by Ryder Stacy
“Very well, very well,” the head procurer said at last, after he had gone back and forth up each row and seen and inspected every one of them. Every short, tall, skinny, fat, normal and mutated female specimen that filled the warehouse like a cattle run fresh in from the Rio Grande. “Do you have your clipboard?” he asked his subordinate. “I don’t want this bastard to give me what I can’t use.”
“But, Excellency,” the wart-faced Russian flesh-peddler whined. “We agreed in advance that if you liked the purchase—you would take them all. You said—”
“Oh quiet, your whining drives me to distraction,” the sex-officer barked with annoyance. “I will pay you what we agreed. There is plenty to amuse the President and provide entertainment for the delegates. I just don’t want to infest my goods with the most hideous. Americans, I suppose, go for what we go for.
“That one there covered with warts,” he said with disgust. “Get her out of here.” He pointed at the creature. “She’ll infect the others.” He began walking down the first row from the start all over again, as both his assistant and the slaver followed close behind, scribbling quickly in their notepads.
“I’ll take this blonde one, this three-breasted one with the star pattern . . . I’ll take the Siamese twins there; amazing how they’re joined at the—I wonder if they both feel it?” He moved on. “Let’s see, the half row of Negresses there—pygmies, aren’t they? Yet perfectly formed. Oh, the visitors will get a kick out of them, I’ll tell you that. Oh, and save that one—the albino—for the President. He loves them small—and—and mutated like that.”
“Yes, yes,” the slaver noted, writing away madly as he noted the number of each one that was pasted on her back, so he would deliver the right ones. Already he was thinking of how he would spend the money, the small fortune he would get for this delivery.
“Are you listening, man?” the procurer shouted angrily, slapping the slaver on the side of the face with his riding crop. “I haven’t time to dawdle. Wake up, fool.”
“Excellency, Excellency, so sorry. Sorry, sorry . . .” he mumbled inanely, bowing halfway to the floor half a dozen times. Then he continued to write down the selections.
“Yes, I’ll take these Arabian girls with the extra legs, these three here with feathers on their arms. Cute—I like that. And those two-tongued ones. I know just the group that will get a kick out of that,” he laughed and the others joined in, not knowing who the hell he was talking about.
“Come on now, don’t dawdle, fool,” the procurer said, smacking the slaver on the side of the head again, just as the last pain was starting to subside.
“And I’ll take those and these . . . and . . .” The colonel went through the whore selection like a kid through a candy store. He took one of everything nice—and two of everything nasty.
Nine
Rona was there to see Rockson off, just as the sun was heading down wearily from yet another day of trying to heat the poisoned and pitted landscape that was the new America. She had been afraid there might be trouble—with the anger of some of the Council and the crowd at the meeting early that morning. But no one was quite able to muster the will or gumption to take on Ted Rockson—and his five-man team of combat hardened strike troops. No way, Jose. Rock himself wasn’t sure if he would have defied the Council if the second re-vote had gone against him—instead of in his favor. He was glad he didn’t have to find out. This time.
The rest of the Freefighters had already gathered and were waiting for Rockson when he showed up, Rona by his side. The five men looked at one another with quick knowing glances and their faces softened into grins. Rock had been at it again. If the guy wasn’t out somewhere blowing up mountains, he was in bed with Rona. The woman had the energy of a she-lion. But not a man among them wouldn’t have had to admit he was a little jealous. For she was probably the most beautiful woman any of them had ever seen.
Archer, the seven-foot-tall near-mute, who Rockson had rescued from a quicksand pit years before, was already atop his huge mount, the largest of all the ’brids. But even this steed, with the weight of 350 pounds—and a load of fighting gear on its back—had a decidedly pale look on its furry face. The huge mountain man tested the wire of his homemade crossbow. It had been giving him trouble lately, but he had tightened a few things here and there and . . . He took a steel arrow from a quiver on his back and fitted it into the firing slot of the immense crossbow. A small handle that worked through a simple but effective gear system easily pulled back the piano wire, so that the steel bow bent far back and locked in place. Archer lifted the bow to his right cheek and sighted around the departing chamber, filled with stables, supplies and hybrids. He pretended to take out a few of the whining animals at the far end of the place. And then, satisfied that all was in working order, put the weapon on its strap back around his shoulder and looked over at the rest of them, anxious to set off. He jammed down his floppy leather hat in anticipation of wind as they exited the fortress.
