by Ryder Stacy
“Jeez, it’s a spooky one,” Rona whispered to Rockson from about ten feet behind.
“Yeah, you can feel it,” he whispered back, and realized that he was whispering not just to avoid a landslide but because he felt as if the crater was listening—a malevolent ear taking in all that was said about it. “I hate these fucking things,” Rockson suddenly spat out. “Once the Reds are kicked out and President Langford takes over—I’m going to lobby hard for the first order of business to be getting rid of these pus-filled wounds. Our country will never heal, never grow fully green again as long as they exist. It would help lower the rad-level anyway, to fill them in.”
“Amen,” Rona said as she looked up at the dark slopes alive with a thousand radioactive shadows. The whole damned thing seemed haunted, filled with ghosts, bursting with lost souls glued forever to this one spot. The entire team unconsciously moved a little closer together as shivers rippled along their backbones.
They were but halfway around the manmade obstruction when there was a very low but distinct rumbling sound that seemed to come from far off. Rock raised his hand and the team came to a halt, silent, as they listened intently through the first whistling teeth of the evening wind. It was a deep sound, so low that it was almost inaudible. But its vibration seemed to be traveling through the ground beneath their feet. The ’brids grew nervous and began stomping around. Rockson jumped down from old Snorter and put his ear to the soil. His face drained of color. Mutant psi-instinct sent shivers up his spine.
“I don’t exactly know what it is—but something bad is about to happen.” He leaped up and onto his ’brid in a single motion and kicked the animal hard on the side.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Rock yelled at the top of his lungs. Snorter took off like something launched from a cannon with the rest of the mutant steeds right behind. But they’d only gone fifty feet or so when the earth began shaking harder—very slowly but rising in intensity every second. The ’brids were able to keep their balance but for how long, Rockson wondered, sure that a full-scale earthquake was about to hit. He waited for the cracks to begin opening in the flesh of the planet; for the men, the animals around him to disappear, screaming their way thousands of feet down into a consuming darkness. Not again—not now, he demanded to unknown gods as he leaned forward on Snorter’s back, slapping its shoulder to make the ’brid move faster. But the team needed no more motivation than they were already getting and flew along, their feet barely touching the ash and gravel ground.
Suddenly the ground beneath them seemed to convulse several times as if the earth itself was about to vomit and an explosion of rock and red lava shot a thousand feet into the air from the crater next to them.
“Jesus Christ,” Rock blurted out as Snorter slowed to about half speed, trying to keep its balance in the midst of the upheaval. For a split second Rockson thought it was an A-bomb, as a mass of dark gas lifted into a mushroom-cloud shape high in the sky. But in another second, he realized what it was—a volcanic eruption. The dormant A-bomb crater had stirred something up that took a hundred years to get to the surface—but it had arrived with trumpets blaring.
The earth settled slightly but the huge crater continued to shoot up a torrent of fiery dust and glowing rocks. Clouds of spewing gas and particles settled over the Freefighters, blotting out the sky, making it as dark as a moonless night.
Rock slowed the terrified ’brid even more, pulling at the reins with all his might to make the creature obey his commands. Turning in his saddle, he yelled out, “Throw your rope to the man in front of you. We’ve got to tie the ’brids together or we’re goners.” Rona passed the word back and as they continued slowly forward through the blizzard of black, ropes were tossed and anchored around the saddlehorns. Safely tethered, Rockson built up speed, literally pulling the rest behind. The blind leading the blind—they’d have to get out fast. The gases of volcanos, Rockson knew, were often poisonous. A few minutes of breathing the foul-smelling stuff that was passing for air and they might be dead. And if the gas didn’t get them, he could see a half mile behind, even through the thick curtains of falling hot ash, glowing rivers of lava bubbling over the lip of the crater and down, like a cup that runneth over.
Rockson struggled to keep his eyes focused. The air was already becoming so thick with soot and noxious fumes that it filled his lungs with a racking pain. Tremors nearly threw the mounts off their stride.
