Doomsday Warrior 01 Page 6

  The men walked over to examine it, still a little cautious. Up close its teeth looked even more formidable. Five rows going back in its mouth, each row containing nearly thirty hooked, razor-sharp teeth. The front row had a set of fang-like protuberances almost five inches long. Equipped with fins and a tail and ten little feet with small claws, the creature looked somehow peculiar as if it was really made up of several different animals, wrongly sewn together.

  “It’s a strange one, that’s for sure,” McCaughlin spoke. “Been fishing this part of the country my whole life, ain’t never seen one like this.”

  “Bet he don’t taste too good,” Saunders, one of the machine gunmen piped up. “Might as well just throw him back.”

  “Hell I will!” McCaughlin said. He went to his pack, pulled out one of the smokeless stoves the Freefighters carried and set to cooking his catch. A half hour later, the men were all digging into the fish and asking for more.

  “Damn thing’s delicious, best I ever ate,” Saunders mumbled, stuffing his mouth with his third helping. McCaughlin basked in the glory of his catch and now his cooking.

  “Boys, you got the best fisherman this side of the Rockies with you. Don’t know how lucky you are.” The ten clawed, little feet of the fish were particularly tasty and the Scotsman kept most of them for himself—he was the fisherman.

  They had been feasting for about half an hour when Rockson felt the air change. It grew cold suddenly, electric. He looked up at the churning gray sky and saw the green clouds. The clouds that meant death.

  “On your feet, men. Double time. There’s an acid storm coming. We’ve got five minutes at most.” The Freefighters dropped their meals where they stood and ran for their supplies and the hybrids. They had all experienced these storms before. Everyone alive in America had. The green-clouded storms pulsing with electricity that appeared out of nowhere and swooped low to the Earth, releasing a putrid rain of radioactive acid that meant death for anyone caught in its downpour.

  The men had trained for this eventuality. They had to—lack of preparation in this new world meant certain doom. They herded the hybrids together and made a circular barrier with their packs and weapons. They quickly pulled out the aluminized tarps which every man carried. Compact, able to fold up into a compartment in their packs, the tarps could expand to twenty foot square to create a momentary haven of safety. Aluminum was one of the few substances that could resist the dissolving powers of the acid rain. The Attack Force quickly created a little lean-to, zipping four of the tarps together and hoisted it over their group, now bunched together. They tied the ends of the silver tarps to four trees.

  Not a moment too soon! They pulled down the shiny flaps on the sides of the tarps so they were completely enclosed in the metallic covering. Bunched tightly together, they could hardly breathe in the instantly sweltering enclosure. The hybrids’ foul breath, strong-smelling bodies, neighing and shifting made the space a madhouse of activity. Within seconds they heard the thick drops pelting the tarps and huddled closer together in the center. From the woods around them they could hear the screams, the death cries of animals caught in the hail. It was a horrible sound—for though the acid of the rain would burn the flesh, it would not necessarily mean instant death. Instead it caused a slow eating away of hide and muscle that could take hours depending on how much acid fell. It was not a pleasant way to go.

  The storm increased in fury, pounding down on the tarp while the men sat, their hearts pounding and their lips dry, in the near-darkness of the enclosure. Several of the hybrids tried to rise, panicked by the sound, but the man nearest them would poke them in the nose with a fist or pull their ears back until they calmed down. The tarp above their heads sagged, rippled with the acid water of the storm. It was a severe one, with high winds, and the entire structure began shaking. Jesus, if it came loose, every man thought silently.

  But suddenly, as quickly as it had appeared, the storm passed. There was silence outside. They waited about ten minutes for the drops to dry and then carefully peeked outside. The area that had been directly hit by the acid drops was in shambles. Trees, vegetation, all wilted, eaten away with brown and black holes as if burned by fire. Several animals lay dead, their bodies lying at strange angles, legs and necks broken and cracked as the tormented creatures had tried to outrun the excruciatingly painful drops, flailing their torsos so powerfully that they literally broke their own bones. A deer lay near the pond, its flesh still smoking, its head burned almost entirely away. Nearby, a skull attached to a charred black body was all that remained of some other luckless forest dweller.

