Doomsday Warrior 14 - American Death Orbit (11 page)

But Chen was even faster. He pulled the leg a half-foot back and lashed out with a second kick before she could get out of range. If she ran from the room they were all dead. Even though she was retreating from it, the sheer power of the kick managed to connect at full extension. The blade of his kung fu shoe ripped right into her rib cage, slammed her with such force that she was picked up and thrown through the air perhaps five yards, where she crashed down to the cold steel floor.

He could see even from across the room that the she-thing wasn’t getting up. Not when black cold blood was rushing from her mouth like water from a fountain nymph. The kick had smashed her ribs in with such force that a whole bunch of bones had smashed upwards and speared the living heart. She wasn’t warning anyone.

Chen slid through the net’s opening, having to move slowly as everything stuck to him and kept seeming to try to pull him back inside. But at last he freed himself and, shutting the door so any passing Vampyre wouldn’t see, he quickly freed the others with the blade. Standing upright, having access to all sides of the nettings, it was easy to free them. And once each man was out he released the next. Within five minutes they were all standing around stretching their arms and legs madly in all directions as every part of them had fallen asleep from lack of blood, from being so cramped and tightly bunched together for hours.

“What now, Rock?” Rajat asked, as he rubbed his wrists hard and wore a big grin on his face. He had been sure the Doomsday Warrior was going to come up with something. And he had. Even if it had been just knowing to bring Chen along.

“It could be,” said Rock, “that these women have never seen weapons like ours. A bit of luck! Now we find McCaughlin, and get the hell out of here. We’ve already lost too many men and too much time.”

Rockson ripped out his .12 gauge shotpistol and headed toward the door. “Keep your weapons out at all times—and don’t move in groups of less than three. Unless they have something besides teeth and hypos and poison, we can get the hell out of here! These mutants aren’t
real
women! Show no mercy! I don’t want to lose any more of you. Now move, men, move!”

He tore across the room, stepping over the body of one of the Vampyre women, her rib cage clearly poking through her chest. And even as her own sickly black vampire lifeblood drained out of her into a pool around the twitching body, the lips pulled back and the fangs descended. Even in death, her body was all vampire.

Fifteen

A
s they hit the hall outside the refrigeration room, Rock could see they were in a long warehouse filled with silverware, pots and pans, all the accessories of a real diner—and more. Also visible was their vampire equipment—there were rows of hypo needles, tubes, cannisters to collect blood in. Rockson shuddered even as he saw the stuff. They’d take care of smashing that stuff later—it was the living that mattered now.

There was no one else in the warehouse and the strike force split into teams under command of each of the core Rock team members. Each headed toward the different doors of the place.

Rock took Argas and Collins, two of the combat men,
and
the two whiz kids. He wanted to keep his eye on them. After everything that had happened, they were still alive, which all things considered was close to a miracle. But miracles tended to come few and far between. And he didn’t want to lose the little spaceship experts, or the entire expedition was finito.

Rock threw open the main door of the place—and a large tin roof warehouse—and came out with shotpistol at chest level as the two combat men charged behind carrying their Liberator automatic .9mm subs. Thank god the Vampyres hadn’t stripped them of their weapons. Doubtless it was going to be a
fatal
oversight for the she-bitches!

Even as they emerged, two of the Vampyre women who were pushing a corpse along in a wheelbarrow stopped in their tracks, their faces grew demonic, fangs extending, eyes glowing deep yellow.

And there was something else about the Vampyres that Rock hadn’t noticed inside the dim refrigerator room—they had wings. Now the Vampyres unfurled them from behind their backs and came toward the humans like nightmare bats, skimming just yards above the ground. Their little ugly gray shriveled wings flapped wildly—not able to give them full flight, but sure as hell good for a few short quick hops.

Rock ripped his shotpistol up and let loose with two blasts and two blood drinkers went careening off sideways in opposite directions in a tangle of screams and blood and broken wings.

With that, the shit really hit the fan—and the Vampyres were shooting out from everywhere.

