by Ryder Stacy
Rockson glanced over at the mountain man and noticed a trickle of red dripping from his long black beard.
“Ed, you’re hit,” Rock yelled. The mountain man put a hand up to his face—it came back wet.
“Just nicked meself shaving, Rock,” he laughed. It was a flesh wound—Ed would survive, Rock thought, feeling the throbbing pain of his shoulder. They were taking the Reds out—but it wasn’t good enough. Even if just one Russian slug got them for every ten they handed out—they’d still be dead by the time it was all over. And Rockson didn’t feel like dying. Not today.
“I got an idea,” he said suddenly. “We need an edge, and I think I know what it is. Pull out your alumnatarp,” Rock snapped. The heat shields, which both men had been using until the attack, had fallen back on top of their packs. Rock smoothed out the metallic-coated cloth until it was flat. Above them the parakites seemed to be regrouping for some new tactic their commander was screaming out orders for. Mt. Ed followed Rockson’s lead, not quite sure what the Doomsday Warrior had in mind. Within a few seconds both of them had a shiny mirrorlike piece of material in their hands nearly three-foot square.
“I think I suddenly see what you got in mind,” the mountain man said, as the sun bounced down off the bright material and into his eyes, making them squint and water.
“You got it pal,” Rock said, aiming the square up at the sun and then tilting it slightly until the rays were being bounced back up at the massing parakite force. “We’ll give them a little more light so they can see us better,” Rock said, holding the stretched-out gleaming fabric in one hand and his Liberator in the other.
“You smart, Rock, plenty smart,” Mt. Ed said softly. “Wish I thought of it—makes me feel sorta dumb.”
“You kidding—you brought the damn things along,” Rock laughed, as the kites came in, whistling a .55mm death song. Their commander’s big move, Rock could see instantly, was to have them come in one at a time, about fifty feet apart—presumably so they wouldn’t tangle each other up as they had a penchant for doing. So much the better.
They let the lead kite soar down like an eagle that had just spotted its prey until it was about two hundred feet away—then both men aimed their squares of mirror fabric at the oncoming death-dealer. The blinding beams of light converged at the same second on the Red’s snarling face. What was happening? He couldn’t see. Everything burning, his eyes on fire. Where was he? Where was the ground? The commando threw his hand over his face, trying to find protection from the blinding light—but there was none to be found. Where was he—where was— The parakite slammed into the ground with the force of a spear, burying the would-be Russian killer headfirst up to his shoulders, smashing his skull into so many brain-splattered fragments.
“It works,” Mt. Ed yelled in delight.
“ ’Course it works,” Rock grinned back, thanking the watchful American deities above that it did.
As each new kite came flying down, its .55mm pouring out torrents of death, Rock and Mt. Ed aimed their squares of aluminized tarp onto the Red driver’s face. Then they blasted away as the craft went out of control. Within a minute they had taken out half the attack force—broken bodies marinating in their own pools of blood littered the prairie, their once firm and graceful parakites now nothing but ripped and shattered pieces of garbage.
The airborne commander, Lieutenant Karnovski, was livid with rage. How dare these two puny rebels knock out half his force of elite airmen? His men were trained, top of the line—not some pig farmers from Poland. These two fools below didn’t have the goddamned right to succeed like this. It was luck—that was all—blind luck. He bellowed out commands to the remaining eighteen men.
“We will come in in one long line—that way they won’t be able to focus those damned mirrors or whatever they’re using on us. Whichever man takes them out—he will be my second-in-command,” the lieutenant screamed. “Formation five—immediately.” The parakites pulled up and around in a wide circle nearly half a mile from Rock and the mountain man.
“They’re leaving, Rock,” Mt. Ed said, starting to rise.
“Not yet, my friend,” Rock said softly, knowing the Reds as he knew the wastelands of America itself—treacherous, murderous, not ready to give up until either the attacker or the prey lay dead. Mt. Ed reloaded his mini-cannons as Rockson slammed another banana clip into the Liberator. Far off Rockson saw some dark clouds brewing, heading in their direction. But it would take an hour for them to arrive—and by that time everything would have been decided.
