by Ryder Stacy
I am only trying to keep the world together under one power so there will be no divisions that will again become nations—nations that will eventually have another world war and finish off our tottering ecology. I am on the Earth’s side. I swear it, Vassily said silently to that little bit of belief in God inside him.
Ruwanda appeared, holding the silver tray with his now twice-daily hypodermic injection on it. A hypo instead of his customary golden brandy. Everyone was plotting against him. Why were the lesions on his body getting bigger, the welts under his blue-green skin more numerous? Why were his legs more unsteady each day? Were the doctors in league with Killov?
Perhaps the doctors were giving him cancer not curing it. How was it that they couldn’t cure him as they had cured so many other cancers with the Tibetan drug—the Chi Gompo—a powerfully effective anti-cancer agent ignored for centuries by the “civilized world” which scoffed at the simple combination of herbs and minerals dug out of the Tibetan Mountains by red-clad monks. Finally, after the cataclysm—the Great War—when millions were dying of cancer every month, the doctors, ready to try anything, experimented with the ancient brew of the shamans of Tibet, discovering to their astonishment that the cure for most cancers had been created by Gompo Rinpoche in the Sixteenth Century.
Why didn’t they get me the goddamn stuff, Vassily fumed. What was in those injections? Live cancer cells? A slow poison? Perhaps arsenic—something, yes. Killov couldn’t wait for the premier to die a natural death. No, he won’t leave me in peace. He’s too eager to destroy the world. He’s the one. He prayed again to his secret God. God, let me stop him—grant a dying man one request. Let me do this for mankind. Let Killov die before me; help me defeat him.
“Is something the matter, your excellency?” It was Ruwanda’s concerned voice. He had put down the tray, come over and caught the premier as he began sagging toward the floor.
“Yes, Ruwanda, help me to my desk.” He looked at the big broad nose, the ebony skin so flawless. “You, Ruwanda,” he said, slurring his words, “you are my only friend.”
“Not so, your excellency! The whole world loves you.”
“The truth, Ruwanda, is I am despised. But I am a good man, in relation to history. I will die and I will go wherever animate things go and I will have little to be ashamed of. I am the victim of my circumstances. It was my destiny to rule the world.”
“Your karma, your excellency,” Ruwanda said soothingly. “You are doing the best you can. You are trying to save the world.” Vassily sat heavily back into the chair; the African released his grip under the frail arm. The premier stared up at Ruwanda. “I’ll let you know a secret, Ruwanda—the doctors are poisoning me, Killov controls them.”
“You are imagining things, your excellency,” the black slave said. “No one wants you to die. It would be too great a loss.”
“Ruwanda?”
“Yes, excellency?”
“I don’t want my injection. Get me—get me some brandy. And then get me a priest.”
“But there are no priests; your excellency knows that. All religion is against the law. Your excellency is tired. He needs some rest. His mind is cloudy.”
“Then—then get me some sort of holy man. Call someone with feelings, Ruwanda. Feelings like me. I’m sick of all these cold, calculating assassins around me. Murdering doctors, ice-cold functionaries and statisticians. Get me a holy man!”
Ruwanda just stared at the frail old man. The premier ran his fingers through his hair—for a long time. He just sat, stroking the thinning, dark black, lightly greased hair. Then he said, “No, Ruwanda, you are right. I am foolish. There are no holy men in Russia. But there is something I must do. Tell my phone operator to adjust the transmitter to Top Secret Ultra Scramble. I want Zhabnov. President Zhabnov in Washington. I will save the world as the Earth wants me to. The only way I know how.”
“Yes, sir,” Ruwanda replied, heading off to notify the phone personnel. Vassily waited a few seconds for the circuits to be made and then lifted the red receiver from the desk. The satellite scramble disk turned on the roof as the radio waves were bounced off Satellite Communications Relay Five some ten thousand miles up and then back down to Washington, D.C.
It was five A.M. in Washington as the phone rang next to Zhabnov. He stirred restlessly as the young girls on either side of him poked him awake. Bleary eyed, the president picked it up, his heart pounding. Only one person would be calling him now. The little drugged girl stirred and smiled wanly from beneath the wet sheets.
