Doomsday Warrior 06 - American Rebellion

by Ryder Stacy

  Behind them the German guns at last came to a stop. It was clear to them that there wasn’t a chance in hell of getting the escaped slave. Ammunition was precious. There would be another day. From nearly half-a-mile away Rock could hear the AMRV and jeep engines chug to life and take off.

  “We’ll just wait for this mist to rise a little,” Rock said to Rona who seemed to be adjusting to their swamp ride. Within another 20 minutes, the heat of the pumpkin-orange sun, now risen fully into the eastern sky, burnt off the top layers of fog so that from a distance of three feet above the green swamp the air became clear. The lowest level remained thick with the gray-green smoke swirling above the water all around them. Rock stood up so he could see above it and carefully began paddling toward what he thought was the shore. But after about five minutes of edging ahead, and seeing only more green swamp, more groves of thick-vined swamp trees, and no shore, Rock coughed and came to a stop.

  “Do you have something to tell me?” Rona asked, without turning her head, her voice tart with sarcasm.

  “Afraid so,” Rock said. “I hate to say it . . . but I think we’re lost. But I’m sure we can find our way out again. After all these swamps are only . . .”

  “Fifty miles wide,” Rona said, cutting him off. Something edged through the top few inches of the green slime just inches from the boat, sending a little ripple against them. Rona screamed and jumped back falling on her back into the center of the raft. Rock caught her.

  “Just a snake Rona, or a frog or something,” he said, setting her upright again.

  “It’s the ‘or something’ that concerns me,” she said, turning and throwing her arms around him once again. “Oh Rock I don’t mind dying. Not really. Not if it’s with you. I just don’t want to have to swallow all that green muck. Couldn’t we drown in some nice clear blue water, sink to the bottom, all clean and shiny? Just lie there like statues on display?”

  “Hold it woman,” Rock said laughing. “We’re not quite dead yet. I have no . . .”

  His mouth froze in mid-sentence, as she looked at him. It was the voices again, the strange chorus of screams and whispers, grunts and growls that he had heard while dumping bodies days before. This time they were close, very close, and they filled his brain, like the roar of a freight train.

  “There’s something. Something . . .” he whispered.

  “I hear it too,” she said, her face growing even more pale than her usual ivory tone. “It’s some kind of telepathy. Rock, could it be the Glowers?” she asked hopefully.

  “No, I’m afraid it’s not.” Rockson knew the feel of the Glowers’ telepathic signals. They were melodic, beautiful, like the music of the universal mind. These voices were broken, brutal. Filled with violence and rage. And they were drawing closer every second.

  Suddenly the bubbling slime-filled surface of the swamp for yards all around their small air-filled boat broke into violent foaming and waves which rocked them violently back and forth. Huge shapes broke the surface and rose up surrounding them! Rona screamed, and even Rockson’s face blanched. He had seen many ugly things in his time—mutations, creatures that shouldn’t have existed. But these were beyond anything he could imagine. They were vaguely humanoid, but nearly ten feet tall, and they seemed to be created from the swamp itself, dripping, green figures of pure rot and decay. Their heads, as large as auto tires, seemed featureless, just big mounds of the dripping slime. Their immense arms reached out, toward the raft, the green rot of their being dripping down from them. Their chests were as wide across as the raft itself. They must have possessed enormous strength as they surrounded the raft, effortlessly gliding through the thick mud. They seemed like living trees made of foul mud and excrement. The creatures dripped their own substance back into the swamp, green dankness falling from their faces, arms, sides, dripping down like little waterfalls of decay. But they didn’t seem to lose shape, Rock thought. His logical mind watched, trying to understand them, trying not to be frightened. All things had minds, ways of behaving. If he could communicate with them. But there wasn’t much time, for they were converging on the raft, their swampy hands reaching, reaching . . .

  Thirteen

  “Stop!” The Doomsday Warrior screamed out with all his telepathic powers, his eyes tightly shut, his entire brain focusing on the command.

