by Ryder Stacy
“My God, do you know everything about Americana?” Rock asked, smiling. “When do you get the time to learn all this stuff?”
“I’m fascinated by history. Someday there’ll be a unified America again and we’ll need to know her history. A country without a history is like a man without a heart, no soul, no spirit. We need every precise bit of our history that we can find and reassemble. Someday, Rock, this mall should be a museum that our children and their children’s children can come to and learn of their nation’s past.”
“And those spears,” Perkins continued, questioning the Macy’s creatures. “You made these?”
“Yes, from pots and pans in Kitchenwares, sharpened over fire, beaten into points. Use kitchen knives too—tie to mop handles. We kill. Kill death dogs and cat beasts out in fog. Sharp!” he said, holding one up, handing it over to Rockson. Rock hefted the homemade weapon. It was actually very well balanced. He pulled it back and swung his arm forward, flinging the four-foot spear through the air. It flew a good eighty feet and twanged to a stop in the center of a pillar, still adorned with ribbons and paper garnishes of a century before, now yellowed and turned to dust from the relentless grinding down of time.
“We live here,” the chief said, sweeping his hands across the vast, shadowed expanses of the mall. “I am Chief Floorwalker. It be that way since our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ time. We stay here, hunt and trap creatures that come near. We eat food from Food and Delicacies on second floor. We wear clothes from racks—” He pointed down at his new blue boxer shorts. “You like? There be more—” the creature said benignly to Slade. The Freefighters all laughed.
“Go ahead, Slade,” McCaughlin said through guffaws, “take a dozen. You could sell them back in C.C. Underwear like that is hard to find.” The Freefighters, even Rock, cracked up. The Macy’s creatures looked on, confused at first, and then joined in. Laughter filled the darkened aisles, echoed up the rusting escalators.
“Any Russians nearby?” Rock asked.
“Last time come—two, three years ago. We killed with spears. Many. We kill all. We have. Want to see?”
“What the hell is he talking about?” Rock asked Perkins.
“I think I have an idea,” the archaeologist said nervously.
“Come! You come with us!” the leader of the Macy’s people said, pulling Rock and Slade with his two huge, hairy hands. They went through a long aisle of gloves, mufflers and ear warmers and then through two swinging doors to a back room. Here, hundreds of mannequins, naked, waiting eternally to be clothed and displayed, stood silently. Floorwalker led them to the center and, pointing proudly, said, “Russians.”
Rock and Slade and the other Freefighters gathered tightly behind, looked up and gasped. There, in full uniform, were thirty Russian troops. They had been partially preserved but had still decomposed over the years. Their faces were dripping, rotting monstrosities, held together with glue; their bony hands, flesh curdled down to a thin leather, clutched the pistols or weapons they had been holding when the end came. They were posed in positions of action—one Red with his leg lifted as if running, another holding up a Kalashnikov to take aim.
“Good? Yes?” Floorwalker said, looking at Rockson. The other creatures looked on anxiously, listening to his response.
“Careful, Rock,” Perkins said. “I think this corpse museum has some sort of religious significance to them. Be complimentary.”
“It’s beautiful. Truly beautiful.” Rock walked over and hugged the beaming savage, who grabbed him back. The people all cheered. Rock stepped back and surveyed the sculpture of dead flesh more closely.
“I think you’ve got a friend for life, Rock,” Perkins said, examining the creation.
“I like their rifles,” McCaughlin said. “Looks like they’re still serviceable. Freshly oiled. These Macy’s folk must take good care of their merchandise.”
The Floorwalker clan seemed overjoyed by the enthusiastic reaction to their display of Russians. They exited the main lobby and walked out into the fog bank and then quickly back into another building some hundred feet away. The Price Chopper. They walked through the ruins of the supermarket. Cans, cans everywhere—mostly rusted to bits, some opened and eaten long ago. But not the prize that Erickson went looking for and found.
