Doomsday Warrior 08 - American Glory (15 page)

“Good,” Panchali laughed, holding his arms wide to the sky as if thanking the gods. “Good. The wheel of Karma spins again. We fight again, Ragdar, my wishes have come true. I will have to sample your gourmet treats some other day.”

“But to fight
alongside
the rebel American Freefighters,” Ragdar mumbled. “It is all so strange. I can’t . . .” Ragdar, who liked to see the world in simplistic, easily understood terms, was confused and mystified. They were mercenaries, but never had they fought alongside any man—let alone their lifelong enemies.

“As for me, Sikh Ragdar,” Panchali said with a look of supreme satisfaction on his dark lined face, “I don’t give a damn who we fight—as long as we get the chance once more to sever heads from their infidel bodies.”

Eleven

“W
e’ll have to go around it,” Ted Rockson said, pointing at the rim wall of the mile-wide A-bomb crater that loomed ahead, blocking their way north to Fort Minsk like a monument to the gods of nuclear darkness. He pulled the reins of his ’brid slightly to the right and the long straggly line of Freefighters fell in behind him. Since his conversation with Premier Vassily, the Doomsday Warrior had actually begun believing that they had a chance to thwart Killov’s coup d’etat. Even the maddening tit-for-tat—Rona and Kim were still riding right behind him as if to make sure he heard their every biting word—didn’t irritate Rockson today. For the first time in days he felt in a positively good mood.

“My, you’re looking well today, considering . . .” Rona said with a sweet smile to Kim, who rode almost abreast her, a few feet behind.

“And you too,” Kim rejoindered, hitting the psychological tennis ball back. “When one realizes that you’re in your mid-thirties and still surprisingly attractive. Why, those sun lines or, are they ‘crows feet’ eyes and lips are hardly noticeable—except perhaps in bright light. It really is amazing.”

“And amazing that your diminutive twig of a body hasn’t crumpled out here in the real world,” Rona suddenly blurted out as Kim’s last barb had stung her. She felt that her face was more striking than the more sweet-girl-next-door looks of her rival—but Kim
was
ten years younger than she. And somewhere in the midst of her fears of losing Rockson, Rona thought perhaps he would want a younger woman, less touched by the acid hands of time.

“All right, you two,” Rock said, leaning around in his saddle. “We’re going around some high slopes here with lots of loose rock and boulders just itching to slide down if the right sound waves hit them. Sound waves like you two clucking on like a couple of mad hens in the barnyard. Okay. I mean, it’s a free country and all that—but not when the whole damned mountain might come down on all of us.” They both looked at him with burning eyes, angry at him, at each other, at everything, but clamped their lips tight as vises, the skin turning white and stiff in repressed rage.

The team spread out about 30 yards apart in the standard formation for any potential landslide terrain, so the entire team wouldn’t be buried. Rock slowed his ’brid to a crawl to see what effect the clapping hoof beats of the expedition might be having on the shale slopes that stretched up a good half mile into the rainy gray afternoon sky. He had seen several avalanches, almost died in one. And it was not an experience he wanted to repeat.

They rode about a hundred feet from the base of the crater, still strewn with shiny green-glass balls—dirt and stone melted by the bomb blast a century ago. The jewels of the atomic age. Highly radioactive jewels—death to the unwary collector. Whenever Rockson passed one of the many craters that scarred the face of America like pockmarks that wouldn’t disappear, he got the same feeling. A sensation of dread, of darkness, so deep it filled the pit of his stomach, his heart, with waves of nausea and doom. For Rockson could feel the souls of those who had died from the blast. Those whose ashes were mixed into the mountain, their molecules forever and inextricably bound with the radioactive molecules of the nuclear mound. If atoms can cry, then the Doomsday Warrior heard their moans, felt their invisible tears waft down the slopes in waves of drifting blue fog.

“Jeez, it’s a spooky one,” Rona whispered to Rockson from about ten feet behind.

“Yeah, you can feel it,” he whispered back, and realized that he was whispering not just to avoid a landslide but because he felt as if the crater was listening—a malevolent ear taking in all that was said about it. “I hate these fucking things,” Rockson suddenly spat out. “Once the Reds are kicked out and President Langford takes over—I’m going to lobby hard for the first order of business to be getting rid of these pus-filled wounds. Our country will never heal, never grow fully green again as long as they exist. It would help lower the rad-level anyway, to fill them in.”