The remaining parakites strung themselves out in a long line nearly a quarter-mile long and came in at the commander’s signal. He flew in the center of the attack, white lightning bolts painted beneath his black craft, screaming orders in every direction to his men to tighten up or spread out more. At a thousand feet he gave the order to begin firing. Nineteen .55mm machine guns opened up, unleashing endless streams of glowing slugs, all of them inexorably winding their way toward the two Americans.
Rock and Mt. Ed focused their alumna-mirrors up at the Red death birds trying to create confusion, panic. Rock found one man’s eyes almost instantly on the right flank—he veered off sharply to one side, slamming into the closest kite. Both twisted away from the oncoming attack force, tangled in a final death embrace as they plummeted into instant corpses below. Down the rest of the line came, firing puffs of fire and smoke, gaining speed every second.
“The commander!” Rock suddenly yelled to Mt. Ed. “The guy in the middle with the lightning—get him.” They both turned their squares of sun-briliance toward the black-helmeted leader, his parakite about twenty feet ahead of the wave. Far below he saw the two faces in his sights. He reached for the trigger—blind! He couldn’t see—the damned mirrors. He dove suddenly, trying to lose them, but the pools of light stayed on him, filing his vision with an unpenetrable brilliance. He pulled the trigger, firing madly off into infinity, praying that he hit them.
As the lieutenant came soaring in, wobbling and twisting wildly, Rock and Mt. Ed both got him in their sights. The mountain man let his blunderbuss fire with a thunderous roar as the Doomsday Warrior held his finger on the trigger until the entire clip had unloaded into the sky. The slugs tore through the hot air like a migration of birds searching for hell—they found Kamovski. Nearly fifteen of Rock’s clip slammed into and through the Red’s chest and stomach, dissecting him quite sloppily down the middle. His internal organs spewed out below, whipping back in the wind onto the faces of the flyers on each side and behind him. Mt. Ed’s load of death caught the commander square in the neck, severing his head like a guillotine. The headless body, spraying blood like a fountain from the opened neck, flipped from its perch on the parakite and spun through the air, a ghastly, unrecognizable piece of mutilated meat, slamming onto the parched earth below, which greedily sucked down the hot red blood.
The rest of the death squadron suddenly panicked. They squawked over their throat mikes to one another, unsure of who was in charge or what to do. Someone made a decision. The entire remaining force—just fifteen of an original forty pulled sharply up and around to the left. They turned and headed off, never looking back.
Rock and Mt. Ed stood up, surveying the destruction they had wrought. Bodies lay everywhere, as if the birds of the sky had suddenly committed mass suicide. Each corpse lay in a spreading pool of its own blood—terribly red and bright against the hard white earth. The two Americans got their packs together and soon headed off—west, dead west. Within minutes vultures began circling in the pink-tinged sky, as storm clouds rumbled threateningly several miles away, their large shadows moving across the land like the face of Armageddon. The vultures slowly descended on the warm corpses, first tentatively then furiously ripping away at the still warm flesh. Soon it became a maddened flood of the ugly gray and black carrion-eaters, their long, sharp, hooked beaks just right for slicing up meat. The birds of the dead feasted away on the Russian birds whose feathers had been shorn by the two sol
itary figures, now just dots on the shimmering horizon.
Twenty-Three
The floating sailship loomed suddenly upon them as if out of nowhere. Immense ballooning sails of the sheerest substance pulled the craft across the plains at forty knots, silently moving, like the wind itself.
“What the—” Mt. Ed yelled, lifting one of his blunderbusses toward the glowing mutations that stood in the bow.
“No, don’t,” Rock commanded sharply, putting his hand over the barrel and pushing the rifle down.
“But Rock, they—”
“They’re the reason we’ve come, my friend,” the Doomsday Warrior said firmly, staring at the rapidly approaching desert craft with wide eyes. So they did exist. The goddamned Glowers were not just a legend. Well, he had never heard that they had killed an American—just Reds. He’d have to trust them.
The Glowers on the port side threw a large net over the edge as the energy ship came bearing down on the two men.
“They want us to grab hold,” Rock yelled to Mt. Ed who stood, looking confusedly at the approaching craft. He had never seen anything like it and appeared almost hypnotized. “Snap out of it, man,” Rock bellowed in Ed’s cauliflower-sized ear. “Grab hold of the netting as they go by. You got me?”
