Doomsday Warrior 03 - The Last American

by Ryder Stacy

  “All right, Rockson,” Ed said dubiously. “But I don’t like it—don’t like it one bit.” He sat down sullenly on the dirt, the rifle cradled across his leg, his eyes set firmly on the opaque wall through which Rockson had just dissappeared. “BETTER NOT MESS WITH MY LITTLE FRIEND THERE,” he thought out with all his might to the Glowers, squinting his eyes in total concentration.

  Inside the large dome, Rock stopped dead in his tracks. There—lying naked on the ground in the center of some bizarre painting—was Kim, and several feet away, seated cross-legged, one of the Glowers—this one of a distinctly purplish hue. Rock rushed toward the woman he loved, tears springing to his eyes as he saw how burnt her face and flesh were—her hair falling out—her eyes swollen shut. She barely breathed, her chest rising imperceptibly—she felt cold, very cold. He raised his hand to gently touch.

  “DO NOT TOUCH HER, ROCKSON,” the voice blasted into his skull, making him throw his hands over his ears and leap up.

  “I AM SORRY TO USE SUCH FORCE, BUT YOU CANNOT TOUCH HER NOW—SHE IS—VERY HURT.”

  “WHAT CAN I—WE DO?” Rock asked, never having felt so helpless in his life.

  “YOU CAN HELP HER, ROCKSON. THERE ARE WAYS. BUT FIRST YOU MUST CLEANSE YOURSELF. BECOME AS PURE AS YOU ARE CAPABLE OF BEING. WE KNOW YOU ARE A MAN OF GOOD HEART, A MAN OF MEDITATION AND INNER PURITY. GO TO THE SUN-SOURCE NOW, ROCKSON. CLEANSE YOURSELF—THEN WE MAY BEGIN. COME BACK IN TWO OF YOUR HOURS.” The voice stopped and the turquoise-colored Glower faded to a dull shine, remaining motionless. Rock walked outside, not looking at Kim. He understood. There was to be a battle. But not of men or guns or knives—a battle of souls, for her soul. And Rockson was going to be the one who would have to do battle.

  Twenty-Four

  There were a circle of them now—nearly thirty of the Glowers seated together, their legs crossed, their bodies throbbing blue, their organs pumping rapidly on the outside of their bodies as they prepared to send out their energies. They sat around Kim, naked, her arms folded across her perfect breasts. Rock walked back through the door—naked himself from his purification ceremony. He had sat for the full two hours in the direct sun, without water or shade, without clothes. He reached out to the sun, to the earth, for strength—for ultimate courage, and sank into a deep meditation. He came to when he heard them calling “ROCKSON—IT IS TIME.” Now was the moment of reckoning, and the Doomsday Warrior had never felt so frightened in his life—for he held, he knew without question—her very life in his hands.

  “YOU ARE PURIFIED,” the voice said as Rock entered the Great Dome—the center of the Glowers’ village.

  “AS PURIFIED AS I’M GOING TO GET,” Rock answered with his mind. They all thought to him, but the turquoise one seemed somehow to have the voice emanate from him. It pulsed even more brightly than the rest.

  “I AM THE TURQUOISE SPECTRUM,” the voice went on. ‘THE HEALING SPECTRUM. YOU MUST LIE DOWN BESIDE HER,” the voice commanded. Rock did so, walking over to Kim and pushing back the urge to touch her, to hold her with all his might. He lay down next to her, just inches away.

  “JOIN US NOW IN THE CIRCLE—WITH YOUR MIND,” the Turquoise Spectrum telepathed to him. “WE KNOW YOU ARE A STRONG MAN, TED ROCKSON. AN ALMOST FANTASTIC STRENGTH RESIDES IN YOU. IN YOUR MIND, AS WELL. WE HAVE TOUCHED YOUR THOUGHTS AND KNOW YOU ARE CAPABLE OF DOING WHAT IS NECESSARY.”

  “AND WHAT IS THAT?” Rock thought back, letting his arms and legs go limp as possible, breathing deeply.