  The men shuddered, said a silent prayer of thanks for their own survival, and carefully replaced their supplies. They folded the tarps, first carefully shaking out the few drops of the vile rain that had not evaporated, and packed them. One of the hybrid horses had somehow gotten a few drops of the acid on its shoulder and was howling in pain. Brice, the medical man of the Attack Force, got some ointment from his pack and after gouging out the affected area with a scalpel, salved the raw flesh of the hybrid. It would survive. It just wouldn’t have hair in that spot ever again.

  They headed off into the brush again. According to Rock’s calculations they should be emerging from the main part of the forest by the next day. Then just a quick run across the mountains and home again, in Century City. The men were in a good mood. Things had gone relatively well this trip. Except for the dead. But there were always dead on a strike. They all knew that death lay just around the corner. When it came there was nothing any man on Earth could do to stop it. Death was the one certainty in a constantly changing world.

  Rock kept the lead, making enough noise so that any hungry cat or wild boar would know they were coming. His experience had taught him that most animals would rather run than tangle with man. They attacked when cornered or suddenly frightened. Most. So he let those in the dark woods know that guests were present but would just be moving through. He didn’t like to kill animals unnecessarily. Russians, that was another story. But then they were animals of a different order.

  Behind him the men marched at a brisk pace, the machine gun and mortarmen at the back, keeping their equipment balanced on the backs of the occasionally ornery hybrids. The Freefighters began singing, first one voice softly, then another and another, until all fourteen remaining men of Century City Strike Force #1 team were belting out chorus after chorus of:

  “Ninety-nine Blackshirt skulls on the wall,

  Ninety-nine Blackshirt skulls

  If one of those skulls should happen to fall

  Ninety-eight Blackshirt skulls on the wall

  Ninety-eight Blackshirt skulls on the wall,

  Ninety-eight . . .”

  It was a dumb, stupid song, but the men sang louder and laughed at the start of each new verse. Rockson grinned to himself at the front, pushing forward through increasingly dense growth and thorns, hacking at it when it became entangled around his khaki pants with his twelve-inch bowie knife. But it should be the other way around, he thought. The numbers should go up not down, because we’re killing more of them every year now.

  When he was a youth, the resistance forces were still unorganized. An occasional Russian truck would be sniped at, a stray Red soldier knifed in the gut. But that was all changing now. The Free Cities were becoming more and more organized and working toward establishing a unified military council that would coordinate all attacks throughout America so as to cause the most damage. The casualties of the occupying forces were more than doubling every year. The price that the Russians would have to pay to continue their enslavement of the United States would rise—until it was too high. Then the Slavic murderers would pack up their things and head for the steppes of Mother Russia, tails between their legs. How Rockson longed for that day. When America would be free again. All other thoughts paled in comparison to this burning dream.

  The moon rose full, shining like a ghostly eye in the dark sky, lighting up the harsh land below. The wood
s were thinning out now and Rock knew they couldn’t be too far from the other end. A clearing ahead! Rockson surveyed it swiftly with his eyes and ears. He stepped forward, holding up his right hand and then pointing to the ground—meaning stop. Crouching low, the Ultimate American moved forward through the trees, edging along the shadows, so as not to reveal himself in the bathing rays of the now-purple moon, covered with a thin haze of radioactivity that circled the Earth high in the Van Allen Belt.

  Something was out there! He could feel it in his tingling flesh. But what? Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. He edged closer, taking out his .12 gauge, rapid-firing shotgun pistol that held six shells and two in the chamber, the blast of which could take out two or three Russians at twenty feet. Rockson moved on his toes, his weight perfectly balanced, his ears perked to the most silent of sounds. He peered around a thorny bush, his pistol held high in his hand. Something, something.

