by Ryder Stacy
“Scared of a few snakes, dear?” Rona shot out, seeing her chance.
“It is silly, isn’t it?” Kim answered instantly. “With such a large target as you—why would they ever go after me?”
Rockson looked left and right as far as he could see and then turned to the rest of the men who had come to a stop behind him.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to go through them. Must be some sort of breeding grounds—extends for miles. We can’t play around trying to detour.”
“But Rock,” Rona said, suddenly feeling not a little squeamish herself. “Surely some of them are poisonous—how—how will we get through? I mean, the ’brids—” She stuttered on, nearly incomprehensible, as she slowly realized that he really meant it.
“We can use the new aluma-tarps that Dr. Shecter developed. His tech boys reformulated them so they can be split into strips and used for other purposes. They’re as strong as steel, flexible—just perfect for hybrid armor.”
It took them almost half an hour to get the wide protective tarpaulins—based on the space blanket of the 20th century—wrapped around the legs of their ’brids from the hoof to top of the thigh and secured with tape. The animals didn’t seem to like the idea too much, making noises to that effect—but they had been well trained back in Century City and allowed themselves to be girded. When the Freefighters finished and stood back to see what they had wrought, they had to squelch the laughs. For the creatures looked like overstuffed, badly made carousel horses, walking around stiffly from the somewhat confining pieces of aluma-tarp. But beauty was not the name of the game out in the wastelands of post-nuke America. Only their hoofs and eyes were uncovered.
Rockson ordered the team to mount up—and pull their legs up onto their ’brids’ shoulders out of reach of the acres of snakes. Slowly, every man in the unit, even Rockson himself, feeling the deep unconscious fear of the man’s most ancient enemy—the serpent—deep in his guts, started down the pebble-strewn slope toward the plain below. The ’brids grew increasingly nervous as they approached the gauntlet of living venom-tubes, raising their heads high and looking down out of the wide fear-opened eyes. Rock hoped that the snakes would just let them pass, not wanting to get trampled by the large ’brids. But such was not to be.
The moment Rock’s hybrid reached the start of the obstacle course, the snakes went wild. It was as if they had been waiting just for this moment to arrive. As if with one mind, one living body with a hundred thousand tentacles, the plains all around them came to life in a slithering of slimy bodies. There were snakes of every size and color, thick black ones like eels with their dark mouths open and hissing, green and red ones, moving like slashes of electric color across the light brown dirt. From little worms the size of pencils with fangs nearly as large as their bodies to pythons twenty feet long with jaws opening like a shark’s ready to swallow a man whole—and maybe try a second course of hybrid horse. And they were all coming in one direction. If there is a universal human phobia, it is that of snakes. What man can look upon the face of a viper, stare into those diamond eyes as orange as the back side of the sun, and not fear that forked tongue flicking in and out, endlessly tasting the scent of evil in the air? Who can look and not know that that face is descended from Eden’s demon?
“Rock, Rock!” Kim screamed just behind the Doomsday Warrior as her ’brid reared up, nearly toppling her from the saddle. Her boots had come out of the stirrups.
“Hold on, Kim. Wrap your legs around its neck, grip the saddle horn with both arms.” There was no stopping, no time for mistakes. The snakes closed in from all sides like the twin walls of the Red Sea crashing together against the terrified riders and their mounts. They leapt and struck out with jaws agape as if they were ready to swallow the world. Thousands of pairs of fangs closed on the aluma-tarps around the hybrids’ legs, searching for flesh in which to inject their venoms—poisons which could take out even a ’brid in a matter of seconds. But the death-dripping hypodermics couldn’t penetrate the material. An ooze of venom began running down the sides of the ’brids’ legs. The ’brids stepped high—and fast, scrunching many.
