by Ryder Stacy
“Two are dead here! We must take them out or the worms and the rats will come in while we’re gone.” The others looked over with blank eyes. Death was a frequent visitor here. More than life. There was nothing to mourn. Emotions were luxuries that slave workers could not afford to buy. The rest of the men finished slapping water on their deeply lined faces. Though hardly a one was over thirty-five, they all looked to be in their fifties. Life expectancy for American laborers in one of the Red fortresses was forty-two years, although these statistics were hardly given to those whom they affected.
The twenty-one workers left their dismal concrete home with the two dead ones. They pulled a large rock in front of the only door, a rock that took five men to move. Hopefully it would keep out the subhuman scum who lived in the shadows of the Sector, too weak or diseased or insane to even be of benefit to the Reds. They lived off the crumbs and the dead. The workers walked down their muddy street toward the main “highway” through their part of the fortress—nothing more than a bulldozer-flattened stretch of gravel and tar—the one bit of building the Reds had done in the American Sector, in case they had to bring large vehicles inside. The workers carried the two dead men to a large pit filled with excrement and garbage and threw them down. The bodies rolled over and over, falling a good forty feet to the top of the pile. Rats and other mutated vermin were on them in a flash, as were some of the scum people, who barely waited for the corpses to come to a stop before they began their bloody butchering. They ripped off chunks of the still warm flesh with their teeth and nails. They knew no shame or guilt—they were below or beyond these sorts of reasonings. Just a hunger beyond all hungers and the knowledge that at least today their swollen bellies would be filled.
James-25 felt disgusted. He pulled away from his fellow slaves and joined the thousands of streaming workers walking quickly down the main thoroughfare into the Factory Sector of the Fortress City. Here, immense concrete windowless buildings poured out billows of smoke as they geared up for another day of production of goods to be shipped back to Mother Russia. James-25 passed through the electrified gate that separated the American from the Factory Sector. Red guards with automatic rifles stood atop concrete bunkers and walls on both sides of the entrance, keeping a cold eye on the workers. They rarely had to use their weapons. Just the constant show of force from the moment the slave laborers came to work was usually enough intimidation to keep them in line. Besides, the idea of rebellion doesn’t catch fire easily in the minds of those who have pushed down into the lowest pits of the human heart. Only an occasional “Ted Rockson will Save Us” or “Death to the Reds” showed that somehow, somewhere, even in the minds of these nearly zombielike creatures, there was still a spark of hope, the merest glimpse of something beyond this hell on earth.
As he headed toward his factory, a canning complex for the various agricultural products that were grown in strictly run communal farms for several miles around the fortress, James-25 saw an army truck filled with prisoners drive by. A not unusual sight, as the Reds were always rounding up stray Americans to be put into the factories or farms, or high rad rock breaking. Occasionally, it was said, they’d even catch a freefighter. Freefighter. James-25 had heard of them for years. Did they really exist? What would it be like—to be—his mind grappled with the word and the concept—free. What was free? Without walls, without guards, without the constant beating down of his mind and heart. He felt his guts tremble as if he were about to vomit. Free . . . freee . . . freeee!
Suddenly there was a commotion from the back of the prisoner truck. A man jumped out. An American, not a Red, James-25 could see that instantly. The man was dressed in good clean clothes, without holes. He looked proud and strong and terrified. He rolled as he hit the dirt and came up firing back inside the truck. A Russian guard jumped out but was caught in midair by a slug. He tumbled to the gravel, mashing his face into a bloody stew. The escaped prisoner ran toward the lines of workers heading toward the factory, but they all ignored him and got out of the way so as to not be mowed down by the Red fire that they knew would shortly be coming. James-25 watched as if it were all a dream. Everything seemed to be in slow motion The other Red guards were leaping from the truck, drawing their service revolvers, unslinging their Kalashnikovs. A hail of bullets began searching for the running man. He was running straight toward James-25 when suddenly a Red slug caught him in the hip. He spun around and fell to the gravel with a thud but continued crawling and firing back over his shoulder as he did. Another Red hit the dirt. The man’s aim was amazing. Somehow James-25 had always thought only Reds knew how to fire a gun. He had never even seen a firearm in anything but a Russian hand. The prisoner kept crawling right toward him until he reached out and put a hand on James-25’s shoe.
