by Ryder Stacy
“I don’t like it Rock,” Detroit said, as the six Americans stood in center of the raging storm. At his words a chorus of bolts took off from directly above them and roared down to shattering fiery rendezvous with tall pines and iron rich peaks. “It’s a megablow,” the black cannonball of a man continued. “Could take us all right the hell off this earth.” Detroit looked up at the writhing fists of clouds pounding and punching away at one another. The stocky freefighter was afraid of few things—the megastorm was one of them. He had been in one of the super storms that periodically swept across America and had barely escaped with his life as winds grew to two hundred and fifty mph and tore everything—trees, vegetation, animals screaming out shrill death cries—away. He had made it to a small cave and watched in horrified fascination as the world outside was leveled to a splintered, flooded wasteland.
“We’ve got to move on, Detroit,” Rockson said softly. “The Reds aren’t going to wait.” He scanned the horizon ahead, trying to penetrate the ocean of a storm and see beyond, see the Russian convoy which he knew lay ahead. “We’ll get wet but we’re not going to die,” Rockson said, looking at the gathered fighters around him, “unless you look up the sky too long and drown. So keep your mouths closed and your feet on the ground and we should be at attack point within several hours.” The men glanced nervously ahead, down the side of the mountain where the trail seemed to meander wildly from cliff to cliff. But they all knew Ted Rockson and trusted him with their lives. They would have walked into the fires of hell itself with this man, with Ted Rockson. Perhaps that’s just where they were going.
The ground grew blacker as they headed down the steep slope, a sign of a nearby A-blast, in the war of a century ago. Rock took a look at his wrist-geiger, an invention of Dr. Shecter, the head scientist of Century City and surely one of the ten most intelligent men alive in the world today. The man’s output of technological innovations and advanced weaponry was prodigious. The needle of the geiger was heading from the blue, safe zone, into the green, radiation-present zone of the watch-sized detecter. But it wasn’t even near the beginning of the red—hot zone, totally within acceptable limits for the freefighters. Their genes, as had the genetic structures of all freefighters living out in the more high rad parts of the United States, had mutated so that they were now nearly a hundred times more resistant than their pre-war ancestors had been to the poisonous ravages of radiation.
But though he was safe from the invisible death, the ground they walked on was not. Rock looked around at the black, unproductive, sterile land as they came to the outer edge of a crater nearly a thousand yards wide. He felt a charge of hatred bolt up and down his spine. Hatred for the Reds—the murderers who had done this to America, land of the free, home of the brave, country of the dead. Eighty percent of the U.S. population had died within the first two weeks of the strike, dying either of the bomb blast or of the far more painful and terrifying radiation damage which made the hair fall out like burnt wheat and the teeth fall like rotten black fruit from the bleeding gums of the wounded. The Reds were easily able to fly in their troops and take over the U.S. from citizens in no shape to fight back. For nearly a century the Slavic invaders had occupied America, living off the produce, keeping her surviving population in the chains of slave labor.
But times were changing. Able to mount only small-scale attacks over the decades, the American free-fighting forces were at last growing in numbers and strength. The seventy-five Free Cities had only recently organized into the Confederation of United States and plans were under way for a Re-Constitutional Convention at which delegates would be sent from every hidden city to elect a president and congress and prepare plans for an all-out military assault on the Reds. Not that the Americans weren’t totally out-gunned by vastly superior Russian armaments, tanks, deathchoppers, and jets, even neutron bombs which the Reds had been using with more and more frequency. Out-gunned until now. But just months before, Rockson and a small expeditionary force had headed out into uncharted regions of the Far West, “land of the red fog” as the freefighters called it. The expedition had made contact with a strange race of mutated Americans called The Technicians, named after their ancestors, missile technicians who had survived the nuclear exchange in their super-fortified concrete bunkers deep under the western soil. The Technicians had lived there for a century, their eyes growing larger, with almost iridescent pupils as fiery as a cat’s, heads as big as pumpkins atop diminutive children’s bodies with spindly legs and arms. The Technicians had continued to use their knowledge doing the one thing they knew best—making weapons. Why they produced these weapons they had no idea. For whom? For what purpose? They had been totally shut off from all communication with the rest of the United States for a century and didn’t even think anyone was alive out there as the terrain around their bunkers was black as soot, miles of lifeless slag.
