by Ryder Stacy
But the sergeant wasn’t noticing that. Just that he was suddenly on the floor at the feet of the leader. And the others were around him now. Their feet came slamming down on him. Hundreds of feet, like out of a horrible dream. Scarred and boil-ridden, twisted and bone-broken feet, all slamming out of the air. Within seconds, his body was smashed in a dozen places.
Within seconds his men came rushing in through the door, and lined up until there were a dozen of them along the inner wall. Still, they withheld their submachine-gun fire, for fear of hitting their sergeant.
Suddenly the crowd of wild, raging half-men parted slightly. The second-in-command of the factory detail saw the bloody ragdoll that was left of his superior.
“Judas Priest!” he screamed in fear and rage, “Shoot! He’s dead!”
The dozen guards opened up with their submachine guns, shooting right into the thickest of the resisters. The “leader”—Henry—took a good thirty slugs. The bullets sliced down the man’s body, sending him flying to each side in two badly butchered pieces of human carcass.
The maddened zombie men screamed wildly and rushed forward, now overcome with animal fury They pulled pieces of glass and sharpened nails from their torn work clothes, weapons they had used on one another.
The guard’s submachine guns blasted away at the wall of zombie revolt which came at them in a stinking, polluted crowd of screaming half dead. Many fell, but many more slavering half-men replaced them.
“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” they intoned over and over like some sort of insane battle cry. And they fell. By the dozens, just piles of bodies squirming and twitching on the floor. But they kept coming now. Seeing that they were all about to die anyway, even the stupidest of creatures will fight back. Even a worm will bite when cornered. Many of them fell, their faces and chests blasted open by the firepower of Hanover’s troops. The primitive knives and shivs flashed and the guards fell too, piled one atop another. They screamed hard as the zombie men sliced up their bodies with great gratification in each thrust. All their pain, all that was left of their humanness within the walking dead physiques came out now in a tidal wave of murderous fiery rage.
They surged over the guards’ corpses and out into the streets, where the rest of the detail had pulled back to the right.
Another dozen troops set up yet another hail of firepower. Which didn’t save them either.
It took nearly an hour to completely quell the riot, once crack troops were sent in and shot to kill. It was the first big disturbance that Pattonville had seen since General Hanover’s takeover. And it was not to go unpunished.
Two choppers with missiles and auto machine guns tore up the entire two block stretch of factory-worker housing, which had been sealed off at both ends. They peppered the slave rebels with so many slugs that they melted and turned to puddles in the street. It was Hanover’s worst fear—that they would come for him. They had to be taught a lesson. And they were. Not a soul was left alive. Not a slave standing.
And yet there were smiles on their twisted dead faces. Smiles that said, “Better to lie dead than kneel as a slave!”
Fourteen
“He say you next, man-creature from above. I say no. You must obey our rules—or King Sulphur will throw you into the fire pit!” the nude female humanoid said with a serious tone. Rock didn’t need any elaboration on that point, nor the rest of them. They could still see the bubbles far below through the bottom of the cone shaped opening.
“I’ll be glad to obey,” Rockson replied slowly so she could understand his words, though she seemed able to comprehend things pretty well. “But obey what?”
“I am Shi’sa,” the angelic living sculpture said.
“I’m Rockson, Ted Rockson,” the Doomsday Warrior replied, smiling.
“The king wants to know why you have come down here, what your real plans are,” the marble woman said. She now walked a few yards toward them as guards around the room stiffened nervously and held their obsidian spears out in case anyone tried anything.
“I swear to you,” Rock said with all the sincerity he could muster. “We mean no harm whatsoever. We fell down into this damned place and in fact would just as soon leave pronto. So if you’ll just show us the way out—we’ll be glad to split and never mention this ‘Cave Med’ to anyone.”
“Split?” she asked with alarm as some of the others grew visibly nervous at the word. Rockson realized that in a world made of stone and lava, “splitting” might not be the best adverb or verb or whatever the hell it was to use around these folk.
