Doomsday Warrior 04 - Bloody America Read online

  “They go for the brain first,” Mt. Ed said, his wiry black beard falling below the thick sun-puffed lips. “Then the heart, kidneys. This one hasn’t even touched its skull stew.”

  “Strange,” Rock said, stepping back from the corpse and looking in the direction the cat had come. “They usually don’t back down from a challenge. But that one seemed scared. Of what?” If there was something that could scare that, Rockson wanted to know what it was and quick.

  They both turned suddenly, reaching for their guns as they heard a scrambling in some dense brush just yards away. Three gray wart hogs, their long tusks standing straight as an officer’s sword, came rushing toward them. Rock ripped out his pistol, but the usually fierce warted pigs swerved to the right and tore right past the Doomsday Warrior without so much as a glance.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Charles Langford, the newly elected president of the Re-United States of America grumbled.

  “Beats me,” Rock said. “But I think maybe we should join them and start heading in that direction.” He started down what seemed like some sort of path the animals were following, a slightly trampled-down stretch of bushland about ten feet wide. But it was turning into a superhighway Rockson thought, as a whole new group of animals came flying through the thickets and past them, out onto more open terrain. Not one paid the slightest attention to Rockson or the others, their heads down, their legs pumping like locomotives as they shot by.

  Rock kneeled down and put his ear to the earth. He heard something, something he didn’t like at all. He had heard the sound once before and he had nearly died.

  “Okay folks, I don’t want to alarm you,” Rock said, looking grimly at Kim. “But we’ve got to drop everything and run. There’s some sort of flood, tidal wave heading this way.” They started a medium jog in the direction the animals were heading. Rockson could have run twice as fast but held back with Kim and President Langford who were still recovering from the radiation burns they had received just a month before. The Glower’s incredible telepathic healing powers along with Rockson’s own PSI abilities had cured the two of them, pulling poisoning radiation from their bodies. But still human beings are made of flesh and blood—they had been in deep shock, and Rock wondered how much they could take.

  The Doomsday Warrior pulled out a pair of dirty field glasses, a beat-up pair that Mt. Ed had given him, after saving Rock from the same N-bomb blast that had nearly killed Kim and the president.

  Now he could see it: a wall of sheerest black, like the side of a mountain, coming straight toward them. And it didn’t look like water; Rock could see that from twelve miles away. It was thick and oily and seemed to almost reach forward with pseudopods of its foul grease, grabbing and digesting the poor creatures that hadn’t been quick enough. Rock spun the glasses around in the other direction, searching for a rise, a mountain, anything that would get them out of the oncoming deluge.

  The sound of the thing came to them: a dull roar, far off, with the power of ten million tons of water, crashing forward, growing with every minute as the black foulness continued to pour from the bowel’s of the earth miles away.

  There! To the east, perhaps two miles away. Some kind of small hill, Rock could see through the dusty glasses. “This way,” he screamed out to the others as more animals continued to rush past them, an old mangy wolf actually brushing against Mt. Ed’s leg for a second, too scared to stop and take a bite.

  “We’ve got to go faster,” Rock shouted to the president and Kim as they began to falter.

  “Can’t Rock,” the president gasped. “I’m usually much stronger than this but—” He looked humiliated, angry at having to slow down the party. “Rock, leave me,” he gasped, lurching around on unsteady legs. “Take Kim and—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Father,” Kim said loudly as the four of them stopped as Langford collapsed to the ground, his chest heaving.

  “Kim, can you run?” Rock asked the petite blonde, the woman he loved.

  “Yes—I—think so, but my fath—”

  “Don’t worry.” Rockson placed both arms under the gasping middle-aged leader of America and swung him up over his right shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The president gasped for a moment and then relaxed, resigned. The three of them began running again, faster than before. Kim’s mouth was wide open, sucking in air, and even Mt. Ed, who Rockson knew was made of iron, began to look a little weary. But then he did have over three hundred pounds of flesh on him to carry, not to mention his huge sack of supplies and trio of blunderbusses hung over his shoulders. They tore across the increasingly sparse bushland, just black cactuses and tumbleweeds occupying the yellowish ground.

