Doomsday Warrior 11 - American Eden (6 page)

It was totally dark now, they were plunging ahead at breakneck speed, but they had no choice. The super-strong wolf-dogs were the one thing in their favor. Snow-wolf pelts were special—they were immune to acid snows, the result of a hundred years of genetic mutation after the nuke war. The dogs would keep going. But the acid snow, though it didn’t blind the teams, still stung their eyes. Therefore the howls of pain. The dogs wanted to stop and huddle together, protecting their eyes. But if they stopped, the humans they pulled would be burned to skeletons in a matter of ten minutes.

Only the whip kept them going.

Rock had to look ahead—he uncovered his eyes. It hurt, but he had to look.
There
. Through the swirling gray-blackness, Rock dimly saw a shape—the cliffs. “We’re almost there, keep behind me, I’m going to find a niche in the rocks for us to hole up in,” he shouted, the wind nearly drowning his words.

It didn’t take long once they reached the jagged jumbled rocks of the cliffs to find a deep rock overhang. In seconds they were out of the snow and wind. With their flashtorches lit, they unhooded and removed their outer clothing and applied ointment to their stung faces and eyes. Detroit had a space between his left glove and his coat, and the skin was badly burned there. But by some miracle that was the only injury. The parkas weren’t impervious to the acid snow, but they had some resistant quality. Schecter had synthesized the material the parkas were made of. Good old Schecter.

There were some small gnarled tree stumps in the rock shelter, “Joshua trees,” said Detroit. “Thousands of years old.”

Rock carefully unhitched the teams of dogs and tied them to the stumpy trees, then Chen and he applied ointment to the wolf-dogs’ big red saucer eyes.

They seemed to sense that they were being treated for their own good, and the salivating teeth-aplenty creatures docilely accepted the ministrations.

That accomplished. Rockson said, “Maybe we can get a fire burning—there’re lots of broken branches and some dried grass in clumps here and there.” It was a good idea, for the temperature still hovered around sixty below. In no time at all, wood and kindling had been gathered and a roaring fire lit. Rockson sat down close to the fire on the bare earth. Ah, this was better.

He felt something uncomfortable—maybe a root—under him.

He stood up to see what the offending object was, and picked up what looked like the femur bone of a human skeleton. “Hey, look at this—seems like we’re not the only ones to ever stop here . . .”

“Nor the unluckiest. I wonder what he died of.” Chen said.

Rona said, “Maybe we’d better have a look around . . .”

One of the bigger of the wolf-dogs, the one that Class Act seemed to always huddle with, began growling. His fierce red eyes, glowing in the campfire light, fixated on Rockson. The beast yowled and lunged forward, snapping his restraint, his salivating triple jaws heading straight for the Doomsday Warrior.

“Drop the bone,” Rona said, throwing her weight against Rockson, pushing him aside in the nick of time. Rockson rolled and came to a stand. He had dropped the bone, yet was preparing for another onslaught from the wild dog. But the dog just lost interest and sat down.

Chen put his exploding star-knife down. “I was just about to throw it at the damned animal. We would have been out one damned good dog,” he said. “Good thing it quieted down.”

“I wonder what upset it?” Rockson mused, carefully going over and retying the creature. It didn’t even growl. Then Rock went over to the bone again and started lifting it. Instantly the dog began growling. He dropped it.

“Looks like it isn’t you but the bone the dog doesn’t like,” Rona observed.

“Okay with me,” Rockson said. “I’ll leave the damned bone alone.” He walked to the fire. “McCaughlin, do you have that dried caribou meat? The dogs might be a bit hungry. Maybe that’s what’s bugging them.”

“I’ll get right to it. Rock. I’ll fix it up, roast it on a spit over this here fire. And I’ll fix us humans up some good grub too.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth. Save the fatty parts for our dogs. They deserve some food. They sure are doing their job. Glad I thought to use them for this trek.” Rock shot a glance at Rona and winked.

In a matter of twenty minutes, they were all chomping on the delicious dried meat of the caribou. The howling winds were subsiding outside, and they were warm. The snow had become white, and the hissing acid death was being dissolved by pretty white snow-flake crystals.

Detroit took some of the gristle over to the dogs and fed them one at a time, in size order. That’s the way they ate in the wild. Biggest first. Feed them any other way and you’re a dead man.