“Leave,” he said with a broad smile. “All we want is to get out of here, and back up topside. We’re on a mission to save thousands of people’s lives. It’s of vital importance that we—”
The king suddenly leaned over and clicked into Shi’sa’s marble ear, and she nodded, spoke up again.
“Your white skin and strange noses—are they real?” she asked, referring to the jumpsuit they all wore and the nasal blocks which poked out of their nostrils. Rockson thought furiously, coughing as he stalled for a few seconds. He had to be very careful about how he answered any questions. Their very strangeness might make the king reticent about doing them in. On the other hand the truth went a long way when you were trying to gain someone’s trust. He decided on the latter course.
“They’re clothes. Our real flesh is underneath,” Rock replied. “We need to wear these white suits and the nose gear to live down here. Without them—we’re dead.” Suddenly the king motioned for his guards to go over to the prisoners and several of them reached out to Archer’s outfit and started tugging on it.
“NOOOO PULLL,” the near mute exploded, standing up and sending the two guards who had been on each side of him flying. Everyone raised their spears and Rockson saw the end flashing before his eyes for the third time in the last hour.
“No, no,” he shouted, holding his hands up trying to defuse the situation before it was too late. “We will die without these outfits or the nose gear. They enable us to withstand the temperatures and the gases down here.” He looked imploringly at Shi’sa who seemed to be the brains around here, even if the king wore the royal lava crown.
The Doomsday Warrior motioned at Archer to cool it too, and with a few deep growls the giant got back down on bended knee but continued to glare at the guards who had made a semi-circle around him. They didn’t seem all that enthused about the idea of trying to take on the big fellow.
Shi’sa whispered again to the king who then stood up regally. He raised his arms and spoke what basically sounded like Greek to the Freefighters but they were glad to see that the guards relaxed and stood back again.
“King very interested in your story,” Shi’sa said, and Rockson swore he could see the hint of a smile roll across her alabaster lips. He was amazed by the shifting coloration of her nude marble body. It had so many tones and shimmering veins of color underneath the skin. She was like a living diamond more than a female. Every motion she made, every turn made the hues change and melt together. There was a strange and somewhat frightening beauty about her. And he desired her.
Suddenly another figure emerged from the shadows behind the throne and Rockson instantly didn’t like the vibes he got of the fellow. The man was nearly as big as the king and walked with the same regal presence. Only this one, aside from having the usual lava covering, also had a crown of skulls, three of them around his chest and what looked like a necklace of dried hands and feet around his neck. Rockson assumed the man was the witch doctor here, or the equivalent. And he could sense as well that the lava-shaman didn’t like them. He kept pointing to the smoking hole, and shouting, “Nek! Nek!”
Rock made the hand motion for his men to be cool but be ready to move if the shit really hit the fan. There was a brief but intense argument between Shi’sa, the king and the witch man. But after about thirty seconds, Shi’sa spoke again and Rockson knew by something in her eyes that she had won them a reprieve at least for the moment.
; “King will talk to you later,” she said. “Now, they’ll take you to where you will be fed and not hurt. Please—don’t cause trouble—or you will be sent to the fire hole.”
“Will do,” he replied with a smile and their eyes caught and held. He couldn’t believe it. He was getting turned on by a piece of living rock.
The guards led them off to one of the thermal updrafts, right to the edge of the upside down conical structure and prodded them with their spears. Rock gulped and stepped out into thin air praying this wasn’t a trick and that he wasn’t just going to fall two hundred feet to the petrified ground below. But as soon as he stepped out he felt the hot air rushing all around his body and he slowly began descending.
It took about ten seconds to go down. Whether they had somehow manipulated each of the bubbling steam holes to be elevators, or had merely taken advantage of them intrigued Rockson. He knew there were a thousand questions he had about the place and its people that most likely would never be answered.