To his left, Chen, the Chinese-American martial-arts expert and fighting teacher of Century City, leaped up in a single smooth motion onto the back of his ’brid. He had always been an expert at the martial arts, gymnastics—but he had never gotten to work on his rodeo-relationship with the hybrid horses until just recently. He had been working out along with some of the other “cowboys” of the place on perfecting his riding skills—leaping mount and dismount were two of them. Though no one seemed to particularly notice. Chen sat atop his black-and-white ’brid and checked his weapons pack. The fighting expert, Rockson’s oldest and closest friend in the world, felt most alive when starting out on a mission. He hated to admit it to himself, for he had always counseled moderation and not to take pleasure in violence. But it wasn’t really the violence that drew him, so much as just being out there. Alive, all senses on full alert. And yes, when it came down to it, testing his strengths, his skills against other men, other creatures. For wasn’t that what life was—a challenge? A challenge between all things on the planet, for supremacy.
To his side, McCaughlin—cook, “doctor,” woodcutter—a bear of a man, and not getting any smaller as time went on, was loading the last of the kitchen supplies onto his two pack hybrids. The men always made fun of him when he loaded up the damned clanking pots and pans, the slabs of bacon and elk fat, spices and powders. They laughed now—but they wouldn’t later, not when they were in the middle of nowhere, sweating it out in the broiling sun, stomping through mud. Then the steaming chow he served up was the most delicious damned stuff on the face of the earth. Thus their smirks bounced off his broad back as they saw him struggle with his load. The man looked as if he were about to open a traveling culinary school.
Next on the line of the strike team was Detroit Green. The black cannonball of a hellfighter had been with Rockson from the beginning. Named after his hometown, the black powerhouse had made his way to Century City, where he and Rockson, another orphan, had grown up fast friends—had traveled the mountains together, spying on the Reds and their convoys . . . until things changed and Rockson grew into a leader of men. But there was no resentment between them. Detroit knew what he could do—as did all the other men of the squad. Go with Rockson into hell itself if he asked them—if that’s what it called for to set America free!
Though not tall, Detroit’s shoulders were like a defensive lineman’s—and the oversized sweatshirt he wore bulged as if it would split from the muscles beneath. Across his chest were bandoliers of grenades—the weapon with which he was extremely adept. Coming from a long line of baseball players, pitchers in particular, Detroit had always played the game well, whether knocking down cans from an alley wall in the slums of New Detroit—before the Reds took out 90 percent of the city—to pitching in the Century City softball games—and winning most—to throwing grenades at convoys and even choppers. Detroit was a starter all the way. His fighting abilities—plus his mechanical aptitude, which somehow enabled him to repair anything that chugged, turned, wheezed or s
puttered—made the son of a bitch a one-man army of can-do.
Near the wall, trying to figure out just how to strap up the damned hybrid properly, was the newest member of the Rock team—Scheransky, a Russian defector. Some of the men had been apprehensive—to say the least—about Scheranksy’s addition. But Rock had trusted the man—and his ability to speak Russian, plus his technical knowledge about a number of Russian weapons and communications systems, made him an extremely important asset to the team. That was enough for the rest of them. The Russian had already proven himself in combat. The crucial forge. For there’s something about sharing the experience of bullets coming at you that tends to make men fast friends.
Scheranksy had been fat, pale, when he defected. But already his liaison with Century City, with Rockson, had toughened him up. He looked trimmer, leaner . . . dare any of them think it, meaner. For it had been the joke of the outfit that the man was the least fighting oriented fellow they had ever seen. It wasn’t really in the man to fight. And yet he had learned. For he was one hell of a motivated man. A man who had tasted slavery, and now had the flavor of freedom on his lips.