“Use your neckerchiefs,” Rock screamed again, barely able to be heard even by Rona, who was right behind him. He took his own sweat collector from around his neck and reached around, fumbling for his water gourd. Rock ripped the top from it and poured the contents over the handkerchief, completely drenching it. He wrapped the makeshift gas mask around his face and within seconds felt more clear-headed as he was able to suck in relatively breathable air. The nostrils of the ’brids had closed, using an evolutionary adaptation of small chambers in their nasal cavities to filter out particles. But even the multi-talented mutant mount-mammals couldn’t filter out the gas.
Somehow, though, the ’brids kept going, heaving with great rasping breaths but not slackening their paces one step. The ground seemed to slow to a low rumble and behind them they could hear the volcano roaring out her evacuation of the earth’s burning stomach. The spout of red and white-hot glowing material spewed forth shooting off for miles in every direction. The main river of red lava rose higher and higher over the mouth of the nuke crater, spilling its deadly contents onto the earth’s sandy flesh as if pouring from a broken spigot.
Rockson kept on in the direction he had been heading when the atomic hell-hole blew its heap—straight toward the desert. They could circle back toward Fort Minsk, their objective, later. The main thing on the agenda was survival. But as the air grew thicker and thicker with dust and sickening smells, it didn’t look like a good bet. He turned and could just make out Rona and her tethered ’brid following quickly behind him. Her head was wobbling from side to side, but as her eyes caught his she gave a feeble nod to show she was conscious. Rockson motioned for her to check Kim and slowly, as if half asleep, the red-haired Freefighter twisted around in her saddle to check her love-adversary. Rock swung forward again and tried to see through the cocoon of volcanic debris that completely encased them now, in search of any trees or cacti or gulleys. They were traveling almost blind, slowly, and he felt as if he was going through a tunnel with no lights. But Rockson knew that the ’brids had a sixth sense for obstacles; he’d seen them perform in blindfolded tests conducted by Shecter’s bio-unit. All he could do was hold on tight. He wished to hell the women were not along on this mission.
They’d gone about a mile and a half when the ash fog grew less dense. The prairie came into view, stretching off flat and featureless, bathed with the diffuse glow of the obscured sun and the fire of the orange mouth of the volcano, which vomited its load like a bad supper.
Rockson looked around, at last able to see the full team, still roped together, stretching back fifty yards. Everyone was still hanging on, though some of them looked ready for embalming, draped over their ’brids’ shoulders face-forward like they were out cold. But it was what was coming up behind them that caught Rockson’s horrified eye. A tidal wave of lava, sweeping forward, setting ablaze every tree, every cactus, every scurrying plains creature that it encountered. A wall of searing mud and molten rock five feet high, burning across the landscape from every side of the crater, its molten stone glowing like some immense beacon a thousand feet high, a light that could have been seen from the moon. And it was coming straight toward them at a fast clip, faster than they were moving, bubbles and hellish foam licking along the tops of the red waves.
“Faster, dammit, faster,” Rock screamed in Snorter’s ear, kicking him as hard as he had ever kicked the creature in their long relationship. The beast seemed to understand Rockson’s super intensity, that death was imminent. Snorter started to gallop, its big furry head lifting high into the air and down ag
ain like a piston running the animal machine beneath it. The rest of the team somehow jerked along and kept pace, their heads pulled forward by the nylon rope of the ’brid ahead. They had no choice—either they slammed their legs down again and again to the point of collapse or they fell and died. And if just one fell now—all would perish.
