Doomsday Warrior 06 - American Rebellion (12 page)

The cylindrical craft seemed to accelerate every second, borne down the tunnel into which it fit perfectly by some kind of electrical charge which crackled with static around the edges. Rockson reached his other hand forward as well and hung on, gripping the steel shaft at the back with all his strength. The perfectly smooth edges of the tunnel created no friction against his clothes so he slid along effortlessly behind it. But the men back there—the men he had left! He felt torn with confusion. They needed him, yet so did Rona. And if he let go he might smash up and down on the walls like a ping-pong ball at such great speed. He’d have to hold on for now, and wait.

The tube buzzed like a steel bee through its hidden tunnel for about 25 seconds, covering a distance of nearly two miles. They came to a sudden but smooth stop at the other end of the tunnel, which opened into a dimly lit storage room of some kind. Rock jumped down onto the floor and tried to gain his balance as the ride had made him dizzy. The cockpit clicked and suddenly flew open and Rona emerged with a strange look on her face.

“What just happened?” she asked, “I think I missed something.”

“You fell into the Silver Express here,” Rock said, raising an eyebrow. “I went to grab you and . . .”

“Rock, all those men—they’re . . .”

From far off they could hear the reverberating sounds of explosions echoing down the tube.

“I’ve got to get back to them. Stay here.” The Doomsday Warrior jumped back into the craft and began pushing every button in sight as Rona looked on, not wanting to be left behind. But Rockson couldn’t get the craft to budge. Whatever instruction that had been programmed into it had also shut down its functioning systems.

“Damn,” Rock said, jumping out again. He slammed his hand against the side of the craft, which gave off a low gong-like sound.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said angrily. “See where we are.”

Rock headed for a door at the far end of what looked like a warehouse, filled with heavy industrial equipment and supplies. He opened it and looked about and gasped. It was the garbage dump where he had worked, or part of it which the slaves had never been allowed to enter. But there on the other side of a gate—the area for dumping corpses, the railroad car and the tracks which led off to the swamps. Suddenly he saw lights bobbing up and down coming down the road that led from the fortress itself. A dozen or more armored vehicles came streaming right toward the warehouse. They knew the other end of the tunnel and had sent men to bite down on whatever came out this end.

Rock’s battle strategies had gone awry rather quickly. He had been too anxious, he berated himself, to get to Rona, to see her. He should have thought things out more. Now all those men . . . it gave him a sickening feeling in his guts, a feeling he had never known before—of betrayal. They would have seen him going on the tube. They would think he had fled, a coward. That all his words about becoming
men
were lies. He shook his head in anger. Damn this fucking world. The way it twisted the plans of men.

But there wasn’t time to battle a full regiment of Nazi troops, as more and more light filled the road, making a solid line back to the fort. They were after him bad, whoever had organized the slave rebellion
must
be captured.

Rockson ducked his head back inside the warehouse and looked quickly around for anything they could use: a vehicle, a weapon. But just motors, and gear boxes, load reducers, recharged batteries, stood around in no particular order on the floors, and hanging by huge hooks from the walls. He noticed a float, an inflatable device of some kind on a shelf and walked over. A CO
₂
raft. He grabbed it and some rope and threw them over his shoulder.

“Come on, Sugar Pie,” he said to Rona who stood by the door checking the clip in the lifted German automatic rifle as the bouncing headlights drew closer, a thousand murderous eyes in the dark night.

“Where the hell are we going to go cruising out here?” Rona asked as Rockson pulled her into the darkness of the flat fields ahead.

“Going into the swamps. It’s the only place they won’t dare follow. We’ll hide inside, then come out and somehow get back to those men. I pray some are left.”

They rushed through the darkness following the railroad tracks that Rockson had gotten to know so well in his time here in Goerringrad. They had gone but half the distance when the far dawn began breaking through the thick clouded sky above. The great cumulus mountains took on deep electric purple tones as the sun reflected off their curving mile-high sides. The ground around the fleeing freefighters grew from black to gray and suddenly they could see everything. Could see the flat wet reed fields all around them, the tracks heading off to the foul swamps which lay ahead and behind them. The German attack force was closing in every second as the machine gunners in the lead AMRV opened up with a burst that traced a jagged line just yards away.

