Doomsday Warrior 09 - America’s Zero Hour Read online

  Zhabnov gasped, as a misty face was beginning to emerge from the picture. He nearly screamed when the pulsing phantom of Washington stepped slowly out of the portrait and onto the cold floor beside him. He put his hands over his face.

  “I’ve done nothing to you. I even kept your painting,” he protested.

  “Look at me,” the phantom commanded. In spite of himself, Zhabnov peered through his fingers. The now-solid-appearing apparition had a ghastly pallor tinged with a faint flush of fever. The accusing eyes were of an unearthly luminosity. His clothing was faded and decayed as if eaten by worms, and hung around the thing in tatters.

  “My spirit has been troubled by your presence in my nation’s hallowed halls. It is your disturbance of this place that has summoned me from my grave,” he accused, pointing a trembling finger in Zhabnov’s face.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Zhabnov whimpered.

  “Oh but you did,” the hideous spirit of Washington intoned. “You’ve come and taken over my country, my people. You may think that the power is on your side because of your weapons and troops—but we, the dead, have our eyes on you, Zhabnov. We’re reaching for you to bring you down into our world.”

  Everywhere around the room, the walls began to glow. Spirits of other Presidents came through the walls and began flying around Zhabnov like a tornado—the eyes glowing, the black holes of mouths, chanting like the dismal choruses of hell.

  “Zhabnov—we’ve come for you. Zhabnov, Zhabnov, we want you, we want you.” They jabbed at Zhabnov with skeletal hands from the grave.

  “No, no, no!” Zhabnov pleaded, shaking his head.

  He awoke in a sweat, wrapped like a mummy in the sheets, his face under the pillow. He gasped for air.

  “President Zhabnov, President Zhabnov,” said Gudonov in his shrill, piercing voice, tapping him vigorously.

  Throwing the pillow off, Zhabnov groaned.

  “Wake up! You have an important telephone call.”

  It was from Denkov, the general in charge of the attack on the Denver Monolith—the KGB’s last known toehold in the country. Denkov’s raspy Ukrainian-peasant voice reported, “Sir, the siege is going well.”

  “When will you wipe out the enemy?” Zhabnov asked. “I could use you back here.”

  Denkov, never a rash man, paused. The siege had actually bogged down. The KGB troops, even without Killov’s leadership, were fighting tooth and nail.

  “Well?” Zhabnov shouted. “When?”

  “A few days, a week.”

  “Do it faster.”

  Nine

  It was a gray day, the kind of day on which a man thinks of dying. White broiling clouds overhead discharged a steady heavy snow that blanketed their way and made visibility nil. Rockson kept the men moving through the deeper and deeper drifts. They leaned low on their thick-maned ’brids, using the pungent mops of dark golden mane as blankets, and zipped up their nylon super-insulated parkas. The Doomsday Warrior noticed that the treetops of the occasional evergreens they passed were starting to wave back and forth. That was bad. A blow was coming, maybe a big one—the first signs of an Arctic blizzard, with untold feet of snow waiting to drop on the team.

  As the ’brids stumbled on and the temperature dropped, the skies above grew dimmer and dimmer, as if it were night though it was only one in the afternoon. “Men,” he turned and shouted, “we’ll have to make camp soon. Keep your eyes peeled for any kind of shelter and—”

  He paused in midsentence as he suddenly saw faint shapes at the limits of his vision through the falling snow. “Halt,” Rock said in a lower voice to his men. The men stopped their ’brids in their tracks. For a moment, but for the snorting of their steeds all was silent, and then—yells and dog barks. Rockson located the direction of the dim noises off to his left and lifted Schecter’s haze-cutting electron binoculars out of the case putting them to his eyes. The binoculars, as he scanned the horizon, automatically adjusted their forty-power focus, and within seconds he saw the source of the disturbance. Dog sleds and drivers—and they were heading this way.

  “Defensive positions, men,” Rock shouted. “Take advantage of the terrain. Get over behind those frost buckles to the side of the road.”

  Rock could hear the shouts of the strangers now, as he left his ’brid and dove belly down behind a slight protuberance in the drifting snow. He could hear the cracks of whips as the drivers pushed their teams to maximum speed. They were coming in fast.