“This is Vassily. Are you awake? Listen to me! Code Potemkin. You hear that? It’s in your personal code book. Do you understand me? This is a direct order from the premier. I know you will carry out your command. Code Potemkin.” He hung up, without waiting for a reply.
What the hell was Vassily talking about? What was going on? Zhabnov stumbled over to his bedroom safe and took out the Top Ultra Secret—for the eyes of the premier only—sealed, leather-bound command book. He stood naked by the night table, his huge stomach and small organ casting shadows from the table lamp. The president opened the book to Potemkin and read, “ELIMINATE KILLOV—HE IS A TRAITOR. IMMEDIATE TERMINATION WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.”
Zhabnov slammed the book shut. Grandfather, he screamed silently. Thank you. Code Potemkin. Kill Killov. So now Vassily was directly allying himself with Zhabnov. That meant that not only was his presidency safe, but that the premier was grooming Zhabnov to take over. Yes, and between the two of them, surely they would be able to eliminate the Blackshirt leader. He was clever. But he was mortal!
At precisely 10:30 A.M. the next day, Killov was walking in KGB Central, Denver with his omnipresent elite bodyguards—with their head-to-toe black leather uniforms, knee-high boots and submachine guns over their shoulders—on his way to a meeting on the Mind Breaker’s effectiveness. He saw Yablonski, one of his most trusted officers, walking toward him, smiling. Yablonski extended his hand, something he normally didn’t do. Killov saw it as Yablonski’s hand reached for his—a small, pointed object concealed in the palm of his hand. Yablonski’s smile turned into a grimace as he leaped forward. Killov lunged to the side at the last second and the dart plunged into a guard’s shoulder. Shellfish toxin. The guard slumped to the floor twitching, hands on his stomach as a thin trickle of blood seeped from his mouth and eyes. Killov’s guards surrounded Yablonski and knocked him to the ground.
“Don’t kill him!” Killov screamed. “Take him to the Mind Breaker.” Killov was shaken. He had thought he was in total control. Yet his own man had tried to kill him. That meant an organization at work to destroy him. Something that he knew nothing of. But Yablonski would talk when the white-hot needles plunged into his skull cavity. Yes, he would reveal everything. Killov glanced down at the corpse turning blue on the floor. He turned to another guard.
“Get rid of it,” he said, motioning to the body. The KGB colonel headed into the demonstration. Now they would have a very interesting subject indeed. And he had thought the day was going to be boring.
Twenty-Eight
The Expeditionary Force headed across burning plains for days. Only an occasional black-spiked cactus or a strange multicolored lizard would show itself from time to time. At last they reached the foothills of the next range of mountains. Groves of trees, cool shade and underground springs bubbling lusciously to the surface awaited them. They ran to the water holes, men and hybrids alike pushing aggressively for space to lap some of the precious liquid up. Then they lay back in the shade with a breeze coming down from the mountain ridges ahead of them.
“The one good thing about heat,” Chen said, lying flat on his back, his ninja suit sopping with cool spring water, “is that it feels so good when you hit the shade.”
“Is that the same as the thing about Red bullets is that they feel so good when they pry them out of you?” Detroit asked. Erickson began to set up a small kitchen for the approaching night. They would eat good this evening.
Rock got
up early the next morning, refreshed from the first good night of sleep for days and left word with one of the guards, Slade, that the men should rest up and clean out their supplies. “Just take it easy,” he said with a grin, patting Slade on the shoulder. “I might not be back for up to a day. I’m scouting ahead. So just pull out the cards and rest.”
Rock headed through the thick woods up into the foothills of the looming range of mountains, some of which poked into the clouds. He was looking for a passage to the West. According to the old Esso map he carried with him wherever he went, they were in what had been eastern Utah and the range ahead was the Uinta Mountains. He pulled out his binoculars and sighted the sheer rock walls ahead. No way would the ’brids be able to traverse those.
