by Ryder Stacy
The ’brids seemed to fascinate them, as they gathered around the terrified animals and reached out, poking them lightly with the spears. A few daringly reached out with dried lava-coated hands, once they saw that the things weren’t about to eat their fellows.
The lava people formed a line of about twenty on each side of the four Freefighters, allowing them to bring their ’brids. The huge crowd that had gathered jumped and smacked their black stone weapons against their chests like gorillas beating themselves. The sound was almost deafening as the cavern filled with the sharp cracking sounds of rock weapons smashing on rock-chests.
Rockson tried to take it all in mentally as they were led along with the armed guards on each side. But it was hard. It was a bizarre and twisted world, unlike any that he’d ever encountered. Small craters, from a few feet across to twenty feet in diameter, were filled with steam rising out of them. Work crews of the lava-beings were filling rock gourds with something there. In other craters, the lava humanoids were sitting around floating in what looked like black mud. Like a jacuzzi for the yuppies of the green-cast underworld. They lay back soaking it all up, whether as a bath or to add more crust to their coverings; Rockson wasn’t sure. But as they did step from the steaming mud rock, their layerings seemed thicker. This was definitely the weirdest place Rockson had ever fallen into!
The buildings, or hanging structures, or whatever the hell they were that dropped down from the high glowing ceiling were miracles of construction. Somehow they must have tapped the natural forces of the lava and guided them, when hot, into various shapes. It was like a glassblower blowing huge hundred foot cones, all jagged and bulbous with windows and doors. The Doomsday Warrior could see more of the lava-beings moving in and around the structures, even though they were hundreds of feet above the ground.
He was wondering how the hell they got up and down from lava condos when he saw that there were some kind of thermal pits of air on the ground below each of the ceiling structures. The lava beings were standing up in a line and raising their arms out just over the pits. The sheer heat and currents lifted them straight up on an elevator of pure hot air! They rose high, seventy, a hundred, a hundred and fifty feet into the air, not wavering an inch. Reaching an inset platform at the bottom of the immense upsidedown cone-house-things, they stepped off as easily, as off an elevator stopping: “Ladies’ Lingerie, 6th floor?”
“Can you believe this place?” Detroit laughed, walking behind the Doomsday Warrior. “I mean, it’s like out of the Wizard of Oz mixed with Attack of the Mole People.”
“And we’re following the Black Brick Road: Right?” Rock couldn’t help but interject with a chuckle. For some reason he was feeling a certain amusement at the whole crazy scene and even the lava men that surrounded them. Maybe it was the sulphurous air, making him giddy.
“Yub,” the one who was walking just ahead of Rockson said, as they came directly below one of the cone houses some two hundred feet up. It was the largest of the ceiling-crew, Rock could see right away. And it had what looked like huge precious stones inset all over the sides. Only these were stones the size of Cadillac snow tires.
“Yub, yub top,” the creature said, prodding at Rockson with the spear. They did speak English, crudely, Rock noted with a ripple of relief. Where there was communication there was always a chance.
“Horsie,” he said, looking around at Snorter who he was holding onto the reins of right behind him. “Me take horsie?”
“No horsie,” the lava soldier said, motioning for one of his own team to come up and take the reins. Rockson hesitated again. He sure as hell wasn’t going to allow the ’brid to be thrown into a stew pot or something. But the bastards hadn’t actually made any violent moves.
He sighed and handed the reins over and the lava man who took them seemed quite nervous, his lava coated hand trembling as he took them. He pulled the ’brid, which walked off and again the lead guard pointed toward the thermal draft.
Rockson looked over and down. It was glowing far below and he could feel, even see, the heat rising just ahead of him. He reached out gingerly with the heat shield covered arm and tested to see whether it would burn him to a crisp in a second. It was tolerable. Another lava-face prodded him and Rockson stepped forward, waving over his shoulder at his men who were behind him.