Rockson knew it couldn’t go on like this for long—one of them would get up high enough to reach paydirt, and . . . He leaned around in his saddle and screamed out over the disquieting sound of ten thousand snapping rubbery jaws, “Hit the ’brids! Scream at ’em—shoot your pistols off next to their heads—make ’em more scared of you than the snakes!” The men did as Rockson ordered, kicking, yelling in the ears of the animals. Guns went off, firing in the air as the snakes continued their ceaseless barrage against the foil-covered legs of the panic-stricken steeds. When an animal is frightened, the only way to regain control of it is to take back control of its mind—be a more powerful fear-force than the one confronting it. Or so the theory goes. And in this case it worked. The pistol shots terrified the ’brids, who had been running in circles into one another, stepping high, afraid to venture further out into the sea of living serpents. The barks of the guns, the men screaming as if kingdom come had come, panicked them into a dead-ahead galloping stampede. Rockson took the lead with Snorter and shot across the moving ground as the other ’brids closed rank behind, all of them running as fast as their steel girded legs could carry them.
Thousands of the snakes were trampled, ground into bloody mud beneath the ’brids’ pulverizing hooves. Yet still the serpents on every side flew into the air as the ’brids approached, trying to judge their airborne trajectory so as to reach the faces of the tearing animals or the things that rode atop them. The Freefighters kept shooting on every side of them, firing first one way then the other and reloading with snap-in clips in seconds. The streaks of black and gray erupted in explosive blasts of snakeskin and innards as the .45 cal., .7mm and .9mm, along with Rock’s own .12 gauge death-presents all turned the air around them into putrid mists of red.
God only knew how many vipers they sent back to hell, but the Freefighters weren’t counting—just killing. The stampede went on with no intention of stopping—only the sheer speed and power of the large mammals and the leg armoring allowed them to slam their way through what, for any other creature on earth—even a three-horn grizzly—meant certain paralyzing death. Rock heard a piercing scream behind him even above the constant gunfire and turned around to see one of the new men picked for the mission, sandy haired Matheson, wrestling with a four-foot-long piece of writhing death. The black snake with four yellow and red stripes running parallel down the sides of its body had its fangs sunk full-length into the man’s neck and was pumping out grams of nerve poison. Matheson managed to rip the thing out and heave it away and back down to the writhing army below. He threw his hands around his throat and his whole head seemed to lift up, his neck stretching impossibly long. Then his entire body began spasming, the arms and legs jerking out of control. The body tumbled from the saddle and down to the sea of death. In a second it was covered with a blanket of the things. The others had to go on. They rode for minutes that seemed like days, but at last the snakes seemed to grow less dense and then they were gone completely. Rockson made them ride on for another thirty seconds to make sure the wretched creatures wouldn’t come after them, and then pulled Snorter to a stop. The other ’brids, their energy gone in the mad burst and seeing no more of the squirming things crawling around their ankles, also slowed and halted, their foam-flecked jaws hanging open from the exertion, their tongues hanging out panting like dogs.
“Everyone still here?” Rock asked, making a quick head count.
“Everyone except Matheson, poor bastard,” said McCaughlin, who had been taking the rear, spitting out a disgusted wad onto the dirt below.
“At least he didn’t suffer,” added Chen, who had been riding just behind the unfortunate man. “I saw him go down—he was dead before he hit the ground. That poison was like a cyanide injection to the brain.”
“Anyone else? Any ’brids acting funny?” Rock asked. They all looked around at themselves
and each other—and somehow nothing was the worse for wear. Matheson’s hybrid, who had followed the orders, stood looking up at Rockson nervously as if it had done something wrong.
“McCaughlin, take that extra ’brid and hook him up with your kitchen team. Might need him later. And don’t, whatever any of you do, touch the aluma-tarps! They’re covered with the stuff—you can see it like syrup coating the outer surface. We’ll have to be careful until we reach a stream where we can wash the stuff off. So don’t let your legs down, or your hands rub against it, okay?”
He didn’t have to worry. After experiencing the ocean of demonic creatures, none of them was going to mess around with the excretions. As uncomfortable as their legs were in the muscle-straining position high on their mounts’ backs, they tried to hold them even higher to avoid being anywhere near the moist, poisonous deposits.
“East—we’ll keep due east,” Rock said, starting Snorter forward at a slow gait. “I know this area, there’s a river ahead a few miles.” They followed behind slowly like a funeral procession. Even Kim and Rona were at a complete loss for words, their hearts still beating so rapidly that they felt as if they would crack their ribcages. Both were deeply shaken—but neither wanted to admit it. So they rode with heads hung down as if in mourning for the lost Matheson.
