by Ryder Stacy
FREEDOM’S CAUSE
The lightning-quick Russian victory over the United States is total and complete. The Soviet thermonuclear first strike transforms America’s cities into fire-scorched mounds of radioactive rubble, its vast countryside into a shattered wasteland. The onslaught of Russian invasion troops capture most Americans fortunate enough to survive the nuclear carnage, creating a slave labor force to serve every demand of the Russian overlords.
But a handful of survivors escape the Russian net and choose to live—and give their lives if need be—for freedom’s cause. Led by Ted Rockson, the ultimate soldier of survival, the FreeFighters vow to drive the hated Russians from American shores at any cost. And when civil war breaks out between the two Soviet factions that rule the United States—the Red Army and the black-shirted KGB—Rockson knows it’s time to strike, to divide and conquer the oppressor—or die in the attempt. The battle that will determine the very course of civilization is about to begin . . .
DOOMSDAY
WARRIOR
INVITATION TO DEATH
“Welcome,” said the cold voice dripping with lies and deceit. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Ted Rockson focused on the man who sat in the misty dimness at the far end of the room behind a long wooden desk, his thin pale hands clasped together on the heavily waxed top. It was Killov. The Skull. And he was unarmed.
“Thanks for the greeting,” Rockson said, his shotpistol pointed at the man’s chest. “But you’re going to come as a prisoner to stand trial for war crimes—or die right now. However you want it!”
“Tsk, tsk,” Killov said. “You should be taught some manners. Pity you won’t get a chance to learn.” The Blackshirt leader jerked his knee up under the desk, pressing a button. There was a roar from the front of Killov’s desk as the wooden panels flew off and a mounted rack of ten shotguns simultaneously discharged a wall of waist-high shot at the Doomsday Warrior . . .
ZEBRA BOOKS
are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
475 Park Avenue South
New York, N.Y. 10016
ISBN: 0-8217-1812-6
Copyright © 1986 by Ryder Stacy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
First printing: April 1986
Printed in the United States of America
One
Picture a paradise. Picture a field filled with flowers of every hue, stretching off to all the horizons waving, dancing in the wind like beckoning fingers of purest utopia. Picture petals on these rainbow flowers as soft as silk, with rivers of molten gold streaming through their spider-web veins. Picture fruits hanging from soft bending trees, branches reaching down to deliver their luscious cargo so human arms needn’t reach, legs needn’t stretch. Picture pink and orange and blue and green fruits in myriad shapes and sizes, bursting with juices and pulpy thick flesh. Picture birds with peacock tails hanging down below them from their high perches, their wings filled with luminescent feathers so subtle and rich that a Michaelangelo could spend a century cataloguing their tones. Picture parrots and hummingbirds and saucer-eyed owls, all cooing and chirping out their melodious ode to existence in a constant chorus that echoes through the moist, pungent groves of trees that fill the field. Picture a paradise.
Look closer in this picture of paradise. Peer deep into the rainbow. Pry apart the bands of color and peer beneath the purples, the oranges, the globes of sweet fruit like a woman’s hot breasts. Peer closer beneath the feathers, beneath the silky petals. See the teeth, the claws that hide waiting to snatch anything that ventures near. See the hooked rows of daggers hidden in the hummingbird’s throat, the digestive juices of steaming acid that line the bowels of the daisies nodding happily in the noonday sun. The thorns of the rose bush as sharp as razors and dripping with a poison that could take out the nervous system of an elephant like an ICBM missile shot straight from the underworld. Picture a paradise that is a living hell.
“Oh, look, Rock, how beautiful,” Kim Langford said, pointing from her position atop her hybrid horse which rocked its hips back and forth lazily as it moved at a slow, even gait across the prairie. ’Brids knew—better than any creature alive, perhaps—that the longest journey was made one slow step at a time, and they carried out that knowledge with a thoroughly lazy vengeance.
Ted Rockson shifted slightly in his saddle, trying to make his aching thigh muscles a little more comfortable. He sighted in the direction that Kim was pointing. A field—filled with trees and flowers and fruits. A veritable oasis out here in the middle of nowhere. Nice. Maybe too nice.