He and his men were marched, once they were all down, across the base of the cavern to the right side. All around them the lava people stared in wonder at the white skinned creatures from above, creatures from a place where their legends probably told them nothing could even survive anymore. Craters bubbled, smoked, fumed, and hissed around them as the creatures bathed and swam and even seemed to eat some of the bubbled volcanic extrusions.
They were led to the far end of the underground world about a thousand feet from the king’s ceiling residence. Suddenly it appeared obvious to Rockson that the royalty lived up on top, while the peons were in smaller craters and cone dwellings below.
At last they reached a huge circle of steam coming out of the earth. It gushed up right out of chasms that formed a nearly perfect circle perhaps fifty yards in diameter. Rockson grew nervous as the guards prodded them toward the steam, thinking it was another death crater. But as he got to within yards of it, he could see that there was actually an opening right through the geyser of superheated moisture. They walked through, shielding their faces and then were inside.
And the moment they were in, Rock could see that in effect it was a prison, with bars of steam rather than steel.
The gush of white smoke roared up around them all the way to the ceiling where it was sucked away by some sort of updraft. A fact that Rock noted, as it meant that air was being conducted up—possibly to the surface. The ’brids were already inside their steam-bar prison, tethered to a rock.
The Freefighters made a quick survey of their cell. It was simple but effective enough. With just two guards posted up front, their spears aimed right at the only non-steam opening, there was nowhere to go. Archer held his hand out toward the steam wall on one side and jumped back with a howl.
“WAAATTERR HUURRT,” the huge near-mute exclaimed with downcast face like a baby that hasn’t gotten its bottle.
“Let’s just cool out for the moment,” Rock addressed the others. “I’d say we’re basically trapped in here right now.” They grudgingly saw that he was right as the rest of them walked around the inside of the circle of steam and gingerly held out hands, not even touching the wall of white moisture as the heat was intense. They were trapped as surely as any butterfly under glass. Trapped in hell.
After about an hour there was movement up at the entrance and two guards came in carrying stone gourds full of steaming mud. Shi’sa was right behind them and she motioned for the guards to put the “food” down.
“This is not lava,” she said with a grin as the Freefighters were all slightly ga-ga at her marble nudity. None of them could take their eyes off her hard beauty. “Is a kind of veg—veg,” she stumbled with the words, “vegetable—that we grow down here. You can eat it without harm.” Archer stuck his finger into the gray colored gruel and licked it off. His face lit up like a kid given a bowl of cotton candy when he’d been expecting spinach. “Has everything the body needs,” she said, taking a taste herself to show them it wasn’t poison.
The men walked around it sniffing at the gruel, not quite sure how to deal with it. All but Archer, who was taking big spoonfuls of it into his mouth.
“King Sulphur and Ta’klak are talking about what to do with you,” she said, ignoring the guards who stood behind her as they couldn’t understand a word of the pidgin English. “Must be very careful, make no moves, nothing that is a—threat to the king. It can go either way.” She rested her hand on Rockson’s shoulder and she felt warm, strangely soft for someone who looked like she was carved out of a marble boulder. “I’ll be back later,” she said giving the Doomsday Warrior’s flesh a squeeze. Then she was gone.
The men ate, chuckling about the fact that Rock seemed to have smitten another female, even if she was a member of a lava race. They ate the gruel and found it tasty and soothing. After a few hours the fact that they didn’t puke it up or die, made them relax slightly. The nasal gear was a hassle but the few times they took it off to rest their aching noses the gases were intense. A man could clearly breath them at least for a few minutes. But beyond that—none of them wanted to venture a try.
They lost track of time within the steam prison sitting around recounting war stories to break the monotony. Then they slowly fell asleep. It had been, to say the least, a long day.
Rockson was dozing off, lying on his bedding. He had taken it from the ’brid which was also grabbing a snooze. Then there was activity at the opening of the steam prison. It was Shi’sa again. This time alone.