Unlike snakes of the pre-nuke war era, which had but two fangs and swallowed their prey whole, the post-war monstrosities that Rockson and his team had barely survived had rows of inward-curving teeth about a quarter-inch long. This enabled them to actually chew off pieces of their victims, rather than having to eat them all at once or have nothing at all. Times were hard. Only those creatures, those species that had adapted and continued to adapt to the rapidly changing environments of the earth, would survive.
Thus Matheson’s body was shared by hundreds of the undulating serpents, who ripped the carcass apart like lions at a feed. They sank their jaws deep into the bloody flesh, locked them like clamps, and then pulled back with all their weight, ripping pieces right out. The epidermis and layers of muscle were consumed within minutes. Some of the smaller vipers slid inside the body through the nose and mouth and eaten-out eye sockets. Down through the throat and the intestines they slithered, ripping at the membranous walls around them until at last they bit through to the treasures their kind thirsted after above all else—the inner organs. These they dug into with wild abandon, biting and snapping around until their bodies were coated from snout to tail with blood. They ate for hours in this warm dream sea of consumable flesh.
Nine
“You see anyone?” Rockson asked the men crouching in the dark on each side of him as they slowly scanned the Red radio-relay outpost with their binocs from a nearby hill.
“Nothing,” Chen whispered back. “The gates closed.”
“Zip,” said Detroit, letting the mini-glasses fall back around his chest and taking up 2 grenades in his grit-coated strong black hands.
“Then, it’s a go,” Rock whispered as he motioned forward with his arm twice, signaling the rest of the Freefighting force waiting behind him in the bushes. With the passage of Rockson’s plan of attack back in Century City, the Doomsday Warrior had taken that as a mandate to mean all of his plan. Including that part about trying to strike a deal with Premier Vassily. And that meant talking with the man, or at least with his aide-de-camp, Rahallah, who had some say in the Kremlin.
The small Red Army outpost that the Freefighters were edging toward was a long-distance communications outpost whose function was to intercept radio messages from other Red fortresses for a distance of up to 1,000 miles and relay them by satellite back to Moscow’s central Army headquarters. There they’d be pumped into their Decode-Computer, If Rock could get hold of the sophisticated transmission gear locked away in the concrete bunker—and get one of the technicians to operate it—he might have a shot at getting through. But the best-laid plans of mice and mutants . . .
They had barely gotten past the surrounding barbed wire perimeter, slicing through it with mini-wirecutters—one of many small tools that McCaughlin carried on the supply ’brids’ backs—when a floodlight swooped down and caught the three lead Freefighters frozen for a split second in mid-stride.
“Take ’em out,” Rockson yelled above the momentary silence, as the Reds slowly realized that someone was attacking them—the first time in the ten years the base had been there. Without giving them a chance to organize, the Freefighters swarmed out of the darkness, their Liberators set on full auto, firing sprays of .9mm slugs at every dark uniform they saw.
The gunners in the two machine-gun emplacements on each side of the forty-yard-wide outpost frantically swung their big .50 cals. around on their tripods, trying to sight up the fighters who jumped and darted like grasshoppers, impossible to follow through the lenses. Suddenly from out of the midst of the attackers came two spinning steel pineapples. In each tower the guards scrambled toward the wooden stairs, letting their ammo belts drop to the floor. But not one made it as the grenades Detroit had flung detonated with fiery roars. Red bodies flew through the sky, clothing blazing like sizzling comets, filling the night with the stench of human flesh.
It’s an ancient adage—probably going back to the first Neanderthal’s invasion of his neighbor’s cave—but surprise is the most powerful ally a fighting force can have. The enemy is caught off guard, asleep, taking a piss out back. And in the vital seconds it takes just to comprehend what’s going on—it’s too late. The Freefighters threw their ropes, climbed the walls and swept through the compound with the ferocity and timing of a pack of tigers, destroying with claws of burning slugs every Russian stupid or slow enough to stay in range. Rockson’s fifteen-man team was probably the best-trained, toughest unit in Century City—and thus in the entire country. The poor bastards didn’t have a chance. Even Rona and Kim were taking their toll, from the hill, with long range IR-scoped shots. Rock and Chen headed for the main concrete bunker set dead center of the base, dodging a line of machine-gun fire that was tracing closer to them by the second.