Until Rockson showed up. Upon hearing the entire story of what had happened to America after Russia’s first strike, The Technicians had gladly given Rockson five of the particle beam disintegrators they had built. Weapons of such enormous power that a single shot of pure black energy from one of the strangely shaped plastic rifles could bore holes through a mountain. Rock and his men had returned to Century City, their hidden city fortress in the middle of the Colorado Rockies, and proudly presented their black beam weapons to Dr. Shecter, who as Century City’s head scientist, immediately took the weapons under his command as too valuable to be used in “just any battle” with the Reds. He had made a careful, controlled scientific testing of the range and power of the particle beam rifles. Results? An unknown energy source with the power of a controlled atomic explosion. As hard as Shecter tried, he was unable to duplicate the weapons. Duplicate, hell, he couldn’t even open one up, as The Technicians had made them in a plastic mold, out of an unknown alloy that was impervious even to diamond drills.
At last Shecter had permitted Rock to take two of the weapons to attack a large Russian convoy that ferried supplies from the major Midwest airport of Fort Dobrynin to Denver some two hundred miles away by truck. “We’ve got to try them out in a real combat situation,” Rock had pleaded with Shecter for months. At last the scientist, tight-faced and cryptic as ever, had relented, after attaching a charge of high explosives to the stocks of the weapons which could be detonated by simply pressing a four number combination on a small panel. No Russian would ever get one of these rifles—and live.
A streak of star-hot lightning tore into the trail just thirty feet head of Rockson, ripping him from his thoughts of Dr. Shecter and home. The arcing lance of pure energy bit into the hard ground and spat out shards of stone shrapnel which flew off in all directions.
“Down!” Rock screamed as all six freefighters hit the deck in a flash. The wave of debris passed overhead or slammed into their thick khaki flak jackets. They rose after a few seconds, wiping themselves off. Drenched, covered in mud they pushed on.
“Even the Goddamned ground is attacking us,” McCaughlin sputtered, pulling his big frame from the muddy trail, spitting out black dirt.
“That was our rest stop,” Rock said poker-faced to the others and continued down the mountain trail which zigged and zagged as if a madman had carved it, down the side of the mountain. He kept having to readjust his poncho over the particle beam rifle which was slung over his left shoulder. Shecter had sworn the damn thing was impervious to everything he could test on it. But water? All Rockson needed was to aim at a Red chopper coming in at him, fire the particle gun and have a dribble of muddy water come out. He made sure the glass smooth muzzle of the long black-marbled barrel was safely hidden under the plastic coverall he wore.
The storm continued to snap and snarl at the six figures walking along the rock-strewn trail, tearing down at them like a wolf into hot flesh. Bolts cracked everywhere, lighting the night with demonic eyes. The rain let loose in a waterfall from the sky. Within minutes the ground was waterlogged mud, making movement hard as the freefighter’s boo
ts made obscene sucking sounds as they slowed to a crawl through this newest obstacle to their destination.
“I thought God was on our side,” McCaughlin said to Chen who walked right in front of him.
“Well, there’ve been many gods in history. It depends on which one you mean,” Chen answered with a thin smile. His kung fu shoes floated on the top of the mud easily as the others’ boots dug in. “Obviously the rain and the thunder gods don’t like us. One of us must have offended one of them in a past life.” The Chinese martial arts master looked in a mock accusatory fashion at the big Scotsman lumbering along behind him. But McCaughlin merely grunted, hefting his Liberator automatic rifle on his shoulder. They moved for nearly two hours through the pounding gale, drenched to their bones. Not a man complained. These battle-hardened American freefighters—they had been through it all and more. Anyway, it was in the fifties, thank God. Tonight, when the temperature began dropping down to the twenties and thirties, their soggy clothes could mean death. But in the world of 2089 A.D. you had to take one thing at time.
