by Ryder Stacy
“I implore you, my fellow Americans, to not take this letter lightly. I know that there are grave risks involved for you to come to this convention—death itself. But you must all come. Every single freefighting city must be represented for this new regeneration to take place. I have spent my life working toward this day. It is the fruition of my dream to see you all gathered together—to share our experiences and our strengths. It is not for myself that I wish this. I am running to be the first president of the Re-United States. But if I am not elected—if all I have succeeded in doing is gathering you all to begin anew—then I could die a happy man. The date of the convention is September twelfth of this year. The location is secret, known only to the elected leader of your city or town. He will reveal it to those chosen.
“I wait for you, men and women of America. God willing every one of you will arrive safely and we can set to to work on the long, hard task that awaits us. Good luck and God be with you. Signed, Charles L. Langford.” Willis ended the letter and let his hand sink slowly to the podium. He shared the explosive excitement that he felt welling up in the assembly. But something else—a foreboding. If it all worked, it would be the greatest day America had ever known. But if it failed—if the convention was taken prisoner by the Russians—it would mean the destruction of many, even all, of the Free Cities. The destruction of the only chance America had left. The future was beckoning with an outstretched bloody hand.
“I think the letter pretty much speaks for itself,” the Council president said. There were few times that Willis could not find additional words to add to any proclamation, but this time he knew he would only sound foolish and trite were he to try and elaborate on Langford’s poetic call to arms. “The only question, then,” he went on, “is just which four citizens of Century City will be the ones to go?” There was a sudden and loud silence, filled with an electric tension, as the entire audience—now nearly five hundred people, jamming every aisle, hanging out the doors of the wide, oval-shaped Council Chamber, looked at one another. Suddenly people began shouting out names, one after another.
“Tina Williamson,” a voice said from the front.
“Garth Patricks.”
“Sanford Ferguson.”
“Dean Keppel.”
“Ted Rockson,” at the mention of which the chamber filled with deafening roar that made Rock look sheepishly down at the floor, but filled him with a great pride—a million times more than that acclaim he had received for fighting and destroying the enemy. Now they were placing their trust in him, their highest trust, their lives.
“Hold on! hold on!” Willis yelled, banging the gavel down like a sword on top of the shiny red-toned podium. He felt a little surge of glee now that the crowd was back to the usual bickering and jockeying. This was the world he knew, and he knew just how to deal with it. “Slow down, now,” he intoned firmly, “we must decide this in a calm and orderly manner. First there will be nominations, then seconds, then voting. We will assume that those of you who are here are a representative enough selection of Century City to make the voting legal.” It was true, it did seem like the whole spectrum of humanity was there—fighting men, cooks from the great kitchen, engineers, with their pencil-marked smocks, and working men, with their jeans and flannel shirts soaked in grease and oil from tending the vast network of underground machinery and power units of the city. The melting pot of America lived on, a stew of colors and names and accents and dress. Here, people could still be unique and individualistic, and this was the greatest freedom of all.
Over a hundred names were nominated, including Rockson and most of the Rock team—Detroit Green, Master Chen, McCaughlin, even Archer, the seven-foot mute who had just joined Century City within the last year, after Rock had saved him from an imminent death in quicksand. Archer, with his ever present crossbow cradled on his arm and his quiver of two-foot hunting arrows slung behind seemed quite amused by the honor and kept laughing silently, smacking his lips together and moving his tongue without a sound coming out.
Most of the nominees were the most famous personalities of the city, in different fields—politicians, newspaper writers, heads of factories, artists, educators, even some of the more well-known actors of the theater company that regularly performed to appreciative audiences. Dr. Shecter, who stood off to the side in his floor-length lab coat, watched the proceedings puffing on his oddly curved pipe, which seemed almost an appendage to his hand. He waved his hand to the crowd when his name came up and nodded curtly. But he and they knew it was an honorary mention. The world outside was far too harsh for any but the toughest to survive in.
When the nominating process had finally been completed, Willis began to start the voting procedure, but a voice suddenly piped out from the crowd and cut sharply through the fog of talk.
“I think I should say one thing,” the voice said. A somber shape moved slowly down the middle aisle, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea. It was Rath—head of intelligence of C.C., a tough man and a realist. He walked up to the podium and Willis stepped aside. As head of security and one of the five most important men in the place, Rath’s authority to speak to any point was unquestioned. Rath smiled wanly to Willis and addressed the crowd. Rath had the vaguest resemblance to a weasel, with his long, angular face and small mouth that seemed to suck each word back in as he spoke it, as if he might be revealing something top secret. He was not universally liked.