  The dripping piles of filth stopped dead in their tracks, frozen in confusion. None had been able to speak with them before.

  “Stop,” Rock sent out again, keeping his eyes closed so as not to let any trace of fear of such hideous creatures fill his thoughts. For he knew that the outer appearance of creatures in the new America was no indication of anything. The most beautiful of nature’s creations could kill you in a second, while the ugliest, like the turned inside-out Glowers, could be the most loyal, even loving beings. It was the mind, the heart that mattered, and Rockson desperately tried to reach these monstrosities, tried to bridge the gap between human and . . .

  “What dares talk?” a voice asked, filling Rock’s head.

  “A man,” Rock sent back, suddenly feeling an electric hope that he could win them over. “A man who flees the German and Russian armies. Armies that kill. We come in peace. I speak to you as a brother of the earth.”

  “Brother?” the voice telepathed back with what Rockson could sense had a certain amount of sarcasm. “We are brothers to no one. We are Narga—the undying ones. We kill all who come here. We are created out of death, out of mold and rot. And this we give back to the world of the living. All living things that come to this green hell must die.”

  The Narga started forward again.

  “Stop!” Rockson commanded again, sending out such a bolt of mental energy that the swamp creatures pulled back this time with a start. The puny human creature had actually caused them pain. They had never known pain before.

  “How can you talk with us?” The question slammed into his head. “You are a human thing? The others cannot speak with us.”

  “I am not human,” Rockson answered. “I am mutant. A new species,” Rockson added, hoping that maybe fellow mutants would feel sympathetic to one of their own kind.

  “Mutant?” There was almost the sound of laughter in his head for a moment, as if the swamp things found it amusing. “Welcome to the end of the world mutant, for this is the place where the most hideous of nature’s creations are found.”

  “Eat him,” a voice from the many telepathic voices of the creatures rang out, zapping into Rock’s head like a knife blade.

  “Yes, eat him and the girl. They will be tasty,” another dark mind added. “We have not tasted fresh meat for long. Always cold and hard.”

  The thoughts of the creatures were filled with sickness, darkness, broken images, blood and death. It was hard for Rockson to even listen. But he had to. Had to feel all that they sent and understand them, and fast.

  “No. Not eat,” the one Rockson had been telepathing with spoke out with a mental roar. “I talk with him.”

  The speaker was clearly the leader, although the Doomsday Warrior couldn’t tell how far his power went. The others seemed restless, they stood around the raft, just inches away and he could feel their deep hunger through the air. Rona sat with her eyes half closed, pulled down as far as she could go into the raft as if like a child she could make the nightmare go away by hiding in a little corner. This was not exactly how she had planned to go, into those huge mouths dripping with green slime.

  “Who are you?” Rockson asked, trying to get in a conversation with him. One thing he had. learned over his many violent years—things won’t eat you while they’re talking with you.

  “We are the ugly, the cursed, the damned of God’s creatures,” the voice spoke again. One of the huge swamp things stood right next to the raft looking down at Rockson as the others pulled back a yard or so. So, this was the leader. Now at least he knew who he was talking to, although any distinguishing features of the slime-being was pretty much lost on him.

  “This is
our world. The mud, the quicksand, the rot. We are the rot, the rot is us. We were created out of the darkness—and all who come here shall join us. Why have you come, puny human. Did you not know the price for entering this foul place?”

  “I came to escape from the Nazis,” Rock said, searching through his mind for just the right words. He had no idea what they believed or their loyalties, if any, but now was the time, to say the least. All he needed was a political argument and it would be chow time. “We were captured and made into slaves by them. We fight on the side of America. We are Freefighters. We did not know that this was your world, or we would not have trespassed.”

  “Yes, the Germans,” the voice went on, almost softly, a slow waterfall of green foam dripping continuously down its immense chest and legs. It seemed that it should almost just disintegrate as its physicality kept dripping, but somehow it didn’t lose any mass. Perhaps the creatures kept sucking up the swamp itself from below, like a pump, Rock thought, continuously replenishing their substance.

