Doomsday Warrior 18 - American Dream Machine Page 3

  Rockson smiled wryly. He was only twenty-three miles from his intended destination. Better than he had hoped when he crash-landed. But even twenty-three miles could be a deadly distance if he didn’t get some water soon; it might as well be a hundred. And the cold was worse than he’d expected. Must be minus fifty already. And the night was young! If he was numb with the cold now, what about in an hour? He surveyed the moonlit irregular rocks near the arch and considered crawling into a crevasse in the sandstone formations, to try to rest and keep warm till dawn.

  No, he’d die here for sure if he did that! “Keep walking,” he mumbled to himself. “Walk until you find something to set fire to with the matches.” He had to look for some dry grass to gather, or twigs. He had to use his eyes, look for live vegetation—for live vegetation might mean water.

  He was staggering after just an hour. But Rock kept his head high, trying to tough it out, ignore the cold. He kept telling himself that he could walk till dawn if necessary. Yeah, believe it!

  As the first rosy fingers of dawn wriggled out of the grave of a bitter cold corpse of earth, Rockson’s numb and frozen eyes beheld a clump of twisted, dried-out pine trees dead ahead. He rushed over to them, half stumbling over his own numbed feet, and fell upon the scattered brown needles. Madly he gathered together a pile of the dry stuff, and with shaking bluish hands added a few twigs to the pile. Then Rockson took out his matches and struck one. It lit cheerily. He ignited the kindling to start a campfire. He kneeled by it, keeping it from the constant west wind, and absorbed its growing warmth until he almost burned his pants off. He found some larger branches and added them to the flames.

  By the time the sun peeked red over the horizon, Rockson was on his way to getting warm. And that meant he had another thing in mind now: water! “Got to have water!” His wild eyes searched around like radar beacons, and soon alighted on some squat, round cacti, a whole mess of them, each about a foot wide. Cacti! Most postnuke cacti were poisonous. And yet . . . these looked very green and fresh, beckoning in the sunlight.

  “Barrel-babies!” Rockson gasped out loud the popular name of the little cactus that Century City citizens had learned over the years contained small quantities of bitter but drinkable sap. He fairly leapt for the plants. He tore open with his belt-knife the first one he reached and sucked up every ounce of the moisture in its pulpy center. Sure was bitter! But what the hell. It was wet!

  After he indulged himself on six other barrel-babies, he’d had enough. Rockson half walked, half crawled back to the now-substantial campfire and threw a few more larger sticks upon it. He was still cold, so he half curled around the flames. A feather bed in Century City’s honeymoon suites never felt as soft as the hard ground below his bones at that moment. Rockson kept his shotpistol in his right hand as he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  When he awoke he knew he had slept for hours. The sun was halfway up in the velvet purple sky. Some ravenlike birds were squawking and twittering in the dead pines nearby. Perhaps they were serenading him. Congratulating a survivor. The birds soon tired of his attempts to mimic their cries, and flew over and pecked at the remains of the cacti that he had torn apart. They seemed as thirsty as he had been, pecking at the pulp with gusto. Rockson smiled and sat up and yawned. He looked around and, feeling the weight of his gun in his right hand, stuck the shotpistol back in his waistband.

  Rockson made for a dead pine tree and relieved his bladder—what little there was to relieve—on the gnarled bark. He rubbed his hands together, stomped his feet. They were still a little numb. After all, it was winter. But the temperature was rising by the second. Perhaps it would make it all the way into the twenties today, if the clouds didn’t cover the sun. A regular tropical resort!

  He scratched at his face and rubbed his eyes and then headed northeast again, as best he could figure the direction. Before he did so, however, he gathered up some of the smaller barrel-babies scattered in the sands. He needed a way to carry them, but that was no problem. He tied some pine twigs together to form a sort of rough basket, and put the water-cacti inside it.

  He whistled as he set off. What more could a twenty-first century man ask? He had a blue sky to walk under, some water in his gut, and a happy song to whistle.

  Soon he stopped whistling. And he walked. And walked. In a few hours, he realized the temperature was defying his earlier guestimate. It was hotter than hell. Maybe 110 degrees! Rockson had quickly used up all the little cacti he’d carried along, and so he threw away the basket. He walked on. Crazy weather. Crazy world . . .

