Doomsday Warrior 04 - Bloody America (10 page)

“Food,”
one of the dulags, an old man with a face covered with brown warts, groaned just behind Ivan. The man was trembling violently, his hands reaching out ahead of him, palms up as if God were about to drop a feast down on them. Ivan looked over at him with eyes as cold as the frozen tundra. He had seen so much suffering, death, disease, that he was immune to it. The human system can only take so much before it goes into a state of shock—before a numbness sets in through which nothing can any longer be felt. The old man screamed once more for food, and with a thick green bile dribbling between his lips, keeled over face forward onto the hard cushion of gravel at the edge of the road.

“We die like flies,” a large, barrel-chested man who had slept just behind Ivan said angrily. “We are nothing. We are the no-people.”

“I am hungry,” a thin, gaunt man off to the side of the road cried out. “I’ve had no food for days. I can’t remember when.”

“Yes, I am hungry, too,” Ivan said, joining in the growing chorus of angry voices. Suddenly there was a group of dulags, then a crowd, voicing their discontent, their anger. For years they had remained dormant, silent, dead. But now, a breaking point had been reached. Even the lowliest slave can only be pushed so far.

“We are all dying,” the big man said. It was obvious that he had once been very strong. His big bones and broad chest were testimony to a peasant of tremendous strength—a cow lifter as the Russians termed that kind of strength. Yet now his flesh and muscles hung loosely on his large frame. He was wasting away—as they all were wasting away. Men turning into nothing.

“Food,
I must have food,” an old man with white beard that came nearly down to his waist, croaked out. “I am ready to die for food.”

“Yes, we must eat,” the voices echoed around him. There were nearly a hundred of the dulags now, roused from their sleeping nooks by the angry sounds of so many voices. Their eyes lit up for the first time in years. Just to hear the anger, the dissatisfaction, made their hearts swell, brought up the bitter juices of hate that had been hidden for so long deep inside them.

“They must give us food—today,” the large man said, clothed in a torn flannel shirt with one of the sleeves missing. He had no shoes on his feet, just thick weeds wrapped round and round the swollen heels and toes. “They have so much—we have nothing. Nothing!” He screamed out the words in defiance.

“Nothing,” they echoed back, their voices growing louder by the second.

“Come, we go now,” he said. He had become their leader. They who were without leaders suddenly had one in their midst, and the rebellion in his voice fueled them like gasoline poured into a fire. They marched forward, their rags hanging down around them, torn pants flapping over thin legs. They walked onto the road and toward the city. They were in a state of madness, uncaring of what their fate would be. Death, if it came, could only be a friend to those who had nothing. As they walked along the road they shouted at the other untouchables sleeping everywhere out in the open, to join them. The sleepy men roused themselves, amazed at the rebellious crowd, marching with their heads held high, their eyes flaming with righteous anger. They had never seen any such uprising before. They had no words to describe it. Just feelings, deep in their guts. Feelings of power, of strength—something unknown but weirdly beautiful.

The crowd grew as it marched along the dirt road which turned to paved highway about two miles from the main entrance to Petrograd. Their fury gave them strength. It surged through their starving bellies, filled their tired limbs with the electric energy of those who fight back.

Suddenly an army staff car came zipping down the paved road toward them. The two officers in the back seat could hardly believe their eyes as they took in the marching mob before them.

“Stop!” the young lieutenant yelled to the driver. The car screeched to a halt just ahead of the now nearly six hundred dulags. The officer took out his Tokarev .65 clip loaded revolver and held it straight in front of him as he stood up in the open-topped vehicle.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he screamed out with the contempt of the Russian command.

“Food, we need food,” the leader yelled from the front of throngs. “We are hungry. We are human beings. We deserve more than scraps.”

“You deserve nothing,” the young officer said, standing tall in his crisply pressed uniform. “We decide what is given. Now disperse back to your wretched holes before you all die.” He fired a shot over their heads. Many of the untouchables cowered, pulling their heads down, diving to the ground. But not the leader and those who stood with him in the mob’s front ranks.