The Freefighters opened their eyes and began to rise up when they saw that she wanted Rockson to come with her. They didn’t exactly like the idea of their leader being taken off into the steamy underworld, especially when they were being left behind.
But she reassured them, and he gave them the “okay” sign and headed out with her past the guards, who lifted their spears to let them pass. She led him around to the side of the cavern and through a small opening, one hardly big enough for them both to pass through.
They walked down another of the glowing green tunnels for about a hundred yards and then emerged into a wider chamber, this one about fifty by fifty feet.
Rockson was taken aback. Unlike the other sections of the cavern, this one seemed made of a different material. It was almost translucent and soft, like they were inside a huge bubble. She led him further to the center of the chamber to a mound that seemed to glow red hot.
They walked around it and she suddenly jumped right onto the thing. Rockson looked on in horror for a few seconds, thinking she had committed suicide or something. But as he saw that she was bouncing on the ten foot wide mound of what looked like membranous glowing material he reached out and touched it as well. It was soft, like a water-bed. Warm, but not burning hot.
She motioned for him to come join her and Rockson started getting a funny feeling in his gut about what was going on. Or about to go on. Naw, it couldn’t be!
At her urging, he crawled up onto the glowing mound and it gave beneath him like jello, a not unpleasant sensation. He crawled to the middle of the mound and before he could even ask her what the hell the stuff was made of, she grabbed him.
And her touch made clear just what she had in mind.
Fifteen
Making love to a woman made of stone wasn’t exactly how Ted Rockson would have chosen to spend a Sunday afternoon. On the other hand, now that he was here—might as well lie back and enjoy it. It was disconcerting to say the least. When he touched her he discovered with surprise that there was a softness beneath the marble flesh. She was like the mound of flexible glowing rock they were lying on. Seemingly hard as diamond but giving, with a throbbing warmth within.
She was aggressive too, like a she-wolf who hadn’t had any he-wolf for a long, long time. Her firm body pressed wildly against his, the spectacular breasts pushing against his chest. Her hands were all over him ripping at his clothes with desperate urgency. Up close in the light of the glowing lava bed her marble flesh was even more amazing, not just filled wi
th colors but veined with a spiderweb of silver and gold. It was like she was a living sculpture, carved from the finest stones in the world, sculpted down to perfect symmetry.
She was a goddess, a living goddess. Rockson had been with some breathtakingly statuesque women in his time but the perfection of every inch of her was almost overwhelming.
Desire takes over where angels fear to tread. And as she took off the last of his garments and then proceeded to slide her lips over every part of him, Rockson found himself responding as men do. And as she touched and stroked him Rockson felt his manhood arching up to meet her.
Then she was atop him, guiding him and moaning like any human female throughout history when her lover slams home. The heat of the mound beneath them combined with the heat of their bodies and soon he was covered with sweat. He prayed that stone women could be satisfied, for if she wasn’t, God only knew what she might do. Her strength could be awesome, he could feel samples of it as she squeezed him hard and wrapped her legs around him as they rolled around the glowing red lava bed.
After a good twenty minutes of frenzied panting they both rose to a crescendo at the same time and there was an explosion as they both achieved their peaks. Then they lay there wrapped in each other’s arms.
Rockson wondered if she had any granite cigarettes to smoke!
After ten minutes of silence—they could hear only their own hearts and the rumblings of the earth around and beneath them—she spoke up.
“You are a real man, the one I’ve been waiting for. Ever since I touched minds with those of your people above, I have wondered and fantasized about it—all.”
“Don’t your people, hum, you know—make love?” Rockson asked a little nervously, not wanting to stir up trouble.
“The men have lost the use of their—organs,” she said sadly. “We don’t die, but we have no children, nor make love either. They are all—drones, I think that’s the word you humans use.” Rockson was beginning to understand. “I wanted to feel what it was like.”