Instantly he was rising up on the hot air of the thermal updraft. It felt like a dream, like how a balloon must feel, if it could. With his arms out, his body caught enough of the super-heated air rising up at a good sixty miles an hour to carry him straight up. He was anxious for a moment when he felt his body start to shift to the right as he let an arm drift up. But the thermal updraft had a self-leveling quality to it, and it eased him back again, like he was going up through an invisible tube.
Suddenly he reached the bottom of the hanging cone structure and two guards held their hands out from a hatch and grabbed hold of him as he whooshed to a near-stop.
They pulled him over onto the platform made of the same shimmering black stone, this one a deep violet tinge. Rockson scanned the immense obsidian and lava city inside the door-hatch and whistled between his teeth. It was even more impressive from up high. He could see the whole group of structures more clearly, the patterns they formed up on the jagged ceiling.
The captors took him and the Freefighters—who floated up one after another—through a narrow carved walkway out of which dozens of other passages spread off. It really was more like a termite colony than something humans would inhabit. But then these things weren’t human. No potted plants, no fountains like Century City. No ice cream.
They came to a large oval shaped room. It was shaped almost like a teardrop, rising up to a slender opening high above, widening to about thirty feet and then narrowing again below them in concentric circles of openings.
As they led Rockson in, he could see that below a hole in the room’s floor another crater, a wide one, a good thirty feet across. And this one was filled with the bubbling red hot lava. If you went down there—
But it was the sight of a strange chair that arrested Rockson’s eyes. There was a throne of some sort. It wasn’t the typical King Arthur-type throne, but it was definitely the seat of royalty. The handcarved stones it was composed of were polished and shimmering. The precious jewels, red and blue, green, and vibrant yellow were all over the thing in strange shapes and geometric patterns. Sitting on the “throne” was a man. The king, emperor, big cheese, whatever you want to call him, Rockson knew instantly. Power was unmistakable in any race, no matter how twisted and alien. The king was big. Must have stood above Archer at full height. But where he sat now, in the immense chair, with regal straight posture, he didn’t look large.
He too was covered with lava scales, but this king’s face mask was open. His “crown” was two black stones arching out like ears from both sides of his gray, impassive face.
“Bow to King Sulphur,” the guard intoned harshly, giving Rockson and the others coming in behind him a most nasty look. Rockson dropped to one knee and motioned for the rest of his men to do the same. It never hurt to carry out the customs and rules of a local society. First rule of combat anthropology.
The face of the ruler looked humanoid, similar to a man, but more like a rounded sculpture, a work of art by a Michelangelo perhaps. For it was smooth, smooth as marble. Notwithstanding that, it could move.
The lips twisted up and the lava king mumbled to a guard by his side. As he spoke, from behind a silk curtain that Rockson hadn’t noticed stepped another of the creatures, this one obviously a female.
She was without the lava scales that all the others had. In fact, she was naked. And she sure as hell looked all woman, even if she was made out of gray stone. Her skin had the same smooth marble texture of the king’s face. It was as if she’d been carved from living marble, multicolored streaks running through her. And her breasts were as full and upturned as any Renoir nude. The curve of her legs, her wasp-waist, were quite lust-producing. A work
of art, not a person.
Rockson realized that he was staring at her; as if in a daze. She seemed to put a “hold” over him.
The king was yelling. Rock tore his eyes from the gray female and listened:
“Who you? Where?” the face asked, moving slowly, the thick lips opening and closing like the doors of a rock-crushing unit.
“From above,” Rockson replied mustering the friendliest smile he could. Which was hard, considering he was staring into the face of a bloodless golem. A creature of stone. Suddenly he felt a shiver, then more of them, ripple along his backbone. The things were not even vaguely human. He sensed something. Inside they were different as well. He’d have to be very careful.
“Fell into hole,” he said doing a little air-drawing of them tumbling down from the earthquake.