“Oh, can we?” the blond daughter of Charles Langford, the newly elected president of the Re-United States of America who rode just paces ahead of them, asked in an excited voice. “It’s been days since we’ve had rest or seen anything worth seeing other than this sand filled with nothing but wart-faced lizards and cacti.” Rock, Kim, her father, and a squad of Freefighters from Century City had been on the move for nearly two weeks now, traveling as many hours a day as Rock felt they and the ’brids could stand. Their attack on the Octagon in Washington, D.C. had freed President Langford and Kim from the KGB. Snatched right from under the nose of Colonel Killov, the psychotic leader of the Blackshirts. Rock knew that the man would not take kindly to said occurrence. And he didn’t want to face an armada of attack choppers without an inch of cover for a hundred miles. Not with the president of the U.S., the first elected leader in more than a hundred years, and his daughter, the woman Rockson loved, in his charge. Rock’s own death would be of no great loss—at least to him. But theirs would be a disaster for every citizen, every slaveworker, every Freefighter in America. There was too much at stake to slacken for even a second.
“I don’t think we should, Kim,” Rock said slowly, knowing as he spoke that she wasn’t going to go for it. “I never much trusted things that pop up out of nowhere, things that shouldn’t quite be where they are. ’Cause there’s usually a reason—and it’s usually bad.”
“Oh, Rock, you’re so paranoid sometimes,” Kim snapped at him, her already alabaster cheeks growing a whiter shade. “We’re safe by now. They would have caught up to us days ago. We’re out of chopper range—at least from D.C. Come on,” she said, growing softer. “Please. We don’t have to stay long. Just gather some fruits, let the ’brids drink. I think I see a pond ahead,” she said, smiling with the sudden enthusiasm of a child whose face can go from anger to pure delight in a second, in the passing of a cloud. Perhaps that was why he loved her, Rockson thought, and his heart filled with an inexpressible mixture of longing and pain at her sudden perfect beauty as she smiled at him, unveiled, unarmored. While he, the warrior who had fought for so many years he had long since stopped counting the number of dead, the lakes of blood, the skies of smoke and the stench of mass death . . . he had almost become dried up inside, so filled with the despair of mankind, that only a deep and darkly humorous cynicism fueled him and kept him going into yet more battles. Until her. Until how she looked right now.
“Yeah, sure,” the Doomsday Warrior said, so softly she could hardly hear him. Though he knew in his guts it wasn’t right, he said, “Sure, let’s go.” But slowly, unconsciously, he released the safety on the .12 gauge death dealer that sat at his side, waiting.
Kim whipped the reins quickly from side to side on her ’brid’s shoulder and the shaggy creature stubbornly added a few steps to its stride. The closer she got, the less Kim could believe her eyes. It wasn’t just a field—it was—it was—like the Bible. The word snapped into her
head. The Bible—like Adam and Eve. Fruits, dripping with a sappy dew, hung everywhere ready to burst their luscious innards out onto the world. Flowers like crazy quilts sewn from all the colors of the spectrum surrounded her, filling her eyes with a kaleidoscope of petals and leaves. Even the ’brid seemed to grow excited by the presence of so much beauty and rocked its back legs in the air, bucking around like a rodeo bronco. Kim tried to hold on but was tossed into the air, landing on her rump in a thick growth of purple lilacs as deeply violet as a king’s royal robe. They cushioned her fall like a bed of the softest fingers on earth and her nostrils filled with the overpowering perfumes.
Rockson rode up, pulling his ’brid to a skidding stop, and jumped down to her. “Are you all right?” he asked, his mismatched violet and aquamarine eyes burning with a tense fire.