“Don’t let them take me pal,” the man said. “I’m a freefighter. You know who we are. We’re fighting to free all of you. Help me man, I can’t let them catch me.” He crawled over to the empty garbage cart that James-25 ducked behind.
“There is no help,” James-25 said emotionlessly, but softly. Bullets dug into the ground all around them. But somehow he didn’t feel fear. “There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There is nothing in life except work and death.” The man managed a weak smile in spite of his pain and the situation.
“I see it’s a real cheerful place around here,” he said. “I’ll have to have my next vacation here.” In spite of himself, James-25 was moved by the escaped one. He had courage—he—he—was a man. Something that none of them in here was. James felt the stirring of a thousand different emotions in his heart.
“Listen buddy,” the man said, firing two more rounds at the Reds who continued to pepper away at them from about ninety feet away. A bullet dug into his left leg as another whistled just over James-25’s head. “Do me a favor,” the freefighter pleaded, handing James-25 the pistol. “Shoot me, I can’t do it myself. But I can’t let those bastards catch me. I know you don’t know what’s going on out there . . . but you and me—we’re brothers, my friend. We’re Americans, and if the Reds get me, a meeting that I was heading for, a meeting that could mean the end of Russian control of our country, could be destroyed. Do you hear me? Do you understand? Shoot me! Shoot me now! I can’t let them catch me.” James-25 looked at the pistol. The Red guards were closing in now and he could see that they wanted to get the man alive. He knew what they’d do to him. He’d heard the prisoners who were taken to the Mindbreaker building. You could hear them in the dead of night, even though it was behind concrete, a half-mile away. The screams were unforgettable.
“Americans. We’re Americans,” James-25 said, letting the words roll over his tongue like a fine wine. Then he smiled for the first time in twenty-five years. “Yes, I see.” He placed the pistol almost tenderly against the freefighter’s temple and pulled the trigger. The man’s brains exploded out the other side, the .45 slug making a hole big enough to put a fist through. The body fell like cold stone to the red gravel.
The Reds were closing in on James-25 now. They would take him and hurt him. Hurt him bad. He stood up from the body and walked toward them. He thought of the slime hole he lived in. He thought of the factories. He thought of his only friend, Nicolas-77, who had drunk the formaldehyde and was now being eaten by rats and scum. He thought of the freefighter he had just killed. How the man had acted, even in the very jaws of death. A man. To be a man. To die a man. Yes, to die.
He raised the pistol and began firing. He walked forward, hitting one Red in the stomach and then another in the shoulder, spinning the soldier around and around as if he’d been punched by a tree-sized fist. James-25 kept firing with a smile on his lips that grew wider with every shot. It took fifteen Red slugs to finally put him away.
Seven
The Council Chamber of Century City was buzzing with activity. Delegates of the different work groups of the city mingled with the representatives who actually made up the Council, standing around in scores of small groups, talking, debating, mak
ing deals, swinging votes. There were a number of important issues on the agenda tonight—but one loomed like a giant—the election of the four men and women who would journey to the Re-Constitutional Convention and represent Century City in the formation of a new nation. Each had his favorite, whom he felt was the only logical choice. It was turning into a popularity contest. Threats and favors flew back and forth like a flock of birds in a frenzy.
Willis, the president of the council, slammed his thick hand-carved wooden gavel down on the podium. The noise continued unabated. Never noted for subtlety, the Chamber of fifty seemed unusually argumentative lately, as if the members knew that some historically important vote, a vote that could affect the very future of mankind, was about to take place. The pressure was on—it was do or die time, and no turning back.