“Down, boys, down,” the deep voice of Detroit Green bellowed out just behind them. They hit the ground as another pair of Freefighter presents wrapped in sweat came tearing over their heads. The Red gunner tried to sight up the nearly indistinguishable black man, squinting through the eight-inch-wide slit in his pillbox about seventy feet ahead. Detroit was not just a grenade thrower—he was the ace grenade thrower. Back in Century City, he was the eternal star of the military baseball team, which played the civvies twice a year. The long muscular arms on his squat muscular body could generate such power and pinpoint accuracy that neither the opposing baseball team nor the Commies stood a chance. Both of Detroit’s death apples flew through the narrow opening, one hitting the machine gunner on the side of the head. He nearly blacked out, came to in about a second, and looked down to see the two globes lying motionless on the floor as if waiting to be picked up. He had just enough time to turn and reach for the door, his fingers barely touching the knob, when they both went off. What was left of him slid underneath the door, making a belated gelatinlike exit from the charnel room.
“Go! Go!” Rock yelled, seeing the smoke pour out of the sighting slot. They charged forward, eyes darting back and forth through the smoke and the tracers. The Freefighters pounded through panicked groups of half-naked men who came charging from their sleeping quarters, screaming in terror and firing wildly in every direction—half the shots hitting their own men. Rock’s men just hit the dirt and opened up at waist level, mowing them down like beer bottles on a rickety fence. Only these bottles spouted brews of blood when hit.
Rockson hit the stairs that led to a steel door about ten feet below a pillbox.
“Crack it,” he yelled out to Detroit, who ripped two more high-explosive doughnuts from the ammo belts crisscrossed over his chest.
“Concussion, Rock,” Detroit screamed above the battle, “gonna make a pow,” He placed the grenades against each side of his mou
th, ripped the pins out with his teeth, and let them drop down the stairs, bouncing along like metal tennis balls. Rock, Chen, and Detroit flew backward through the air and hit the ground, hugging the dirt as if it were a willing woman. Suddenly they were lost in a thunderous roar and were blanketed with chunks and particles of dirt and concrete. Before the noise had stopped reverberating in their eardrums, they were up and heading down the smoky stairs, weapons out, nerves on hair trigger. The concussion had lifted the three-inch-thick steel door right out of its frame and sent it flying backward, apparently crushing someone who had been standing just behind it into a pulp that oozed out from underneath it.
Rockson was praying that the Russians had followed their typical course when building the communications outpost. As was the way of the Russian Empire—everything planned. Everything came down from the top, from bureaucrats who sat around in huge empty halls making plans and forms for the world. In Century City, the Doomsday Warrior had taken the opportunity to go through captured Russian books and letters whenever they were taken along with the other booty. And he knew they always built the com units dead center of the subbasement, reasoning that it was the most protected place in case of full-scale artillery attack—though where the Freefighters were going to get any nuclear weapons had apparently never crossed their minds.
The three Rock Team Freefighters, their faces red with exertion, sweatshirts drenched with sweat, tore through the basement searching for the stairs to the lowest level.
Rockson suddenly felt himself slammed aside by Chen, a burst of .50 cal submachine-gun fire missing his head by inches. The Chinese Freefighter martial-arts master used the collision against Rock’s body to throw himself off in the other direction. While in motion, he flung two five-pointed shuriken from under his sleeve and then hit the other wall, sinking to the floor in an instant. The advancing Russian gunner kept firing, spraying the weapon back and forth down the hall—until the first spinning blade caught him just under the Adam’s apple. It cut three inches into the man’s throat, severing everything of any importance along the way. The Red dropped his rifle and slammed both palms over his sudden uninvited throat operation as if trying to keep everything from falling out. But it fell out—in a gush of blood and vomit—and the man fell to the concrete spasming in his own red liquid, his eyes already fixed and staring.
