Doomsday Warrior 01 (7 page)

So it went like that. Vassily wasn’t letting either him or Killov get too powerful. He was using them to balance one another, leaving the ultimate control back in Moscow. So be it! This job did have its compensations after all. Indeed.

He pressed the intercom. “Prepare the bedroom.” Zhabnov smiled. The last one had been a little Negress. Delightful. Absolutely delightful. Too small for breeding purposes. Not meant for Russia’s cold winters. Soft, frightened, the kind he liked most.

Killov paced back and forth in his office—a cold, stark, ultra-modern gray-and-white affair. He wore the tight, black uniform of synleather, emblazoned only on the collar with the insignia of his rank—five red stars and the KGB red death’s-head. That fat imbecile Zhabnov was probably raping one of those little American waifs right now instead of attending to business.

Am I the only one
, the KGB commander asked himself for the hundredth time,
who understands the real threat these American resistances forces pose and the only one who takes forceful action? Zhabnov and his general staff have all grown fat and complacent. Content to mount an offensive here and there once a year. An offensive, ha!
Killov snickered.
Sending out ten thousand troops surrounded by cranking vehicles. Why, the rebels could hear them coming a hundred miles away. So, of course, they never run into opposition. So, of course, there is no resistance.

And yet even I don’t know the full extent of the danger. I only suspect—based on disappearing ammunition, fuel, and medical supplies. Based on whole platoons of my men sent out on search-and-destroy being swallowed up in thin air out here in these mountains.
He stared out the window at the mist-shrouded Rockies off in the distance. From the eightieth floor of his KGB command building in Denver he could see a good forty miles—when the day was clear of the duststorms or the mists.
I get report after report hinting of a vast network of underground infestations of rebels armed to the teeth and trained to barely leave a trace. Americans who, until the Mind Breakers, would just recite nursery rhymes when captured, even when tortured. They seemed to have learned some sort of mental process—a hypnotic block that let them literally be murdered slowly by my expert interrogators rather than reveal a shred of information
. That is, if he could even get them before they swallowed one of those damn cyanide capsules they always carried. That was something he found hard to fathom. The way they died, instantly, without hesitation, when his Blackshirts would have some surrounded and close in. And when they broke down the door or poured into some cave, guns blazing—just bodies, already turning cold, faces blue from the cyanide. Would he do that—for Russia? Give his life if captured? But then, of course, he would never be captured. Not with his precautions, his elite guard.

Killov glanced down at the request for the use of atomic weapons he had received back from Premier Vassily in Moscow, a big “NYET” stamped on it in red. The intellectual fool, always reading a book on Napoleon or Caesar or Nixon. Always quoting “what other great men have done before me,” to tight-mouthed underlings who had to sit and listen in total silence. Sometimes Killov thought that Vassily wanted the Americans to wipe out the Red forces in America. The premier of all the world was a fanatic about American lore and history. His respect for America and her past was too great for him to sanction effective countermeasures. Vassily and his books, Killov thought, like Nero and his fiddle . . . while Rome burned.

Is that how we won world domination? By waiting to be destroyed by the might of America? No! We acted before they would have the upper hand. Our scientists figured that quite accurately. By 1990 the military situation would start turning back in America’s favor. She would have nuclear superiority. It was all there in graphs and charts. There would be a war sooner or later so . . . then-Premier Antonin did it. Did it! Launched a pre-emptive strike—over the vehement objections of the party functionaries. And we had won. The Americans hadn’t known of the twenty killer satellites the Russians had managed to slip into space in the early 1980s. When they went to counterattack, the killer sats, using laser sighting and particle beam rays, had been able to knock 93.7 percent of the U.S. nuclear missiles right out of the sky. There was devastation it was true, but history vindicated—posthumously—Premier Antonin’s decision.

Now, almost a hundred years later, Premier Vassily was about to let it all slip away and permit these mutant Americans to take over the world. They would. He knew that, unless the one man who saw the peril correctly was made president of the United Socialist States—and when the “benign” Vassily died, premier of all the Russias. Premier Killov. But he’d have to wait, have to hide his ambitions or the other leaders back home would have him destroyed from fear. He knew that. And somehow he had to defend that fool Zhabnov from being overrun by the rebels, so when the time was right, there would still be a White House standing.

