Doomsday Warrior 09 - America’s Zero Hour Page 8

  They all thought he was beaten. But he wasn’t yet. Repayment was about to be made. He would aim the missile just far enough away from Denver to have the mountains to the immediate west of the city shielded from total destruction. Of course Denver and half its million inhabitants would be shaken. Many would die. But the Monolith would stand. Then a few weeks later, his loyal troops—and defectors from the regular army hopefully, once they saw his power—would reoccupy his headquarters, restore his Capitol to its dark prominence.

  Big plans. Plans that depended on no one knowing where he was for the next nine days, until Moscow was in his missiles’ range.

  Then let them know. Then let them kneel. It would be too late.

  He took another pill, asyminol—a combination of several energy-stimulating drugs. He was a drug addict; his wasted skeletal body craved pills, not food. Killov hated to eat—even his vitamin-mix elixir was distasteful to his mega-drugged system. But the alarm on his watch/medical-alert instrument was beeping. He had to take sustenance. Resignedly, he opened a premixed vial of orange-colored vitamin fluid and drained it in a single swallow. Then in compensation he swallowed a megafetamine tablet.

  Killov mused about his five missiles. Vassily had built the ultimate weapon—a force that used the destructive power of the universe, a contained “black hole” in time-space—and thus he had sealed his own doom. Killov broke into a big grin as the pill began leaking its aphrodisiac-hallucinatory stimulant into his intestines. His skeletal body quivered in ecstasy. He moved to the trailer’s window to watch the snow go by. He hardly made it. Damned, he’d have to have more sustenance. The doctor that traveled with him at all times, Dr. Witowski, had set up an intravenous feeding bottle and tube next to his airmatic bed-chair. Killov had a set of sterilized micro hypo needles in the drawer of the end table. He took one out now, attached it to the tube running from the hanging plastic bottle filled with bluish megavitamin and mineral protein glucose, and attached it to the tube. Then he jabbed the needle into the vein throbbing on his right forearm. It didn’t hurt much, it never did, anymore. Still, there were so many scars on his arms that he’d soon have to start using his thighs.

  He adjusted the flow meter and watched the enervating life-giving food in soluble solution drip-drip-drip down into the tube. It was infinitely better than chewing and swallowing.

  Yes, I am sick, he thought, but I am respected.

  They call me the skull, the monster, the dead man. So be it. Fear engenders respect. And respect engenders obedience. My troops will make this awesome journey through the coldest weather for me. No one would dare challenge me, or fates much worse than frozen death await them.

  Killov picked up the interphone.

  “How far north are we by the inertial readings, Mershneff?” he asked the driver of the vehicle.

  “One hundred miles north of the forty-ninth parallel, Your Excellency,” the driver stuttered out, checking the gauge on the immense, black, light-illuminated dashboard.

  “And our speed?”

  “Only thirty kilometers per hour, sir—the terrain is quite bumpy and cracked, and wind-blown drifts make it difficult for the ten half-tracks carrying the troops, and even for the missile trucks.”

  “Nevertheless, I want to reach the fifty-fourth parallel tonight. We’ve no time to dawdle. Notify all to move faster.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. Immediately, Excellency.”

  The hum of the atomic-driven turbines went up a notch and Killov turned once again to the scene outside. He would be satisfied only when they reached the Yukon’s mountains. Of course there would be a great danger there, for the land hadn’t been explored since the nuke war over one hundred years earlier. But his crack troops, his equipment, would be up to it. And his protector, Death Itself, the all-powerful entropic power of the universe, had always protected Killov, for he was its most loyal servant.

  Spirals of color began spinning in the snow outside as the numerous drugs in his body pushed him to the edge of hallucination. He had to lie down. He closed the window blinds. As he drifted in a drug-induced semi-twilight, he thought. With Rockson dead I will have America, then the entire world, united under my absolute rule. Then I will destroy it. In a million atomic fires, end it all!

  To be the last to live.

  But first . . . Moscow had to surrender, then a brief atomic war of subjugation, nuking the rebel territories of Australia, South Asia, and the Micronesian Free States. Then, when the world is mine, he thought, from my space satellite station, I will press the button and blow everything, every living thing on the five-billion-year-old planet Earth away!