  “YOU MUST JOIN WITH HER. WITH HER ESSENCE, HER VERY BEING, IN ORDER TO SAVE HER. WE HAVE DONE EVERYTHING WE CAN. HER BODY IS CAPABLE OF BEING CLEANSED OF THE DAMAGE—BUT SOMETHING IN HER DEEPEST CENTER IS RESISTING OR IS DAMAGED. YOU MUST GO IN AND BRING HER OUT. SHE IS LOST, ROCKSON—YOU MUST FIND HER.”

  “BUT HOW—HOW DO I DO THIS?” Rock asked a little nervous. “I’VE NEVER—”

  “DO NOT FEAR—WE WILL LEAD YOU.” The Turquoise Spectrum raised a glowing blue finger and pointed at a goblet several feet to Rock’s side. “DRINK!” Rock lifted the green porridgy liquid to his lips and took a deep gulp. The stuff was wretched, the worst thing he had ever tasted. But he kept it down and swallowed it, feeling it all the way to his stomach. He could feel the energy of all the Glowers around him. They were totally calm. Whatever they requested of him—he had to do. Never had he placed himself in someone else’s grasp this way—and there was something in him that didn’t like it—didn’t like it at all.

  Soon he felt the effects of the mescaline-mesquite mixture they had given him to drink. It hit his guts like an explosion. He felt as if he was melting, as if he had no substance—like the Glowers. They spoke to him soothingly and seemed to join with him inside his mind. He began hallucinating vividly, colors shifting, walls buckling. Kim, in the middle of the rippling room, seemed to swell and shrink.

  “THERE IS NO NEED TO HALLUCINATE,” the voice said. Suddenly he was with them. Part of them. He felt them—knew what it was like to be a Glower. It was beautiful. Without pain or hatred. Without the slightest trace of violent emotion. They were pure—pure of heart. Out of the most destructive, darkest forces ever unleashed on earth had been created this race of benevolent beings, who could set an example on how to live for the entire stupid human race.

  He was drifting energy. He was a breeze, a motion of swimming atoms. He was all places at once, within each of the Glowers, seeing what they were seeing, hearing what sounds they perceived. The images gathered into a giant spinning ball, with lines of reality shooting off everywhere. And he could see it all as one. Could perceive a million different planes of existence at once. And they were a new whole. It was as if his mind had been expanded to perceive on a macro-scale, lifted to a new level of evolutionary consciousness.

  He could feel the rays from the solar system hitting the atmosphere of the earth, could sense an immense tidal wave tearing across the Pacific Ocean. This was what the Glowers perceived every second of every day, he realized in awe. Their senses seemed to extend right into the planet itself, as he felt them picking up distant rock-plate shiftings far below the earth’s crust and seismic waves from the earthquake activity constantly ripping at the planet.

  They were like—like gods.

  “NOW YOU SEE,” the soothing voice of the Turquoise Spectrum said. “YOU SEE WHAT IT IS LIKE.”

  “IT’S BEAUTIFUL,” Rock answered back telepathetically. “IT’S BEYOND ANYTHING I’VE EVER DREAMT OF.”

  “TO BE WITH THE EARTH THIS WAY, TO FEEL ALL THINGS,” the Glowers now addressed him with their multitude of voice, blending into a whole—a perfect chord of multiple harmonies—“TO KNOW ALL THINGS IS TO NOT BE ABLE TO DO DAMAGE. HOW CAN ONE DAMAGE ANOTHER WHEN ONE WOULD FEEL THE PAIN OF THAT PERSON OR CREATURE? HOW CAN ONE DESTROY THE LAND WHEN ONE FEELS THE SOIL, GROWS IN THE BRANCHES OF THE TREES? WE ARE MUTANTS, BUT OUR WAY IS THE WAY OF ALL LIFE. THIS WE WISH TO TEACH TO YOU, TED ROCKSON. FOR YOURS IS A LIFE OF PROFOUND DESTINY WHAT YOU DO, WHAT YOU MAKE OCCUR WILL AFFECT THE FUTURE OF OUR PLANET. AND WE WISH VERY MUCH FOR THIS FRAGILE BALL TO SURVIVE. THERE IS MUCH TO BE DONE HERE AND IN THE UNIVERSE. EVIL MUST BE STOPPED—EVERYWHERE. LIFE MUST FLOURISH. AND WE—WE ARE THE GUARDIANS OF LIFE.”