At last they came to a deep valley which fell off below the peak they stood on, nearly three thousand feet down to a long winding road.
“This is it, men,” Rockson said, leaning back against one of a dozen large boulders that dotted the lip of the mountain around them. “Why don’t you all rest up, make what cover you can among these boulders, using your ponchos. McCaughlin, how about some coffee?” Rock implored, his breath frosting out in a globe of steam. McCaughlin grumbled as he was fond of doing, but put down his double-sized pack which contained kitchen supplies as well as arms and pulled out a flameless, smokeless tube stove, another of Shecter’s inventions, which worked off a chemical inside a pinky-sized tube which, when snapped at one end, gave off an intense heat for about half an hour. The men huddled around the black fire rubbing their hands in the rising waves of heat. The freefighters quickly set up a temporary camp as they waited for the Red convoy to pass below them. Within five minutes they had erected a camouflaged mountain tent and anchored it with twelve inch pegs into the hard surface of the mountain’s rocky soil. The moment it was together they all ran inside to dry off and then took out their weapons and inspected them for the impending battle.
Rockson and Detroit would fire the particle beam weapons. The attack on the Red truck convoy was more for testing the black beam weapons in a combat situation than just another ambush on the Russian army. Although it would be highly satisfying if they could destroy a good portion of the diesel fleet. The big tractor trailers would be carrying supplies for three of the Midwest Red fortress cities, enough for six months. The loss of these strategic loads of ammunition, parts, and medical supplies would weaken them drastically.
These are the kind of strikes we need more of, Rock thought, as he checked the long narrow particle beam rifle for dirt or damage. Not the attacks on a few sentry posts, or even the destruction of five or ten tanks. No, the American freefighting forces had to begin turning into a real army and take on whole fortress cities, whole Red armies at a time. Rock could feel that the times were changing. It was in the air, in his blood. An electric tension of things shifting, worlds colliding. And Ted Rockson, the “Ultimate American,” the dealer of death to restore life, was in his element.
Rock fingered the particle beam rifle’s trigger, checking to make sure nothing had lodged in there. But there was no space for twigs or dirt to find a home. The Technicians had made the weapons with a fluid perfection. He remembered them with fondness, their huge brains and children’s bodies, the strange mathematical language they spoke. They had contributed an incalculable advantage to the American forces. For the first time in a hundred years the freefighters could really talk about “winning.”
“Looks good, Rock,” Detroit said, hefting his black beam rifle and sighting down the three triangular sighting devices along the top. The other men checked their conventional weapons—Liberator automatic rifles. McCaughlin and Lang unpacked a rapid-fire mortar which they manned as a team. The small metalloy shells could blow out the side of a tank or take out a whole hillside swarming with advancing soldiers. Archer loaded a band of ten two foot long razor-sharp arrows onto the side of his crossbow, a device he’d constructed which allowed firing arrows one after another. Arrows which could pierce cleanly through a man’s chest or skull, exit, and then slice through another body. Arrows which only whispered death as they flew like hawks unerringly to their target. Rockson had saved the seven foot mute mountainman from certain death in a quicksand pit and since then the incredibly tough mutant giant, whose family had been slaughtered by the Reds, followed Rock everywhere, would not allow him to go on a mission without him.
The wailing sounds of the megastorm seemed to suddenly die down and Chen poked his head inside the tent. “Storm’s heading out.” The men emerged from the confines of the synthnylon mountain tent and stepped outside into the muddy ground. The last of the coiling snakelike clouds were flying off to the west to wreak further damage. The storm would move all the way to the unknown lands of what had been California and on into the Pacific Ocean where it would finally blow itself out several hundred miles out at sea.