“My fellow citizens,” he began crisply and the room quieted. “It is well and good for you to pick your favorite to go on this crucially important venture—who you think is the brightest, the freest, the best-looking,” the crowd chuckled at Rath’s obvious reference to Lloyd Holston, the dandy around C.C., with his coiffeured hair and Beau Brummel outfits—even he had received a nomination. “But I must remind you of one thing. It is hell out there. A living hell. I think you all know that, but, somehow, in the midst of all this democratic enthusiasm,” he said the words with the slightest of sneers as if further democratization of America would somehow only make his job more difficult, “you seem to have forgotten it. Well, I’m here to remind you again. This is not some little trek out a few miles to gather meat or wood. This isn’t even an attack on a Red convoy fifty, a hundred miles away, then tear-ass back to C.C. through the brush. No—we’re talking a thousand miles or more. Most of you don’t even really know what it’s like out there. In our locale we’re not doing too badly. There are forests, brooks, wildlife all around us. But once you get into some of the heavier nuke zones to the north—I assure you—things are quite different. And quite horrible. There are creatures out there you haven’t seen in your darkest nightmares, deserts, swamps of the foulest putrescence, stretching for hundreds of miles, with fungus and growths that literally attack and consume human flesh. There are . . . but need I go on? I fear that once again some of you will think that I am over exaggerating. Rockson!” Rath yelled out to the back of the chamber. “I ask you as a man who has traveled throughout this ravaged land. Are my words true or not?” The crowd turned as one and looked at Rock, who met the thousand eyes upon him.
“I’m afraid every word is true. It’s indescribable out there. Only the toughest of you could survive.”
Rath looked out over the audience with a thin smirk. He had been vindicated by Rockson himself. They knew that the Doomsday Warrior didn’t lie . . . or exaggerate. He had no need to. Rath continued with even more vehemence than before.
“My point is just this. It’s well and good to have delegates who are truly representative of C.C.—women, youth, scholars, technical staff—but they’d be appetizers for some of our hungry American creatures who roam the wastelands.” He paused a second to let it all sink in, then said quickly, “I propose that Ted Rockson and three of his strongest men undertake this expedition—by acclamation!”
The audience erupted into pandemonium with equally large numbers yelling “Yes!” as screamed “No!” It was the inevitable question that has always brought democratic principl
es and the reality of survival into conflict. Rock was slightly surprised at Rath’s turnabout, as the man had been putting such pressure on him not to go just the day before—but it was true, every word of it. It wasn’t the time or place to be sending picnic invitations.
Willis quieted down the place and allowed an orderly debate to take place that lasted nearly five hours. Finally it was proposed that a compromise solution be taken in which Rock would pick his best man and the other two delegates would be chosen from among all of Century City’s citizens. The compromise passed and then votes were taken on a total of fifty candidates. At last, after they had been up nearly the entire night and consumed countless gallons of coffee the two were elected—Terry Shriver, the most influential woman in the city, one of the members of the Council itself and the head of the Economic Development Committee, and, Dean Keppel, considered by many to be the most educated and scholarly man of the subterranean city. The dean was the head of the Century City University, which produced nearly a hundred graduates each year. The university taught all the modern skills—computer, survival skills, plant and animal identification, weapons usage and production—as well as the old Liberal Arts standbys—English, biology, history and even Latin. Dean Keppel was a stern taskmaster, but those who graduated—and all did—were educated and taught to think for themselves. Keppel, a man in his mid-fifties, had a whitish-silver mustache and spoke with a Southern accent. Within Century City’s original tunnel-trapped group of survivors, there had been men and women of many races, colors, and creeds. When they had built the tunnel into something resembling a city, they had often grouped into units similar in some way to themselves. These units had maintained a kind of ethnic consciousness, keeping the old traits, life styles and accents alive. Thus, McClaughlin with his Scottish brogue and heavy-drinking ways was descended from the Scottish-Irish subculture of the city, while Dean Keppel had grown up in what was called the “Little South” section of the city—Level 17, where those who identified with that particular persuasion had gone to live. These ethnic groupings, with their own style of dress and mannerisms, with their own foods and holidays, even parades, and, of course, their accents, which they not only kept but fostered and tended like a lingual garden—kept the spirit of a people, a way of life from the old America alive.
Rock was glum about the choices of Dean Keppel and Terry Schriever as delegates. Were they physically and emotionally strong enough to make the arduous journey? Rock would be allowed just one man to take with him to protect these two. Who should it be? Who was the toughest?
Eight
The sun rose shakily over the Colorado Rockies. The night had been long and hard, hard as a tomb. The acid rains had come and spewed out their fuming black droplets as big as grapes. Rain that melted, ate, everything that it touched. Throughout the surrounding peaks and valleys corpses lay, black and smoldering, fused into grotesque mockeries of living flesh, with their heads and flesh and bones all run together like plastic left too long out in the sun. Here and there a creature screamed out in mortal agony—its legs gone, its hide dotted with black, hairless sores where the drops had hit. Soon, the predators would prowl and would strike, putting the hideous half-dead animals out of their misery. Thus, even death could be merciful, even the carnivore a blessing to some who would end between its jaws.
A smoky mist covered the lowlands, foul and putrid, the still rising steam of the acid rains pungent and burning in the nostrils. And from out of the mists, the tallest structure on earth, black and ominous, oozing evil from every steel pore, rose into the orange dawn. The Monolith—headquarters of the KGB in America—a vision so terrifying to the surrounding slave workers and farmers in their little shanty towns that they were barely able to look at the monstrous structure. It towered over them always, a reminder of their powerlessness and of the fate that awaited them were they to displease their Russian masters.