  There were a dozen sleds approaching with five or six men trailing each on skis, pulled along by ropes attached to the laden sleds—rifles slung over their shoulders or cradled in their arms. Through the electron binoculars’ crisp laser-enhanced images he could see the expressions on the Mongol-stock faces—and they didn’t look friendly. The Freefighters waited, motionless in the snow, Liberator rifles steady in their hands, waiting. They were upon them. A lead sled skidded to a halt and the first five men approached, the others staying a bit back.

  Rock stepped forward, indicating he was the leader. Rifles trained on rifles, but at least they hadn’t come in shooting.

  The leader pulled down his parka top of fur and sealskin and raised his empty hand. Rock raised his hand in the same universal gesture.

  The man stepped five paces forward as Rock waited, his hand ready to go for his quick-draw holster and the .12-gauge pistol that lay inside.

  “Hello,” the leather-faced man said, “why do you come this way? Are you Canadians? Do you speak English?”

  “We’re Americans,” Rock said, “Freedom fighters.” He did not attempt to be evasive. Most people he had come across in nuke-devastated North America had a universal and deep hatred of the Russians. He had yet to run across a group who hadn’t heard of the American Freefighters and who weren’t at least neutral to their cause.

  The man’s shoulders seemed to relax. He said, “That is good, if you are who you say you are.” The man did not come forward to shake hands, though. He cradled a long-range .50-caliber World War III rifle that looked like it could take out a whale with a single shot. “And who are you?”

  “Name’s Ted Rockson, but you may know me as—”

  “The Doomsday Warrior?” the man laughed bitterly and spat in the snow. “That’s impossible. The Doomsday Warrior is seven feet tall, at least. He is much more muscular than you are, and has a voice like thunder. But you are the leader of this group that trespasses on the North Range—our land— Why do you trespass?”

  “We are in pursuit of Russians who have stolen equipment that we want back—dangerous equipment that could destroy all your people in a flash. Have you seen these Russians? They might not have worn regular Soviet uniforms.”

  “Yes—yes, we have,” the man said slowly and deliberately. “They came through five days ago—we tried to be friendly to them. In return, they killed five of my people. They stole much food and supplies. How do we know you are Americans and not Russians also?”

  “And who am I addressing?” Rock asked with a sigh, somehow not in the mood to prove his trustworthiness.

  “Tinglim, Chief of the Nara-Eskimos. King of the Aurora. Lord of the tundra south of the Sasquatch River.”

  “Well, Mr. Tinglim,” Rock said, “can your men put down their rifles, and mine will do the same? Find it hard to carry on a conversation with guns poking out of everywhere.”

  Tinglim said something in a language Rockson didn’t know, and the Eskimos lowered their rifles. Rock ordered his team to follow suit.

  “Again, I ask you—What is your real name, mister?” Tinglim demanded. Rockson repeated his claim. Some of the Eskimos laughed. But Rock pulled down his hood and they stopped.

  Tinglim stepped forward. “Hummmm. You have the multicolored eyes and the streak of white hair the legend speaks of, but you are not seven feet tall, maybe just six feet. No, you can’t be him.” He turned and animatedly repeated his remarks in Nara lingo. The dark-faced men laughed coarsely. Then he shouted something. From the most distant sled
a figure stepped forward—a figure of enormous girth swaddled in furs. A man-monster, seven feet tall at least, his hands were chained together—and he strode like he owned the world. The Eskimos made a wide path for him. He came up alongside Tinglim and dwarfed the big man.

  “This is Olmo, our slave. We captured this wild man last year. Sometimes we pit him against the fighters of other tribes. We win much food, much ammunition,” he laughed.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Rockson said.

  The man snorted, like a bull, and glared down with nothing but hate in the almond-shaped eyes.

  “I don’t believe you are who you say you are,” the Eskimo chief said. “And that means you are probably lying about everything. If you were the Doomsday Warrior you could defeat Olmo in hand-to-hand battle . . .”

  “Well, sorry to disappoint you,” Rock said, “but I’m not in the mood to fight anyone today. Nevertheless, I am the Doomsday Warrior. And we are Freefighters.”

  “You are not Freefighters!” Tinglim snapped. “Olmo will battle you, and if you are the Doomsday Warrior you will defeat him.”