  They lifted him high—up into the clouds and down into the dirt. He was with the birds soaring and then the worms crawling through a billion, billion tons of darkness. Then they pulled him back. The energy that was Ted Rockson and that of the Glowers seemed to spin around and around in the circle, as they all sat motionless. Faster and faster, like some sort of cyclotron of souls—and when they had reached a critical mass they flew into Kim—through her flesh into the very pores of her being.

  Suddenly he/they were in communion with Kim—inside her mind, her spirit. He groaned inwardly. She was grievously hurt, her cells dripping and bleeding inside, and he wanted to end the pain. He saw, through the Glowers’ eyes—the synapses of her nervous system—the connection to—another energy world—gray shadows. He could see auric images floating—rainbow bodies of
—the dead. He searched with the Glowers for her attachment to this world—it was gone. Where there should have been the long, winding tunnel of her synapse system to the living—was nothing. Her Shadow Body in this world—her Life Body, driven away by the blast.

  “RELAX, WE WILL LOOK—SHALL FIND—HER OTHER—AND REATTACH.” They drifted, thirty-two minds forming a new mind, like balloons above other worlds. Other worlds that even through the Glowers’ eyes Rockson could not comprehend. Worlds where the dead met the living,—where all things were possible and impossible—hard and soft, future and past. Then he felt the presence of her—of a vibrationlike essence that he knew was her. The Glowers felt his reaction and rapidly descended to the energy source. It was caught—trapped in a blast-created time warp, imprisoned between one moment and the next. They swooped down, and, concentrating all their energy at once, lifted her life body from out of its neutron-cage. They linked firmly with it and lifted back up—soaring, soaring back into the multidimensional skies, flying with psychic wings.

  They flew so high that Rock grew alarmed within the collective mind. Up into the blackness, till it seemed that even the stars were far below them. Then they dove, ripping down from out of the ethers into a brightness that grew and grew until it filled the heavens. And the Glowers were now pure energy-life coming down onto the surface even faster, accelerating to nearly the speed of light. At the last moment before impact, Rockson realized it was Kim they were about to fall into—Kim—with their cargo of her soul.

  Twenty-Five

  The sun rose like a brilliant pearl of the purest, most aching red Rockson had ever seen. The sky was alive with a glistening silverish color, as if the entire heavens were made from a mother-of-pearl shell. The aurora shot down spears of brilliant Day-Glow reds and oranges and violets. It was the beginning to a day in which surely anything must be possible. Rockson sat with his arms around Kim as they nuzzled together on a small rise in the flat earth off to one side of the Glowers’ village. It had been nearly a week since he and the Glowers had retrieved her life force from the netherworlds, and she seemed better everyday. The Glowers had immediately set to work healing her body, once her mind was whole—and already the blisters were gone and her hair had returned to its natural color. They were able, as they had done with her father, to literally pull the radiation from her cells, absorbing it into their own, which they could use as sustenance.

  She turned to him and said as soft as flower petals waving in the wind, “I want you Rock.” She leaned toward him and kissed his neck.

  “Are you strong enough to—I mean—”

  “A woman knows when she’s ready,” she smiled mysteriously. “I ache for you. You touched my mind—now touch my body. They go together, Rock. I’m burning, feel me.” She placed his strong hand over her full breasts, which seemed to swell at his touch.

  They spent the night together making slow, beautiful love. Her moans and words of love for Rock made him feel rich and alive, as strongly as the Glowers had. He realized as he moved insider her that for men and women—their lovemaking was the way they experienced the harmony of things—the higher units created out of the joining of different living things.

  He felt closer to her now than he ever had—now that their minds had linked, they seemed to have a kind of telepathic connection even without the Glowers’ help. They stared long into each other’s eyes and seemed to experience thoughts, sensations, through their eyes. They looked into each other’s eyes so deep that they felt they might fall forever into the colorless purity of their hearts—fall, swirling in the pleasures of the other, of love.