“This time you cannot frighten us with your toys,” the big man said, pulling a large curved dagger from the back of his mud-coated gray pants. “You are the ones who are going to die.” Others in the mob also pulled their weapons from their sleeves and pockets: knives, pieces of glass, icepicks, meathooks. All had killed before. Their own. But now it would feel good to kill those who had enslaved them, destroyed them. They started toward the car.

The lieutenant grew pale. They weren’t supposed to act like this. He had never seen the dulags do anything more than cower. His power of authority seemed to crumble around his suddenly frail-looking body. He aimed at the leader and fired. The shot caught the leader in his right shoulder but he didn’t flinch. He laughed and spat at the ground as he came forward.

“I have survived much worse than that fool.” The driver slammed the car into reverse and stepped on the accelerator, but before he had gone a yard the mob was upon the army vehicle. They grabbed the sides and lifted it, quickly tipping it over. The wheels spun uselessly in the air. The mob fell upon the three Red officers, stabbing at them, flailing away with their crude but efficient weapons. Within seconds the soldiers were bloody carcasses lying in the road, blood pouring from a hundred wounds.

The death of the Reds emboldened the small army of untouchables. They raised their arms and roared out screams of defiance. Never had they felt like this—like men. Several of them sawed away at the corpses and quickly butchered the heads free from the bodies. They found branches at the side of the road and speared them into the bloody appendages. They held the three heads high—their flag of conquest. Now they marched forward even faster. Anger, hate, murder in every step. More and more of the dulags joined them, streaming out from their hiding places in trees, under bridges, behind bushes. Within a mile their number had grown to nearly a thousand and continued increasing at every step. They came upon four more army cars and quickly disposed of the inhabitants, losing several of their own in the skirmishes.

But they were no longer afraid. The taste of blood was maddening—they wanted more. They came to the very edge of the city. Huge gates stood open at each side of the main entrance several hundred feet away. The twenty or so guards, lounging around the front, stared at the approaching army of the untouchables with eyes as big as moons. They never had any trouble with the rabble other than a few incidents of thieves grabbing at a gun or lunging at a soldier—and being quickly disposed of. The officer in charge ran to a phone just inside the entrance and frantically called central command.

“We’re being attacked,” he screamed out.

“What? What the hell are you talking about?” the officer at the other end asked in a bored tone, wondering if the gate guard had been drinking again.

“We’re being
attacked,
you idiot. There must be a thousand of them. They’re right here at the gate.”

“Who? Who?” the desk officer asked, suddenly alarmed.

“The dulags. I know it sounds incredible but—” His voice was cut off as a thrown knife whirled through the air and caught him in the back. The officer fell to the concrete ground, the phone dropping from his hand. The front ranks of the dulags tore into the gate troops. Within seconds twenty torn bodies lay in pools of hot blood, their eyes wide, their mouths contorted in screams of sheer horror. The heads were again sliced clean from the corpses and mounted atop poles. The head bearers marched at the front, into the city, walking through a large open area that was sometimes used as an outdoor market, still largely empty in the early morning. The peddlers who were just starting to set up their vegetable and used goods stands stood stock-still in amazement at the vision of the army moving forward, forty heads now held aloft on blood-splattered pikes.

“Join us, men who are nothing. Join us or die!” the leader yelled. The peddlers ran in terror toward a second gate at which Red troops were now setting up machine guns. As the peddlers came toward the inner gate they were mowed down like so many rats, falling by the bloody dozens onto the concrete square. The dulag army surged forward screaming as they charged at the line of defense.

“Food, give us food—bread, meat. Give us food or die.” The troops opened up on the advancing ragtag army, taking out nearly fifty of the forward ranks in just seconds. But still the untouchable came forward, no longer afraid of anything. Death was a joke to them now. Blood was what they wanted. If they could not eat bread, then they would taste Red Army blood. The officer in charge of the second line saw that they would be overrun within minutes. Already the ranks were shouting at one another, getting ready for another charge.