The freefighters let out with a cheer. Their clothes would have a chance to dry off and their targets would be clear and visible for the attack. They watched the clouds roll quickly away to be replaced by rapidly brightening skies. The sun aggressively pushed herself back into prominence, burning away the gray misty fog which pervaded the air. A long arched double rainbow—common after the war due to atmospheric alterations—of pinks and violets and blood red tones hovered shimmeringly in the air across the deep valley. Far down the slopes lined with scraggly black-barked pines, at the far end of the twisting valley, the freefighters suddenly heard the sounds of what could only be one thing. A Red convoy. Smoke from the diesel engines of the tractor trailers sent up a gray haze which followed like a cloud above the truck fleet.
“Better make some sort of camouflage,” Rock said to the Rock Squad who stood around him. “With the skies clearing they’ll be sending choppers ahead for recon.” The men broke down the tent and took off their own brown and gray patterned ponchos, laying them across large rocks at the edge of the plateau. They eased into position as comfortably as was possible in the still soggy dirt and aimed their weapons down onto the road where the convoy would soon pass.
Rock lay flat on his stomach and sighted along the three triangular sights of the black beam weapon. The sights gave off a reddish glow except in the very center of the triangle where the target was. When the target was dead center of the triangles it would brighten considerably, signaling the holder of the rifle to fire. The particle beam weapon contained a memory as well, locking in the coordinates of the target once it had been found. Even if the person firing the weapon slipped or jerked as they pulled the trigger, the weapon itself would compensate as the particle beam shot out.
Rockson could feel his heart beating fast. Normally he was unafraid of battle. He had survived so many. It was part of his history, his destiny to do battle with the enemies of America. But today he felt different. What happened in the next fifteen minutes, half hour, would mean failure or success. A free America or a continuing slave state.
The first of the Red convoy came into view at the far end of the valley. Typical Russian defensive array: swift-moving armored vehicles with machine guns, scouting, darting ahead, followed by ten Soyak-12 tanks nearly fifty feet long and capable of making forty mph on a flat road. Then came the truck convoy itself, nearly a hundred of the big tractor trailers stretched along the muddy road like one of the legendary freight trains of old that Rockson had read about. A rich target. He fingered the long smooth weapon impatiently. Two attack helicopters, black with red stars emblazoned in their sides, flew quickly overhead but missed the Rock Squad, hidden under ponchos, beneath rock overhangs. The Reds couldn’t imagine that anything but at least a thousand-man force would attack such a well-armed column. And even then it would be
suicidal when the Reds could call in air strikes within minutes. Beside the convoy had never been attacked. Until now . . .
Two
The road below the freefighters became a solid wall of roaring engines, smoke, and gasoline fumes. The drone of tens of thousands of diesel horsepower echoed off the valley walls and up to the waiting freefighters, their weapons picking choice targets as the column advanced along the dirt highway. Rock waited and waited to signal the attack, making himself hold back until the last possible second when the entire convoy filled the valley road below. He set the particle beam on highest energy output, a beam of about a six inch diameter. This, The Technicians had instructed him was the most powerful of the weapon’s settings.
Detroit lay nearly thirty yards away, his elbows resting in mud beneath two man-sized boulders that stood above him leaning toward one another so that they almost touched. He took the safety off and sighted on the lead tank. He looked over at Rockson who lay absolutely still, following the convoy through his sights. The signal. When would he give the damn signal? Sweat oozed through the black skin of Detroit’s powerful neck. He moved his finger back and forth on the trigger guard, suddenly craving a cigarette and knowing he couldn’t move an inch now to get one.
“Fire!” Rock yelled to the attack squad, his eye trained squarely on the lead tank, broadside. He pulled the trigger. Without a sound the black beam hung in the air bridging the three thousand two hundred and forty-seven feet between Rockson and the tank in a millionth of a second. The tank turned from dark gray to cherry red and then a blinding white in the space of about one second. Then it exploded with a roar, its molecules of steel and magnesium imploding in on themselves. Target destroyed, Rock thought with a grim smile. Where the tank had been was now just glowing pieces of shrapnel littering the swampy road.