  At last they reached it. Rock laid the president gently at the base of the seventy-five-foot-high hill. Kim and Mt. Ed fell against the soft curve of dirt at the base as Rockson swung the field glasses back behind them. It was there! Larger than ever. With the binoculars it took up nearly the whole lens: a wall of oily water, of some kind of liquid anyway, dark as a moonless night, stretching like a curtain of death across the horizon. What it was, where it came from, Rock would probably never know. Just one of a thousand ways of dying in America 2089 A.D. He gave them thirty seconds to rest and then said firmly, “Let’s climb.” They protested but rose. The wall of darkness could be seen now with the naked eye as it grew and grew, roaring across the prairie, now less than five miles off. The dull roar was growing to an unnerving rumble that seemed to shake the very ground beneath them.

  It wasn’t an easy climb, Rock could see that right away. The hill was high enough as the flood didn’t look like it would rise over fifty feet, but the sandy, graveled surface of the hill proved difficult to support a strong foothold. Somehow they struggled up the side, kicking dirt in one another’s faces, moving up ten feet, sliding down five. Rockson, dragging Langford by one arm, was the first over the top—and he didn’t like what he saw. Just thirty feet away near the center of the fifty-foot-wide plateau at the top of the hill stood—stood—Rockson really didn’t know what to call it. But he knew he didn’t like it—and it didn’t like him. He quickly pulled the president up over the side of the embankment as he yelled down to Mt. Ed.

  “There’s something here; get some of your mini-cannons loaded up. We’re going to need them.” Rock turned back to face the lizard-thing, now up on its hind legs standing nearly nine feet in the air. It looked vaguely like a snar-lizard, a none too pretty development in the gila monster family. But this thing was a monster far beyond any snar Rock had ever seen. Its face was a twisted mess of throbbing green arteries; its jaws, shaped somewhere between an alligator’s and a tyrannosaurus rex’s snapped at the air, as its long clawed hands opened and closed as if imagining ripping Rockson to pieces. Its entire scaly body, muscles rippling in thighs as thick as Rock’s chest, was iridescent green with streaks of barely visible red veins occasionally shining through. But it was the rows of serrated teeth that seemed to take up most of its face—teeth a good eight inches long and curved inward, set on jaws that looked as if they could snap a tree in half.

  Rock stood in front of the president who lay moaning on the yellowish crest. He moved slowly to the left, wanting to draw the creature’s attention away from Langford. He glanced back as Mt. Ed’s hand came looking for a hold over the loose-packed top.

  “Careful man,” Rockson yelled down. “Move slowly. I don’t want to spook this thing.” He looked down quickly at the shotpistol, fully loaded. It would take more than a few shots to get that thing. Its scales looked like hammered pieces of half-inch metal, and close to impenetrable. The lizard creature flicked out a long red-forked tongue every few seconds, tasting the air around it. Its orange eyes burned like mini-suns set far back in the huge green head. There was still blood around the creature’s black, quarter-sized nostrils. It had eaten only hours before, but now that it realized it was relatively safe from the impending disaster, it felt hungry again. The dim thought of food slowly penetrated the monster’s brain and then
its musculature. It suddenly dropped into a half crouch, pulling its long snakelike neck down. Its legs bent like springs, ready to pounce. Rock didn’t like the posturings at all—the thing was going to strike.

  The Doomsday Warrior scanned it quickly up and down for any weakness. Its throat just beneath the lower and larger jaw looked unprotected by scales. It had to be flexible so the lizard could chew and swallow huge chunks of meat. Rock fixed the throat in his mind.

  Mt. Ed pulled himself completely up over the side, grabbing the biggest of his rifles as he rolled over onto his stomach.