  But at last, as befalls all mortals, their pleasure came to an end. They rose as the sun rose above them higher and higher into the pink-tinged skies, with high purple wisps of volcanic smoke creating a violet mist high in the atmosphere. They walked back to the village hand in hand.

  “Rockson,” President Langford yelled out, now completely healed and bursting with activity. “I’ve worked out a whole plan of military coordination, Rock, with the many Free Cities, and some battle plans I think might give us a strategic edge over a number of Red fortresses. As the president I am also commander-in-chief, and I feel we must broaden our scope of attacks quickly. I’ll need your help, Rock, lots of it. I know of your great experience in battling the Reds, and also of the Particle Beam weapons you’ve told me about. Somehow I feel we have the key to the whole ball game here if we can just put it together. We must leave here soon—today, Rock, I—”

  A voice came suddenly into Rock’s head. It was the Turquoise Spectrum, Rock could recognize the energy waves now. “COME,” it said softly, but insistently. Rock excused himself from Langford and Kim and walked over to the Healing Dome. He entered and saw the thirty again seated in their motionless circle. He removed his boots and sat cross-legged in the only remaining spot. He closed his eyes and quickly linked up fully with them.

  Again they took him out, let him join their collective consciousness—their wholeness. He soared up into the skies and into the seas. They took him around the planet—he could see the Red generals in Moscow, planning their next lines of attack, could see the starving hordes on the Asian plains, the almost decimated peoples of Africa. The Glowers showed him the warlords ruling over their bloody domains throughout South and Central America, ruling with an iron fist, dispensing justice with bullets in the chest.

  They showed him the forests and the farms and the deserts—the ruined land, the wastelands running with sores, land that would never grow anything for centuries. They showed him the entire planet—its strengths and its ugliness—its beauty and its utter devastation. They let him see it all for better or worse, holding back nothing. They gave him a glimpse of what they had—ultimate knowledge. His mind spun like a maelstrom, sucking down everything in its path as they slowly let him reenter his physicality. He felt his body again—tightening his hands reassuringly beneath his grasp, feeling his lungs breathing and his heart pounding furiously as if he had just run a hundred miles without stopping.

  “NOW YOU SEE WHAT WE SEE, ROCKSON,” the voice of the Glowers said. “NOW YOU KNOW.”

  “NOW I KNOW,” he repeated telepathically. It was hard for him to deal with all they had shown him—so much, so much to absorb.

  “YOU MUST WIN, TED ROCKSON. WE ARE AGAINST VIOLENCE, BUT YOU SAW WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR EARTH. SOMEHOW SHE HAS STILL SURVIVED A GREAT WAR, SOMEHOW SHE LIVES, TRYING TO FIGHT HER WAY BACK—TRYING TO GROW AND TO EXPAND GROWTH. BUT THERE ARE FORCES AT WORK IN THE WORLD THAT ARE NOT CONTENT WITH JUST ALLOWING THE DAMAGE OF THE PAST TO EXIST—THEY WANT MORE—MORE DESTRUCTION. THEY WISH TO DESTROY HUMANITY AND TAKE THE WHOLE OF EARTH WITH THEM. THEY ARE PURE DEATH, ROCKSON, THE BLACKNESS—WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF THE LIFE FORCE.”

  Rock knew what they meant. They had shown him the stockpiles of nuclear weapons that still existed, shown him Colonel Killov plotting his exterminations, the hordes of untouchables that made up most of the planet.

