Doomsday Warrior 10 - American Nightmare

by Ryder Stacy

  The man told him, “Third pile to the left,” and pulled free.

  Rockson made his way over the shifting piles of reeking garbage till he found Barrelman, who looked up and smiled. “You are free? Glory be. Just don’t eat fresh food—it’s not only the muzik, it’s the food, that hypnotizes. Drink a lot of liquor—keeps your mind off of it. At night, especially when you sleep, take care—sleep up on a roof. The brush-eaters can’t climb stairs well, and make a lot of noise doing it. That’s my advice.” He went back to picking garbage.

  “Thanks for the advice,” said Rockson, “but I need more than advice on survival.” He pulled the coat from his arm. “See this weapon here? It can kill a hundred rookies—I want you to get the street people together to fight back. I can show you how to make these weapons. I made mine from parts at a gun store. There must be hundreds of you strong enough to fight the Chessman’s tyranny. Talk to me, damn it. Who is Chessman?”

  Barrelman put down a soup can. “Very well, citizen. Chessman was the Soviet chess champion, here in the city for a match,” Barrelman said. “He was caught cheating—a hidden mike in his ear. He was getting help from a team of Soviet grandmasters in a hotel across the way. Chess federation threw him out of the contest, declared the American champion to be the winner. Then Chessman lead a coup . . .”

  “Yeah, I heard about that—skip it. What is Chessman like? Is he strong?”

  “Well, as strong as five men, they say. And he has powers of illusion, I’m told. Powers to use your own mind against you.”

  “Sounds like bull to me,” said Rock, frowning. “He’s just a man with an organization behind him, and lots of technology.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure, Rock. Chessman killed his queen—his wife—with mere powers of his mind. She was mentally forced to drink poison. He can control your mind.”

  “Not likely. The propaganda machine must have made his whole thing up—to keep people in fear. Without his machines and rookies and drugs, without all the fear, he’s human.

  “Storm the condos. Take what’s yours. Be free.” Barrelman looked straight into his steely eyes, then downward.

  “A few hundred of us could fight. But many others are weak, sick in the head, after years of this life,” muttered Barrelman. “I tell you, citizen, freedom is just a pipe dream. There was an attempt right after the coup to stop the Chessman, but it failed. The muzik speakers went up, the food was filled with tranks, and the control squares were created. We live on the edge, poor and hungry and sick. But free. We have no will to fight, though. Believe me, it’s hopeless.”

  “A hundred men will do, Barrelman,” Rock insisted. “Get them together—here—while there’s still time. Why did you ask me to come see you, otherwise? What did I risk my life to seek you out for?”

  Barrelman shrugged. “I wanted to have you among us—we like to see citizens fall into our ranks, that’s all. We are fewer every day. We need recruits. So’s we don’t die out. You go and do your violent business—we can’t fight. We won’t fight. It’s hopeless.”

  Rockson’s shoulders sagged. It did seem hopeless. “I don’t belong here,” Rockson said. “I must get to my home—far away. Why don’t you all simply leave the city—go somewhere.”

  Barrelman sighed. “There isn’t anything outside the city.” He pointed to the far end of the garbage dump. “That mist over there—we call it the Veil—surrounds the whole city.”

  Rock looked where the old codger was pointing. “It just looks like a mist to me. Maybe smoke, that’s all.”

  “Don’t believe me? You can go over to it and stick your head through—but it won’t let you out of the city. Try to push through and it pushes you back.”

  “I think I will try it,” Rock said, and went over the garbage piles until he was nose-against the mist. He pushed his head against it—and through. He could see the desert surrounding the city now—barren, still. He pulled back, moved about fifty feet from the Veil, and ran toward it with all his might. Like a thousand gathered rubber bands, it shoved him back. He fell and rolled.

  “Told you,” Barrelman yelled. “Chessman won’t let nobody escape the city. Controls the Veil from his Tower, he does. And no one can get in there.”

  Rockson felt along the Veil for some distance. It didn’t have any gaps, as far as he walked—until he heard a hissing, like escaping air. He looked twenty feet further along the rolling piles of debris. And there was a strange sight. It had been hidden from his view before, when he had stood with Barrelman, by the debris. It looked like a lens shutter, purple and red, swirling. Suspended in the air.