Killov stopped pacing. He would win. He would win because he was the stronger. It was nature’s way. He looked out at the mountains caught in the sunset’s purple rays. Beautiful. America the beautiful. And in those purple mountains majesty—nests of resistance—somewhere up there, he’d give his right arm to know where, was Ted Rockson, “The Ultimate American” the populace called him, scrawling his name on army barracks and alley walls. How many were out there? He tried to pierce the mist with his mind, to see, to know. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? And at what level of attack capability were they? There were disquieting rumors among the itinerant panhandlers and trappers, passed on to him by his operatives among the masses, that the technology of some of these hidden Americans surpassed the finest in Russia. Then why were they hanging back? Why didn’t they attack? Killov knew the reason. They were growing stronger while the Russian Empire was growing weaker, more decadent, more lazy, more off-guard every day.

Five

T
he Freefighters marched through the night as the terrain was fairly passable and Rockson wanted to try to make up time lost spent in the thicker woods. The men nervously ignored the gallery of eyes that peered at them from behind every tree, every shadow. They could hear the rustlings and growls of the forest creatures—some sounded quite large, but they appeared to find the party of Freefighters a little too big or too unknown to attack and stayed in the darkness. As the morning sun began its weary ascent through pink-clouded skies, Rockson ordered his men to stop. They found a grove of very dense palm-like trees that surrounded a pool of cool, blue water and the men threw their supplies to the ground and collapsed in exhaustion, happy to be resting for a few hours.

Within minutes they had stripped down to their birthday suits and were yelling and splashing in the fresh, cold water. After cooking breakfast and feeding the hybrids, they formed a group around the edge of the bank and told stories. Tall tales, the toughest fight they had ever been in, stories of Russian atrocities, gossip about who was sleeping with who at Century City. It felt so good to relax. Life in 2089
A.D.
America did not usually allow moments of complete relaxation, total tranquility. But here in the middle of the chirping, shadow-and-sun-dappled woods, tranquility seemed to be the order of the day. There was a harmony here, a perfection, a wholeness that most of them had never experienced.

McCaughlin made a crude fishing pole from a birch branch and twisted a safety pin he used to hold his constantly splitting pants together into a hook. He probed around in the dirt until he found a big, juicy, black beetle and skewered it with the pin. Using nylon thread, he dropped a line into the pond water and lay back on the sandy bank in a state of ecstasy.

“Fishing, now that’s my style,” the smiling Scotsman said, looking over at Rockson who sat silently, lost in his own thoughts.

Suddenly, about twenty feet out, the water in the tranquil pond was broken by a great splash. “What the—?” McCaughlin began, nearly losing his pole which was being yanked wildly in every direction. He sat up and pulled back on the line as something thrashed violently just under the surface, whipping the blue water into a cauldron of boiling foam.

“Got me a big one, goddamn it,” McCaughlin exclaimed and whistled loudly. The other men gathered around to cheer him on. The big Scotsman pulled and yanked but the thing on the other end of the line pulled back just as hard. Suddenly it broke the surface, whipping wildly—a horned, multieyed, ten-legged, green, scaly creature nearly two-and-a-half feet long with a row of spikes running the length of its back. It shook and whipped its head this way and that trying to free itself from the safety pin hook solidly embedded in its snapping jaw.

“Damn, that’s ugly,” Carter said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fish that ugly.”

“That’s what your mama said when she first saw you,” Detroit snickered.

“I don’t care if he’s ugly or beautiful,” McCaughlin choked out, “I’m going to get the little sucker.” The Scotsman stood up and, using all his three hundred pounds of strength, pulled the pole high over his head. The green fish-thing came flying from the water straight up at him, snapping rows of razor-sharp teeth like a cutting machine.

“Look out!” the Freefighters yelled, scattering in all directions as the biting, sixty-pound thing flopped on the sand, twisting its hard body around violently, biting at everything in sight.

“Damn, he’s mean,” McCaughlin said almost proudly, jumping back himself and letting the pole drop to the sand. The fish saw the motion of the branchpole and pushed itself with a thrust of its powerful tail at the object. It slashed at the wooden object, snapping it in two with a single bite of its toothy jaws.

Rockson walked over until he was about six feet away from the thrashing creature. “Come on, boys, it ain’t right to torture living things. That’s for Russians.” He pulled out his twelve-inch bowie knife, reached down and with a single powerful slash cut off the fish’s head. It stopped moving, the tail twitched a few times and then it was still.

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.