“Amen,” Rona said as she looked up at the dark slopes alive with a thousand radioactive shadows. The whole damned thing seemed haunted, filled with ghosts, bursting with lost souls glued forever to this one spot. The entire team unconsciously moved a little closer together as shivers rippled along their backbones.

They were but halfway around the manmade obstruction when there was a very low but distinct rumbling sound that seemed to come from far off. Rock raised his hand and the team came to a halt, silent, as they listened intently through the first whistling teeth of the evening wind. It was a deep sound, so low that it was almost inaudible. But its vibration seemed to be traveling through the ground beneath their feet. The ’brids grew nervous and began stomping around. Rockson jumped down from old Snorter and put his ear to the soil. His face drained of color. Mutant psi-instinct sent shivers up his spine.

“I don’t exactly know what it is—but something bad is about to happen.” He leaped up and onto his ’brid in a single motion and kicked the animal hard on the side.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Rock yelled at the top of his lungs. Snorter took off like something launched from a cannon with the rest of the mutant steeds right behind. But they’d only gone fifty feet or so when the earth began shaking harder—very slowly but rising in intensity every second. The ’brids were able to keep their balance but for how long, Rockson wondered, sure that a full-scale earthquake was about to hit. He waited for the cracks to begin opening in the flesh of the planet; for the men, the animals around him to disappear, screaming their way thousands of feet down into a consuming darkness. Not again—not now, he demanded to unknown gods as he leaned forward on Snorter’s back, slapping its shoulder to make the ’brid move faster. But the team needed no more motivation than they were already getting and flew along, their feet barely touching the ash and gravel ground.

Suddenly the ground beneath them seemed to convulse several times as if the earth itself was about to vomit and an explosion of rock and red lava shot a thousand feet into the air from the crater next to them.

“Jesus Christ,” Rock blurted out as Snorter slowed to about half speed, trying to keep its balance in the midst of the upheaval. For a split second Rockson thought it was an A-bomb, as a mass of dark gas lifted into a mushroom-cloud shape high in the sky. But in another second, he realized what it was—a volcanic eruption. The dormant A-bomb crater had stirred something up that took a hundred years to get to the surface—but it had arrived with trumpets blaring.

The earth settled slightly but the huge crater continued to shoot up a torrent of fiery dust and glowing rocks. Clouds of spewing gas and particles settled over the Freefighters, blotting out the sky, making it as dark as a moonless night.

Rock slowed the terrified ’brid even more, pulling at the reins with all his might to make the creature obey his commands. Turning in his saddle, he yelled out, “Throw your rope to the man in front of you. We’ve got to tie the ’brids together or we’re goners.” Rona passed the word back and as they continued slowly forward through the blizzard of black, ropes were tossed and anchored around the saddlehorns. Safely tethered, Rockson built up speed, literally pulling the rest behind. The blind leading the blind—they’d have to get out fast. The gases of volcanos, Rockson knew, were often poisonous. A few minutes of breathing the foul-smelling stuff that was passing for air and they might be dead. And if the gas didn’t get them, he could see a half mile behind, even through the thick curtains of falling hot ash, glowing rivers of lava bubbling over the lip of the crater and down, like a cup that runneth over.

Rockson struggled to keep his eyes focused. The air was already becoming so thick with soot and noxious fumes that it filled his lungs with a racking pain. Tremors nearly threw the mounts off their stride.

“Use your neckerchiefs,” Rock screamed again, barely able to be heard even by Rona, who was right behind him. He took his own sweat collector from around his neck and reached around, fumbling for his water gourd. Rock ripped the top from it and poured the contents over the handkerchief, completely drenching it. He wrapped the makeshift gas mask around his face and within seconds felt more clear-headed as he was able to suck in relatively breathable air. The nostrils of the ’brids had closed, using an evolutionary adaptation of small chambers in their nasal cavities to filter out particles. But even the multi-talented mutant mount-mammals couldn’t filter out the gas.