  The Nara chief shouted orders and rifles swung up. So did the Freefighters’ weapons.

  “You will all die,” Tinglim sneered. “We are many. You are few. If you do not wish to die, you must fight Olmo. Truth will win.”

  It was fight-or-die time again. Rockson had been in this situation too much lately. It didn’t pay to have a reputation, he mused as the Eskimos unchained the oversized champion.

  “Any rules?” Rock asked, taking off his jacket.

  The Nara were turning their sleds sideways, commanding their huskies to lie down as they settled back for a good show.

  “What are the rules?” Rock asked again.

  “No guns,” Olmo snarled, shucking his sealskin jacket, stripping down to his hulking bare chest. The man was like a sumo wrestler, but more muscled—and covered with thick brown hair. He hardly looked human. And with his face twisted up in a snarl, lips curled back over jagged teeth . . . Rock felt as if he were facing something from a prehistoric age.

  Olmo took off his boots and threw them over his shoulder. Rock kept his combat snow-cleats on, and his clothes—the air was frigid. They started circling each other; cries of support and suggestions began coming from both sides. Olmo shot in close and suddenly came forward, feet first, attempting to snare Rock’s legs, twisting him down into the snow. Now he had the advantage of his enormous girth, muscles, and weight, and gripped the Doomsday Warrior around the neck in a hammerlock of death—but Rockson somehow twisted and slipped free. He pulled out his long hunting blade and held it forward. Rock wasn’t about to duke it out with something this powerful and fast. The half-animal murder machine was thrown a harpoon by a Nara man. He caught it and smiled a jagged smile of menace.

  As quick as a cat he leapt forward, thrusting the harpoon at Rockson’s stomach. Rock saw the flicker of the killer’s eyes and knew the weapon was coming. The Doomsday Warrior jumped to the side and swung the sharp edge of his hunting knife at Olmo’s abdomen. The blade barely made contact as the man was able to stop his great bulk in mid-stride. Still, Rock’s blade drew a thin line of blood along the giant’s stomach. The man-thing pulled back a few feet and looked at the American with surprise. No man had ever cut him in his thirty years of life. And they had fought the most famous fighters of many tribes!

  The maddened fighter opened his jaws, showing his bent rows of broken teeth. He made what Rock could only interpret as a smile, though hardly a friendly one.

  “Good fight,” Olmo snarled. “Now me kill.”

  Rock and Olmo, now having tested one another, squared off circling each other slowly. The Eskimo’s slave-fighter was more wary now. He knew this was not an ordinary man, not an ordinary fighter. He felt no fear—just caution. He would win, of that there was no doubt. For he had many tricks.

  Rock hefted his knife at chest level, moving it from side to side ready for whatever attack Olmo chose. He had decided to let the Arctic monster do the attacking—he would counterattack. The man was too big for Rock to go in—let him make the first move.

  Olmo feinted to the right. As Rockson responded he twisted and came at the American’s side with the harpoon. The razor-sharp tip grazed Rock’s ribs, gouging out half an inch of flesh, but not penetrating the rib cage. As the weapon slid past his body, Rockson lashed out with a spinning sidekick to the thing’s groin. It caught Olmo squarely in the groin and nearly lifted the howling monster off the snow.

  The kick took the wind from the thing, and he landed sitting, his weapon falling to the side. Rockson moved in slashing with his knife, but Olmo leaped up and out of the way, circling to the left now, retrieving the harpoon. The big man-thing opened his immense hands and closed them slowly, like he had Rockson’s head in each baseball-mitt-sized appendage. The crushing power the hands had could flatten a man’s skull! Rock sensed that the move was to distract him and detected a slight repositioning of Olmo’s feet.

  The giant broad-jumped through the air at the Doomsday Warrior, who leapt to the side. As the Doomsday Warrior moved, the Eskimo champion heaved the harpoon at an amazing speed. Rockson twisted desperately and the harpoon just missed. It flew by, landing twenty yards away where it stuck a foot deep in the snow. The giant came at him with a mad look on his distorted hairy face. He would crush the frail man with his huge arms. Rockson mightily threw his knife dead-center, not into the body, but into the forehead of his murderous adversary. He rolled to the side as the man-thing plunged on to where he had just been. Olmo, the razor-sharp knife imbedded in his thick skull, fell forward, splashing red on the white snow, his hands jerking spasmodically. Rockson had thrown with all his might, so that the tip of the hunting blade stuck out of the shattered rear of the head—matted hair dripping brown brain fluid and red blood onto the whiteness of the northern plains. That was that.