“Look men, Maxwell House coffee—two containers of it. We can have old-fashioned American coffee.” They wasted no time, this being a treat of extraordinary dimension, and made a fire on the floor, brewing the coffee in a big pot that one of the primitives ran and got from Kitchenwares. They poured the bubbling, gritty brew through a strainer and into orange-and-blue designer cups.
“Goddamn delicious!” Berger said, starting a second cup. The men all savored the brew. The coffee beans that were grown in hydroponics back in C.C. somehow didn’t have enough richness. These, on the other hand. Rock offered a cup to Archer and then to the Macy’s creatures, who hesitantly took the steaming coffee and, after burning their lips several times, got big smiles on their hairy faces.
“This good,” the leader said. “All this time we no know.”
“Tell me,” Perkins continued with his questions, trying to gather as much data about the Macy’s people as possible. “Where are the women? Children?”
“We keep in other building, way in back. Pet Supplies—big building. Thick walls. Safe there. No come out. Many dangers here.” He swept his hand across the outside window. What strange creatures were breeding out in that fog bank, Rock wondered, that put such fear into these people.
“Tell me,” Perkins asked, leaning closer, “what do you all believe in? I mean, why are you here, what is your god?”
The Macy’s man looked at him incredulously. “What our god? Macy’s is God. We here to serve Macy’s and Mr. Macy. This his temple on Earth. That why we keep displays neat. Take what we need but everything ready for business.” The Freefighters listened in fascination.
“We keep store clean for when Mr. Macy come down from the fog and open store. Then he take us in giant Buicks and Toyotas down the highway to the home of the gods—New York Macy’s. There we live happy, no danger.” He smiled as all around him, the Macy’s creatures, sighed in appreciation of their myth they lived for and would die to protect.
“Mr. Macy be very proud when he come here and see store so neat. That why we kill Russians. They mess up place. No one can mess up store.” He looked fiercely at Rock and Slade.
“It is very well kept,” Perkins said dubiously, looking down at the leader who sat, his long, hairy arms hanging to the floor, in front of his people.
“We decorate store every Christmas—have plastic tree with stars we put up. Hold special sale on all goods. But no one comes. Never. You want buy anything?” he suddenly asked, looking hopefully at the Freefighters. “On sale, everything, plus ten percent discount for Americans.”
“I think you might have a few sales,” Rock said, looking around at the amused Freefighters. “But God knows what we’ll pay you with.”
Thirty-Three
The Expeditionary Force headed out the next morning after stocking up on several hard or even impossible things to obtain in 2089 A.D., courtesy of the Floorwalkers. Perkins had stayed up nearly half the night questioning them about their society. He had taken pages of notes and begged Rock to let them stay another day.
“Sorry, pal,” Rockson said as they loaded up their ’brids. “We’re already behind schedule and off course and I’m sure there are loads more surprises ahead, so—”
“But, Rock, it’s so . . . so fascinating. These people have evolved a unique society in a hundred years, using just the materials at hand. It demonstrates the infinite adaptability of the human species. The isolated tribes that have sprung up around the country must be studied. As scientists it’s our obligation to—”
“I agree, Perkins. But we also have a mission to obtain weapons that will help return America to us. That will have to have priority over all other scientific experiments
for the moment. Sorry. Anyway, you can come back. They ain’t going nowhere.”
The mist seemed slightly thinner as they rode northwest from the mall. After several hours it began to dissipate altogether and they found themselves back on one of the many almost-dead plains that seemed to fill the midsection of the country. The sun was strong once they came fully out of the mist, but a constant wind blew across the flatlands keeping the men and the ’brids relatively cool.
They began passing ruins of towerlike structures. Spires forty feet tall, twisted red metal, arches in doorways, entrances twice the height of any human.
“Ever see anything like ’em, Rock?” Perkins asked, taking pictures with his 35mm camera.
“Not me,” the man who had crossed nearly half the country in his days of trekking, replied. “They look functional somehow. Perhaps astronomical tools, or timekeepers, using the sun.” Rock had seen pictures of the ancient Druid Stonehenge and the sundials of the pre-technological world. Perhaps these were part of America’s distant past as well, though he couldn’t remember reading about them.