  “Fire!” Rockson yelled from thirty feet down the small plateau. “Distract it.” Mt. Ed didn’t flinch as he sighted up the ugly predator, aiming for the top of the thigh. Maybe he could sever some muscles, take away its mobility. He pulled the trigger and the six-foot-long crude-looking homemade rifle exploded out a fist-sized shell. The shot dug in just an inch below the spot the mountain man had picked and slammed into one of the lizard’s steel-hard scales. The slug bounced off, dropping back onto the soft dirt, though the creature let out a roar of pain and anger. It hissed loudly and leaped toward Mt. Ed, its tongue snapping out, its front arms reaching for the human who was nearly as big as they were. Rockson jumped, too, perpendicular to the creature. Their arcs carried them just past one another, and as Rockson approached he aimed the shotgun pistol at the lizard-thing’s throat. Before he could pull the trigger something whipped around his leg and slammed him out of the air to the ground. The creature’s seven-foot-long tail—it had caught his foot as it jumped. The thing was amazingly agile. Rock fell to the dirt, the tail letting go instantly as soon as it had knocked him off balance. He hit hard, almost flat on his face and stomach so swift had been the pull of the long green appendage. He shook his head a few times to clear his brain and then rolled over quickly in case the thing was about to land on his back.

  But it was engaged in other business. On top of Mt. Ed. The two of them were battling away—a war of the gargantuas. The mountain man was trying to wrestle it to the ground, but it was too strong even for him. It snapped its tail forward and wrapped the end around both of the human prey’s legs and pulled. The big fellow who had saved Rockson’s life was slammed to the yellow dirt with a loud thwack. He reached for his long hunting blade and had it halfway out when the lizard came in for the kill. Like a snake striking, its head and jaws moved in a blur. It snapped the fearsome rows of teeth into the man’s neck and slammed shut with all its strength. Mt. Ed’s body shuddered violently as the head was nearly severed from the neck. Blood gushed like a river from the opened gash and splattered out in all directions, onto the lizard and the cold hilltop ground. The thing snapped its tongue in and out of the red neck, sipping the hot blood, slurping it back into the drooling green mouth.

  “Oh my God,” Rock whispered from about thirty feet. It had all happened so quickly—in seconds, before he had had a chance to react. “You bastard, you slimy ugly bastard,” Rockson madly screamed at the thing. He walked forward, aiming the shotpistol.

  The lizard-thing looked up, its orange eyes swinging around menacingly, taking in the approach of the human with the fiery pupils of hell itself. Another! Another meal! In its dim mind it wondered why these prey died so willingly. Hardly a fight. It took one last sip of the delicious blood from the cooling corpse, Mt. Ed’s buckskin jacket drenched with the sticky redness of his disappearing life. The green scaled mutation jumped up into the air, spinning around in mid-flight, and landed on its long heavily armored legs. It roared out a shriek of contempt and headed toward Rockson, moving with loud slaps of its immense clawed feet. The Doomsday Warrior waited until it was just ten feet away. He knew it was about to leap—he had figured out its style. As it tensed its legs he jumped to the side. The lizard launched itself forward and Rock began firing. He pulled the trigger down once and kept his finger on it. The automatic firing sequence took over, sending a shell down the chamber every third of a second. Rock kept the pistol pointed straight ahead, not letting it bounce back even an inch. The thing had to die! The first shell caught it in the chest and knocked two of its thick scales off. The second shell hit the same spot—minus the green armor plating—and dug deep into the lizard’s chest. Green blood began spouting from the holes. The third shot hit it in the stomach and then the groin. The thick hide, only lightly armored down here, was pierced with tiny holes, and the thick green blood began oozing out of the still airborne predator.

  It was almost upon him now, wriggling its body in mid-flight as it saw that Rockson had moved off to the side. In spite of its wound it still was strong and alert. Rock could see that: Its eyes glowed with murderous intensity, searching for his flesh. But the Doomsday Warrior stood his ground. He raised the .12 gauge death dealer back up the green body as the hideous face came closer and closer. This time the throat—he let the pistol rip out another three streams of lead death. Two of the x-shaped shot patterns caught the thing just below its jaw where the scales of the upper chest and the scales of its jaws met—here there was only thick leathery hide. The shells tore through the outer layer of lizard flesh and into the thing’s throat and windpipe. The entire side of its neck exploded out in a sputum of green and black liquid, tendrils and veins. Yet it continued forward, more dead than alive but determined to take its killer with it. Rock stared into its mad eyes as it fell atop him, firing the final shot directly into the center of the hideous face from just inches away.