  “Hey,” Barrelman yelled, “don’t go near that! It’s dangerous, and it ain’t what you’re looking for.”

  “What is it?” Rockson watched as Barrelman, waving frantically, approached. “It’s the Portal,” the old man gasped, reaching Rockson’s side. “Don’t mess with it. Go through it and as sure as hell you wind up downtown on the big bridge. It’s damned dangerous, drops you in traffic! You could get run over downtown on that busy highway.”

  “The highway bridge?” Rock said, grabbing Barrelman. “Did you say if you go in the Portal, you wind up on the highway bridge downtown?”

  “Yup.”

  Rockson remembered the bridge. That was where he had first appeared in this mad world—after the time-storm had sucked him into it. Maybe if he walked through the Portal he’d wind up back in the future, not on the highway bridge. It was worth a try. Excitedly, he threw Barrelman the compound gun.

  “See you later,” Rock said. He ran pell-mell toward the spinning mass. Like a sprinter bound on winning first prize, he ran over the rolling piles of debris, down an incline of crushed cans and ashes, and plunged into the mist. It felt wet—like hitting a fog bank. And cold.

  Rockson found himself ducking through traffic on the very same highway bridge downtown. On the roadway! Horns blared, brakes screeched. God! He avoided a car, got on the sidewalk, and sat on the curb, thinking. After a while he had another idea. Maybe if he had more speed, more power behind him, he’d succeed. He ran off the bridge, and down several streets until he was in a parking lot behind a tall condominium. He looked for a good car. He passed up several two-door economy jobs, even a big Caddy. He needed real speed.

  He found it! A spanking-red Porsche. He smashed the driver’s-side window with a rock. The alarm went off, but the wiring was simple and he cut it off quickly. The ignition system was likewise routine electrical circuitry. Rock managed to hot-wire it in a minute.

  He roared off, feeling his way through the smooth gears, headed south toward the city dump. He took Highway 15, blowing his horn, taking the left lane, swinging madly around the other cars. He hit 110 mph. He remembered the ramp down to the dump had a small sign, GARBAGE RAMP. The sanitation trucks used it early in the morning.

  In a matter of minutes Rock reached the ramp and swung off the road. Rockson got up some more speed on the ramp; he roared the Porsche along between the heaps of refuse, down the sandy road used by the garbage trucks. The pickers on the garbage piles, Barrelman included, looked up in amazement as the flashy new sports car screeched down the lane, tearing up a huge cloud of dirt and cinders. A madman was driving at over a hundred miles per hour right at the Portal. And he disappeared.

  Rockson was on the same highway bridge again. He had failed to get through to his own time. What’s more, he was hurtling the Porsche directly at an oncoming red car—a rookie-filled Toyota Camry. He started to hit the brakes and then he saw the eyes of the frantic driver. He was about to chicken out, and Rockson wasn’t. The rookie car swerved, jumped the curb, and tore through the railing. It sailed out far into the air before it nosed over and fell the three hundred or so feet to the pavement below.

  Rockson brought the Porsche under control.

  He pulled over. Traffic was light, and only an occasional car passed him by as he sat there thinking. Then as if a light bulb had lit up in his head, he realized that he hadn’t come out of the future in t
he dump, so why should he expect to go into the future that way. The Portal wasn’t the time-door, this bridge was! He had first appeared in Salt Lake City on this bridge. The time-door must be on this bridge!

  He put the Porsche in gear, swung it around, and roared back the way he had just come. And nothing happened. He merely came to the end of the bridge. He hit the brakes, swerved, repeated the process, going to the other end of the highway bridge and back several times. He even tried it on the wrong side of the road, against traffic, chickening out a few more hapless drivers.

  Still nothing. Sirens were wailing everywhere now. He swerved to the right side of the roadway, and took an exit. He tore down several side streets until he found a warehouse district and stopped the car. The pounding in his ears was his heartbeat. They would be looking for his car now. He’d walk back to the dump, get the compound gun back that he gave Barrelman.

