by Ryder Stacy
Ralph turned dumbly and started toward the two with his hands out as Rock and Chen froze momentarily. Suddenly the nervous guards whipped the combos around and each let out a thundering roar. The first load missed but the second caught the hapless Ralph in the leg and he went spinning around like a top out of control. As he spun his blasted leg-stump spurted red.
And it all gave Rock and Chen enough time to move. Just a fraction of a second. But enough. Both men leaped up from their freeze and even as the guards ripped their weapons around, one took a foot in his face courtesy of Chen, the other a blade across his throat. Rock sliced the dude’s throat with his custom Bowie blade, the one with the foot in the face didn’t get up. His nose had been driven into his brain.
Suddenly there were more sounds and from everywhere they could see guards running doubletime with submachine guns and rifles and gas throwers and every damned thing you could think of. Even as Chen and Rock looked at each other they knew it was too late. There were just too many of the bastards. They pulled back slightly, standing back to back as Chen took out a bunch of his star-knives. “Might as well use ’em all up, and die fight—”
“No,” Rock hissed with barely repressed fury at himself for letting themselves get taken so easily. “We’ll fight later. Act zombie. They might not have seen all this action!”
They both lowered their heads, twisted their lips up crazily and put their arms out. Rock glanced down at Ralph, who was now lying a few yards away, a scarlet mosaic across his one remaining leg. But he was still alive.
“Don’t move an inch,” the leader of the attack squad, a big beefy fellow with flush red cheeks said, as he came rushing up among the troopers.
“What the hell are you zombies doing here?” a man with sergeant stripes asked. “You look like Class D labor. You should be on the other side of the city.”
Before he could get the answer to his question one of his underlings yelled from about twenty yards off: “Sir, sir, two of our men here. One cut up and the other one has a flattened face. Both are dead!” He came rushing over with a sickened look on his young face. He was only a recruit. A lot of the Pattonville army were young, Rock noted. But even a baby could pull a trigger. And a man would find himself just as dead. The captain in charge of the guards rushed through the ranks as the soldiers kept their weapons trained on the Freefighters.
“What the hell happened here?” he asked. “You,” the captain screamed at his sergeant, his white face turning to pink then red as his voice rose. “What happened to those men?”
He went over and slammed his right hand across Rockson’s cheek, but the Doomsday Warrior didn’t even flinch, just turned his head with the blow and then stared back with zombie-composure. He knew the only possibility now was to bullshit, to confuse these army boys, make them not suspect.
Neither Chen nor Rockson would utter a word, no matter how many times the captain bellowed at them for some answers. He also cracked them hard several times across the face with a huge leather gloved hand. Again neither made the slightest flinch but just went with the energy, taking most of the sting out. At the level of martial arts that both of them practiced, a man could think he’d hit one of them solidly, when, in fact, only the very edge of his blow had landed.
“Put shackles on them,” the captain addressed two of his flunkeys, pointing at Rock and Chen. Both Freefighters eyed each other fast so it went unnoticed. And both silently agreed to let themselves be shackled. They were just outgunned. Besides, it could get them right inside on everything, Rock thought, trying to be optimistic. Thick chains were thrown around their arms which were pulled back behind their backs and locked with padlocks.
“Take him to the repair warehouse,” the captain said, pointing down at the prone Ralph whose leg-stump was being put in a tourniquet. He otherwise seemed not too near death as he propped himself up on one elbow and watched the whole proceedings with a zombie-like curiosity. “See if he can be salvaged.”
Several guards went over and lifted the fallen man up under the armpits and helped him along. The other leg worked okay, so with their support he was able to hobble at near normal speed.
“And as for you two liars, thieves, defective workers, whatever the hell you are,” the captain smirked with pleasure on his thick jowled face, “it’s off to the interrogation basement. You’ll like it there.”