“Faster,” Rockson yelled. They flew toward the swamps, jumping right and left every second or two. Rock set the pace, with Rona following behind. They had practiced this style of avoidance running in the C.C. as all active Freefighters did and moved along with a perfect cadence, shifting, evading, but never slowing their charging stride.

At last they arrived. The thick green bubbling slime lay at their feet. Rock set the raft down and pulled the release valve on the CO
₂
cartridge. “Pray this thing doesn’t have a leak,” Rock said, “or we’ve got some
major
problems.”

The Germans were within a thousand feet and closing fast. Now a second armored car opened up with a hail of slugs that ripped into a large moss-covered boulder only yards from the two. The raft made a rasping sound and then suddenly was inflated, filling before their eyes in a matter of seconds. Rock picked it up and threw it down right at the green muck’s edge.

“Madam,” he said, letting his hand drop toward the slightly bobbing rubber craft.

“Are we really going out into this stuff?” she asked, looking quite unhappy about the idea. The rising sun was now a red pearl on the tongue of a far off mountain, illuminating the thick rippling green slime with a ghastly pinkish color. She had never seen anything so uninviting in her entire life.

“Oh Rock,” Rona said as she stepped gingerly into the tightly inflated six-foot by four-foot raft. “If I end up drowning in this green mud I’ll kill you.”

Rockson stepped in and kicked off from the bank. The raft lazily slid out into the thick green porridge, topped with dead leaves and vines fallen from surrounding mutated willows that stood in groups every twenty or thirty yards. “See, I even have a paddle,” Rock said, trying to reassure Rona, who sat at the bow staring ahead with horrified eyes at the mist-covered jungle of green muck ahead.

“That really makes me feel better, Rock. I want you to know that,” she answered, not turning around for fear that any movement might make the boat tip. Behind them the Germans roared toward the swamp, opening up with everything they had, even a few mini-cannons which sent thick blasts of slime splashing into the air around the raft. The swell rushed under the rocking raft but didn’t harm it. Rockson paddled like mad with the small wooden oar, sculling the boat from the back. At first the weight was hard to get going but after a few seconds he made the thing build up a little steam and they sped away from the shore.

Rockson spotted a thick series of groves of the large and thickly leaved swamp trees and headed for them. But the Nazis were closing in just yards from the swamp’s edge, pouring down a steady stream now from every damned thing that could spit lead. Rock veered the craft behind the closest grove, getting a little bit of cover. They couldn’t afford to have even one slug tear into the raft. The smell of the dank green oily liquid beneath them was nearly overpowering now that they were right out in the middle of it all. Rona kept feeling as if she was about to gag, preparing to lean out and contribute some of her own to the ocean of slime.

Bullets from the Germans rocketed around them, zinging into the trees in the way. The Nazi vehicles screamed to a halt right at the swamp’s edge. All but two, that is, which misjudged the amount of solid land left and flew right into the stuff. They instantly stuck in door high as the green liquid rose around them. The Nazis were preoccupied for a few seconds and Rockson took the opportunity to shoot forward in the open toward a second, much thicker grove of trees. He was just yards away when one of the officers looked up and directed fire. But it was too late. The raft whipped behind the high cover as tracers screamed vainly into the bubbles behind them. The mist closed around them.

“Damn. Damn you!” Von Reisling screamed, raising his fist at the departing prisoners. Just feet from the shore, two of his vehicles and nine of his best men were being sucked under to horrible deaths. Suddenly they were gone, straight down into the seemingly bottomless swamp.

“Do not think it is over,” Von Reisling screamed in broken English into the swamp which was now misting over with thick curtains of gray steam from the heat of the rising sun. “We will come after you—we will bomb you. You will not humiliate the Fourth Reich. That I promise you.”

With that he turned and entered his command car, ordering the others to stay behind and continue firing in the enemies’ last known direction for at least an hour. He drove off, back to camp, seething with fury. The man had created an insurrection, nearly a hundred slaves, who had all died or been recaptured. But worse—he had stolen the woman. The woman,
Eva
herself, was gone. He could not believe it! He had had her so close. The goddess herself in his grasp. And now gone. It was an ultimate tragedy. For a nationalistic, history-conscious Nazi like himself, it was tinged with a gothic melancholy. A great man had lost his perfect woman.