  As he walked back, using the under-the-elevated-highway route, he tried to figure out why he couldn’t go back to his own time.

  Wait a minute! If the time-storm that had brought him to Salt Lake City had been created by the nuke war—no wonder he couldn’t get back! The nuke war hadn’t happened yet! There was no time-tunnel! What he had tried to do was impossible. For now.

  Rockson reasoned, logically, that he’d have to wait until the exact date and time of the nuke attack—September 11, 1989, 6:04 P.M. Central Standard Time—and then try again to break through the damned Veil. He’d do his best to take Kim and his kids and his friends with him too. He’d try to save them from destruction.

  When Rockson reached the dump, Barrelman handed him back his weapon.

  “Told you so,” he said. “But you sure tried—I’ll hand you that. Never saw a car go so fast!”

  “Maybe you know now how determined a guy I am,” Rock said. “Help me destroy the Chessman.”

  “I can’t do that!” Barrelman looked down. “Sorry.”

  “Then, I’ll fight alone,” Rock snarled. “You make me sick. You eat their garbage, live like hunted rats, yet you will not fight.”

  Rock turned to leave but Barrelman shoved a piece of worn colored paper at him—a map. Rockson looked at the old, worn-out Exxon road map. The heavily creased map was a treasure. It looked like the Salt Lake City map Rock remembered from the Century City archives.

  The map showed Interstate 15 and Interstate 80, coursing north-south and east-west respectively, the highways cut through the heart of the fabled city of Joseph Smith, the great religious figure of the early western expansion of the United States.

  To think that this holy city now housed such an abomination as the Chessman, thought Rockson.

  The garbage dump he stood in now was in the south, the rundown Park Terrace section of the city. He should be able to see Mt. Olympus, elevation 9026 feet. It was a clear day. Yet all he saw looking southeast was haze. Back to the problem at hand: Rockson had to get across town again. According to Barrelman’s running commentary as the Doomsday Warrior surveyed the crumbling, taped-together Exxon map, it would be easier if he went up along the elevated highway.

  “The cameras are fewest there. Then you’ll see the signs for Route One-eighty-one. Then you’ll pass the planetarium—look for the dome. Watch out around there. It’s a favorite haunt of the rookies. Why not stay with us?”

  “And eat garbage? I’m going. I’ll die a Freeman, or I will triumph—for myself and all of you.”

  “Well, then, if I can’t stop you, friend . . .” Barrelman pulled out a set of keys—all corroded. “Here. Take these keys. At Eleventh Avenue and Charles Street there’s a corner shop—it used to be mine. The sign, if it’s still there, reads HOBBY SHOP. Model planes in the window, if those are still there—I think they are. The consultants only recently came out against hobbies. They now say people should not waste their time, that people should work more instead. Anyway, no one dared open it after they came in the middle of the night and threw me out of it. Inside the store are some things you might want. A knife—a big hunting knife. It used to be my dad’s. It’s in a box stuck up under the rear part of the counter, if they haven’t found it. There’s a sink if you need water—and you will, today’s hot.”

  There was a perfectly geometric grid of pink and gray squares all across the map of the city, sixty-four in all. Rockson asked Barrelman what they were.

  “Those are the control squares. After the coup, the one that made Chessman mayor, he had a block of buildings torn down every ten blocks, and had a large flower bed and walk area of cobblestones put in its place. Lots of the homeless are a result of that housing demolition. Each square has the same name as a chessboard square—you know, like King’s Three, or Queen’s Seventh. It’s another way that Chessman controls the city. It’s hard to go too far without crossing one of the squares. And the poles all around the squares have sensing devices—cameras with zoom lenses, microphones, the works. We avoid the squares if possible, wind our way around the city. But it slows you down if you’re in a hurry.”

  Rock sighed. The evil control of this Chessman knew no bounds. Nearly total social control—that was what he had accomplished. Like on the TV programs Rock had watched with Kim. Twenty questions . . . only one answer: social order.