  The green lizard-thing was on top of him now. Rock tried to roll away, but its immense weight pinned him down. He reached for his knife and grabbed it, swinging it in a swift arc and pumping it into the thing’s side again and again. He must have stabbed it fifteen times into a vulnerable spot where some of the armor plating had been ripped away before he realized the thing was dead. If it wanted him it would have had him by now. Rockson pushed up with all his strength. Resting his elbows on the bloody ground and heaving at the same time, he slid out from under it. It was dead all right! Everything above its chest was just a mess of slimy green twisted tissue. His last three shots had butchered the thing. The heart was seemingly unstoppable as it pumped out pulse after pulse of oily seaweed green blood through the nearly foot-wide opening in its neck.

  Rockson turned toward the other side of the plateau, not wanting to see what he knew he would see. Mt. Ed was gone. Rock walked slowly over, the empty shotgun pistol dangling like a paralyzed limb at his side. He stood over the American who had saved his life.

  “Shit, goddamned shit,” the Doomsday Warrior whispered down to the dead man. Whispered to the world, to God, knowing nothing would hear. “You didn’t deserve to go this way.” The Doomsday Warrior spat out from between clenched teeth. His brilliant eyes sparkled with rage.

  Rock suddenly heard a deep groan from his right. The president. Langford was trying to sit up, his hand over his forehead where he had been cut when Rockson had yanked him up over the side. A hand suddenly came over the edge of the hill and a high voice yelled out for help.

  “Someone—I can’t make it alone.” Rock rushed over to Kim and reached down, pulling the small blond daughter of the president of the U.S. up over the edge.

  “What happened?” she asked breathlessly. “I heard all that shooting. Is my—” She glanced frantically around until her eyes saw the now sitting Langford. “Thank God,” she half cried, rushing toward him, throwing herself around him. “Oh Father, I thought—”

  “No, I’m all right, but—” He looked quickly to the other side of the rise and then back again. Kim turned her eyes and saw the bloody red thing, the head totally ripped from its body, that had once been the mountain man.

  “Oh no—” She burst into tears and jumped up into Rockson’s arms. “I can’t be, it can’t be,” she muttered over and over again.

  “Shh, it’s all right,” Rock said, cradling her sweet-smelling body that contrasted so bizarrely with the fetid stench of the bloody charnel ground that the hilltop had been turned into.

  �
��He’s gone now. No more pain,” the Doomsday Warrior said, holding the woman he loved with all his might.

  Three

  The flood of foulest blackness grew closer as screaming animals continued to hurtle by below flying like arrows shot from a bow, running as they had never run before. Some tried to get up the hill where Rock, Kim, and the president were, but most plummeted back down, their scampering claws or hooves too frantic to get the footholds necessary for the ascent. A few creatures made it to the top but Rockson didn’t fire, letting them take up shelter at the other end of the plateau where they eyed the humans and each other nervously—three desert goats, a smallish mountain panther, and some kind of unicorned species of mountain elk that Rock had never seen before, two of them, with a long straight horn coming from the center of their white heads, extending nearly six feet up. The creatures snorted and looked anxiously around, but all the animals seemed content to make a momentary truce with one another in view of the common danger.

  The front waves of the black wall slammed into the lower portion of the hill sanctuary. They could actually feel the thud and shaking of the entire dirt structure as the dark waters pressed from all sides. The crest of the dark flood was filled with debris and struggling animals screaming out bloody murder as they floated past. It was a horrible sound, the barks and growls and roars of hundreds of prairie creatures who hadn’t moved fast enough. They quickly sank into the black stickiness and an even more ghastly silence descended around the hill. After the initial waves the flood seemed quite calm, except that it kept rising. At first it was only about thirty feet above the prairie floor, but gradually the black sea seemed to move up a foot every minute or so. Rockson kept a careful eye on the rising waters, although what they would do if it came over the top he had no idea. There was nowhere else to go.

  They heard a loud commotion as a huge felled tree came by with a whole passenger list of raccoons screaming out their fear and indignation at having their home so rudely dragged up by its roots and buffeted downstream. But they hung on tenaciously with enough presence of mind to gobble down each waterlogged bug that stumbled drunkenly from the innards of the nearly eighty-foot-long, six-foot-thick tree. The sun had long since set, but the stars shone down like rows of beacons, giving the night air and the flood an eerie translucent quality, everything shining and bobbing.