They were taken to one of the ramps and down past machine-gun posts set in concrete bunkers on each side of the wall. It looked like there were flamethrower muzzles, and gas slits, and God knew what all. Rockson filed it all away under “watch out” in his mental file. He’d be back this way, no doubt about that.
They were led along a concrete corridor that opened out into the full breadth of Pattonville. Rockson could see it all, block after block of warehouses all harshly lit by arc-lights, all connected together by the main thoroughfare. It went on and on, virtually disappearing down the line, two miles off. Rockson was used to Century City. C.C.’s many levels and huge open squares created an open feeling. This was closed in. He didn’t know how the inhabitants had lived here in such cramped quarters for so many years.
The place was teeming with zombie-slave workers carrying all kinds of gear back and forth, pushing dollies and wheelbarrows. Hanover was making up for his lack of heavy machinery with the zombie labor force itself. Under the armed direction of the guards it was a throwback to the old days, the days of the Pharaoh when men were used up and sacrificed to build the pyramids.
Rock saw them stumbling, some collapsing here and there. A zombie-pulled truck with flatbed and wheels but no front engine was being filled with the dead and dying, thrown together without regard for which side of the great divide they were on. It would all get sorted out down at the “cleansing” acid pond. These bastards didn’t have the slightest regard for human life, Rock thought bitterly. The workers were zombie-brained but they were still men. Rockson felt a deep surge of disgust and animal rage well up in him but he kept it down, and clanked along in his metal bindings.
“Here, scum,” the captain said, leading them down another ramp off the side of the main warehouse terminal. They made two sharp turns, then were taken into a big sound-cushion-walled room which Rock didn’t like the looks of from the moment the door opened—torture chamber. There were metal tables with bodies still strapped down on them, coated with blood. Men groaned, pinned in all kinds of wretched devices and pain giving apparatus around the large chamber.
Rockson and Chen were taken to one shackle-holding wall, which had no victims on it but did have faded purple stains, indicating someone had had their fun there not long ago. They were chained back up with their arms above their heads and then once secured. Their torn filthy clothes were cut free of them with razor sharp scalpels.
Standing there stark naked with long whips about to descend on their unprotected flesh, both Freefighters looked hard at each other. Their eyes were like steel. They’d been through worse than this a dozen times before. Still, Rockson knew it wasn’t going to be fun. Especially when the first bite of the rip-whip tore a whole little chunk of flesh from his chest.
Nineteen
“Your numbers!” the captain demanded as his whip hand snapped out at first one, then the other of the two Freefighters. Both had been whipped before when captured over the course of their fighting careers. But never with steel thorns, like on the ends of the rip-whips. It hurt. And each swing left a bleeding gash on their flesh. Still, neither winced or made the slightest expression of pain. But they did glare into the captain’s pink eyes and made him understand deep inside that his day was coming. And it was going to hurt too.
“Now tell me,” he roared, getting angrier as the whip lashed out. “Your numbers, damn it—what are they, before I get really mad.”
“Captain,” one of the assistant-torturers shouted as he rose up from a small computer station on the side of the room. “Their faces and their iris-patterns don’t match our central file. They’re not on any of the regis
tries.”
“I see, I see,” the captain said, standing back a few feet and looking them up and down. “That’s a horse of a different mutation then, isn’t it? That means they’re not homegrown gasbrains at all. But spies—from outside. Clearly they therefore can talk, so clearly we’ll have to use more potent forms of pain to persuade them. The electrodes!” he screamed, placing the thorn whip back up on the wall, within a descending row of a dozen of them.
Two portable generator-devices were rolled over on wheels and the troopers stopped them at the side of each of the captured men. Small wires led out of the things and they were placed all over Rock and Chen at their ankles, knees, chest, genitals, solar plexus, throat and spinal cord.
“Now perhaps we will get answers,” the captain chuckled as he stepped back. Sometimes the jerking electrified bodies would kick out and get him right in the guts. It had happened before. Not this time.