  A black shadow flew up at him, growling, teeth slashing at his face. Then another! Rockson flew backwards with the attack. He smashed forward with the butt of his .12 into the face of the furry creature, dark, with dripping jaws. There were more. Many more—all around him, he heard their rustlings and snarls from the darkness. He spun to the side as the second attacker pounced, its fanged jaws slamming shut like a vise on the sleeve of Rock’s dark green field jacket. He smashed the animal so hard in the face that bloody teeth fell to the ground. It slunk away, yowling. Wild dogs, a pack of them. He’d been attacked before, but never surprised like this. Never so many. Orange eyes glowed at him from everywhere, burning with the flames of death. Of blood. Of throats ripped out and arms torn off, dragged away into the bushes. Rockson had seen what these packs could do to a man. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Three of them approached out of the darkness, from about ten feet away, moving in slowly, in a half crouch, lips pulled back revealing rows of dagger-sharp teeth. They were huge, almost two hundred pounds apiece, covered with matted, dank hair, and those jaws, big as shovels, foaming, dripping with thick saliva in anticipation of their next meal. Two suddenly shifted to the left as the other approached from the right. Strategy, Rockson thought, going to try and outflank me. He stepped back, raised the shotgun pistol and fired at the two big shepherds as they prepared to launch themselves into his space. The .12-gauge lead load tore from the muzzle of the big gun and spread out in an x-shaped pattern. It caught both of the killer dogs square at the neck and ripped through the heavily muscled hide like butter. Both dropped like dead meat to the bloody ground, their rib cages ripped open like a carcass of butchered beef.

  His hand moving back in an arc to take the recoil of the pistol, Rockson let the force swing it up and instantly forward again. The third of the attack group, a mutant Doberman with a jagged red scar along its entire body, leaped at Rockson, its jaws open wide. The pistol spoke death again and the would-be killer fell to the earth, its brains blasted from the top of its head, hanging out in dribbles of pink putty. Rockson moved backwards quickly now. They were closing in from out of the darkness. From behind trees and rocks and shadows, their eyes filled the whole night. Everywhere was death.

  He kept his eyes on them, moving continuously backwards at an even, almost unnoticeable pace. If he turned and ran they would be on him in a second. His will must tame theirs. He stared at them and aimed the gun at the pack, showing them the weapon that had taken three of them out. “Back! Stay back or I’ll kill. I’ll destroy you with this.” The approaching killers, snarling and snapping at the air with increasing frenzy, smelled the dead members of their pack and stepped over them toward the retreating creature with the glowing fire in his hand. Somehow they knew the gun was poison. It held them back—for a moment. Almost forty of the dogs closed in on Rockson in a semicircle, growling and growing angrier by the second, frustrated at not making the kill. They wouldn’t hold much longer, Rockson could see that.

  A large Doberman with canines nearly six inches long suddenly charged him from twenty feet away. Fast—a blur of fur and teeth. But Rockson was faster. He blasted the dog from the air, bloody pieces of black fur floating slowly above the shattered body. The rest approached closer, now completing the circle around him, coming in from behind. He was cut off. There were five shots left and then . . .

  A shrill sound filled the air. A blinding blue-white light lit the sky, bathing the rock-strewn field with a daylight brilliance. Rockson and the killer pack were caught frozen for a split second as if by a camera—suddenly the dogs ran. Yelping, tails between their legs, they had had enough. The flare floated slowly down, dangling from a small parachute, burning like a sun, sending out waves of purifying light. Within seconds the dogs had bounded back into the darkness from which they had come.

  Rockson turned as the rest of the Freefighters came forward from the woods behind him. Detroit stepped up to him, eyes taking in the ripped carcasses on the hard ground.

  “We couldn’t see what was happening, Rock,” Detroit said, bending over and opening the jaws of one of the killers and whistling. “But we sure could hear the growls and gunshots. We figured a little flash bulb might make ’em shy.”

  Rock reloaded the four empty chambers of his .12-gauge pistol, taking the thick cartridges from his utility belt.

  “It did. I would have been dogfood in another five seconds,” Rock said, putting the pistol back into its hip holster. “This is getting to be a habit,” Rock said, turning to the other men with an ironic grin. “I’ve got an image to protect. I’m supposed to be the tough guy here.”