“Yeah, Rock, yeah,” the bear of a man said, slinging his rifle back around his shoulder where it banged against the other three. They both waited, tensing their legs to jump as the nearly hundred-foot-long ship, pulsing with crackling charges of electricity, came upon them. Suddenly it was there, right by them, ripping by only feet away. Rock leaped out and landed squarely on the netting that felt soft, almost plasticlike. He set one hand firmly and spun around to check on his companion.
The big mountain man was in trouble. His right foot was tangled in the webbing, while his left hand just barely held on to the net. He had somehow fallen halfway backwards so he was bent over, his head slowly drifting down toward the rapidly moving hard-packed earth. Rock swung forward, wrapping one leg around several weaves of the net, and grabbed hold of Mt. Ed’s other hand. Straining with every ounce of his mutant strength, Rock slowly pulled the nearly quarter-ton trapper back up toward the webbing. At last Mt. Ed reached forward and grabbed hold of some of the plastic rope. With his own tremendous strength he raised himself up and set his other foot into the bottom of the netting.
“Owe you on that one, Rock,” he said with a sheepish grin.
“Hey, you’re the one who pulled me from the atomic barbecue, remember?” Rock smiled, as he pulled himself up and over the side of the Glower ship. Waiting on deck for him was a greeting committee of six of the pulsating blue creatures. Rockson was taken aback at seeing their organs and blood all pumping on the outside of their bodies—but he could instantly sense a beauty beneath the apparent hideousness.
“GREETINGS, ROCKSON,” a voice said, suddenly appearing in the center of his mind.
“What the—” he muttered, as Mt. Ed half fell onto the deck of the rapidly moving ship, which was already sweeping around in a wide arc and heading back into the vast emptiness of the burning plains. He stood up behind Rock, eyes wide in fear and fascination.
“THERE IS NO NEED FOR SPEECH. OUR MINDS CAN REACH YOURS. WE TAKE YOU TO THE ONES YOU SEEK—KIM AND THE PRESIDENT.”
“You have—,” Rock began speaking and then fully realized what the Glowers were saying. “YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE? ARE THEY SAFE?” the Doomsday Warrior asked with his thoughts.
“YES, THEY ARE WITH US. THE PRESIDENT IS CLEANED OF THE POISON. BUT KIM—SHE NEEDS YOUR HELP, ROCKSON.”
“HOW CAN I HELP? WHO ARE YOU? WHAT—”
“ONE QUESTION AT A TIME,” the voice answered, Rock could swear with just the slightest trace of humor in the tone. “YOU CAN HELP BY TAKING US INTO HER MIND. SHE HAS BEEN WOUNDED IN HER PSYCHE AS WELL AS HER BODY. SHE NEEDS THE FORCE, THE POWER OF YOUR LOVE—THE LOVE BETWEEN YOU—TO BRING HER FROM HER DARKNESS. AS TO WHO WE ARE,” the voice continued, the six Glowers ten feet away in front of Rock and Mt. Ed, standing absolutely still, their bodies brightening and dimming in unison as the thoughts were sent out to the two Americans, “WE ARE WHO YOU THINK WE ARE—THE GLOWERS—AS YOU CALL US. WE HAVE EXISTED FOR NEARLY A CENTURY, SINCE THE END OF THE WAR. OUR ANCESTORS WERE ASTRONAUTS—AMERICAN ASTRONAUTS MANNING A SPACE STATION WHEN THE BOMBS WENT OFF. THE RADIATION THAT SHOT UP INTO SPACE MIXED WITH THE INCOMING COSMIC ENERGY OF THE COLLECTIVE GALAXIES—AND WENT THROUGH THEM—TWELVE WOMEN AND TWELVE MEN. IT ALTERED THEIR PHYSICALITY INSTANTLY, MAKING THEM GLOW AND NOT NEED FOOD ANY LONGER. THEY RETURNED TO EARTH AND CRASH-LANDED OUT HERE.” One of the Glowers swept its arm across the prairie that flew by the sailship, as if demonstrating the words.