  “We—we were created by the German death makers,” the swamp thing went on, addressing Rockson face to face so that he could suddenly see two red eyes, glowing like dark embers set deep in the green dripping head.

  “We were slaves who had been used up by them and then discarded in this place of wet hell. Many months ago, perhaps a year, when they first began building the fortress. Our dying flesh mingled with the chemicals and the radioactive poison and germs of the swamp. And somehow we found ourselves coalescing, coming into being, if this can be called being. Then we were reborn, from human into monster.

  “This is not life—it is an eternal death. We cannot die, though we wish more than anything to do so. We remember our human selves, our wretched lives serving under the Reds and the Nazis. But now our existence is a million times worse. We and the filth are one, our bodies, our minds, made of nothing but poison and death, melted, rotted, putrescence. We are prisoners here trapped inside these monstrosities. We wish only to be released.”

  “What—what is your name?” Rockson asked, hesitantly, wanting to make a personal contact with their leader. He had learned long ago in dealing with countless barbarian and savage tribes of men that one must always go for the leader, either to influence him or kill him. The rest would follow.

  “I am Nitrogen Carnivore,” the huge dripping swamp-thing said, some of its foul droppings falling down onto the edge of the raft. Rona pulled back, slowly, trying not to look repulsed so as to offend anyone or anything’s sensitivities.

  “We are named from the foul elements from which we were created.”

  “I am Methane Death,” one of the green creatures said, stepping forward next to the one with which Rock was conversing.

  “I am Monoxide Blood,” another said, joining his swampy compatriots. Rockson sensed their hunger growing as the red eyes swept up and down the two Freefighters’ bodies like radar domes hot on the trail of a kill.

  “Food. We must eat,” one of them sent out.

  “Yes, they are warm, warm—Nitrogen. It’s been so long since we had hot food. Everything’s already a cancer by the time it gets to us. Only an occasional snack of a hand or an arm. They are big. Enough for us here, if we don’t share with the others.”

  Rockson sensed they were pleading with Nitrogen Carnivore to officially open the dining hour. He decided to play a longshot.

  “I’m Ted Rockson,” he telepathed out, once again using all his mental power, sending out a burst that burned like streaking fire through the invisible airwaves. “The Doomsday Warrior.”

  Again, they pulled back as the power of his mind seemed to have an awful effect on them, like an electric charge.

  “The Rockson,” he heard them whisper from mind to mind.

  “Yes, I remember,” Nitrogen Carnivore said, standing up to his full ten feet plus of purest rot, little branches and leaves, the bones of a dead animal all were intertwined and stuck in his oozing green swamp body.

  “The Rockson. They tried to stop your name from being even spoken in the labor camps. I spent most of my human life in those camps. Yes, we’ve heard of you. Our greatest curse is that we still have minds, memories that will not die even within our own bodies of death.”

  The tree-sized leader of the swamp monsters stood back as if really seeing Rockson for the first time.

  “We will not eat these,” he said with a firm air of command. Rockson could hear the others protest with soft telepathic whines of hunger, but they quickly stopped. Whatever Nitrogen’s hold over them, they seemed completely obedient to him. Rock filed it away in his brain, marked “Important.”

  “You come,” Nitrogen said. “We go to our home. Show you to others.”

  He reached down a dripping green arm nearly seven feet long and as thick as a log as his rough-shaped appendages that served as hands grabbed hold of a rope at the front end of the raft. Turning around, the immense swamp carnivore began walking off into the dead center of the vast swamp as the others splashed behind. The bizarre group of a dozen Narga and the two Freefighters rushed smoothly through the thick slime, the raft pushing a huge swell of the green oil up and around the sides of the inflated craft. Rona was trying to get even deeper down inside the raft, as if it were possible. Rock put his hand on her shoulder and tried to reassure her.