“Hit the exits, men,” Rock yelled. They did.

Outside there were six small tin-roofed wooden shacks spread out around the warehouse. A hundred yards to the left was U-ETE-HERE, the diner itself. Obviously it was the center of the entire trap-and-bleed operation, for from the diner’s every door the screaming, snarling women emerged within seconds of hearing the shots. But they sure as hell didn’t look like women when they all spread those wretched wings and came flying just yards above the ground from every direction. Still, their sheer ugliness made it easier to shoot them.

And suddenly the entire area was alive with an air-ground battle the likes of which had never been in human history, and likely never would again. The Vampyres were fast and tough and more than plentiful. But they were used to going up against small under-armed groups of travelers, not combat-hardened fighters equipped with the most modern automatic weapons. And so their dynasty came to a fast and bloody close after having consumed thousands of humans over the last seventy-five years.

The she-bats attacked the men thinking it would be child’s prey. And their fierce demonic faces did make the men shudder. But that only made them spray out their loads of .9mm shells until their pistols and subs were empty, and then slam in another clip to take out more.

Everywhere around the encampment the vampire creatures were taking hits. Slugs tore through wings and clawed feet and they fell from the sky like ducks on a migration passing through the London Blitz.

Chen used his expertise at throwing exploding star-knives, knocking out two or three at a time in explosions that rocked the air with smoke and mutant flesh.

Archer started with his steel alloy crossbow, but it was too slow after the first arrow to reload the damned thing. And so he used it like he often did, swinging the huge thing around him like some immense club smashing two, three of them at a time right out of the air.

Rockson bee-lined for the diner with his own little team packed tightly behind him on full run. The whiz kids both packed their own .9mm’s which they seemed a little unsure of how to use. But they carried them at the ready.
Everyone
fought in America 2090
A.D.
, kids, too. As they ran across the field to the gleaming piece of Americana, Rock saw a whole stream of Vampyres surging out of the diner’s front door,
and these had weapons.

They were screaming madly in a bizarre language of clicks and howls as they carried long ice-pick-like spears nearly four feet long which they flung from small handholds that they grabbed with their fists. A whole stack of the spears flew by Rock and he saw they were no joke. One suddenly dug right into the shoulder of Collins and he spun around and went down, already going into full paralysis. Christ, the spears were drugged as well.

“Down,”
he screamed to the two whiz kids and the remaining combat men as Rock threw himself to the ground. Another hail of the icicles of steel whistled through the air and came down about forty feet behind them.

Rock raised his shotpistol and fired. And kept firing as he waved his arm back and forth. Behind him he heard the whiz kids open up as well, their Liberator automatic pistols burping out steady cracks of death.

There was so much smoke and blood it was hard to even see what the hell was going on. But Rock didn’t take his finger from the trigger until every shot was fired, then he flipped the quick release chamber lever and slammed in another set of shotgun X-pellet shells, then closed it again, all within three seconds.

He raised his head and saw that the pallid vampire women lay dead all over the ground. Without wasting another second Rock jumped up and tore through them, jumping over bodies, some of them still grabbing out at him, half-alive, trying to sink their fangs into man-flesh. The radiation mutations fought to the bitter end, he had to give them that.

He came flying in the front door of the diner, firing as he ran. Two of the blood drinkers were waiting inside with fire axes on each side of the door. But Rock was fast. Both took full loads of shot from just inches away and went flying backward like they’d been kicked by mules.

He scanned quickly up and down the diner where they had sat just the night before and thought they were in paradise.

Right.

There was no one else there, but there was a door which led to an adjacent small building that had been tacked onto the diner.

Rock tore down the center of the place, nearly slipping in the pool of red on the floor, and went through the thin wooden door like a football player slamming into a practice dummy, taking the door right off its rusted hinges. It was bright inside, as there was something going on for which they needed light to see by. Something horrible.