From the eightieth floor of the black steel and glass structure, Colonel Killov, commander of the Blackshirts, looked out over the land of postwar America—the land around what had once been Denver, now his seat of power. Others rejoiced in beauty, what little of it there was to find, but Killov found his pleasure in ugliness, darkness, and death. He watched with serene pleasure as the lingering mists from the acid rains swept across the American slaves’ huts and lean-tos off in the distance. He absorbed the sickly orange glow of the sun as it hobbled over the mountains to the east, a plodding ball of dull fire hardly able to compete with the darkness of the world. He could see it all from up here, through his huge tinted picture windows that ran the length of the entire floor on every side—his home and operations center—the clouds, the gray mountains, the wastelands to the south, charcoal-colored, devoid of green, red, blue.
“Yet another day,” the skull-faced commander mumbled to himself, cracking open yet another packet of Arthovalium—his sixth dose in the last twelve hours. His hand trembled as he put the big pill in his mouth and swallowed it down with some tepid water left sitting on his black marble desk from the night before. He would have to do something about this increasing drug habit of his. He didn’t like to think about it—he was taking so many pills now. It was not that he cared about the rightness or wrongness of it, but he couldn’t die. That was all. The colonel had too much to do. Destiny had brought him to this peak of power for a reason. “Yes, I will cut down my doses and eat. But not today. Today there is much to do.” He let himself gaze out the window for a few more minutes—one of his few pleasures—watching the wounded sun crawl out of the grave of night. Gray etching itself on black. He craned his neck, as below hundreds of Ziv staff cars and motorcycles began pulling up in the immense parking lot off to one side of the Monolith.
Over nine thousand men and women worked in the KGB Center, called the “Death House” by the Americans. The round, eighty-story building was set in the center of a vast KGB fortress, with its own military base and factory complex. About five miles away was the Red Army fortress—separate, unwelcome. The KGB demanded its own space. It did not want to mix. The meaning of KGB was fear—to watch over the Soviet military as well as the American slaves. Mixing meant familiarization and friendship. This could not be. Not the Blackshirts. Their black uniforms and red death’s head medallions showed that they were not ordinary—but immortal, superhuman. An image had been created of supreme strength and violence, and it was believed—by all. And that was how it must be. For fear only worked when it was believed.
Within the walls of the Monolith, myriad functions were carried out. From information fed in from military operations, informers, spydrones, and the KGB’s own network of intelligence operatives, a comprehensive picture was drawn of rebel activity and trouble spots around the country. The intelligence units took up the bottom twenty-five floors, filled with maps—floor-to-ceiling, contoured maps of the entire country, flashing with multicolored lights to designate types of disturbance. Green lights for environmental dangers—from earthquakes to radioactive mists—red lights for rebel attacks, orange lights for possible freefighting cities, and blue lights for all the other KGB centers in the United States. Messengers constantly ran from floor to floor as their superiors yelled out orders. The sheer enormity of spying on such a vast country as the U.S. was a constant struggle. There were always problems, always emergencies—breakdowns of equipment, rebellions, sabotage of factories and the Red fortresses by the underground. The Red Army were fools, barely capable of going out and capturing a few rebels, let alone understanding the whole picture—the emerging patterns. That work was for the KGB.
On the next fifteen floors were the counterespionage “services”—the ruling bureaucracy that sent out the Death Squads to liquidate all those thought to be troublemakers. There were no laws they had to obey—they were the law, the judge, the jury, and the executioner. They reigned over the country like barbarian warlords of the past.
From the forty-first to the sixty-fourth floor were the communications networks, linking all KGB centers in the count
ry with Mother Russia, as well as with their comrades in arms around the world. From Timbuktu to London, from Paris to Tokyo. Radio, laser systems, and giant radar dishes on the roof slowly turning their fifty-foot cones followed linking satellites ten thousand miles above the atmosphere. Information was sent and received from virtually every corner of the world. The wires buzzed with energy as the global Soviet Empire talked to itself.
On the top fifteen floors were the administrative offices of the top KGB officers. Here the rooms were huge and plush, with Persian rugs and flowing copper waterfalls. The elite of the elite—their death’s heads cast in solid gold—the most feared men in America ruled from here—Killov, Turgenov, Dashkov, Mukstadt.
Below the ground floor, the original designers of the Monolith had built an additional ten stories down, pushing a good two hundred feet into the ground. Here, it was thought, just in case of counterattack, the structure could be used as a fallout shelter, and thus it was built with twenty-foot thick concrete reinforced walls, airlocks, self-contained oxygen supplies, and provisions for years. But the KGB had quickly found a much better use for these subterranean floors—a use more fitting to their line of work: torture chambers. The floors beneath the Monolith were equipped with over five hundred cells, in case large-scale interrogations became necessary. The most advanced—and the most primitive—torture devices known to man were here, a laboratory of the implements of pain. From bamboo shoots inserted under fingernails, still effective on many American fortress workers, to sophisticated electrode devices, which when activated to the genitals were capable of producing exquisite pain.