  My master, Death, would be most happy . . .

  Eleven

  Rock saw wisps of smoke in the air, and when they crested a hill, there lay the Eskimo village. It was a group of several dozen igloos shimmering like immense half-pearls in the vast blanket of snow. Children played on small sleds pulled by husky pups. Women came out of the igloos, though, bundled as they were, it was hard to tell what sex they were. Only their softer complexions and long, silky black hair showed their gender.

  Rock, and the Rock team—Archer, Chen, McCaughlin, and Detroit—plus Scheransky, were escorted to the largest white ice igloo.

  “How the hell do you build these things anyway?” Rock asked curiously, as they approached the dome of ice.

  “It must be done carefully,” Tinglim said. “The entrance must not be in the direction of the prevailing west winds, but perpendicular to it. The igloos are just domes made of ice bricks; actually wind-snow. Highly compact and hard snow we cut in the nearby drifts and cart here. They are laid upward in a spiral of diminishing diameter. If we had wood for scaffolds we would make bigger ones, but we migrate anyhow. So we abandon these igloos when the snowfall gets too heavy and buries them completely.

  “Come, let us enter. Watch the ice steps, Rockson—they are steep and dark.”

  They passed through curtains and entered the open space inside—a pleasantly lit chamber hung with pelts. On a platform at the far end sat two Eskimo children in thick layers of clothing. They giggled upon seeing the strangers and crawled under the furs. In the middle of the room a small metal stove let its heat into the center but not the edges of the room. The walls were all glazed ice.

  “A marvel of engineering,” Scheransky said, “saves bricks too. Imagine, to make buildings out of frozen water!”

  “Don’t you know your own history?” Rock asked. “You Russians used to make huge palaces of ice during the Czar’s winter carnivals, which were called Moslenitza. That was in the nineteenth century. Your Ivan the Terrible built an ice palace of clear ice on an island in the Volga River each winter. He made sure the walls were crystal clear on his side—he could see the ice castle from his own warm, heated palace. He filled the ice palace with naked virgins and horny dwarves. Ivan watched them try to keep warm together until they froze to death. Then he had his soldiers replace them with fresh victims. The sadistic pleasure of a diseased mind—right?”

  Scheransky blushed. “I don’t believe it—but if it is true, that is one reason why we Communists had a revolution to overthrow the mad czars.”

  “But Soviet Russia still goes on torturing people all over the world,” Rockson retorted heatedly.

  Tinglim protested, “Stop! This is a peaceful house, no arguments! Come, let us sit on the bed platform. Because it is raised, it is the warmest place in the igloo. Let us have nice hot tea and discuss affairs of men, without women around.” He clapped his hands together.

  The Nara women withdrew after leaving teapots and cups.

  It was warm. Rock and the others removed their ice boots at the edge of the platform and leaned against polar-bear-fur pillows and sipped the hot buttered tea.

  “This is more like it,” said Detroit. “But I don’t understand how it can be, say, sixty degrees Fahrenheit here, and the ice wall doesn’t melt.”

  “It is caused by currents of air from blow-holes,” said Tinglim proudly, “Pl
us, of course, the force fields . . .”

  “Force fields?” exclaimed Rock. “So that’s the humming I thought I heard.”

  “Yes,” Tinglim said. “The Ice City people gave us devices to generate force fields along the ice walls to prevent the warm and cold air from mixing. See the little boxes every five feet along the sides? Go over and touch a wall.”

  Rock did so, cautiously. There seemed to be some sort of almost magnetic resistance in the air which his hand had difficulty pushing through. Rockson returned to his seat.

  “We could use some of these force field boxes,” Rock said, thinking how Schecter would love to get his hands on one, dismantle it, and see what makes it tick.

  After the tea, Rock and Tinglim sat alone by the small metal fireplace in the center of the igloo while the rest of the Rock Team explored other areas of the Eskimo encampment.

  The Nara chief told the Doomsday Warrior legends of how his people experienced the Nuke War a hundred years earlier.

