Doomsday Warrior 05 - America’s Last Declaration (11 page)

“Save some soap—and water—for me,” Rock yelled, flopping down onto one of the two massive beds made out of tree logs. The images of the diner kept sweeping through his mind like a mad dream. Just when he thought he’d seen it all, something would pop up to challenge any ideas he had about becoming jaded.

The water stopped and Archer came out wrapped in a towel that barely covered his midsection—with the three bears printed on it.

“You must be Poppa Bear,” Rock joked, rising and heading for the shower himself. He took a long one, washing off the grease and dirt of their last few days’ ordeal. When he came out he heard elephantlike noises from one of the beds. Archer was snoring like a buzzsaw. But Rock was so tired that the second he hit the cool white sheets he fell into a deep sleep—snores or no snores.

The doorbell to their cabin rang when it was already bright and sunny outside. It was Maliber, holding a tray of scrambled eggs and bacon. “Breakfast in bed. You might want to tip the bellboy, gentlemen,” he said, the absurd little hat perched on his head like a red bird’s nest. Rock found another small silver coin and pressed it into the motel manager’s meaty hand. “Thanks, mister. Checkout’s at 11:00—unless you want to pay for another night.”

“What’s the daily rate?” Rock asked. Maliber took his bellboy cap off again.

“Ten dollars each per night—plus five for the water.”

“Sounds steep,” Rock said, aware of his dwindling supply of gold.

“Mister, this here’s the only operating motel north of the Mason-Dixon line. You’re lucky as hell to find us.”

“Well, maybe I can win some of it back in the game room,” Rock said, grinning.

“That’s the spirit,” Maliber said. “You might. Then again . . .”

Rockson grabbed his plate off the tray just as Archer was about to consume it, having long since finished his. “Not so fast, pal,” the Doomsday Warrior said. “I may be smaller than you but I got to eat too.” Their clothes had been cleaned and pressed overnight and lay folded over an armchair by the window. “Never knew these leggings were brown, not soot black,” Rock remarked to Archer. “And that white shirt offsets your beard very nicely. Come on—we have to win some of that money back.”

They entered the back room where a card game was in progress. Five stone-faced men looked up as the two freefighters came in and sat down around the green felt-top table.

“We’re playing poker—five card draw,” the dealer said. “You know the game?”

“I’ve played a few hands,” Rock answered, putting his elbows up on the table. The men introduced themselves. The dealer was Handsome Jack, with black Stetson hat and bow tie, who looked as smooth as the red silk vest he wore. Next, Bart the Bastard with his thin mustache and dark leather jacket. “Watch out for him,” Maliber, who had come into the room, whispered in Rock’s ear. “He might have an ace up his sleeve—or a gun.” Then there was One-Eyed Swamprat, a goofily grinning toothless old man with lots of what looked like gold staples in his ears and almost pink colored hair, who seemed friendly enough despite his weird appearance. At the far end of the table were two beefy lumberjacks in blue jack shirts, who looked Rockson up and down coldly.

Handsome Jack took a drag of a rhubarb cigarette and dealt the cards like a pro, snapping them out at lightning speed around the table. The stakes were small at first but quickly grew as they downed coffee after coffee and the room filled with acrid smoke. Rock tried one of the cigs offered by Handsome Jack. “A mixture of rhubarb and swamp-grown tobacco,” giggled One-Eyed Swamprat, as Rock choked and blew out the wretched-tasting smoke. “Grewed it myself on pig manure,” Swamprat said, taking a deep drag.

“Great.” Rock frowned, guzzling a cup of the good hot brew. That at least was real.

With Rock’s PSI ability he could sense if the person who was raising had anything or was just bluffing. It paid off. A pile of gold pieces, watches, jewels and rings filled his side of the table. Handsome Jack looked more and more disturbed and at last took out a big silver-handled revolver, placing it on the table in from of him. “To keep it honest.” He smiled.

“Suits me,” Rock said. “I never cheat.”

“Mighty lucky fellow,” Maliber said. “But I’ve been watching him. He ain’t cheatin’, Handsome. Relax.” But the gun wasn’t removed.

Handsome Jack won a few rounds but Rockson thought he saw something flick down his sleeve several times. He placed his long-bladed Kreega knife on the table next to his cards. “To keep it honest,” he said between tight lips.