  Barrelman confirmed that the Chessman lived in the Tabernacle most of the year, though sometimes in the winter he “castled,” meaning he moved to City Hall Tower, across town. Barrelman said, “If you manage to kill the Chessman, destroy the radio tower above the bell tower in the Tabernacle, too. That’s where the muzic comes from. Remember, use the key to my store, hole up there until late night. Don’t try to get into the Tabernacle in the daylight. Best time to try to get into the Tabernacle is probably midnight mass. Incidentally, you don’t have a chance.”

  “Midnight mass? Does the Tabernacle still have religious services?” Rockson asked, ignoring the negative remark.

  Barrelman smiled. “Not the usual kinds. They are all banned. Compassion is banned—you should know that. To feel for another citizen except in certain ways, like in marriage, is illegal. People don’t realize—can’t realize—that soon they will be homeless too. There are practically no jobs, except construction. The city must grow—upward. Housing for the rich, death for the poor. Have you seen how they clear a building they want to tear down?”

  “It’s very vivid in my memory.”

  “Yes . . . Good! So wait in my store, and join the flock that goes through the Temple Square—now called King’s Two Square—at midnight.” Barrelman motioned with his arm. “Come over to the crate I call home; I have something for you.” Rockson followed. The derelict reached in a corner of a packing crate and extracted a red suit. “You’ll need this—it’s a bit the worse for wear, but it will be dark . . . If you need to hide, there’s six or seven empty marble crypts in the left aisle of the Tabernacle. The covers are heavy, but they can be moved by a man with strength.

  “You know, years ago, I went with my family—they’re all dead now—to the Tabernacle. That was back when things were different. There was a heavenly choir there. Beautiful voices raised in praise to the Almighty. The singing is strange now, with weird, disjointed music. A devil’s mass, I suppose. But you’ll see. Good luck. And listen . . . if you can, be sure to put out the radio tower. Possibly I can get the other homeless people to rise up if you can put out the damned muzic.”

  Barrelman hugged the Doomsday Warrior. “I think you’re the bravest American I ever met, and I’ll see you Off the Board, in the Great Whatever.”

  “I’m not planning to die just yet, Barrelman!”

  Rockson set off, having donned the old suit. It wasn’t a bad fit—a big man had worn it. But the previous owner had obviously been endowed with a pot belly, for Rockson had to cinch the rope belt tight to keep his pants on.

  He walked over the mounds of garbage and toward the elevated highway that bordered the edge of the dump, as Barrelman had directed. Lost in the inky shadows of the big roadway, he passed a few broken surveillance
cameras mounted on concrete pillars under the road. Evidently falling debris—bolts and nuts from the speeding vehicles—had put out their eyes.

  Perhaps the city fathers didn’t think it very important to replace the cameras, as they’d only be broken again. Moving quickly under the highway till it began getting lower to ground level, Rockson crossed half the distance back through town unobserved. Barrelman, even if he wouldn’t help directly, had given him a map, a key, a chance.

  Ten

  Eddie spotted his quarry even before it appeared as a blip on the glowing radar screen on his instrument panel.

  By squinting and straining his small, close-set eyes, he could just barely make out its pale shape as it hovered near the foot of an elm tree. Or, rather, what had once been a magnificent green elm back in the old days, back before the Dutch Elm blight had turned Salt Lake City’s parks into a pathetic forest of stumps and fallen branches.

  No time for these maudlin thoughts. Eddie jerked himself to attention, swung his tanklike vehicle around, and began lowering its long vacuum arm in line with the target.

  “Stay right there, you sucker. You’re gone. I’m gonna blow you away,” Eddie muttered under his breath. Sweat poured down his face as he took aim. With a quiet beep, the radar let him know that he was on target: the enemy fluttered helplessly in the center of his sights. The autofocus headlamps illuminated it.

  He threw his vehicle into gear, let up on the clutch, and stomped on the gas pedal to lurch quickly into firing range.

  “Aaaaaiieee.” He bellowed a karate yell as he slammed his hand down on the attack button. The vacuum arm hissed, sucking in its victim and swallowing it to some dark place in the vehicle’s gut.

  Eddie punched the destroy button, then relaxed his tense muscles, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and sat back smugly to listen to the sound of the brush-eater’s mighty tearing teeth as they shredded his quarry—a pizza box obviously left under the tree by a group of litterbugs who didn’t appreciate social order.