  Six more hours of walking and it was near sunset. His once-cheery thoughts were now drifting to melancholy subjects. He was hungry. And maybe lost. Everything looked pretty much the same out here. And most of all he was stupid: he should have saved the basket for making a fire! How many miles back had he left it? Too far. There was nothing but barren waste all around.

  He sat down on a flat rock, sighed, and took out the map again. He looked all around him at the fields of boulders, the rolling dry terrain. He was in a blank part of the map now. Best he could figure, he should be near the location from which Archer had sent his distress signal. At least he hoped so. But without landmarks, without a compass or a sextant . . . Hell, Archer’s mysterious Bawl Corner could be right over the rise to the left—or to the right. Or straight ahead. Or behind him. He could have overshot it, off course by a mere mile or so.

  Rockson, his mind cloudy with exhaustion, and with a foul mood descending on him, nevertheless did the bright thing. He decided to walk up the steepest incline and survey the area from there. No sense just walking at random. Gain some altitude, take a look-see before it was dark again.

  When he started up the dusty rise to the left he found something he didn’t much like: tracks. The tracks of several pawed creatures. Big-pawed mothers.

  Oh shit, what was this now? Some huge wolves to contend with? Some Narga-beasts? He put his hand on the reassuring butt of his shotpistol. Comforted by its presence, he continued to the top of the hill.

  The tracks converged with other, similar tracks at the top, then headed off to the west. He realized that they had been made when the ground was muddy. They must be days, weeks old, he told himself. Hell, the creatures that made those tracks could have been prehistoric! Well, at least a week prehistoric. Shielding his eyes from the setting sun, he didn’t see anything like a settlement in any direction. But he wasn’t up very high. All around Rockson were massive boulders, each higher than a man. Rockson figured out a way to clamber from one to the other, to get on top of the highest one. He began to do so. But as he jumped up on the first boulder, he felt a sudden strange apprehension.

  Something was near.

  Had he heard it, or smelled it? Or had he just sensed it with his mutant instincts? No matter. If there was something—or someone—nearby . . . Get the shotpistol out.

  As he reached for the weapon, he froze, crouching. Rock’s muscles tensed, his dry lips opened to breath in extra gulps of the hot air. He was ready. He stood there in a crouch, slowly turning, surveying every concealment area, his shotpistol cocked in his hand, his finger on the trigger.

  He did a full circle. Nothing. Maybe he was going nuts.

  He waited for a time, and then climbed to the highest boulder, well aware that he was now a perfect target for a sniper. But the feeling of danger had passed. Perhaps something or someone had passed near him, passed by without seeing him. He shuddered, imagining all sorts of toothy monsters.

  He had a good view here. On all the horizons north, south, east, and west were nothing but more boulders and sand and scrub pines. Rockson climbed down from his lofty place, went down the rubbled slope, heading northeast—he hoped—once more.

  With just the setting sun’s position to guide him, Rock couldn’t be absolutely sure of direction. But hell, what IS sure in life? Except death. That is sure.

  Eventually he came to another rise, this one composed of reddish soil and, blessedly, clogged with
blueberry bushes. He ate his fill of the juicy godsends, slobbering them down like a mad bear. Sated, Rockson climbed to the bald top of the blueberry hill, and in the twilight he saw it: a settlement. To his amazement, Rockson was staring down into a verdant valley. There were twentieth century ruins down there—the leftover cracked pavement of an old road, and some large concrete-block buildings. Each building was surrounded by grass-pocked parking lots. But what attracted his attentions most was the sole sign of life down there. From the largest building, which looked like an airplane hangar, curled some black smoke. The smoke was coming from a huge shiny new metal chimney pipe. The pipe looked like it had been jerry-rigged very poorly—and very recently. It wouldn’t stand much of a wind, that was for damn sure.

  An ancient, huge advertising sign hung half-collapsed at the edge of the structure’s old parking lot entrance. The rusty words said BOWL G C N ER. Probably once had said BOWLING CENTER.

  Yes. Rock smiled. This must be the Bawl Corner of Archer’s message! The gentle giant he had come so far to rescue could be the one making all the smoke. After all, Archer was never very good at making clean-burning campfires! “Maybe the danger has passed. Maybe we could have a drink together, laugh about the long trip I’ve taken for no reason . . .”