“Oh, Rock, it’s—it’s beautiful,” she laughed up at him, stretching her arms for the Doomsday Warrior to come to her. Her eyes were moist and wide and Rockson couldn’t resist. His face widened into a broad grin and he dropped to his knees, falling on top of her. He held her as tightly as he had ever held a woman in his life. And she pressed her small firm breasts up against him, flattening them against his chest until she was almost one with him. And just for a second they looked into each other’s eyes, totally open, telepathic in love, their souls flying back and forth like wisps of silver fog. This might be the most perfect moment in their lives. Here and then gone as such things are, in a meteoric flash, burned up by the atmosphere of reality. They tried to file the feeling away in the center of their hearts before it disappeared. Then it was gone. Rockson realized that Kim’s father would be just behind them with the rest of the Freefighters and it would hardly do for the president of the United States to find his daughter in the bushes with the military commander of Century City. Rock sighed and pulled himself away from Kim, with a deep sadness passing across his eyes like green strontium clouds flying high across the face of the moon.
“Will you look at this,” Detroit Green coughed, jumping down from his ’brid before it could come to a complete stop. The black Freefighter landed amidst a hillock of dandelions and he began dancing through them, sending the fuzzy little balls of white fibers into the air like a snowstorm of feathers. The others dismounted, their tough battle-hardened faces taking on face-cracking smiles as they were, to a man, unable to resist being moved by the impossible lushness and color of the oasis. They wandered through patches of yellow and red, taking off their boots and letting the velvet tongues of vegetation run across their calloused toes like silk scarves dangled by a courtesan. Their faces seemed to uncoil like a steel spring that has been wound up so tightly that the very fibers of its metal being seem ready to pop. Then release—their muscles loosened, their eyes grew wider and wider in fascination at the fantastic surroundings. And like little boys in a dream, a dream of a world they had never known before but only seen in books and movies of the old days, they wandered around in a daze of aesthetic intoxication.
Balboni was the first to scream. All ears turned to track the source of the howling—then they saw him. He had bent down to inhale the sweet aroma of an immense pink-petaled plant with dayglow green dots covering it like a chlorophyll leopard. He had pushed his face right up into the soft petals, had rubbed his cheeks against the smoothest thing he had ever felt.
Suddenly petals were closing around him, engulfing his head. Their softness turned hard as tiny spikes eased out of the petals, grabbing hold of his skull and undulating as they began pulling his entire body slowly, inexorably into the caustic digestive acids of the flesh-eating stomach hidden in its roots below the ground.
The paradise turned into hell. The flowers amidst which the Freefighters lay reached for them—tendrils suddenly clawed, spiked leaves slashed madly at them, vines snaked around the ’brids’ legs, pulling at them. Hook-beaked owls swooped down from their perches, their faces not cute any longer but hideous, terrifying—with rows of angled razor teeth snapping at the struggling human prey.
“Jesus Christ,” Rockson muttered as he rose to his feet, pulling Kim up with him in a flash. They were being attacked on every side. The peaceful meadow had erupted into a violent twisting and snapping in which every living thing was trying to get them. Every leaf, every petal, every branch, every piece of dripping fruit was lunging madly at the humans who had come near them. Before the Doomsday Warrior could take a step, he felt a snaking vine wind around his ankle and up his leg. The thing was brown like the underside of a log and dripping with a vile juice which was already eating small holes in the sides of Rockson’s thick plastisynth field pants. His hand moving in a blur, Rockson whipped out his .12 gauge shotpistol and fired a load just inches from his boot into the writhing vegetable snake’s body. It exploded in a thick noxious spray of brown and the tendril around his leg dropped to the ground like a piece of rotting garbage. At least the damned things were mortal, Rockson thought, letting a quick whistle of thanks pass through his teeth.
“Use your weapons!” the Doomsday Warrior screamed out over the bray of yelling men and howling hybrids and snapping birds of every size and shape who flew down from the nearby trees in an invasion of murderous beaks and talons. “Your weapons, your weapons!” Rockson screamed again, running forward, firing at twisting bouquets of roses that snapped out with poisoned thorns and patches of carnivorous sunflowers, whose huge white and yellow petaled heads leaned far forward, spitting out a spray of disabling mist. One of the ’brids went down and was instantly covered in a thousand little arms of green and black vines, its body literally ripped apart, as each tendril dug into the hot flesh with snapping pincers.