The king nodded without making a sound. He had no doubt seen such phenomenon before. Surely other quakes had brought down animals at least into the chasm tunnel. But men—that was apparently a different story. Although the king and his naked consort didn’t seem afraid, they were very curious about the men who were now all half-kneeling. Even Archer had decided in his feeble brain to let Rockson guide him through all this, since he didn’t exactly comprehend a hell of a lot of what was going on.
“You want hurt my people, hurt the Lavi?” the king asked as he leaned back with huge arms folded across his chest.
“No hurt,” Rockson said, standing slowly to his feet. He let his hands dangle at his sides to show no harm was intended, but even at that slow motion guards around the room stiffened and held their weapons out. The king spoke some words to the naked marble woman by his side who answered in a peculiar clicking sound of rock-tongue striking against rock teeth. Then she turned black marble eyes to Rockson. “King Sulphur doesn’t like you, he wants to kill you,” the female humanoid spoke up. “I say no.”
“You speak—our language?” Rockson asked in amazement, letting his gaze rest on her perfect nudity again. He was nearly tongue-struck. He wasn’t sure if it was the curve of her perfect body or the carved Venus face, which had an almost angelic quality to it.
“Yes, I am the listener,” she addressed him. “I listen to the spirits in the rocks around our world. I have touched with your people above. And learned some of the language. The king is suspicious. You must not anger him.”
“No intention of that,” Rockson said, with a “shucks-who-me?” type smile.
She smiled back and Rock saw that the face really could have warm expressions without cracking. The king suddenly motioned again and two guards brought in a third lava-man struggling between them, until they were in front of the throne. The king sternly lectured the pathetic groaning creature in the rock-click tongue. It looked like the creature was crying pebbles from his eyes. Tears of black lava.
Then the king rose up and pointed down with his long staff with a double pronged spear, hooked like a fireman’s ripper. It looked like it could eviscerate a man in a single swipe. He aimed the end down at the hole that dropped down in the center of the teardrop shaped throne room.
And without further ado, the two guards pushed the struggling rock-man into the hole.
He had flailed around wildly. Made of rock or not, it sure as hell didn’t seem like he wanted to go down that hole-to-hell.
There was no thermal updraft to keep him aloft. But there was a bubbling lava dome below, glowing orange and red like a star. It only took a few seconds for the lava-man, once heaved, to land with a splot into the pot of boiling slag.
And he was under in a flash, screaming and melting as he sank. Whether they were made of the lava coating or just sort of grew it on them now didn’t matter a hell of a lot.
When it came to falling into lava, Rockson could see, the lava-man was dead as any human man could be!
The king turned to Rockson, and cracked a smile. “Nek?” he asked.
Did that mean next?
Thirteen
In Pattonville, hundreds of miles off, the slave workers of Industrial Hut 17, all fifty of them, were pissed off as hell, which was amazing since half their brains had been eaten away by the repeated exposures to the slave-gas they’d received to keep them docile, and easily controlled. It had worked—up to a point. But even zombies can feel cold and hunger. And their hut was freezing; without the slightest trace of warmth.
The winter winds made shivering bodies on the cold concrete floors feel like they were freezing solid. And the lack of food for days! At least they had been fed to keep their bodies strong enough to work when they worked in the gas factories. But now—now not even that.
So they awoke snarling, their rotted teeth showing as they looked angrily at each other, wondering whether they should carve one of their “brother workers” up. For there was no camaraderie, or sharing between this bunch. They were more like flea-bitten Neanderthals than homo sapiens, each looking out for his own bone with a few flecks of meat on it. They were more animal than men.
And yet—and yet something burned within. Something that hardly knew expression. But this morning they were feeling cold, hungry and angry. And they finally felt that something too.
“Don’t fight,” one of the slaves, a large one, who had still somehow retained flesh on his overworked and whipped body spoke up. He spoke hoarsely, with lips that hadn’t moved for weeks. “They want us to fight each other,” he said.
There were grumbling all around and some snarls. They didn’t like the idea of any one of them taking power. They were nobeings, zombie nothings; only the officers could control them. Such had been their brainwashing.