  “Then again,” Rockson cautioned himself, “it could be some enemy down there making that smoke. Maybe some cannibals are cooking up Archer’s massive fatty body! Grim thought! But could be right! Better go down cautiously.”

  Rockson scrambled down the steep, weed-strewn incline onto the flat surface of the old parking lot. He took cover behind the disintegrating hulk of an old oil truck. You could still see EXXON in red on its side. The truck cannister must have been made of aluminum.

  Something caught his foot in the near total dark. A foul, musty smell of death assailed his nostrils, almost making him gag. Rock had found the first of many bodies he was to discover moldering away in that asphalt charnel ground!

  His vision was very keen, so he could see in the starlight that the deceased were all men, all in unmarked gray uniforms. They were mean-looking mothers, each and every one. The bodies all had had their guts blown out of their stomachs. Some of the bodies were crawling with large ants and grasshoppers, insects that seemed not to know it was winter and that they shouldn’t be out walking around now. Rockson drew the obvious conclusions.

  No doubt about it, there were all the signs of a recent battle here. There were bullet holes in the rusted cars and trucks, and craters made by some sort of artillery fire in the parking lot’s weeded surface. And there was one big hole in the wall of the large building as well. Right in the middle of the bowling center itself. A mortar had made that hole.

  Rockson ducked from cover to cover, coming closer and closer to the building. He was heading as silently as he could manage for the man-sized shell hole in the wall.

  He was just ten feet from that hole, hidden behind the carcass of a twentieth century RV, when a cold thing touched his left temple. It felt like a gun barrel. No, make that a double gun barrel. The wide double aperture of a twin .10-gauge shotgun was pressed hard against his head.

  Four

  Rockson was most definitely slipping! No one had been able to sneak up on Rockson like that in a long, long time. Having no other alternative, Rockson froze in place, not moving a hair. He half winced, expecting the shot that would send his brains flying in a hundred directions. But that didn’t happen. As he took a few short breaths he inhaled body odor. That would be the person with the shotgun. The gunner smelled like a wet bear! As a matter of fact, he stank to high heaven.

  A gruff, gravelly voice snarled out, “STAY still!”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Rock replied. That voice sounded MIGHTY familiar. And that smell, come to think of it. Rock moved his head a tiny bit, so that he could put the corner of his vision over to the side. He saw the mountainous man holding the weapon. The huge man was wearing a wide-brimmed leather hat, and was covered in furs crudely sewn together. He had a huge, tangled black beard, with red and white strands in it. The beard was stuck with old pieces of chewing tobacco and what must have been pieces of food—the menu of a month. The dark, beady eyes were calm and direct, if a bit blank. He knew this fellow.

  Rockson said, in a soft voice, “Archer, it’s me Archer! You fuckhead, put down that shotgun!”

  The shotgun didn’t move. “Huh? Rockson?”

  “Yes, you heard me. It’s your old pal, the Doomsday Warrior, come to rescue you. Is this anyway to treat—”

  Now the barrels of the shotgun lifted away from his temple. Rockson turned slowly and put his steady, ice-chip blue eyes upon the mountain man’s big brown orbs. “Yeah, it’s me!,” he complained. “Why, you stupid bastard! You coulda killed me!”

  The man, still holding the shotgun in one meaty hand, threw out his arms to give Rock a big bear hug. A wide, candy-eating grin broadened on the lips above the tangled beard. “Rock! You came!”

  As Archer nearly squeezed the life out of his would-be rescuer, both barrels of the shotgun discharged. They blasted a hole a foot deep in the soil right next to their feet. Rock’s ears rang, and he could hardly hear for the next few seconds. He checked to see that his feet were still on his body—they were.

  Archer looked embarrassed. “Sorry! Hair trigger!” He stepped back, red-faced, looking like a child about to be admonished for wetting his pants.

  Rock just frowned. “Okay Arch, what’s the big emergency? Tell me why I came here.”

  “See bodies? It over now!” the big man replied. He smiled broadly once more. “Big bad gang. But I MORE bad!” Archer punched Rock on the shoulder in a friendly gesture and nearly knocked the Doomsday Warrior down. “Come!”