  “YOU MUST STOP IT!” The voice of the Glowers came at him with the force of an explosion. “YOU HAVE THE TOOLS AT YOUR DISPOSAL TO WIN, ROCKSON, THOUGH YOU ARE VASTLY OUTNUMBERED BY WEAPONS AND MEN. WHEN YOU ENTERED KIM’S BEING YOU DID MORE THAN HELP HER—YOU OPENED UP YOUR TELEPATHIC ABILITIES. ALL HUMANS HAVE THIS POWER—BUT WE BELIEVE THAT MUTANTS LIKE YOURSELF, THE STAR-PATTERNED ONES, ARE CAPABLE OF NEARLY THE LEVEL OF TELEPATHY THAT WE ARE. YOUR ABILITY TO COME WITH US, TO JOIN OUR WHOLENESS, IS PROOF OF THAT. YOU AND KIM ARE FOREVER LOCKED IN YOUR INNER HEARTS. YOU WILL KNOW EACH OTHERS PAIN, WILL EXPERIENCE WHAT THE OTHER FEELS—NOT IN AN OBVIOUS WAY—BUT YOU WILL KNOW. ROCKSON—WHAT YOU KNOW CAN BE TAUGHT TO OTHERS. FIND THE STAR-PATTERNED MUTANTS IN EVERY FREE CITY—AND TEACH THEM TO RIDE THE ENERGY WAVES AS WE DO. IF A TELEPATHIC LINK COULD BE ESTABLISHED BETWEEN THE FREE CITIES IT WOULD GREATLY STRENGTHEN THEM, AND YOUR PRESIDENT’S DESIRES FOR A UNITED AMERICA AND COMMON MILITARY COMMAND COULD BE CLOSER TO REALIZATION.”

  “WHAT YOU ASK OF ME IS SO—” Rock thought back. “I HAVE
FOUGHT THE REDS AND WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT THEM—BUT THIS THING YOU HAVE SHOWN ME—I CAN BARELY WORK WITH IT MYSELF. IT DRAINS ME, MAKES ME FEEL HALF MAD WITH CONFUSION. THERE IS SO MUCH—”

  “YOU MUST DO THIS, ROCKSON. WITH TIME YOU WILL FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE WITH THESE ABILITIES. BUT YOU MUST USE THEM—PRACTICE THEM EVERY DAY. JUST AS YOUR BODY HAS BEEN HARDENED INTO STONE, NOW YOUR MIND MUST BECOME THE EAGLE—THE PURE ENERGY THAT FLIES AMONG THE STARS, AMONG MINDS. YOU HAVE FELT IT, ROCKSON. IT IS IN YOU—YOU CAN NEVER FORGET IT.”

  The collective voice paused, letting Rockson absorb its thoughts. Then it began again. “THERE IS EVIL IN THE AIR, FAR MORE THAN YOU COULD EVER SUSPECT. WE MUST ALL DO WHAT WE CAN. WE ARE—THE WORDS SOUND STRANGE—AMERICANS—CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES. WE ARE DESCENDED FROM THE SAME BEINGS AS YOU. WE INHABIT A COMMON LAND, LANGUAGE, PAST. WE BELIEVE IN THE FORCE OF HARMONY—THIS YOU KNOW. BUT THE HARMONY BECOMES SO UNBALANCED AS TO MAKE THE PLANET FALL OFF INTO THE ETERNAL VACUUM OF DEAD SPACE—WE MUST FIGHT. IF YOU EVER NEED US, ROCKSON—REALLY NEED US—SEND OUT THE SIGNAL AND WE WILL BE THERE. YOU HAVE SEEN OUR SANDCRAFT—THEY ARE FAST. WE ARE PHILOSOPHERS AND HEALERS—IT IS TRUE—BUT—OUR DESTRUCTIVE ABILITIES ARE AS POWERFUL AS OUR HEALING. WE HAVE THOUGHT LONG ON THIS—BUT IT HAS BEEN DECIDED—WE ARE WITH YOU. WE ARE—FREEFIGHTERS NOW.

  Rock was deeply moved by the silent speech. He, of all men, knew what it must have meant for the Glowers to enter the fray. It was a deep wound to their own psyches. And every Red they killed—they would suffer the pangs of his death. They would sacrifice part of their harmony with each killing—yet still they had chosen.

  The four freefighters stood at the eastern end of the Glowers’ village as the thirty came to greet them goodbye. Their organ systems pumped vividly in the afternoon sun, their blue electricity coursing around them with a perceptible hum.