Rock walked through the meadows and larger and larger hills as he approached the Uintas. The land was thick with trees, birds chirping, small creatures rustling through bushes. It was alive, Rock thought, breathing the afternoon fragrances of the bursting flowers as they opened their petals to the sun and the passing insect, offering draughts of nectar. It always brought a warm feeling to his gut to see life slowly building its way back from the pitted wasteland. In the middle of nothing, life fought back. Maybe it was stronger than death after all.
He finally reached the lower slopes of the closest mountain. From back a ways, it had appeared that there was a very narrow passageway between this and the next towering monument of dirt and rock. If there was a pass it would save them days. He climbed the mountain, which quickly became much steeper than it looked. After an ascent of nearly three hours, Rock reached the peak. The sun was just setting and it was spectacularly beautiful. Rock could see in every direction at once. The plains they had just crossed were an enormous emptiness, flat and dead. Then he swung his head 180 degrees to what lay ahead of them—more mists obscuring the terrain, thick and impenetrable, a blanket of pink and purple and yellowish fogs writhing and covering the land for hundreds of miles. What the hell was in there? Rock wondered. It wasn’t on Brady’s map. The sight of the hot zone into which Rock and his men would have to travel gave him a chill. It looked dead and cursed.
He headed south along the ridge of the long mountain until he reached its southern drop. There, far below, there was a way through. A narrow gully, probably once a river bed, had sliced through the base joining the two mountains. He took out his binoculars. A stone pathway, smooth, a good four feet wide—perfect. He couldn’t see a trace of lichen or any river life. The gully must have been carved long, long ago, perhaps in prehistoric times. He wondered if any of the American pioneers he had read about, in their treks to reach the West, had ever come across this same passage.
Rock started leisurely down the mountain, swinging back north. He knew he wouldn’t make camp until late, but he had traveled many times at night. The darkness was not an enemy. Not to Ted Rockson. Deer, startled, ran as he approached. A herd of them, thirty or forty. Rock wished he had his rifle.
They were running low on fresh food. He reached the base of the mountain around midnight. The crescent moon was rising over the pine-tipped hills, making them look furry, covered with a hide of needles and cones. Rock passed a large swamp. Frogs croaked madly as insect life filled the air with fleets of stinging, biting mosquitos, dragonflies, water bugs and other assorted life of the lower strata of the food chain.
Suddenly Rockson heard a noise, different from the croakings and creakings of the night life. A sucking sound, like something being pulled down a drain. He moved to the edge of the murky green water and came upon an expanse of quicksand. A bearded man, only his arms, shoulders and head still free, was being pulled down into the quicksand pit. He waved his hands wildly, reaching vainly for the shore, trying to grab hold of a branch, tantalizingly close to his reach.
Rock ran to the very edge of the quicksand, testing it carefully with his foot before he advanced. He got to within about six yards of the wild-eyed trapped man. Rock reached into a back pocket of his utility belt and pulled out a fifty-foot piece of half-inch nylon rope. He quickly tied one end to a tree and threw the other to the struggling stranger. The bearded man lunged for the rope and, after missing it on his first two tries, managed to just touch the end with his fingers. He quickly wrapped two ham-hock-sized fists around the rope and began trying to pull himself out. On the other end Rock pulled the cord end over end, his arm muscles straining and bulging as he slowly dragged the man out of the iron-clad grasp of the quicksand. The going was tough; the stranger emerged only an inch at a time. The swamp would not readily release its quarry. But at last the man was free from his hips up. He began slithering across the slimy surface of the sand as Rock pulled.
With a huge slurping and sucking sound, the man’s legs and feet came free. His terrified face at last relaxed into a smile as he realized he was out of the muck. Rock continued pulling and minutes later the man was pulling himself onto solid ground. He stood up, dripping thick, dark, foul-smelling swamp mud, and looked Rock in the eyes. Rockson was big, six-foot-three, but this fellow towered over him. Must have been at least six-eight going on seven feet, and 250 pounds. The man moved his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Just grunts. The man couldn’t make a word. No wonder he hadn’t yelled. The stranger, clad in buckskin clothes and boots, laid a big hand on Rock’s shoulder and looked at him with a deep, sincere expression.
“I’m Rock,” Rockson said, pointing to himself. He pointed at the mute. “You?”