The volcanic lava wall pushed closer, seeming to accelerate as it neared them. Though still a half-mile off, Rockson could feel the crackling heat of the molten granite on his back. They would be mere puffs of smoke if that stuff caught up with them—swallowed without a burp. He scanned forward, searching desperately for anything—he didn’t know what—when he saw a thin blue line off to the right. It was hard to tell if it was a mirage from all the crap in the air or not—but as they drew closer, the blue grew richer and wider and the lapping waves became real water, as a river came into view. The Freefighters bee-lined for the tributary as the volcano shook with H-bomb force once again and unleashed another explosion, larger than the first, that reached up into the clouds and swallowed them whole in its black ash jaws. The damned thing was going to take out this whole section of the country, Rock thought as they rode hell-bent for leather toward the river ahead. Wouldn’t even be bad. He had seen the ash of volcanos in other parts of the country act as fertilizer, creating a rich topsoil after a few years where plants grew in wild profusion, freeing the earth from radioactive poisons of the surface. Only Rock didn’t want to be fertilizer—no matter how much it enriched the ecosystem.
They reached the bank of the river, which was a hundred feet wide at this juncture and raging like a wildcat with rapids creating a billowing foam of whitecaps. But there was no time to go looking for a nice comfy spot to cross—not with a grinding wall of incendiary mud coming at them with the speed of a racehorse.
“Archer!” Rockson screamed out, restraining his anxious ’brid, who wanted to jump into the river to escape the heat that it too could feel on its hindquarters. “Archer!” the Doomsday Warrior screamed again. The bear-sized mountain man cut his rope loose, came flying out of the middle of the pack atop his own monstrous steed—even larger than Rockson’s, with legs like pillars—which it needed to carry the 380 pounds-plus that rode it.
“R-R-Rooocksson,” the huge near-mute croaked out like a frog in heat.
“Archer,” Rockson said, pointing across the rough waters. “That wide oak tree on the other side. See it? Shoot one of your cable-arrows into it. Do you understand me?”
“Arrrchher shoooot treee,” the giant groaned back as he swung his huge steel-wired crossbow around to the front. He reached around behind him and took a narrow but deep spool from one of his saddle bags and attached the quarter-inch alloy cable to the back end of the arrow, resting it in the firing slot. Putting one leg up on the ’brid’s neck, Archer positioned the front of the yard-wide crossbow on his knee and sighted up. His target was a gnarled age-old tree, six feet wide at the base, which drooped wide leafy branches out over the opposite edge of the river, creating shadows where fish swam to hide from their bigger-jawed relatives.
The mountain man let his body settle, waiting several seconds until his arm stopped shaking from the adrenaline rush. Then he gently squeezed the wide trigger, which was big enough for a finger as large as most men’s wrists. The arrow shot from the front end of the primitive but powerful weapon with the slightest whoosh as it sliced the air with a razor head. It flew unerringly just above the river, which reached up as if trying to suck it down, and slammed into the oak a yard above the ground. The arrow hit with tremendous velocity and the specially designed arrow sank in eight inches, burying itself forever in the dense wood fiber.
“Give it to me,” Rockson yelled above the din of the volcanic maelstrom unfolding all around them and the frantic braying of the now completely unhinged hybrid horses. He jumped down from his ’brid and grabbed the spool of cable from Archer’s hands, running over to a large tree by the shore. Rock wrapped the thin steel mesh cable, tested at up to a ton for tensile strength, around the wide trunk and leaped back up on Snorter and started the ’brid forward before he hit the saddle.
“I’ll go first,” he yelled at the disoriented squad of Freefighters, who were dizzy from the gases and coated from head to foot in a fine layer of ink-black soot. “Take your link-up ropes from your saddlebags—every one of you has one,” the Doomsday Warrior cried out as he held one of them up, his eyes glued to the throbbing wall of white-hot slag coming toward them in a rushing waterfall of flame. “Slip the lower clamp around the saddle ring and when you get your ’brid into the water—fit the other clamp around the wire. Don’t screw up—or you’re dead.” He prayed that his words had stirred them from their near comatose states—there would be no second chances.
Rockson headed his ’brid into the ripping river at full gallop, creating a big splash. But the animal was a sure swimmer and headed in the direction Rockson pulled the reins. He slipped the hinge clasp over the cable and breathed a sigh of relief. At least they wouldn’t get swept off. Snorter swam forward, guided by the constant tug of the cable, as Rockson spun around on his saddle so he was facing the other way. The rest of the team steered their mounts into the river one after another, hitting the blue with splashes of white and then linking up. They all seemed to be doing it right and the cold water rushing over them woke them up with frigid slaps.