With the morning mist rising higher and thicker by the second Rockson took the opportunity to head further back into the swamp, to get even more islands of trees between them and the still-firing Germans. He didn’t need to have them get a “lucky” shot in. The Doomsday Warrior slowly paddled forward, Rona sitting up front, calling back directions every few seconds. The main thing was not to get snagged on a branch or sharp rock. There was something about riding an air raft in the center of a vast swamp that made one feel a little unsure about the future. Within minutes there was nothing but thick fog around them tinged with the pungent smell of the rotting swamp. Rockson couldn’t even see Rona at the far end of the raft only six feet away. He slowed almost to a crawl.

Behind them the German guns at last came to a stop. It was clear to them that there wasn’t a chance in hell of getting the escaped slave. Ammunition was precious. There would be another day. From nearly half-a-mile away Rock could hear the AMRV and jeep engines chug to life and take off.

“We’ll just wait for this mist to rise a little,” Rock said to Rona who seemed to be adjusting to their swamp ride. Within another 20 minutes, the heat of the pumpkin-orange sun, now risen fully into the eastern sky, burnt off the top layers of fog so that from a distance of three feet above the green swamp the air became clear. The lowest level remained thick with the gray-green smoke swirling above the water all around them. Rock stood up so he could see above it and carefully began paddling toward what he thought was the shore. But after about five minutes of edging ahead, and seeing only more green swamp, more groves of thick-vined swamp trees, and no shore, Rock coughed and came to a stop.

“Do you have something to tell me?” Rona asked, without turning her head, her voice tart with sarcasm.

“Afraid so,” Rock said. “I hate to say it . . . but I think we’re lost. But I’m sure we can find our way out again. After all these swamps are only . . .”

“Fifty miles wide,” Rona said, cutting him off. Something edged through the top few inches of the green slime just inches from the boat, sending a little ripple against them. Rona screamed and jumped back falling on her back into the center of the raft. Rock caught her.

“Just a snake Rona, or a frog or something,” he said, setting her upright again.

“It’s the ‘or something’ that concerns me,” she said, turning and throwing her arms around him once again. “Oh Rock I don’t mind dying. Not really. Not if it’s with you. I just don’t want to have to swallow all that green muck. Couldn’t we drown in some nice clear blue water, sink to the bottom, all clean and shiny? Just lie there like statues on display?”

“Hold it woman,” Rock said laughing. “We’re not quite dead yet. I have no . . .”

His mouth froze in mid-sentence, as she looked at him. It was the voices again, the strange chorus of screams and whispers, grunts and growls that he had heard while dumping bodies days before. This time they were
close,
very close, and they filled his brain, like the roar of a freight train.

“There’s something. Something . . .” he whispered.

“I hear it too,” she said, her face growing even more pale than her usual ivory tone. “It’s some kind of telepathy. Rock, could it be the Glowers?” she asked hopefully.

“No, I’m afraid it’s not.” Rockson knew the feel of the Glowers’ telepathic signals. They were melodic, beautiful, like the music of the universal mind. These voices were broken, brutal. Filled with violence and rage. And they were drawing closer every second.

Suddenly the bubbling slime-filled surface of the swamp for yards all around their small air-filled boat broke into violent foaming and waves which rocked them violently back and forth. Huge shapes broke the surface and rose up surrounding them! Rona screamed, and even Rockson’s face blanched. He had seen many ugly things in his time—mutations, creatures that shouldn’t have existed. But these were beyond anything he could imagine. They were vaguely humanoid, but nearly ten feet tall, and they seemed to be created from the swamp itself, dripping, green figures of pure rot and decay. Their heads, as large as auto tires, seemed featureless, just big mounds of the dripping slime. Their immense arms reached out, toward the raft, the green rot of their being dripping down from them. Their chests were as wide across as the raft itself. They must have possessed enormous strength as they surrounded the raft, effortlessly gliding through the thick mud. They seemed like living trees made of foul mud and excrement. The creatures dripped their own substance back into the swamp, green dankness falling from their faces, arms, sides, dripping down like little waterfalls of decay. But they didn’t seem to lose shape, Rock thought. His logical mind watched, trying to understand them, trying not to be frightened. All things had minds, ways of behaving. If he could communicate with them. But there wasn’t much time, for they were converging on the raft, their swampy hands reaching, reaching . . .