“Archer!” the big man said with a proud smile. He walked several steps to a tree and lifted up a strange weapon that Rock had but a vague memory from childhood of having seen before. It was made of wood and had a stock with a large, curved bow at the other end. The man bent down again and picked up a quiver of steel-tipped arrows. Rock whistled. Lethal-looking toys. The big man took one of the arrows out and mounted it in the center of the device along a narrow shaft. He pulled a steel wire back, making the bow bend, and attached it to a hook just behind the arrow. The man pointed to a tree across the swamp, a good hundred yards away. He took graceful aim and pulled the trigger. With a thwack the arrow shot forward as fast as a bullet and instantly embedded itself dead center of the thick tree.
“Archer,” the mud-dripping specimen of humanity said again, pointing at the tree.
“I see why,” Rock said. “I’m glad you’re a friend not an enemy.” The man appeared to be trying to read Rock’s lips as he spoke but Rock couldn’t be sure if he could understand him or not. “If I ask you a question, could you nod yes or no to answer?” Rock asked the question slowly, letting the big man look closely at his lips. The bearded bear of a man looked at Rock and nodded vigorously up and down.
“Good,” Rock said, smiling back. It was hard to tell if the man was mentally retarded in some way or just hard to communicate with because he knew no language. “From these parts?” Rock asked. The man shook his head, no, and pointed with his finger beyond the mountains. Then he held up both hands spreading his fingers, and opened and closed them three times.
“Thirty days. You came from there thirty days ago?” The man nodded yes. “You have others?” Rock asked, the man’s face a foot from his studiously reading Rock’s lips on every question. The man shook his head sadly. He held up a hand with five fingers and then grabbed it with the other fist and squeezed it. Then he pulled open his buckskin jacket and showed a huge scar that ran from his chest down to his belly button. The others had been killed and he escaped with that wound. Rock hoped he wouldn’t meet the thing that got this guy.
“And now, where do you go?” Rock asked. The man pointed due west, the direction the expedition was heading, but wouldn’t explain further. “That’s where we’re going,” Rock said, “and you’re welcome to come along.” The man nodded vigorously and smiled, slapping Rock on the back. He uncocked his bow weapon and slung it over his shoulder.
“I’ll call you Archer,” Rock said, turning to the man as they walked down the mountain together. “Archer,” Rock said again, pointing to t
he man’s chest.
“Archer!” the big guy said, his voice sounding twisted, slurred. “Archer.” He said it again and began laughing, pointing to himself. For some reason he found it amusing and said the name over and over again, laughing and slapping Rock on the back with the force of a bull elephant. Rock found the laughter infectious and soon he was chuckling too as they walked through the maze of pines and hickories that lined the lower hills.
Twenty-Nine
It took them another hour and a half to reach the edge of the campsite. Rock knew something was wrong immediately. The fire was too low; anyway, there should have been two fires going. He put his fingers to his lips in a gesture to Archer, and together the men moved forward in a crouch as silent as snakes. Rock’s heart was beating faster. Whatever had happened was bad. Very bad! He pushed aside a large bush and looked down the hillside at the wrecked camp. Rock knew there was no one there, alive anyway. No voices, no breathing. He rushed forward, shotgun pistol in hand, with Archer close behind, an immense Carter knife, nearly eighteen inches long and glistening like the silver eyes of death itself, in his hand.
Rock looked around. Blood on the ground. Their packs had been ripped open; the hybrids were gone. Suddenly he saw a shape behind a tree. He felt sick. It was Harris, his throat slashed from ear to ear. Good God, what had happened? How could all his men have been taken? They were such good fighters. Chen . . . Whatever had taken them off was human—of that he was certain. Bandits, maybe. The mountain ranges of the West were said to be filled with cutthroat killers who preyed on anyone who passed. Rock looked around the site. Everything of value was gone. But no blood, other than around Harris. Maybe the others hadn’t been hurt—yet. He saw a glinting in the dirt and reached down to pick up a knife. Primitive. Bone handle. Whoever these killers were, they had regressed tremendously. Maybe they were nearby. Rock hadn’t been gone that long—the fire, although down to the coals, had been stoked at least two hours before.