  “I will, if you stop shouting!”

  “OK,” Archer said more softly. “Sorry. I make up little mistake with gun! You come! Eat! Drink! Later screw nice girl! Me happy. You no forget Archer! Come we have beers!”

  Rock nodded and trudged along beside the huge man, who headed, not for the hole in the building, but for a door further down along the same wall. Rock was still miffed about the near accident to his braincase, and demanded more explanation for the urgent message, as they walked. He received a terse elaboration of the events that had forced Archer to send the message: a gang of marauders called the Black Magic Boys had surrounded Archer’s little retirement place and given him a hard time for a week. It had been Archer against about twenty well-armed men. Archer had been besieged and desperate when he sent the message. Then he’d had a neat idea. He let them break in where he stored his liquor supply: a thousand cartons of twentieth century Scotch. Then, as the gangsters became too drunk to fight, Archer sneaked around, taking them out one by one, with this very same hair-trigger blunderbuss.

  “Well, I’m glad that you survived,” Rock muttered as Archer held the door open, “but next time send a nevermind message, OK?”

  “You no come see me, if I not in danger?” Archer looked hurt. “You no miss me?”

  “It’s not that, pal,” Rock replied, feeling guilty. He had hurt the big man’s feelings. Archer was like a kid. “It’s just that I wouldn’t have hurried here. I would have spent a little more time fixing up the junk heap that I crash-landed forty miles back!”

  “You hurt?” Archer looked pained. “I see burn marks, torn clothes . . . You hurt?” He was leading Rock through a warehouse-sized room half-filled with crates marked AMF.

  “No, I’m OK, Arch, No problem landing at all,” Rock lied. “And it was an easy walk to get here. Just a few spiders tried to bite me along the way, just a little thirsty, that’s all.”

  Archer slapped him on the back again. “Good! I glad no problem!” They entered a small room, one with some stuffed, paisley-print furniture and a big Ben Franklin coal stove in it. The stove was almost red hot. The big round pipe leading up from the stove into the ceiling was, no doubt, the source of the smoke Rock had seen from the hill. The Vatican made less smoke choosing a pope!<
br />
  There were no windows, but still there was lots of light in the room, cast from several brightly burning Coleman lamps placed on tables around the place. The room smelled like spilled draft beer.

  “Home!” Archer exclaimed. “Is Nice!” He yelled this, forgetting Rock’s admonishment about not shouting.

  Rockson wasn’t so sure. The place Archer called home was a virtual pigsty. Its floors and table surfaces, and its sofa and chairs, were littered with the remains of many well-chewed, poorly cooked chickens. There were crumbling tabloid newspapers scattered everywhere, papers with names such as National Enquirer and Weekly World News. They dated from the late twentieth century, and had headlines that said “I WAS RAPED BY SPACE ALIENS (and have the baby to prove it)” or “WOMAN LIVED SEVEN YEARS TRAPPED IN ABANDONED GAS STATION REST ROOM.” Rockson picked one crumbling tabloid up and asked, “Arch, you read these things?”

  “Yes. Very good stories!”

  “Hmmm.” Rock set the tabloid down. He wiped a finger over the dust on a little end table full of chicken bones and frowned. Archer caught Rock’s expression and said, “This not best part of place, pal. Come see!” The big man opened a second door and they went on into a vast chamber dimly lit by skylights high above. It was cold in there.

  “Well, I’ll be!” Rock exclaimed. They were in an ancient bowling alley. There were two dozen wooden-floored lanes. And AMF pin spotters—some with dusty pins still standing in them—waiting for a strike for over a hundred years. There were lines of bowling balls, too. Rock smiled and went over to one line of big black balls and was about to stuff two fingers into the little holes in one ball to pick it up and throw it. But just then a mean-looking caterpillar, a red one full of spikes, crawled out of one of the fingerholds. Rock decided to forgo the experience! He’d stick to snooker.

  He noted now that half the lanes had their flooring ripped up. That explained the wood and varnish smell coming from the old stove back in Archer’s pigsty room. The giant was gradually consuming his own domicile to keep warm. There must be years worth of flooring left to burn. “Nice,” Rockson said, not knowing what he was supposed to say. “Very nice place.”