“I’ve never heard of anything like this, Rock,” Perkins continued. “There’s something strange about them, though I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
They passed more of the slightly tilted metal towers, every nine-and-a-half miles, all pointing directly northwest, the tops of the towers just visible to one another. Perkins got Rockson to agree to a rest stop next to one of the structures and quickly shot up the ladder, snapping shots of everything. He reached the top, a kind of oval room, and yelled down from one of the ten large windows evenly spaced around the egg-shaped chamber, “Nothing in here. Just metal, but I can see back and forwards, just the tops of the towers. With mirrors you could easily signal messages.” He poked around some more, trying to figure out how the structure had been built, finding no seams, rivets or screws. It was as if the entire tower was one piece. Impossible.
They headed slowly forward, keeping a steady pace that the ’brids could keep up indefinitely, provided they had their daily water and grass or wheat or whatever. Hybrids were extremely versatile—one of their major strong points being the ability to eat almost everything and anything, which they continually tried to do.
The sun crept like a wounded creature searching for safety beneath the horizon, as the sky turned green then ocher. As the beet-red orb fell lower and lower to the cracked, parched surface of the endless flatlands ahead, the stars grew brighter. The northern lights came on like a kaleidoscopic light show of the skies, flashing, splashing, dancing across the purple-tinged sky. Curtains of super-accelerated electrons, caught in the magnetic intensity of the Van Allen Belt high above the Earth, poured explosions of rainbow shrapnel across the northern sky.
The edge of the sun touched the desert floor, then something happened. A noise—coming at them. High overhead but dropping. Something they had missed entirely thus far on their expedition—a Red drone flying reconnaissance. The drone, its sensors picking up movement below, zeroed in on them. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. The ground was flat for miles with scarcely more than a few dwarf cactuses to hide behind.
The drone, veering sharply downward had detected their presence. The robot rocketplane emitted white thick smoke as it accelerated in their direction, its built-in scanners already transmitting information a thousand miles back. It was a big one, a ramjet model, equipped for long, long journeys, sweeping back and forth across America, searching for clandestine activities. And this time it had hit pay dirt. It soared in closer, gyros coming into play, setting the spydrone into a slow roll to keep it stable at its slowing speed as its cameras tried to focus on the “unusual presence” below. Somewhere in Pavlov City or New Lenin or Denver, some bored console watcher was growing excited. He had found something. He would get a medal.
The Freefighters drew their Liberators, put them on full auto and sprayed the craft as it circled above them a hundred feet away, trying to get a clear picture in the gathering darkness of the targets. But bullets wouldn’t stop it—it was nearly two inches thick, alumnatungsten alloy. Even the exploding .9mm shells of the Liberators just dented it, making little pockmarks around the surface of the craft.
Detroit reached for two grenades from the crisscrossed bandoliers that covered his broad black chest, preparing to make a throw. Rockson put a hand over one of Detroit’s throwing hands and motioned for him to put them back.
“It’s not worth a try,” Rock said, lowering his Liberator to scream at Detroit through the din of the rifle fire and the drone’s loud engine. The Reds, in building the drones so defensively, with two-inch armoring, had had to put tremendous engines into them which burned up liquid and solid fuel by the ton. But then Soviet technology frequently preferred brawn over brain in such matters—and then had to strip the rest of the world to fuel its dinosaur-sized creations.
“You might hit one of us,” Rock said, and Detroit lowered his arms. With the Freefighters spread out over several feet, firing from atop their ’brids, frag from the grenade could easily wound someone. Besides, the goddamn drone had probably already sent back its pictures.