But Rockson’s thunderous shots had at least snapped the rest of the team from their mesmerized flailings at their would-be killers. The men reached for their pistols, knives, anything they were carrying and unleashed their own human version of death. Stalks and shoots, tendrils and stamens exploded into a greenish brown slime that filled the air with an acrid mist. Somehow, most of the men broke free of their captors, grabbed their ’brids, and rushed toward Rockson, who had gone over to Balboni. The Freefighter’s head had disappeared into the spotted leaves of the huge meateater, right up to the shoulders. At least he was still alive, Rock could see instantly by the pushing of Balboni’s hands against the outer petals as the man tried to break free. Rockson didn’t even try to pry off the sucking yard-long petals, for they were closed as tight as a Venus fly-trap over an insect. Instead the Doomsday Warrior knelt down and aimed the big muzzle of his .12 gauge right at the spot where the carnivorous roots entered the dirt. He turned his head and pulled the trigger. The foot-thick stem shattered as if cut down by a scythe, the black pulp oozing down into the dirt. The huge stalk and the petals holding Balboni captive fell over and the Freefighter toppled to the ground, still stuck inside.
Rock reached over with his hunting blade and sliced carefully around the neck and face of the captive, working his knife as if he were skinning a deer. But with the death of its circulatory system, the plant quickly released its hold and the speckled flowers fell open and limply down, already losing their shape and color.
Rockson had to turn away for a second, as he saw the freed man. Balboni was a mess. The plant’s inner jaws and digestive fluids had begun to work on the prey. The entire outer layer of flesh had been eaten away, dissolved like a melting bubble. The acid had chewed away all of the Freefighter’s hair, his eyebrows, lips, and ears. Parts of the subdermal system below had been melted into view, and one could clearly see the entire anatomical structure of the musculature of the throat and face as if displayed on a medical school mannequin.
“R-r-oock,” a voice somehow managed to utter from between fleshless lips. “It—got me. The fucker g-g-got meee.” With that Balboni twitched slightly just once and fell still as stone to the blood- and vegetable-spattered soil. Rockson cradled the man’s head, slowly lowering it, setting it softly on its final cushion on the grass. Balboni was lucky he was dead, Rock thought. He wo
uldn’t have wanted to live looking like that. The plant must have injected some sort of poison into the bloodstream—like a spider—to hold and keep its much larger prey.
But there wasn’t time for deep meditations—not when the landscape was trying to eat his entire force, including the president of the United States. Rockson shot to his feet as the others gathered around him, firing every second, reloading and firing again. They bunched together in an ever-tighter circle, grabbing at the reins of their hybrids who stomped and neighed out furious bellowings of fear. Rockson could see that the entire defensive formation was about to crack under the relentless pressure of the attacking plant and bird life which came at them from every side. He saw a sudden large shadow swooping down and fired straight up in the air. Something burst just yards above him and bloody feathers floated down onto his head and shoulders.
Suddenly he remembered an ancient U.S. Army training film on mine clearing—field-style—that he’d seen back in Century City. A vine slithered in, trying to hook his foot, but Rockson pulled the foot away and brought it down hard on the reaching petals, squashing them into pulp with his steel-heeled boots. There was no more time.
“Archer, Chen, Detroit!” Rock screamed out. “Front and center.” The Chinese-American martial arts expert rushed through the frantically firing Freefighters with Archer, the seven-foot half-mute mountain man, and Detroit, the ebony-skinned grenade expert of the squad, right behind him.
“Get out your stuff, boys,” the Doomsday Warrior said, pointing back toward the way they’d come in. “We’ll have to blast our way through. Chen—some of your exploding star-knives, spin them out every ten feet or so! Archer—your phosphorus arrows. You understand me?” he asked, looking closely into the huge fighter’s eyes as the mountain man was not always 100% in the analysis department. But this time, the barn door of a Freefighter understood perfectly.