  “My tribe saw the white lines in the sky, followed by the blossoming of orange glows in the south—in the United States and southern Canada. That glow was followed a few days later by terrible storms here, and then the falling of the ‘burning rains.’ There are tales from the old ones—who were children then—of mysterious sickness. Red boils on the skin, dryness of throat, a gradual withering away of the limbs. And then the birth of strange, mutated children—some more like fish than humans. The mutants were buried alive in the snows near the sacred mountains. Hunting was bad, and the village was starving by spring.

  “All the land grew dry, withered, deserted. The lakes had no boats on them in the spring; the rivers and creeks had no canoes in them. No red-coated moose hunters came through our town asking for guides. It is told that one of our young men took a sleigh to find out what had happened. He set off to Nome, Alaska. When he came back, he was all sickly and spotted. He died—but not before telling my people that instead of a white man’s city, there was only a great circular ice lake, with the scattered burned bones of tens of thousands lining its shores.

  “So my people stayed in this area. Our medicine men—we call them Nyqwit—told us not to wander, for the rest of the world had been poisoned by a Great Evil War.

  “So,” Tinglim continued, as Rock listened fascinated, “we stayed in this area and hunted as best we could and found leaves and berries to supplement our meager larders.

  “My people were alone, cut off from the outside world, reduced to a few dozen families.

  “Forsaking the old ways, and the Nyqwit advice, in a desperate search for food, we headed south, where the game was more plentiful. And came upon this unspoiled area. Here we thrived. Alone, for seventy or eighty years. Finally, others came. We have traded with other Eskimos and Indian tribes for the last thirty years. Our people grew so numerous that we split up—we the Nara Clan stayed in this area, near the ocean and fish. Others went into the forbidding Sasquatch Woods, and beyond it, built the Ice City.”

  “What’s the Sasquatch Woods?” Rock asked.

  “The Sasquatch, I believe, is what your people once called the ‘Big Foot’—great hairy beasts with the strength of twenty men. Olmo may have been the offspring of human and Sasquatch parents. Although they have few weapons, except the huge rocks they throw—and they can throw enormous boulders—they have taken over all the land north of the Sasquatch River. They do not cross it, however. They fear deep water. At this time of year, they usually hibernate in caves.”

  Rock could hardly believe all he was hearing, but he would soon find out. He decided that the Eskimos were great storytellers and that Tinglim was one of the best. But it was time for practical matters, not tall tales.

  “I’m going to need supplies,” Rock said, looking the Eskimo chief squarely in the eye.

  “Whatever we have is yours—for a price,” Tinglim replied, giving a coy look. The Nara leader took a long, slow sip of the hot buttered tea and then said, “I will sell you one sled with a husky team thrown in, for, say—one of your rifles and two hundred rounds of ammunition.”

  “I’ll give you four rifles,” Rock replied, “and a hundred rounds each, but I want eight sleds and dogs—one for each of my men. I’d like to leave here in eight hours.”

  “Ah,” said Tinglim, “are you in a rush? If you are in a rush we can jack up the price. Are you in a big rush?”

  Rock’s mind raced for a second, “Well, not a big rush . . .”

  “That’s more like it,” said Tinglim. “Tell you what. We send for your big arrow-shooting friend. He can bring some samples of your trading goods, particularly your skis-of-metal and your rifles, here. And I want to see some of your clever objects, like that compass you carry on your belt. Maybe I can make a counter-offer.”

  Tinglim slapped his hands together. A very pretty Eskimo maiden, whom he introduced as Wiglim, came in with hot tea and some odd buns—lichen bread—on a tray. Tinglim instructed the girl to find Archer and tell him to bring all he could carry that might be a sample of what Rockson had to trade. Rock started to wish he had allowed Tinglim to consider him a god. It could become a costly mistake not to have done so.

  In a matter of ten minutes, there was heavy breathing at the door, then the entrance shook. Archer came into the igloo carrying a vast mass of equipment: a giant armful that could have bent the chassis of a truck.

  “Put if over there,” frowned Rock. “Right by the door.”

  “Would your friend like some lichen buns?” asked Tinglim.

  Rock’s eyes rolled; “Would Archer like food? Does Lenin have a beard?”

  Tinglim carefully inspected the Schecter skis, the compasses, sextants, knives, pistols, and camp gear Archer had brought in. “I take all this,” he concluded, “And I give you four sleds and dog teams.”