Archer dismounted calmly from his horse, not really noticed by the Freefighters as they continued to fire. He took out a short arrow from his quiver, with some sort of small explosive device glued to the front and a spiral-shaped feather on the tail. Moving carefully, he placed the arrow in the groove of his crossbow and pulled a lever that caught behind the bow’s thick wire and stretched it back. The metal bow creaked and locked back in place. Archer lay down on his back as the Red drone flew slowly lower, circling in a five hundred-foot orbit around the Expeditionary Force. He rested the crossbow atop his high knees and got the orbit of the screaming drone in his sights. He let it go around twice, pretending to fire and counting as he estimated the arrow’s time to striking. On the third orbit, he pulled the trigger. The metal shaft shot out of the steel crossbow like a bolt of blue lightning. It shot toward an emptiness in the sky that was suddenly filled by the ten foot long, forty-five hundred pound spydrone. The arrow hit the unmanned craft at the very tip, where its guidance antenna and laser navigational transmitter and receptor were located. The explosive device on the arrow, made by Archer himself by pouring powder from twenty .50mm machine-gun shells into a small, metal Band-Aid canister, was designed to create explosive power rather than shrapnel. It did its job. The arrow nearly tore through the entire cone, embedding itself deeply in the guts of the craft. As the explosive pack hit the outer armor it went off with a loud boom, startling the Freefighters below who hadn’t realized what Archer was up to.
The drone seemed to hesitate for a second as if surprised, then it lurched wildly, its control mechanisms shattered by the blast. It spun end over end, completely out of control, and fell to the ground some twelve feet from Lang, who dove madly from his rearing animal, hitting the ground with his shoulder. The drone exploded on contact with the earth, its liquid fuel tank igniting into a wall of brilliant flame. Five Freefighters were blown from their steeds, crashing down onto the cooling earth. Lang scrambled away like a fish out of water as the pool of flaming hell spread rapidly out in all directions for twenty-five feet. Lang’s hybrid screamed in mortal agony as the burning liquid oxygen mixture consumed it. The smell of burnt hair and meat filled the air.
Rock ran over to Lang who kept just ahead of the advancing wall of fire. He was almost free. The flames surged ahead and caught his pants leg. It burst into flame, quickly covering the whole lower part of his body. Rock grabbed a blanket from Berger’s hybrid’s saddlebag and threw it on top of the screaming Lang, pulling him back from the sea of twisting flames, as the drone exploded again, sending out a shower of white-hot shrapnel into the air. Rock dove to the ground on top of Lang, continuing to smother the flames on him with the blanket. He quickly extinguished them and dragged Lang, who seemed to have fallen unconscious, back to safety some hundred feet from the bonfire created by the crashing spycraft. The other Freefighters
dusted themselves off and rose from the dirt. No one else had been severely injured. Blood was streaming from McCaughlin’s forehead from falling on a rock. Lang’s screaming hybrid mercifully stopped its death cries as the flames consumed it completely, eating away the layers of thick hide and chewing on the bones of the creature, blackening them with its fiery teeth.
The Freefighters gathered together around Lang as the drone continued to burn, like a torch in the now-dark night, sending up a glowing funnel of sparks and bursts of intense heat.
“He all right?” Detroit asked, looking with concern at Lang who lay sprawled out on his back on the hard ground. Archer came over and looked downcast. His shot, which had seemed so remarkable just moments before, suddenly seemed like a mistake. His face was white, as if he had done the damage to Lang himself.
“Relax,” Rock said, looking up and seeing the frozen expression on the bear of a man. “You did the right thing. It was an accident. Anyway, he’s going to live.” Rock cut open the pants leg with his bowie knife and ripped it apart, revealing the entire leg. It had been burnt worst on the upper thigh, where the liquid oxygen had actually made contact with his clothing. The skin wasn’t blackened but was bright red and blistered badly. Huge, white bubbles covered Lang’s leg as the limb began swelling from the damage. Lang moaned and tried to raise his head. Then he grimaced as the pain hit into him like a knife.
“Damn, that hurts!” he said, looking up at Rock.
“You’re going to be all right, kid. Just relax. Breathe deep and keep your energy going. The worst thing you could do now is go into shock. Then your body really would be in danger. You’ve got to keep calm, keep control. Feel the pain but don’t let it numb you.” Rock stared down, his purple and blue eyes piercing into Lang’s, trying to make him understand.