Rock reached Snorter, his personal ’brid, who had been with him for several years now. A somewhat amazing fact, considering that his previous three mounts had been shot out from under him in the space of two years. He patted the tall, sturdy hybrid on its nose and slipped it a small lump of sugar, a vice that he found made the animal eternally indebted to him. The ’brid was already loaded up. One of the other men had stacked the standard equipment and supplies each of them took on all missions—plus five boxes of his .12 gauge shotgun-pistol ammo, and some sturdy walkie-talkies.
He fingered the pistol at his side. Somehow in his gut he wondered if that was going to be enough. There was death in the air. He could feel it, sense it. His mutant sense told him something was looming ahead of them all. Some monstrous presence in the ether. A dark crushing sensation in his chest that Rock hadn’t felt since—since— No, it was impossible. The man was dead. Killov was dead, he knew it. Crashed in Siberia. Rockson had detailed confirmation. Many had seen the MIG fall from the sky. Explode into pieces. There had been no chance of survival this time. The KGB colonel’s nine lives had run out. Yet why this feeling, like razors made of sheer ice, cutting across the pit of his stomach?
“Rock,” Rona said impulsively, suddenly grabbing him around the shoulders, half spinning him around away from the hybrid. “Oh, Rock.” She buried her head in his neck and Rockson could feel that her eyes were moist. Rona was a tough cookie all the way. Rock had never seen her like this.
“Hey sugar, what’s the matter?” he asked, cupping her chin and looking her in the eyes. The ’brid partially protected them from the view of the others, but the men all turned their eyes away. Even the cloddiest of them knew enough not to look at lovers’ good-byes. “I’ve never seen you like this.” Rock went on kissing her on her wet eyes and then holding her close for a few seconds.
She was the one who broke it as she pushed herself away from him, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, looking quite embarrassed at the outburst of emotion. She had felt, had wanted to feel herself “one of the boys.” Had fought with all these men at other times, on other missions. Yet here she was, a blabbering idiot. She kept her head down, trying to hide in the ’brid’s shadow.
“Oh Rock, I don’t know, I just feel something. Like—like I might never see you again.” She could hardly utter the words, and put her hand to her face to stop the moisture from flowing again. Suddenly she turned and ran off, and he could see by the way her shoulders were shaking that more of the tears were flowing. Rock shook his head softly back and forth and mounted up. The leather and smell of the animal felt good to his nostrils. Without a word to the others he turned and started forward. And without a word they followed.
The outside world hit them like a fist from an ice cannon as they rode through the camouflage netting at the east end of the underground city. Five figures on horseback emerged like ghosts through solid mountain rock. They moved at a slow trot through the moon-spattered slopes of the high Rockies. The night was bitterly cold. Though summer, the clear skies and the effects of radiation on the atmosphere often made the nights thirty to forty degrees colder than they had been in the pre-war days. But these men and animals were inured to it. They had been out here before.
The stars flowed down from the asphalt highway of night like a million marbles, spilling their rolling balls of fire across the landscape. Granite peaks rose all around them like spires from a castled world, towers from a fantasy, a dream. A flock of insect bats flapped by overhead, spooking the horses for a second with their high-pitched squeaks that the men couldn’t pick up but the ’brids did. But soon both man and beast were adjusted to the night, to the regular loping-along motion as Rock took the lead and the others followed behind.
The Reds had offered to fly to D.C. Rockson and all other delegates who attended the peace conference. Or they could travel to St. Louis, where they could take the bullet train usually reserved for Russian brass. All courtesy of the Reds—sleeping berths, food, everything provided. But somehow Rockson wasn’t in the mood to take up the vacation offer. He didn’t want to get stuck inside something like a chopper, even a train—where they could all be shot down, or blown up—something where the Reds would know just where he’d be and when. Rock didn’t trust them. Not by a long shot.
