for the last two days. They quickly cooked the meat. Detroit got out some black bread baked in Century City. He mixed up some insta-energy drink, shaking a blue powder inside his canteen. Within ten minutes they were chewing lustily on the afternoon’s catch.

  “This son-of-a-bitch tastes like filet mignon,” Detroit laughed in wonder, after his second bite. “Tender as hell for a tough-hided Frankenstein like that.”

  They ate for a good half hour, loading up on the juicy lizzie-mutant steaks. Then both men headed back to the cooling body of the nightmare. A few small dog-like creatures were already tugging at the flesh, but they quickly ran off as the humans approached and watched hungrily from the shelter of some bushes.

  Rock and Detroit set to cutting up the thing. Rockson made the first deep incision down the stomach and a gush of blood and organs came spewing out onto the ground. Along with three snapping and snarling young of the dead thing. Rockson jumped back as small but razor-sharp teeth snapped open and closed at everything in sight.

  “Shit—that mother was really a mother,” Rockson gasped, with a trace of sadness in his voice as he jumped back from the squirming babies. They were exact duplicates of the dead parent, only as big as cats. Detroit reached for his Liberator submachine gun that was slung around his back. He quickly got a bead on the three little demons as they squirmed around the ground making deep growling noises.

  “No!” Rockson said, pushing the muzzle of the Liberator away just as Detroit’s finger tightened on the trigger. “Let ’em go, they’re not going to live very long without mama around to protect ’em. It’s not up to us to play God even with the ugliest of nature’s creatures. We’ve got enough food now.”

  Detroit looked down at the three things as they slithered off side by side through the brown grass. “Guess you’re right on that one, Rock,” he said with a sigh and let the rifle slide back around his shoulder. “But they sure are ugly.”

  “Hey, I’m a mutant too, pal,” the Doomsday Warrior laughed. “The whole planet is mutated. It’s a new world now, we’ve got to remember that. The old ways are dying out, new creatures, plants, every goddamned thing is coming down the pike.”

  “Well, even if you change your mind, it’s too late now,” Detroit said as he watched the tail of the last of the wriggling baby-demons slip behind some bushes. They returned to the business of gutting the nightmare, skinning it, bleeding it, getting rid of the internal organs. It was too large by far to just throw atop a ’brid, so they had to butcher it here in the wild. It took a good two hours, but at last they had three hundred and fifty pounds of prime steaks. They loaded them into special nylon sacks designed by Dr. Shecter, the head scientist of Century City for such purposes. Leak-proof and nearly scent-proof, the meat-bags were the perfect storage chambers for hunting.

  “Well, we’re loaded to the hilt, that’s for sure,” Rock said as he stood back and
surveyed the packed down hybrid pack team. “These boys can’t carry another steak between them.” The ’brids, slightly smaller but wider than horses of old, were almost staggering under the weight of the nearly two tons of meat that was now parked on their backs.

  “Do you want to move out now—or wait until dawn?” Detroit asked, a little worried as he glanced up at the fading sun. They had at most two hours until the darkness set in with a vengeance.

  “Let’s get distance between us and the butcher shop over there,” Rockson said, nodding to the spot where the dead mutation’s bones and leftover parts lay strewn around. Already small animals had gathered, and some vultures as well, to partake of the four hundred pounds of gristle and flesh that remained. “I don’t want to tempt any of the bigger boys who will come around to investigate all the wonderful smells.”

  They mounted up on their riding steeds—larger than the ’brids—and took off, with tethers attached in a line behind their saddles to the ’brid pack. Each man led six of the beasts behind him. The hybrids whinnied and made all kinds of commotion as they were wont to do. But once they got going they settled down and shifted into a medium-paced gait.

  They rode up and down over low rolling hills, which were covered with some of the last of fall’s remaining vegetation before the real winter snows and freezing temps dropped in. It had been a warm fall and Rockson wondered if the earth itself was undergoing more climatic changes. Dr. Shecter believed it was. He said that the great nuke-war of a hundred years earlier had shifted the earth’s magnetic patterns, possibly even its orbit. Whatever the hell was going on, mankind, or what was left of it, would have to adjust and adapt to it all. They had no choice.

  The two men rode for about an hour and a half before the inky sky grew a little too dark to see well by. Not wanting to risk any of the ’brids stumbling and breaking a leg, or losing hundreds of pounds of the precious food, Rock decided it was time to stop for the night. He saw a rise with a clearing all around it, giving them a good view if anything came looking for a midnight snack, and pulled to a stop at the top.