Rock and Mt. Ed listened with their jaws hanging open, as the voice once again appeared in their minds. “THE ORIGINAL ONES BRED AND HAD CHILDREN—US. THEN THEY DIED WITHIN FIVE YEARS. WE ARE WHAT’S LEFT—THERE ARE FORTY-THREE OF US. WE NEITHER BREED NOR DIE—WE ARE—ONE.”
“WHY DO YOU HELP US?” Rock asked.
“WE HAVE WAITED MANY YEARS—WE HAD CHOSEN NOT TO INTERVENE—BUT NOW—THINGS CHANGE. YOU WILL BE TOLD ALL SOON. NOW WE MUST ATTEND TO OUR SHIP. WE HAVE HOURS TO GO. YOU MUST REST. YOU WILL HAVE MUCH TO DO, ROCKSON. MUCH.” The voice stopped and instantly the Glowers split off in all directions, as they adjusted the energy sails for the coming night. Rock looked up, admiring their handiwork and the towering mast that held the sail, when he realized they were actually two billowing nearly invisible sheets. One seemed to be catching the wind, but the other, just feet behind the first and made of an even more translucent material—and aimed up at the rising moon and the few twinkling stars—seemed to be catching the very rays and waves coming from space. Rockson swore he could see the faintest traces of red and purple sparks running across the surface of the second sail as it trapped the very pulsations of the universe.
“Damn, these creatures is strange, ain’t they, Rock?” the mountain man asked with a certain trace of nervousness in his throat that Rockson had never heard before.
“I’m sure they mean us no harm,” the Doomsday Warrior reassured Big Ed. But God knows what sort of plans they do have in store for us, he thought to himself.
The two Americans wandered, unchecked, up to the bow. The Glowers throughout the ship made a wide berth as they came by. Obviously there could be no physical contact between the two species. Though the Glowers seemed benevolent enough—so far—their glowing bodies obviously didn’t partake of the neighborliness. Rock had the feeling that even his own mutant strength would have little chance against the crackling blue energy that circled them like a halo of lightning.
From the bow, Rock and Mt. Ed watched fascinated as the ship flew through the night, just feet above the surface of the wastelands they traveled across. They skimmed across dunes, across vast expanses of nothing but black cactus and rock, across fields of bomb craters that stretched for miles. To the north they could see immense volcanic eruptions from some of the craters that had angered the earth—making her send red-hot vomit of lava and toxic gas back up to the wounded surface, which she been spitting out since the very day of the war, a hundred years ago. Far off they could see the rivers of molten earth, undulating forward, glowing like chains of neon pearls in the black horizon. Above them the sky put a lightshow of rainbow magnetic waves. The aurora—but out here dropping, dropping down to the very earth, so that the flickering curtains of the sheerest luminescence reached from the very dirt up the farthest heavens, draping the entire terrain in a cloak of electric jewels.
The ship went right into the curtains of rippling color, and Rock could feel his hair stand on end as the static charges swept over him. It felt as if his entire body was humming with an ultra high frequency—but no pain. “SOON, ROCKSON—SOON.” He heard the voice again and looked around, but none of the Glowers were in sight. Just as the sun was beginning to claw herself back up onto the bloody battlefield of day, the Glower’s village sprang into view. The ship slowed, the Glowers s
lowly dropping the sails—the energy sail first—then the wind sail. They drifted on a few hundred yards, perfectly balanced on the great steel ball that sat beneath the ship acting as some sort of air rudder, until they were at the very edge of the strange assortment of geodesic domes. The ship came to a full stop near two others and about twenty Glowers ran over with long, flexible staffs, which they leaned against the side of the craft, somehow holding it up.
With the Glowers in the lead, Rock and Mt. Ed followed them down a gangplank onto the reddish-colored, hard earth.
“COME, ROCKSON—THERE IS LITTLE TIME,” the voice said with some nervousness—the first time Rock had noticed any emotion in the telepathic communication. Rock was led to the largest dome, while Mt. Ed was held back by two Glowers who stood in his path.
“What the—” he began hollering, reaching for one of his rifle cannons.
“It’s okay,” Rock said soothingly to the big man. “I know it’s all right. Trust me.”