“Sure,” Handsome snapped. But there were no more movements down the sleeve. Soon the crew—except for Rock and Handsome—were out of cash and madly scribbling IOUs. Maliber’s lumberjack friend, who was apparently a cousin of his named Surefoot, was down on his luck that day and finally opened a greasy wallet from which he extracted a key. “Keys to my ’83 Buick Roadmaster, specially equipped for long hauls in hostile territory. Guess that keeps me in the pot—must be worth one thousand rubles at least.”

“I’d like a look at it,” Rock said as it was his twenty-ruble gold pieces that were being met.

“Just take a look out the window there,” Surefoot said, pointing to the back of the room. Rockson rose and pulled back the yellow curtains and looked out behind the motel. It was a beautiful-looking machine. Red, with hardly any rust and huge thick-treaded tires. Some sort of chimney had been punched right through the roof and it appeared to have a square sheet of steel welded to the back. Rock closed the curtain and turned, sitting back down at the table.

“Does it go?” he asked.

“Go? Man, that thing will beat hell out of anything on the goddamned roads,” Surefoot said proudly. “Runs on alcohol, got the engine in the back seat and a two hundred-gallon storage tank. Got a machine gun—a .55—mounted in the front and that there inch-thick steel sheet on the back. Fuckin’ thing will stop a cannon. Also got an instant fuel-dump, which shoots all the alcohol out in case of an accident or something. Also got—”

“OK, OK,” Rock said, holding his hand up. “I believe you. All right, I’ll accept the car as equal to the stakes on the table. Deal,” he said to Handsome Jack. Rock watched him carefully. He noticed eye signals between Surefoot and Handsome during the game. They were working together to get Rock.

Sure enough, Surefoot threw a full house on the table—kings and queens. He reached out to rake in the fortune in jewelry and gold as the stakes had been raised and raised.

“Hold it,” Rock said. He threw down a royal straight, higher than a full house, and pulled the enormous pot, with the keys to the Buick along with it.

“Well, I’ll be a shit-eating rattler,” Surefoot said, jumping up and pulling a small pistol from his pocket. He stared over at Handsome Jack. “You pretend to be my partner and suck me into this. All the time you been working with this newcomer here, settin’ me up.” He cocked the gun, swinging it around at Rockson but suddenly felt the presence of Archer standing behind him with a raised fist, ready to slam the man’s head into splinters.

“Wouldn’t fire that gun if I were you,” Rock said. “My friend here can get pretty mean.” The rest of the players beat a hasty retreat out the door. Surefoot lowered his pistol and put it back in his waistband. He stared long and hard at Rockson, then exited. Rock pushed enough gold coins over to Maliber, who stood there frozen, to pay for their rent and water. Then he and Archer rose and headed outside. He suspected that Surefoot had something in mind—like shooting them both in the back, before they could get the car out of the lot. The two freefighters lugged their winnings—some skunkskin pelts, a bag of wrist and pocket watches, a half dozen leather-bound books, several bear traps and two pistols, along with the loot over to the car. Rock walked around the freshly painted red vehicle. It had a chrome grill through which the muzzle of the .55mm machine gun poked. He stuck his head in the driver’s window and saw bucket seats made out of Fiberglas and a surprisingly sophisticated dashboard with dials and computerized systems checks. A joystick at the other side of the seat apparently controlled the machine gun with a red button on top for firing. But there wasn’t time for a complete investigation. He wanted to get out of there before they were attacked by the whole damned community. He wasn’t in the mood for taking on truckers, lumberjacks, cowboys, bobby-socked teens and god knew what else.

He and Archer climbed in as Maliber walked over to them, his hands at his sides to show he had no weapons.

“Just want you to know that I think you won every bit of this here car fair and square,” the motel-keep said, putting his hand out. Rock shook it and smiled.

“Thanks for the hospitality. I appreciate it. I’ll tell all my friends to stop by here if they’re ever up in this neck of the woods.”

“You do that, now,” Maliber smiled. “And come back yourself. You got to give us all a chance to win back some of this stuff.”

“Sure,” Rock shouted as he turned on the engine. The alcohol drive sputtered to life as a puff of black smoke shot out the chimney on top. The car shook with power. He put the roadster in gear and pressed the accelerator. The tires trailed rubber for fifty yards as they shot down the blacktop like a bat out of hell. Archer turned pale and groaned, “Slooow, Roocksoon, slooow, pleeeassse.” But Rock wanted to get out of there fast. He had a feeling . . .