“Order, order, ladies and gentlemen of Century City,” Willis said, his tall, stooped body leaning over the antique podium circa 1847, found by a Century City expedition in the remains of a charred museum. Willis cherished it like a child, feeling most alive when he stood at the cherry wood speaker’s platform. To many he was the very incarnation of the democratic spirit, with his white hair and stateliness, his far-off philosophical look, as if always debating internally the rules and regulations of the Century City legal system. He banged again, hard this time so the sound shattered through the air and cut the many voices to the quick. Sound died out over the room as he raised his hand across his heart and turned toward the flag that hung on the wall behind him—the American flag. The true American flag, not the Russian version, which had ripped out the stars and substituted a hammer and sickle. The flag, wounded but still alive, and the very symbol behind which all the hidden cities gathered their strength.
“We pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the past glory and the ideals for which it stands, one hundred Free Cities, under God, with liberty and justice for all native Americans.”
Rockson came in just as they were reaching the end of the symbolic fealty to a greater union. He threw his hand quickly over his heart as Rona came in breathlessly a few steps behind him. They had spent a peculiar night together in Rona’s elaborately feminine and sensual bedroom. The two of them had been lovers for years—she, beautiful, five-foot-ten of red-haired wildcat who could allow no man to tame her except Ted Rockson. Rona, although she disguised her affections for him with wisecracks and an occasional punch at his quickly dodging head, was hopelessly in love with the Doomsday Warrior. But Rock, though he cared deeply for her and had had many a wild night in her golden arms, her long red hair covering his chest and face in a rainbow of sensuality, had never been “in love” with her. Then, six months ago, he had met Kim Langford, daughter of the man who was now running for president of the U.S., and had fallen head over heels for her. They had been cellmates in a Russian brainwashing factory where both were about to be turned into brain-pudding—until Rockson had been able to break out, with some late but welcome help from a helicopter load of freefighters. Rock had been able to fight clear of the Red Pavlov City, virtually destroying it in the process. He had traveled with Kim for several weeks and the two had fallen more and more deeply in love. But Kim had decided that she had no choice but to return to search for her father, Charles Langford. Rock’s head was still filled with images of her—her fragile almost childlike face, her ivory-white skin and her body—the most beautiful Rockson had ever touched. The images haunted him every second.
Willis’s thunderous gavel roused the assembled citizens and representatives of Century City to order. He coughed several times, pumped his chest up, and then began. “Now, everyone knows this is a momentous occasion. As meaningful as that day centuries ago, in 1776, when men just like us vowed to overthrow their oppressor. Now, a new Convention is being called A Re-Constitutional Convention, at which a new America will be born.” The audience cheered wildly, stamping their feet and whistling, fingers in teeth, as was the style at most Century City gatherings. “With organization across the country and a new president and Congress to lead us, with generals and synchronized attacks, our country has its first real chance in over a hundred years of blood and pain to win back its precious homeland.”
Everyone’s eyes were bright with fire. The fire of righteousness, of knowing one’s enemies, and of being willing, nay, happy, to die for the principles and the beliefs that set them apart from the barbarians of the Planet Earth. The words of Willis were like a fine liquor, harsh, biting. The people had been waiting, dreaming for years for this moment. Rona glanced over at Rock, who stood several feet away, his eyes intent on the Council president. She felt a confused mixture of anger and desire. She had felt his coldness during the night. Even as their bodies merged and undulated in the most supreme of mortal pleasures, she had felt that his mind, his heart, were somewhere else. What could have changed? Could there be another woman? Here? In Century City? She’d like to find out who, she’d rip the bitch’s hair from her cheating head. Rona’s eyes glowed violently as her fantasy of betrayal filled her beautiful eyes.