  “I know they’re not too pretty,” he said, “but I’ve definitely established contact with the leader. I think we’re going to be okay.” She tried to put on a brave face.

  “I guess, after the Glowers and their slurping organs all over the outside of their bodies, I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. But God they are ugly. My stomach turns just looking at them.”

  “Better than us turning in their stomachs,” the Doomsday Warrior answered, pulling her against his chest so she could hide herself in the strength of his arms. Men she could fight against, she had faced whole armies without flinching. She had trained in martial arts, every kind of weapon, had sparred with Rockson, and Chen, the martial arts instructor of Century City. She had never flinched. But these strange new races, so many of them nightmarishly hideous. She found it hard to just accept. Rockson seemed able to walk up to the most twisted thing on God’s earth, say “hello” and sit down for a game of cards. He had a way with monstrosities. But for her, give her a good five-on-one knife fight with KGB Deathsquads over these things . . . anytime!

  Rockson watched in fascination as they were pulled ever deeper into the putrid swamp. He knew there was no use trying to figure out where they were going or a way back. The swamp was an endless morass of green and groves of thick trees and swamp vines which dropped down. Thicker and thicker draperies of the dark purple rope-like growths dropped over everything like a net. But the Narga with their immense and fluid bulk just waved their tree-like arms in front of them as they walked and oozed through everything in their way. Rockson could feel them playing almost like children, feeling the extent of their great power.

  “Look, Sulphuric Death. I crash this tree,” one of the Narga yelled mentally off to Rockson’s right. The huge swamp thing rushed ahead a few yards, its big elephant-like legs ripping in and out of the sucking swamp. It headed toward a small island of midnight black dirt with about 30 of the 20- to 30-foot high trees huddled together as if for mutual support and protection from the devouring forces of the swamp. The Narga slammed up onto the grove and right through the center sending the foot-thick hard-bark trees smashing over in an explosion of splintering wood. Within seconds the swamp being rushed back down the other side of the mini-island laughing with audible sounds, like pieces of seaweed being slapped loudly together. It lost its balance just as it hit the green surface of the swamp and fell tumbling face forward into the muck disappearing beneath the surface. The others all opened their dark appendages that passed for mouths and emitted the loud slurping laughs as the fallen Narga arose out of the dankness and joined in.

  “Ah, they’re cute, Rock,” Rona said, sitting up next to him. Now that she had seen that t
hey could play, she suddenly felt a deep maternal tenderness spring out from her breast toward the hideous things.

  “Why they’re nothing but a bunch of overgrown green teddybears,” she said.

  They traveled for nearly an hour, one section of swamp pretty much like the next until at last a large island appeared, this one nearly a quarter-mile wide ringed with the thick-leaved swamp trees.

  “This our home,” Nitrogen Carnivore said as he pulled the raft up onto the hard-packed red dirt bank.

  “The only place we can go when we wish to be out of the slime.”

  Rockson and Rona got out of the craft, pulling it a few more feet up onto the island to make sure that it didn’t somehow slip back in. They followed the hulking towers of oozing swamp mud in toward the center of the island, Carnivore in the lead. They walked for about a hundred yards, the two Freefighters overjoyed just to have solid footing underground, when they came to a large clearing, obviously created by the Narga, since the trees at the very perimeter were knocked over right in half. Their demolition methods were crude but effective.

  There were no houses that Rock could detect, just strange round sculptures of some kind, 20-feet tall and almost as wide. They were red in color, made from the island’s dirt which possessed certain claylike qualities and could be molded when mixed with the swamp slime into permanent shapes. Twelve of the structures stood in a circle facing one another and a group of the Narga were in the middle lying flat on their faces looking down at the hard packed ground. They were chanting and slamming their green swamp legs and arms against the ground as if striking it repeatedly. They sang and yelled out choruses that Rock could hear both telepathically and audibly as the watery squishing sounds issued forth from the dark openings that were their mouths, undulating and rippling rivers of mud disappearing inside.