As Snorter swam toward the center of the river it grew rougher, the whitecaps bigger, hitting hard. They slammed into the ’brid’s side, trying to sweep it downriver. The huge animal slowed to a crawl as it fought furiously beneath the surface with all four legs, paddling the wide oars at a fast pace. The whole lower portion of the mammal’s body was pulled sideways by the current, forcing it to swim at a nearly 45-degree angle. But swim it did, never faltering, never doubting it could make it. The massive mountain of fire was moving right up to the other bank, snapping a grove of trees two hundred yards off and chewing them down like flies, sending up little fogs of super-heated sap that were ignited by the heat before they rose fifty feet. Animals trapped by the killing lava rushed forward in streaks of furry lightning and dove head-first into the waters without a second thought and began paddling, holding their heads high up above the lapping liquid. Beavers, gray foxes, desert armadillos—all swam feet apart as if in an animal Olympics—to see who would live.
At last the ’brid touched solid ground and hoisted itself up out of the water, hitting the shore at full stride. Rock leapt down, reaching the ground before the animal could stop, and ran to the sandy shore yelling encouragement to the others.
“Keep going—you’re almost here,” he yelled out to Rona, cupping his hands like a megaphone. He could see that she was barely hanging on and was being buffeted around in the saddle like a pingpong ball. But she had wrapped her arms around the hybrid’s neck and was clutching the thick furred mane tightly with both fists.
Rockson’s attention was suddenly diverted to the back of the watery stampede of men and animals as the screeching neighs of an animal in mortal terror filled the air. Somehow one of the clasps had come loose from the cable—and man and animal were instantly swept beneath the wire and down the river. Rockson opened his eyes wide to see who it was—Karston—one of the siege-experts Rock had picked for the mission. The speed of the river picked up enormously just a few hundred feet downriver and waves rose up to six and seven feet from the surface, slamming wildly around in grinding jaws of white. Karston, tied to his mount, hit the roughest part of the foam and disappeared beneath the waves, the hybrid’s legs spinning over several times before vanishing into the lower reaches.
Knowing the man was dead, Rockson turned his gaze back to the living. The rest of the party was struggling but somehow forging their way across, and within sixty seconds most of them were up on the far shore, some laughing and nearly hysterical that they had survived sure death. McCaughlin brought up the rear and Rock kept an anxious eye on the man as his mount moved at a turtle’s pace, its nostrils and eyes only inche
s above the stinging waves. The big Scotsman hung on tenaciously, his legs wrapped tighter than an anemone around a clam to his ’brid’s back. And behind him, tethered by twin ropes, were the three ’brids the supply man was trailing, all of them churning up the waters in their own desperate reach for survival.
The river of fire met the river of water behind them and the sky filled with smoke and steam from the concussive rendezvous. The vaporized liquid shot out like superheated water from a broken pipe, streaming out across the river. Rockson reached out to guide McCaughlin’s ’brid, who found it hard footing, but somehow between them they pulled the last member of the team up onto dry land.
Rock mounted his ’brid again and headed the team away from the river. The million-gallon flow of water had stopped the lava—for now. Who knew how much it could swallow up—or how much the volcano was going to pump out as it continued to belch forth like a giant factory chimney on a 24-hour work shift.
They rode for a good ten minutes until Rock knew they were miles off and safe—until the next thing that tried to do them in, anyway. The team halted and turned their ’brids around, the fighters saying not a word. The volcano was eerily beautiful from a distance—they could appreciate it now that they knew it wouldn’t burn them alive. It spouted up a geyser of fire in a perfectly shaped plume that had stabilized at a height of about 800 feet. It erupted with a fiery grace, its sheets of flame forming a flower-like shape before cresting and falling back down in wide symmetrical curves onto the sea of red rock below, where it joined in the wild push of the inanimate matter like lemmings on the path of least resistance.