Willis’s voice began growing a little raspy. His age was beginning to show. At eighty-four, even the fieriest of orators was beginning to lose a little steam. He had been around in the days when C.C. was just a big hole in the ground. His parents had both died within years of his birth—cancer. The life expectancy for the original survivors had been fifty years, and then some form of cancer or lymphatic disturbance almost always ended people’s lives, taking them out of the postwar ball game. Willis had been one of the lucky children. He lived. Out of the first and second generations, seventy percent were born dead or severely mutated—with extra arms or legs, two heads, scales, or even, in a few cases, fins. Fortunately these all perished within a year or two at most. It was as if the gene pool of America was going wild, churning out every conceivable experiment in cross-genetic breeding and mutation in an attempt to give the race new abilities to survive. By Rockson’s time, three and four generations down the line, the survivor-genes were taking dominance over the self-destruct genes. Americans, at least the freefighters and those who lived out in the wilds and not as slaves behind the Red fortresses, were bigger, tougher, and more able to withstand any calamity from high radiation to disease than any generation before.
But even the strong must grow old . . . Willis leaned forward on the dais, resting himself from the emotional exertion of the night. He paused dramatically and reached inside his jacket, pulling out a white envelope, which he held up in front of the audience.
“I will read the letter I received from Charles Langford.” Charles Langford, the second most famous or infamous man in America, depending on which side you were on. Langford had traveled the nation for years—on mule, motorcycle, on foot, on anything he could get his hands on. He traveled from one freefighting city to another, often only learning of the location of the next one as he came close to each new place. The hidden cities ranged in size from just several hundred people clothed in hardly more than rags to such technological marvels as Century City. Langford quickly established a name for himself as he went from farm to town to hunting village, meeting and telling the people what could be done—what must be done to reclaim America.
“Hello, I’m pleased to meet you,” he’d say to each new face. “I’m Charles Langford, and I’m running for president of the United States, and I’d like your vote.” Before the first election had even been held everyone had already pledged to vote for him. But now the real election was here, for president and for congress, at a location in Wyoming that only Willis himself knew and would reveal only to the four delegates chosen to make the trek.
Willis began reading the letter from Langford. “Five score years ago the rule of the greatest tyranny of one state over another began in an atomic day of infamy and megadestruction. Never were so many enslaved by so few, never did a nation so high fall so low so quickly. A reign began that according to the conquerer is to ‘last for ten thousand years.’ But far worse than the physica
l ruination and the mutations was the decline of the American soul. When the spirit rots, so the man must soon wither away. But still brave bands of Americans fought on, not willing to give their minds and souls to the Red grinding machine. All over America, underground rebel groups clung together, first for survival, then for attack, and at last for vengeance. But still we are alone, like small islands in a sea of blood, unable to come together. Gentlemen, ladies who are reading this letter, I say unto you, a house divided cannot stand—the day of reckoning is at hand.” Willis stopped for a moment as he felt suddenly dizzy, his heart pounding with the excitement of the moment. He took a quick sip of water from the glass that was always placed on the inside shelf on the podium and continued:
“It is now within our power to fight back—and win. The land has not changed, it is still ours. It cries out every morning, every night, as the sun passes overhead and looks down in tears. It cries out for the invader to be tossed out like so much rubbish onto the bonfire of history. Let the enemy, the Red Empire, feel the flames of our will, let its skin begin to peel and blister from these words.” The audience of toughened fighters mixed in with the civilian workers of the city broke into spontaneous shouting and applause. Never had they heard such stirring words. This man wasn’t advocating a new plan of attack or giving them a pep talk, Langford was telling them that the whole kit-and-kaboodle was theirs to go out and take back. Rock too, felt himself stirred, emotions filling his heart as deep as the feelings he had for Kim.
“These are the new days—days of the freefighter, days of a resurrected America. There are now over a hundred freefighting towns or cities in our country. Most of you only know the location of four or five of those closest to you. And so far this has been a necessity, to avoid total destruction by the Reds. But a new day must begin. A day when we no longer hide but can walk in our own valleys, and climb our own mountains without fear of death. A day of cooperation with one another, of government, of a military council that can direct coordinated strikes against the enemy. It is through this combined strength, through the use of all our minds and bodies, that we will be victorious.” Willis paused again to catch his breath. Even from the back of the room, Rockson could see that the old man was having problems. He could sense the sick, the wounded, feel the aura of darkness around them. Willis’s skin seemed to be taking on a chalky pallor. He wiped his brow several times and continued reading.