He slammed the levers on both generators and the two men began dancing and jumping around on their chains like they were trying to do some kind of epileptic Charleston.
Rock felt a surge of terrible pain go through him. He had felt many kinds of pain in his day, but had to admit electricity was just about the worst. It penetrated to the very core of him, past his skeletal system even, all the way to the central nervous channels and to the Chi life-flow deep inside. It burned with a blue fire along his nerves. And it’s a terrible sensation to feel your body so out of control, just jerking around like a puppet gone psycho. This would be a good time, he dimly thought, for Detroit and Archer to show up. But they didn’t.
As his brain rocketed with pain, Rock could dimly see through his madly twitching eyelids and pulsing eyeballs which felt like they might just pop out of his skull. The captain flipped fingers madly at the dials and levers on the generating equipment, playing with it like a sadistic child electrocuting his first alley-cat. Out of the corner of his eye, though Rockson couldn’t move his head, he could see Chen also jumping around like a pogo stick on overdrive. He tried to move his lips to say goodbye, but the teeth just slammed together hard.
“There, how was that?” the captain asked as he suddenly threw the power back down to zero. Both Freefighters slumped as their muscles went out of convulsion. They looked around at each other and Rockson took a few deep breaths to cool himself out.
“Numbers? Names? Come now, you will talk eventually,” he laughed making the jowls roll around in his stiffly ironed collar. “Why not avoid the pain?”
“Shove it,” Rockson muttered, suddenly wishing he hadn’t. But they were going to get the juice anyway.
“Ah, he talks, how interesting,” the captain laughed and looked around at his fellow torturers who lounged against the walls or in their swivel-seats, watching it all. Down the row there were screams here and there where the torture-techs were working on someone else; more than one from the sounds.
“Work never stops in the Pattonville Torture and Mutilation Chamber,” said a sign on the wall. The words went madly swirling through Rock’s head as such phrases are apt to do when a man is about to die. The captain slammed the torture apparatus on again and the wires filled with ripping electricity that shot all over the prisoners’ bodies.
This time it was almost worse, if that were possible, Rockson decided instantly. Because he knew it was coming. Again, there was the terrible jerking and shaking, every muscle in his body no longer under his command. That was almost worse than the pain. Being a puppet dancing crazily as the ugly faces in a blur around him laughed, their lips big and red and vibrating. The pain seemed to go on forever and Rock could feel that it was being increased as his entire backbone and neck undulated like a snake on fire. He could feel the whole spine shaking around like it was ripping free from the flesh it held up. He knew it couldn’t be much longer, not with the captain upping the power every second. He was going to the happy-haunting-grounds!
“Stop!” a voice bellowed, and Rock and Chen heard it through their pain. The current stopped flowing in a flash. Both of them again jerked to a breathless stop and let their heads lie there for a moment, resting from the ordeal before even being able to look up.
“Sir!” The captain and the men around him jumped to attention when they saw a man in a long leather coat approach. “I didn’t realize it was you, General Hanover.”
“Yes, I sneaked in,” the general chuckled. “I like to conduct spot visits to all my operations. Keeps the men on their toes, that’s for damned sure.” The bushy-eyebrowed young blond man walked over to Chen and Rockson and looked them up and down. “What the—” He looked at Rockson’s mismatched blue eyes again and reached out a hand, wiping a streak of blood from a cheek gash that hid the prisoner’s face.
“My God! You don’t realize it, you numbskulls, but you just caught the biggest prize of all,” the general horse-laughed. And Rockson didn’t like the way the general made that particular sound. He slowly came out of the fog of pain still ripping through his nervous synapses.
“This is Rockson, Ted Rockson. Come on, captain! The man is the Doomsday Warrior, and all that shit. The Ultimate American. The mutant marauder. Hero to the enslaved masses.” The general sneered. The man had a square-jawed face, granite expression. He looked like he really could have been carved on the side of Mt. Rushmore, Rockson decided. He had a deeply militaristic quality about him—from his stiff straight shoulders and back, to dark cold eyes which looked like they had sent many men to their deaths without blinking.