But still the big one went on. “Me 2,789,” he said, standing tall and looking around at them. Somehow his eyes seemed slightly less bloodshot than the others. Because of his large frame, the gas hadn’t taken him quite as well. “Was Henry. Yes Henry. I say . . . Henry say, we fight today! We not dogs! Must feed, give us blanket . . . But nothing. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!”
He screamed it over and over, banging one huge cut and bruised hand into the other like a drum from hell. The others joined in, somehow pulled out of their usual bickering and fighting among one another for space on the cold floor, and chanted instead.
“Nothing, nothing, nothing . . .” the zombie-workers yelled it, and laughed it. They understood it. And even in their dimwittedness they understood that it was a cruel kind of joke. Saw the humor in screaming for nothing. When that was all they had.
“Nothing! Nothing!”
“Guards come,” another hissed, as he looked out of the broken side of the wall down the street for the factory detail squad which was marching stiff legged toward their aluminum hut. The zombie-men gasped and pulled back. The whips they feared more than anything. Whips with little teeth on them like barbed wire at the ends. They hurt, could rip whole chunks of flesh out. Many of them had gouges and running pus-sores from the barbed whips.
“Come on, you scum,” the sergeant in charge of the transport detail, screamed, banging a wooden nightstick against the aluminum walls, filling the hut with thunderous ear-splitting sounds. “Rise and work another day for the general and his glorious New America.”
“Food, we need food to work,” the big slave, the one who had once been called Henry spoke up. The others gasped and pulled back, cringing like wild dogs.
“There will be food tonight,” the guard laughed, surprised at seeing one of them even have the balls to raise his voice. “A problem in commissary. Lot of food tonight. Now we work.”
“No food—no work,” the big one said, folding his arms across his chest and standing there in his torn filthy rag clothes, like he couldn’t be moved. A few of the others, a little braver, or hungrier came around their self-appointed spokesman and stood up a little taller, not down like most of them were, not all bent over. It felt good just to stand tall.
“Food, need food,” another said.
“Food or no work,” they all spoke out, one after another. And suddenly there were twenty, then thirty of them stan
ding around the leader.
“Well! Would you look at this,” the sergeant laughed, genuinely amused. He slapped the hilt of his rip-whip against the side of the wall. “Boys! Come in! I think we got us a regular strike going on here, labor problems.”
A few of the troopers came in the door holding submachine guns at chest level with huge banana clips coming out from below.
“Food,” Henry-the-leader said monotonously. “Then work!”
“No, you do what we tell you to do,” the sergeant said, his face suddenly turning from amusement to anger and then fury. Imagine! One of the slimy creatures dared to stand up to him. The troops all had contempt for the gas-brained slave workers. And it threatened their contempt of them if the things could talk, or reason, or resist. It had to be stopped. Civil order was threatened.
“Now move, asshole,” the guard screamed, whipping out his long black rip-whip right at the leader’s face. The ten foot coil unraveled in a blur and it snapped right against the leader’s cheek. A huge gash appeared from ear to mouth. The sergeant pulled back the whip and swung it back for a second strike.
The “leader” didn’t even flinch or touch the wound as it poured blood down the side of his face. The flesh opened up like two pancakes with red syrup. Some of the other workers gasped and started to pull back. But most stayed. The Russian and French Revolutions began with bread riots, just for simple bread. These men wanted no less.
The hand struck out again, and just as it reached the “leader” the huge slave somehow got his hand up and caught around the end of the rip-whip, where the barbs were thickest. The barbs dug into his hand as he wrapped it around his wrist and forearms a few times. Then he pulled hard. The guard came flying forward, being attached by a strap around his own wrist on the hilt end. As his troops watched in horror and raised their submachine guns, they couldn’t fire for fear of hitting their commander. He was sliding across the cardboard-mattressed floor fresh with the smells of the night’s excretions now, being dragged through shit and puke. The place smelled like an animal house.