“Close the gate,” he bellowed, a large-paunched sergeant with muscular arms and thighs. “Pull back.” The machine gunners dragged their tripod-mounted .55mm back several yards as the officer slammed his fist onto the buttons that controlled the motion of the two towering steel gates. The nearly thirty-foot high, two-inch thick steel doors whirred swiftly along ball bearing tracks and slammed shut with a resounding bang that echoed through the square.

The army of no-men looked around. Who could they kill now? They ran through the large open space, grabbing the food the dead peddlers had dropped as they ran.

“Food, food—see, we have won our dinner,” one of the headholders cried out. They forgot their weapons and even their whereabouts, so intense was their hunger. They pounced on the fresh fruits, the flaky pies, and loaves of bread piled high atop round wooden tables. They didn’t even notice a squad of Russian soldiers silently close the front gates as well. After they had gorged themselves, gobbling down the feast by the handful, slamming it into their thin, starving mouths, they looked around, suddenly remembering their situation and the trouble that might ensue.

“We leave now,” the leader said, still bleeding from the shot that had caught him in the shoulder. “We have won! Now we go back to hills—we hide.” He held one of the heads high, moving it up and down high above his arms, an insane flag of Red death.

Suddenly they heard a sound above them—choppers—three of them roaring over the square. The army of dulags, clutching every bit of food they could carry, rushed toward the front gate. The first to reach it found it locked tight and they screamed out.

“We’re trapped. The bastards have trapped us.” The untouchables ran off in every direction, their cohesion and unity broken by the sudden realization that
they
were about to be victims. They spread out over the nearly six-square-acre marketplace like roaches fleeing for their very lives. The helicopter gunships came in from one end of the square, flying slowly about seventy-five feet apart. The twin machine guns in their bellies opened up, sending a hail of .55mm slugs down whistling murder. The chopper guns were capable of firing nearly five thousand rounds a minute. They tore into the dulag mob like the Angel of Death. The huge slugs tore right through the bodies of the untouchables, some of them taking ten, twenty of the three-inch-long bullets in their bodies. They were ripped to shreds as arms, lungs, faces, and hearts were blasted right out of their human containers.

It didn’t take very long. The glass slivers and knives and hooks of the dulags were hardly a match for the death-dealing high-tech weaponry of the Red helios. The vast, screaming crowd was peppered with tens of thousands of rounds. The concrete around the falling bodies was ripped apart in little explosions of dust as the cartridges created countless little craters between the falling bodies.

When the helicopters reached the far end of the square they turned quickly and came back again, sending down a deluge of death. Within two minutes of their initial appearance over the walls not a dulag moved. All were dead. All were not recognizable as men any longer. Their bodies had been blown into a bloody swamp of crumbling flesh which covered the entire square. Not a moan, not a single breath stirred the smoky air. The army of untouchables was now an army of the dead.

Ten

T
he two captured freefighters were whisked up the aisle of the huge Illyushin-78 Ramjet and told to make themselves comfortable. There were nearly two hundred seats inside but only they, a dozen guards, and the plane crew got aboard. The stewardesses were bulky Russian women in drab gray suits and low black shoes with their stern potatolike faces. The stewardesses strapped Rock and Archer into their seats at the tail section of the plane. The guards sat in front, behind,
and
in the seats on each side of them. They were taking no chances.

It was a gut-wrenching takeoff, and it felt as if the jet went nose up the second it left the runway, not leveling off until it reached the stratosphere after about five minutes. The ear-splitting roar of the engines died somewhat as they hit the thinner air high above the earth and caught into the global jet stream. The chunky stewardesses brought them tasty caviar spreads and sandwiches without crusts and good thick rich Columbian coffee, black as a pit. Archer picked up five of the tiny sandwiches at a time and swallowed them down without apparently tasting their delicate subtle flavors from around the world. Rock savored each bite—better than the slop they’d been given in the prison. He still felt a bit weak from the aftereffects of his little pain session. But Archer seemed just fine. After a few loud burps and one fart that threatened to make the guards retreat to the far end of the plane, the big primitive fellow fell asleep, his head plopping down onto Rockson’s shoulder, and he began snoring like a bull elephant.