Rockson had seen some dreadful sights in his day. But nothing to prepare him for this. For McCaughlin was laying, eyes glazed, flat on his back, naked as a jaybird on top of a wide metal table. His whole stomach was ripped open with a wide gash and blood was oozing out everywhere. Rock felt his heart tighten up like a sponge. And standing alongside the table was the Queen of the wretched lot. At least he figured she was the head Vampyre.

She had a tail, long and green, that was snapping into the stomach again and again with arching undulating movements depositing—my God—what? Was it one
egg
after another, into the gash?

“Oh, my Lord,” Rockson blurted out, and for the first time in his life he did something that he had trained men endlessly in Century City combat courses not to do. He
froze
for a split second. Just long enough for the Queen to see him, and rip her egg-implant tail from McCaughlin’s bloody stomach.

She snapped the tail around with incredible speed and wrapped it around his leg before Rockson could even react. She pulled hard and he went flying down to the floor. Then, even as he raised his eyes and started to swing the shotpistol up, Rock saw the tail coming down at him again with its long stinger. Like a butcher knife with a hollow tube next to it ready to deposit another of the blood-red eggs within.

Even as the egg-tail descended, Rock knew he was dead.
There wasn’t enough time.
But as he saw it whipping down at his brain, there was a fusillade of shots from behind him, as both whiz kids opened up with their .9mm’s on full auto.

The tail, the Vampyre’s body, all went rushing backward as she was hit by a dozen slugs up and down her long-muscled body.

She slammed into the back wall and slid down it to the floor as one of the eggs wriggled out looking for flesh to bite into so it could attach and hatch over the next month, but finding none.

Rock rose up slightly amazed to be alive. He rushed over to McCaughlin, who thank his lucky stars was out cold. It was hard to even look down into the gaping wound that ran along one side of the big Scotsman’s stomach. But he did, made himself, even as he told the two whiz kids to stay back. There were some things it was better for even whiz kids not to see.

There were creatures moving down inside the big man’s stomach, little ugly fanged larvae, blood-red, about as big as fingers.

He almost started to raise his shotpistol toward the unconscious Freefighter’s head, and then stopped himself. It was impossible of course—but maybe there was a chance—there had to be a
chance.

“Reload, and guard him,” Rock screamed out as he rushed outside into the gunpowdered air. They were kids, but there was no time to be a kid anymore. Even the thought of that unholy terror’s tail depositing one of its squirming worm things into him was enough to make him gag.

Outside Rockson was relieved to find that the fighting was over. Vampyre bodies lay all over the place. He ordered the men to search for any other victims of the vampire people—maybe hung on some wall somewhere—and then tracked down Dr. Michaels, the one trained MD on the trip. He had come primarily to deal with space sickness. But they were running into stomach trouble way before that.

“Fascinating, fascinating,” the white-haired, tanned Dr. Michaels said as he walked around the gaping wound, looking down at it from different angles. “Oh, I don’t mean to sound so cavalier,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve never seen anything like this type of mutation and—”

“Neither has McCaughlin, but I doubt he’d find it so fascinating,” Rock said curtly, not able to get into the objective scientific appreciation of such an ugly but rare method of breeding. “Can you help him? He’s been—torn open. Implanted with vampyre eggs!”

“God, I—I don’t know,” the man said, taken aback as he realized what Rock wanted him to do. “It could kill him. Perhaps they’ve attached themselves to his vital organs, gone into his brain, his lungs—his heart.”

“He ain’t going nowhere nice if they stay in there,” Rock said coldly. “Do it—and do it fast. Every second could be vital.”

“My bag—I’ll need that—it’s with the ’brids.”

“Run and get it,” Rock said to the doc, who he knew had been a sprinter back in C.C. “The ’brids and all-terrains are up behind the main warehouse.”

“Back in a second,” Michaels said as he tore off, carrying his still warm .9mm. He had become a killer as well as a healer today. He ran past the bodies, which the men were already dragging in to piles for cremation. Their own men they had piled side by side—the three killed in the refrigerator and the two more killed during the battle. These they began digging graves for under Rock’s orders.