  Rockson turned toward his men, but he saw something wrong. The men’s expressions were those of horror. Rockson spun and found Olmo was standing again, his eyes half bulging out, blood pouring from his mouth. He staggered forward spitting red. Immense arms again sought for Rockson. With a knife right through his head, still he stumbled on. Maybe the damned thing didn’t even need a brain.

  “Here, Rock,” said Detroit, tossing him one of the harpoons they’d brought from Century City. Rock caught it.

  Rockson circled the dying monstrosity for a few seconds and then suddenly jammed the harpoon straight into the monster’s gut. He twisted its jagged serrated edge back out, trailing guts with it. Olmo staggered backward looking at the Freefighter in bewilderment. His legs trembled violently as they tried to hold up the quarter ton of weight. Rockson stared at the half-human mutant and wished it had all been different. The man was cruel. But he was brave as well. If he had been with the Freefighters he would have made a hell of a warrior. But such was not to be his fate.

  The Doomsday Warrior jabbed the harpoon forward again with a sudden and powerful motion. It went into Olmo’s hairy throat clear through his neck. Olmo’s eyes rolled up. The giant tottered and then, face forward, Olmo slammed into the red-caked snow. The most feared of the fighters of the North had met his match—Ted Rockson, the Doomsday Warrior.

  “You are the Doomsday Warrior!” Tinglim said, falling to his knees and touching his hands together in front of him as if in prayer. “Excuse me for doubting you, God Rockson.”

  “I’m no damn god—stand up, man! I’ve had to kill Olmo because you think Rockson is a god, not a man. Now you must help me—help us defeat Killov and his men. That’s what I ask—help, not worship!”

  Tinglim rose slowly, as did the rest of the now-kneeling tribe. “Whatever you wish shall be. Come to our village. Be feasted, bathed, fed, as friends should be.”

  It sounded good.

  Ten

  Two hundred miles northwest of Rockson’s party, on the Al-Can Highway:

  Colonel Killov watched the snowy terrain move by at a good clip from his war
m and cozy cushioned chair in the nose of his all-terrain vehicle. Equipped with every convenience, the treaded trailer had been built for General Dersky of Zhabnov’s Supreme Missile Command. But Dersky was no longer among the living, and Killov had inherited the vehicle when his troops captured Dersky’s five truck-mounted Megon-11 missiles in Idaho. Killov had lost four hundred eighty-nine of his last seven hundred crack Death’s-head Commandos in that raid, but it had been worth it.

  Now he was headed north toward the Arctic Circle with the five missiles on balloon-tired trucks behind him. In another nine days—more or less—he would be within firing distance of Moscow itself. And his near rout in America, his failure to take over America, would be reversed. Armed with the unstoppable Megon-11 cruise missiles that could fly eighty feet off the ground at twenty-eight hundred kilometers an hour, Vassily would have no choice but to surrender the Soviet World Empire to Killov’s ironclad rule, or Moscow would be vaporized by the antimatter warheads of the missiles! If Vassily doubted that Killov would destroy Moscow, Killov would fire a missile toward Colorado, where he knew the American base called Century City was located. The entire west-central part of Colorado would be vaporized. That would show Vassily he meant business—and would also get Killov’s nemesis, Ted Rockson, the “Doomsday Warrior,” out of the way once and for all.

  Killov had not yet been defeated! He smiled a cadaverous toothy grin, and popped an arunil pill into his lips and swallowed. In moments a flood of pleasure spread in his gut.

  The well-equipped trailer he traveled in now was nothing compared to his living quarters on the top two floors of the Denver Monolith. His former headquarters, the eighty-story high, black, opaque Monolith dominated half the state. There he had a hundred servants, a command center that controlled hundreds of swift choppers and fifty thousand troops. Now the Monolith was besieged, soon to fall into the hands of the Red Army. But he would have it back, very soon.