Somehow, though, the ’brids kept going, heaving with great rasping breaths but not slackening their paces one step. The ground seemed to slow to a low rumble and behind them they could hear the volcano roaring out her evacuation of the earth’s burning stomach. The spout of red and white-hot glowing material spewed forth shooting off for miles in every direction. The main river of red lava rose higher and higher over the mouth of the nuke crater, spilling its deadly contents onto the earth’s sandy flesh as if pouring from a broken spigot.

Rockson kept on in the direction he had been heading when the atomic hell-hole blew its heap—straight toward the desert. They could circle back toward Fort Minsk, their objective, later. The main thing on the agenda was survival. But as the air grew thicker and thicker with dust and sickening smells, it didn’t look like a good bet. He turned and could just make out Rona and her tethered ’brid following quickly behind him. Her head was wobbling from side to side, but as her eyes caught his she gave a feeble nod to show she was conscious. Rockson motioned for her to check Kim and slowly, as if half asleep, the red-haired Freefighter twisted around in her saddle to check her love-adversary. Rock swung forward again and tried to see through the cocoon of volcanic debris that completely encased them now, in search of any trees or cacti or gulleys. They were traveling almost blind, slowly, and he felt as if he was going through a tunnel with no lights. But Rockson knew that the ’brids had a sixth sense for obstacles; he’d seen them perform in blindfolded tests conducted by Shecter’s bio-unit. All he could do was hold on tight. He wished to hell the women were not along on this mission.

They’d gone about a mile and a half when the ash fog grew less dense. The prairie came into view, stretching off flat and featureless, bathed with the diffuse glow of the obscured sun and the fire of the orange mouth of the volcano, which vomited its load like a bad supper.

Rockson looked around, at last able to see the full team, still roped together, stretching back fifty yards. Everyone was still hanging on, though some of them looked ready for embalming, draped over their ’brids’ shoulders face-forward like they were out cold. But it was what was coming up behind them that caught Rockson’s horrified eye. A tidal wave of lava, sweeping forward, setting ablaze every tree, every cactus, every scurrying plains creature that it encountered. A wall of searing mud and molten rock five feet high, burning across the landscape from every side of the crater, its molten stone glowing like some immense beacon a thousand feet high, a light that could have been seen from the moon. And it was coming straight toward them at a fast clip, faster than they were moving, bubbles and hellish foam licking along the tops of the red waves.

“Faster, dammit, faster,” Rock screamed in Snorter’s ear, kicking him as hard as he had ever kicked the creature in their long relationship. The beast seemed to understand Rockson’s super intensity, that death was imminent. Snorter started to gallop, its big furry head lifting high into the air and down again like a piston running the animal machine beneath it. The rest of the team somehow jerked along and kept pace, their heads pulled forward by the nylon rope of the ’brid ahead. They had no choice—either they slammed their legs down again and again to the point of collapse or they fell and died. And if just one fell now—all would perish.

The volcanic lava wall pushed closer, seeming to accelerate as it neared them. Though still a half-mile off, Rockson could feel the crackling heat of the molten granite on his back. They would be mere puffs of smoke if that stuff caught up with them—swallowed without a burp. He scanned forward, searching desperately for anything—he didn’t know what—when he saw a thin blue line off to the right. It was hard to tell if it was a mirage from all the crap in the air or not—but as they drew closer, the blue grew richer and wider and the lapping waves became real water, as a river came into view. The Freefighters bee-lined for the tributary as the volcano shook with H-bomb force once again and unleashed another explosion, larger than the first, that reached up into the clouds and swallowed them whole in its black ash jaws. The damned thing was going to take out this whole section of the country, Rock thought as they rode hell-bent for leather toward the river ahead. Wouldn’t even be bad. He had seen the ash of volcanos in other parts of the country act as fertilizer, creating a rich topsoil after a few years where plants grew in wild profusion, freeing the earth from radioactive poisons of the surface. Only Rock didn’t want to be fertilizer—no matter how much it enriched the ecosystem.

They reached the bank of the river, which was a hundred feet wide at this juncture and raging like a wildcat with rapids creating a billowing foam of whitecaps. But there was no time to go looking for a nice comfy spot to cross—not with a grinding wall of incendiary mud coming at them with the speed of a racehorse.