  “No dice,” Rock said.

  This brought a pleased expression to the Eskimo’s face. Out here men spent hours bartering—happy for the companionship.

  “Very well, let us inspect your other goods.”

  The two of them walked outside to Rock’s ’brid, Snorter. Rock unsheathed his new Liberator rifle from alongside the saddle. It was one of the newer models that Rock had recently acquired from the arms factory.

  Tinglim’s fat brown hands ran covetously along the barrel of the perfectly machined .9mm rifle. He looked at the weapon closely, snapped the fifteen-round banana-clip in and out, admired the superlight magna-steel simulated-wood take-down stock. The weapon seemed to cause something approximating love in the man. He clicked the trigger, with the magazine out, of course, and then sighted along the barrel and gave an exclamation.

  Tinglim had pointed it toward a husky, and had seen a tiny little red spot appear on the dog’s fur.

  “It’s just the laser-locking mechanism,” Rock said. “When you sight a target, the rifle shoots forth a harmless red laser beam. The beam leaves a trace of light-activated phosphorescence where it was focused. Then, if you pull the trigger and are off a bit, the bullets will skew to the right or left to find the target.”

  “Amazing,” Tinglim muttered. “Amazing. Perhaps I could up my offer for some more sleds and dogs,” Tinglim said, a greedy look in his eye. The Nara chief motioned to some men, said something in Naraese. Rock was then led back into the big igloo.

  The Nara men brought in all kinds of artifacts, even jewels that Rock really didn’t need, but couldn’t resist looking at. The Doomsday Warrior nearly gasped out when he saw two neon-blue rabbitskin robes. They were beautiful, soft, and iridescent, catching every bit of light and reflecting it. Rock wanted them for Rona and Kim. The robes were of two sizes, one just right for each of the women.

  “It took a hundred and fifty rabbits apiece to make them,” Tinglim boasted. “And not ordinary rabbits. Neon rabbits. They have pelts that are dazzlingly blue, like the feathers of a peacock. It takes great skill,” said Tinglim, “to catch a neon rabbit. Then the pelts have to be dried and hung up in narrow strips. Then they are dressed
and sewn together with walrus gut—very strong. Then they must be hung up in evergreen trees to catch the light of the aurora borealis, enhancing their color so that these robes are almost ultraviolet and glow. The coat that is made from them is light and warm. Wrapped in furs like that of the neon rabbit, a woman could walk in the coldest night without freezing.”

  Rock thought later that there might have been something in the tea to loosen up his mind. For he ended up trading quite a lot of supplies for the furs. Tinglim gave good value back, though, for another four rifles, some rounds, and compasses. He would board the ’brids while Rock traveled north, and promised to return the mounts, no strings attached, whenever the Freefighter came to claim them. They would be given foodstuffs for the trip, some of the harpoons the Eskimos used, a sled and six dogs for every member of the party, warm pelts, and a brick of Eskimo black tea, guaranteed to heat up the blood. Plus four clay gourds filled with highly volatile seal oil. “They might save your life—fuel to keep warm. Or to just make tea.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” Rock said. But he began to wonder suddenly if his men had enough experience in cold-weather survival to make the journey.

  Almost as if reading his thoughts, Tinglim said softly, “You need me too, Rockson. I am coming along to help you—friend. We leave after a good rest for yourself and your men.”

  Rockson nodded and yawned. Some shut-eye was a good idea.

  Twelve

  An aged, frail man sat reading in his electric wheelchair on his “solarium,” a glassed-in veranda overlooking Moscow. He was reading On War, by the Prussian military officer, Carl von Clausewitz. The book had been the basis of military strategy for the entire nineteenth century. He wrapped his shawl more closely about him as strontium-filled clouds passing over a wan sun cast chilling shadows over the city. Vassily, “the Grandfather,” Premier of the world, gazed at the gray clouds that seemed to be threatening to envelop his empire. He’d just been reading of a campaign that had been won because the enemy had been blinded by the glare of the setting sun. That sort of strategy would never work now, he thought as the sun reemerged, resembling a shimmering stone in a pool of water.