Sure enough, as they hit the end of the lot and reached the dirt road heading south, two shots rang out from behind a tree, narrowly missing them as two holes appeared in the center of the windshield. They turned a bend in the road and were quickly lost behind trees. Archer kept growling and as soon as they were out of sight of the motel Rock slowed the car a little. It handled fine, but the going was bumpy and he wanted to get the feel of the wheel before he really opened her up.

He reached over and turned a dial marked Tape Cassette. The strains of a rock song from the late 1980s blasted through the car’s four-speaker stereo:

Cruising at fifty thousand feet

Moving three thousand five hundred miles an hour

We’re flying the super jet

The one they call the phantom FIVE

Crew of eight, carry twenty two warheads

All aimed at the Soviet Union . . .

We’re proud to be the men of the

U.S. Nuclear Strike Force.

Oh, we’re gonna die listening to rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll

Yeah, we’re gonna die listening to rock and roll

They headed down the dusty one-lane road that had once been Route 66, quickly hitting eighty miles an hour. Archer tried to hum along with the bizarre lyrics as the air rushed in the opened windows, splashing them with cool, refreshing air. Rock drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the window as animals darted for cover as they heard the roar of the roadster approaching. Suddenly Rock felt happy to be alive. With the sun beating down and the breeze on his face, his heart welled up with an inexplicable joy. It was a hell of a world in America 2089
A.D.
Yet he wouldn’t choose to have been born in any other time or place.

Eight

H
ands with fingers as thin as bone pressed against the dark blue glass of the eightieth floor of the Monolith, the headquarters of the KGB in America, making damp impressions on the cool surface. Colonel Killov stared through the tinted picture window that surrounded his top floor suite of living quarters and private offices. Killov, the “Skull,” the “Colonel” or just plain “death” to those who knew him or had the unfortunate fate of feeling his wrath. His official title was Colonel Killov, commander of all U.S.S.R. KGB forces. Every blackshirt in America was under his iron-fisted rule. The blackshirts with their death’s head emblems on their lapels who went out into the night and killed and tortured and mutilated America’s slave population. But not just the natives had cause to worry, for Killov was also the Political Doctrine Upholder of the troops of the regular Red Army. Meaning soldiers up to the rank of general could be “disappeared” if the KGB warranted.

Killov ground his teeth together in slow circles making a crunching, gritty sound as if the very edges of his jaws were sanding each other to dust. His thin lips were squeezed tight as the greedy mouth of a small wood’s rodent, his drug-crazed eyes burned like incandescent blue bulbs. He reached for another Alevil and a capsule of Transcendal. His drug use had reached insane proportions. Even he knew that. His doctors—those who dared speak up—told him he had only a few years to live if he didn’t change his habits. He barely slept anymore, his life was more of a walking dream—a nightmare in which death slept under every door, crawled beneath every log, glistened in every eye. His body had shrunk to hanging leather flaps of skin that sagged down from his arms and legs. His face was concave, the cheeks sunken as if shovels had dug out whole chunks of flesh. A protruding red scar ran along his cheek from just below the eye to his jawline. A present from Ted Rockson. Rockson who was always somehow just out of reach.

Killov pressed closer to the glass as if trying to push his way through. In the dark purple of the early dawn he could see the Colorado Rockies just miles away, towering peaks of purest white. And there—somewhere in the midst of these granite mammoths—was Century City and the Doomsday Warrior. But where, where, where? He would give half his wealth, half the Red kingdom that the KGB ruled, to get Rockson. The white-haired streak down the center of his black scalp, those aquamarine and violet eyes staring at him without a trace of fear. He would make them feel fear. Someday Rockson would be before him, begging, bloody and screaming for his life.

Yet now Premier Vassily wanted the Doomsday Warrier even more. Wanted him dead. Killov, the death’s-head emblems perched high on his leather field jacket, turned and walked to his long curved black marble and plastic table—seamless, almost translucent, it seemed to throb with a dark energy as if it contained the souls of all those Killov had killed. He reached for the three reports that he had received that afternoon. All three confirmed the same fact. Premier Vassily was on the move with an army composed of German neo-Nazis. And the reports gathered from his agents in Europe, Moscow and Washington related that the troops were to be used in a strike against Rockson to avenge the humiliation that the premier had endured when the Doomsday Warrior had signed the peace treaty with the Soviet high command and then proceeded to escape, blow up half of Moscow including the main ICBM control center and escape in a commandeered MIG.