Then he hesitated. There were some funny noises. And Detroit felt the ground under them tremble. It wasn’t an earthquake, it was—

“There’s something burrowing under us,” Detroit exclaimed.

They all stood, drawing their shotpistols. The ground exploded all around them. And out of the exploding gaps came hurtling snarling creatures.
Red-eyed, fanged creatures. They moved so fast they looked like blurs.

One took a snap at Rock’s heels; he shot it with his pistol. “They’re some sort of gopher,” Rock said as another one jammed its jaws around his sleeve and tore off some material. Everyone had their hands full. The dogs thought it was great fun, for the creatures from the ground would bite at them, and then be slavered up by the big wolf-dogs, who didn’t even bother to chew the foot-long creatures.

Chen tossed a series of knives, catching three of the hell-gophers in midair. The rest of the Freefighters fired wildly, but to some effect. The ravenous invaders had inch-long fangs. One got poor Danik on the right wrist and hung on trying to tear his arm off. Rock pushed the Eden citizen to the ground and stomped the brains out of the thing that wouldn’t let go.

The humans weren’t doing too well, but the sled dogs had broken loose and were having a field day chasing down the creatures. They closed their triple rows of teeth around them and swallowed them whole. Then a snarling gopher lunged for Scheransky’s throat before he could fire, Class Act intervened. The intelligent female wolf-dog snapped the gopher out of midleap and digested it.

Because of the dogs, and only because of them, it was over. The dogs were sated, and fell asleep in a pile over by the scrubby Joshua trees. The humans dressed their wounds—Danik was the worst, but he was patched up and Chen gave him one of his potions. He’d be all right, Rock believed, they’d been lucky. Rock only found out later that half the supplies had been consumed by the furry devils!

“Do you think there are any more of them?” Danik asked, dry-mouthed. “Perhaps we’d better leave this cave . . .”

“You crazy?” McCaughlin said, “Go out in that temperature and wind in the middle of the night?”

“Well post a guard,” Rockson ordered. “I’ll take first watch. Keep the fire high, sleep close to it. They shied from the fire—the holes in the ground are no closer than eight feet to the fire . . .”

“You’re right.” Rona exclaimed. “And besides, I think the dogs might have eaten ’em all—if not, they sure will eat any more that try that act again.”

Scheransky went over and petted the furry head of Class Act. “I will never call you a mangy wolf again, I swear it by Lenin—I mean George Washington.”

They had an uneasy night’s sleep but there were no more incidents. Rock, between dozes, listened to the wind whistling by. It was as if it were speaking to him, warning him, “Go . . . home . . . Go . . .”

The next day the weather was better—overcast but not quite as cold, and they made good progress. Rockson said, “I believe what’s left of Colorado Springs is right over that hill.”

They came over the ridge and looked down on a glassy-surfaced blackened plain. “That’s the area that took a nuke bomb hit back in the twentieth century,” said Rockson grimly. “The heat of the air-detonated blast melted the sand into that shiny surface. Not a thing grows there to this day. You notice that there is no snow on that mile-wide plain either. There is still some heat from radioactive elements in that surface—hence the clicking you hear on the Geiger attached to the front of my sled. Let’s give it some room.”

“I remember this place,” Danik said, “the President’s Museum is about a mile away from here—just beyond those boulders shaped like a pile of kid’s blocks.”

They quickly made for the boulderfield Danik had indicated. Rockson hoped that any roving scavengers attracted by the body of Run Dutil would not have eaten his notebook as well—some species of high-plains bobcat ate even metal cans!

The building was a two-story affair nestled in the midst of a flat area covered with snow—a parking lot of old. The big rocks had shielded it from the blast effects—everything else in these parts was flattened. It was partly collapsed. Danik was besides himself with feelings, and his voice was choked up when he said, “Through that second door—that’s where my best friend and I stumbled frozen and hungry into the building.”

Rockson and his Freefighters pulled up their sleds in front of the blackened crumbling structure and gingerly stepped into the ruin. It was dark inside; they lit a flashlight. Rockson gasped as his beam hit a human face. McCaughlin shouted, “Watch out—” and drew his shotpistol, before he realized the face was familiar.