  Six

  The Freefighters kept on the move for two days after they left the vast woodlands. They had to be more careful out here because the Russian spydrones flew regular patterns overhead, searching the dusty, rocky terrain for signs of trouble. But because of their regularity, the drones were easy enough to avoid and the men would just take a break when the next one was due over, hiding behind rocks or under trees.

  At last they reached the narrow mountain trail thought impassable by the Reds. They hit the start of the winding path that wove thousands of feet in the air, around two peaks, in the early morning, just as the sun shot out of the darkness, piercing the clouds just above them with orange-purple rays. It took nearly two hours to traverse the crumbling trail that sometimes narrowed to under a foot in width. Even the sure-footed hybrids were nearly stumbling as they rounded the last of the four thousand foot drops, straight down, past sheer rock walls of smooth granite. Then down the long, even slope that ended in a thick-wooded valley.

  They came to the three pine trees beside two large, square boulders that was the only sign of the main entrance into Century City. They walked silently past the trees and into a tunnel of brush and thickets nearly twelve feet in diameter. An owl hooted.

  “That’s the signal this week,” Carver whispered to Rockson, cupping his mouth to his hands. He gave out three rapid renderings of a wood thrush. The owl hooted twice rapidly—too rapidly for an owl—and there was a grating sound. What looked like a twenty ton, black boulder at the end of the little tunnel of brush slid sideways and there appeared a dimly lit ramp of black-painted concrete on the other side, lit by faint green lights overhead. The fourteen Freefighters, pulling their pack hybrids behind them, walked into the cavernous space. After the last man had entered, the boulder slid effortlessly shut behind them.

  There was a click and overhead arc lights came flaring on. On all sides, khaki-clad guards, with silencer-equipped Sten guns stood, barrels pointing at the arrivals.

  “There is nothing like a . . .” demanded the closest figure, his gun at chest level.

  “Dame,” Rockson replied clearly. The guns were lowered. Greetings and slaps on the back were exchanged. Someone popped a cork and the city’s homemade wine flowed into their beat-up canteen cups as was the tradition for all returning Strike Forces. Dr. Shecter, the leading scientist of Century City and one of its most influential men politically, appeared and shook Rockson’s hand.

  “Good to see yo
u back safe and sound. There’s something that I must talk to you about!” Shecter’s fierce brown eyes stared straight into Rockson’s. The intensity of the man was immense. The scientific “wonderboy” was responsible for half of Century City’s development over the last twenty years. An unparalleled genius in many fields, Shecter merely shrugged off any suggestion that he was a new Michelangelo with an “I don’t paint.”

  Shecter moved on to shake each man’s hand. In the absence of Council Leader Evans who was away on urgent business in a nearby Free City, Shecter was the highest ranking official around. Obviously he had been drafted for the rituals for he quickly disappeared back into the vast complex of corridors with his omnipresent guards. Shecter was too valuable to lose.

  Intelligence Officer Rath sidled over with his debriefing crew of four good-looking women who, he felt, helped in making the men relaxed and eager to talk after such hazardous forays. They eased the Freefighters into the debriefing room off to the side and began questioning them in groups of three and four—what they saw, how many enemy had been destroyed. Intelligence demanded every scrap of information. The Free Forces were building up the big picture of the Reds and the information, fed into Century City’s computer bank, was establishing a clear picture of the actual Soviet strength—and weakness—in the thousand mile square around the hidden city.

  Rockson, who would write and file his own detailed report later, was spared what the men referred to as the inquisition. As he headed briskly down the main ramp that led from Security Chamber A, a blond, well-endowed woman ran after him.

  “Rock, wait!” Shannon yelled, running up the ramp after him. Rockson stopped a moment and waited for the assistant intelligence chief to catch up and then immediately began walking again.

  “Can’t wait for the report?” Rockson cracked. “Well, let’s see—nine K-55s destroyed; three, possibly four, limping. I’d say a hundred to—”