“Rockson?” the captain gulped nervously as the rest of his men stirred uneasily. “I—I—”
“Relax Captain . . .” the general looked for the man’s name on the side of his jacket pocket. “Harkow. You’ve just earned a promotion to colonel. I need men like you. Where did you find him?”
“Out by the second ring of defenses— At the Processing Plant. Took out two troopers,” the captain replied, his eyes opening wide as he realized he had just scored a huge feather in his bloody cap. Even if it was unknowingly.
“Yes, I bet he did,” General Hanover said. “So, Rockson, what do you have to say for yourself?” Hanover asked, as he walked back and forth in front of the Doomsday Warrior, his long leather field coat flapping slightly as he turned on a dime. “If I remember, I met you at the Constitutional Convention. Then I was just an adjunct. A minor player in the game of life. But now—”
“If you were there,” Rockson said softly but with a deep contempt that sliced through the blood-scented air, “then you didn’t learn a goddamn thing. That was all about democracy. You’ve established a regular mini-Hitler deathcamp here.”
“Ah, but death for a purpose, Mr. Rockson.” The general laughed harshly. “Death for the greater good. This land of ours is beset by too many savage forces to survive much longer. It is tearing itself apart, with countless little principalities with their own tolls. The countryside is overrun with separatist gangs, mountain bandits, cannibal hordes. Not to mention the Reds, who are still plundering us and our raw materials. The U.S. needs a strong determined leader. I will be that man. I am that man,” he glowered. “But that is in the future. For now, I am so pleased you have been able to join me. You will get to witness my marriage to an old friend of yours—Kim Langford. Her father will be giving the bride away. You see, the President is also my ‘guest.’ He approves wholeheartedly of all that I have done, I’m pleased to say.”
“You’re a liar,” Rockson snarled. “Kim would never consent to marrying you, nor her father consent to anything that would threaten the democratic principles of America. You had to have hpyno-gassed them both, I know it, to even get them to walk down the aisle.”
The general glared at Rockson, because it was true. He couldn’t get either of them to bend an inch. Both were the most stubborn bastards he had ever met.
“Nevertheless, I am marrying her. It will be so much fun!! Yes, and now you can provide entertainment at our wedding ceremony,” the general laughed, clapping his gloved hands together with delight
. “You can be part of the games that are going to be held.”
The torture-troopers looked nervously at each other. They were loyal to the general—but he was fooling with the Rockson! The name brought up a lot of memories. What kid of the last twenty years hadn’t been brought up on the harrowing adventures of Rockson, American rebel extraordinaire, making his way around the U.S. fighting Reds and other evildoers? In their hearts they had a respect for the man. Lots. But their brains told them that the general would shoot them—or worse—in a split second if any of them showed the slightest bit of disloyalty.
“I won’t play in these stupid games,” Rockson spat out, raising himself up to full standing position now that the pain of the mega-current had dissipated.
“I’m a gambling man,” the general laughed, slapping Rockson on the shoulder. “All generals are. How could we not be? Every battle is a gamble, every engagement. To make it interesting and worthy of your talents. If you win the contest, I’ll arrange for you, Kim and her father to go free. You can take them and I’ll let you leave. If not—” he shrugged. “That might motivate you a little, don’t you think? The great Rockson can’t allow the President of the nation to be turned into a mindless drone now, can he? And honey-blonde Kim, why she’d be my sex-toy if—”
“You bastard,” Rock said through clenched teeth. He was angry that the bastard had already outflanked him. But at least Langford and Kim were all right. Although it was Kim his heart felt for, his main goal was—had to be—to free the President. All would be sacrificed to that end. A president. It was practically all that the struggling young ravaged nation of united Freefighters had—the living symbol of the fact that the nation was theirs.