“Well. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.
Lincoln
—Abraham Lincoln—a plastic figure.”

“His top hat don’t look too good.” Rona said. Indeed it didn’t. There was a pack rat sticking its nose out of the decayed fabric.

“Let’s move on,” Rockson said.

Danik took the lead, and they passed a lifelike statue of Teddy Roosevelt riding a horse in the Battle of Bull Run, and then a replica of President Bush signing the Martial Law decree in the Oval Office. They finally came to the Rotunda Room. Light spilled in from above through a hole in the ceiling. The snow flurries drifted in on the figure of John F. Kennedy sitting in his rocking chair. He was staring forever at the three astronauts in spacesuits that had returned from the moon and were coming in to receive his accolades. A tattered and mouse-eaten American flag hung disintegrating on a pole nearby. JFK was up to his knees in snow.

“It wasn’t like that when I was here two weeks ago,” Danik gasped. “There was no hole in the roof.”

“Do you think someone’s been here?” McCaughlin said.

“No,” Rock replied, “The weight of the snow finally got to the roof. Nothing lasts forever, not even the Hall of Presidents. Where is Run Dutil’s body?”

“It should be over there—in the shadows—propped up against the wall. We found a steel box in here, all rusted and jammed closed. Some other hapless wanderers must have brought it here—we found disintegrating skeletons on the second floor, next to charred wood on a sheet-metal plate. When Run and I broke open the box, we found some canned goods inside. Must have been decades old, but we cut them open and ate the stuff. It tasted flat, but it wasn’t spoiled. Canned Soviet-label meat. It gave me the strength to go on, but Run was sickening from a snake bite he got the sixth day out of Eden. He threw up the food and convulsed and died. I was—was too weak, delirious, frightened. I left him—and his notebook of our travels—right where he died.” Danik’s voice trailed off. He looked down.

Rockson shone the beam of his light over in the direction Danik indicated. The body was there, stiff and frozen, its eyes wide and mouth gaping, the lips blue. Run Dutil looked a lot like Danik. The body appeared to be untouched; the cold had kept it from rotting. Perhaps the animals had tried to taste the plastic statues over the centuries and found them unpalatable. And so they had desisted from tasting this real human. Rockson fumbled through the dead man’s clothing until he found the small steno pad with pencil notes inside an inner pocket of his frost-covered tunic.

Eagerly he played the light across its contents. “Direction readings,” Rock yelled exhultantly. “Run Dutil took bearings and direction readings with a sextant. And there are some notes describing the places they stopped.”

Detroit rummaged around and found the toy sextant Run Dutil had used for compiling his meager notes in JFK’s plastic hands. It would be useful, for if the navigation device had some error in it, they could take that into account in plotting their trek south.

“Good work, Detroit,” Rockson said. “We can try to reach Eden now!”

“Can we bury him?” Danik asked somberly.

Rockson wondered how they would spade the ground outside, seeing that it was frozen solid. Then he said. “We can roll some boulders over him—better that way—the animals can’t get at him.”

Danik agreed, Run Dutil was solemnly carried outside, still in his frozen, stiff sitting position. As McCaughlin rolled up good-sized rocks to the body and then hefted a capstone in place, Rockson said, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Heavenly Father, we send you our friend Run Dutil, a good and true American. If you can see to do it, please welcome him into your arms. Amen.”

They all chanted an amen in unison, and then went back and spread out their maps, and compared them to the notes from Run Dutil’s little pad. Rockson drew some pencil marks on the maps, using the meager angles and sun-elevation heights that Dutil had jotted down. He drew estimated margin-of-error lines too—dotted lines that were as much as ten miles to one side or the other of their new route. Then they were off on their quest for Eden.

The dogs were howling and yapping, apparently happy to be on the trail again. They didn’t like the President’s museum much, it seemed.

Taking the bearing to the southeast that Dutil’s notes indicated, they moved their sleds along at a good thirty miles per hour through icy weather conditions. Soon they were approaching the old border of Colorado into Arizona. But there was no letup in the cold temperatures, or in the golfball-sized hailstones pounding the hunched-down travelers.

Eight

T
hey headed southward, guided by Run Dutil’s notes in the little pad. Hopefully, they would find the next landmark on the route to Eden, the giant teepee that Danik had described.