He let his mind drift with the slowly passing terrain. With the full moon shining like a bingo win-light in the great blackboard of the sky, he and the men behind him could pretty much see their way—as could the ’brids, which were blessed with good eyesight. They needed it on these high mountain passes and trails, where a single stumble could mean a fall of thousands of feet. But the steeds pressed sure-footedly on. Thus did the Century City peace-attack team spend their first night. And not a single word through the long night was said.
They bivouacked when the fat slug of a sun began to crawl out of the hole of night and into the tower of day. It would take them two days to get to their next stop on the long journey east. Which should be plenty of time—as the communications from the Reds had given them a date two weeks off. Plenty of time. Plenty of time—if everything went according to schedule. But as Rockson should have known, nothing in post-war America went according to schedule.
They were coming out of their second night, the second dawn as well just starting to come up when the wind seemed to pick up and the sky to the north turned a peculiarly nauseating greenish color. It was as if the whole heavens were about to puke their guts out. Something bad was about to happen. Rockson could feel the hair on his head and arms charge up and stand out, and Snorter stopped in his tracks and reared, whinnying something fierce. Rock calmed the animal down by grabbing hard on the reins and taking control again. But the sky was only getting worse. Far to the north, perhaps twenty miles off, Rockson swore he could see a jet-black cloud, alive and undulating, coming straight toward them. He knew what it was.
“Stop!” Rock screamed, holding up his right hand as he circled Snorter quickly around, so that he was facing the rest of the team.
“It’s a blow,” Rock said, “a black blow,” suddenly having to talk above the roar of the wind that was picking up rapidly. “I think—think—it might be acid rain.” The men’s eyes opened wide—even the tiredest of them who had been off in some fantasy island of the mind as they rode along. They had all seen acid rainstorms before. Had seen the whimpering piles of smoking fur and hide and flesh that was left behind for those caught in such a downpour. Worse than acid snow, even.
“You know what to do,” Rock screamed out. “Alumatarps. Take ’em out fast—we’ve only got minutes, less maybe, to set up the goddamned things.” But they had trained for before and, all except Scheransky moved in precision with one another. Poles were pulled down from satchels and slammed into the ground with collapsible sledge hammers, until they were embedded as solid as King Arthur’s sword. Then they unpacked t
he special Shecter-created aluminum alloy tarps—thin as wafer, but impervious to the vile acids that the atomic storms were sometimes capable of spitting out. The silver squares were quickly attacked to the pole frame, and within six minutes they had a 20 x 20 foot, six-foot-high structure completely enclosed—with walls, roof and all.
“Get inside,” Rock yelled out, cupping his hands over his mouth as the black clouds came on them like gangbusters. The men pulled and kicked and cajoled their nervous ’brids inside. But as the wind picked up and goosed their butts with shrieks of pure fury, the animals shot into the enclosure and stomped around, making all sorts of horrible, deafening sounds. Detroit was the last one in—he always took up the rear. And he jerked his head around several times to double-check that no men or ’brids were out there. Then he slammed down the entrance flap, which sealed shut with a special Velcron coating.
Not a moment too soon. For suddenly the dimly lit world all around the tent went pitch black and the cloud swooped down and enveloped them. A waterfall of liquid erupted onto the tent, making the whole thing sway back and forth as if in the throes of a hurricane. The animals went mad and every man had to hold the reins right at chest level and keep pulling the ’brids down harshly. Some of them were cut and bleeding—but if the damned things got free and outside . . . there wouldn’t be any blood to bleed.
Then the thing really ripped into them. It was as if it were alive, a predator determined to claw them out of the makeshift tent. It slammed into the structure, the black, steaming rains pummeling the sides, seeking entrance to the living flesh inside. The winds beat against the walls, which slapped back and forth, creating drumlike sounds, which, with the brays of the animals and the yells of the men for them to shut up and “get that fucking hoof out of my fucking eye,” created quite a cacophonous event.
