by Ryder Stacy
“I’ve missed you, Rona,” Rock said softly. “Let me just let these muscles uncoil. Give me half an hour, baby.”
“Sure Rock. I’ll be in the gymnasium.” She smiled, revealing perfect pearly teeth and then clicked off. The image slowly died on the screen.
Rock sipped the drink through his teeth, letting the scotch sift down through his tongue and throat, and thought of the woman who had just beckoned him. Half the men in Century City would have given their right arm to spend a night with Rona. Her beauty was breathtaking. A descendant of the Wallenda gymnastic and tight-rope walking family of the mid-twentieth century, she had been trained as a child in all the circus skills. She had traveled around the country with her father, giving performances with a small circus, but secretly gathering information as they entertained Russian troops inside their fortress cities and passing it on the freefighting forces. Until her father was caught with the plans of one of the largest munitions dumps in the country. He had been summarily shot without benefit of trial, jury, or any of the other trappings that the Reds had dispensed with since their takeover. Rona had barely escaped with her life, being sneaked out of the fort underneath a stack of hay in a mule-drawn wagon. She had joined the free forces of Century City where she had lived ever since. She kept up her gymnastic training and under the tutelage of Al Chen, the Chinese-American martial arts expert of the hidden city, had become an expert in karate and jiujitsu. Her body was as strong and firm in its feminine form as was Rockson’s in its male solidity.
Rona, beautiful Rona, Rock mused. The woman who was always waiting for him—to make love with him once again before another dangerous mission took him away. Their relationship played second fiddle to the realities of the war against the Reds. A hit-and-run relationship, warm, sexual but never a romance in the sense that people who expect to live past tomorrow have—with dreams of the future, with sweetness and sentiment. So Rona had to be content with living for each day with Rockson. Savoring the moment, enduring stoically each leaving of the man she loved. Such was love in 2089 A.D.
She sat waiting for him in the meditation chamber where the fighters and workers of Century City went to restore their psychic strength, strength of mind, of health, of will to live, for life could often be hard, terribly hard. She stared at the symbols on the walls—cultural remnants of the once great American civilization: a cross, a wheel, a six-pointed star, a crescent moon and star, a circle with a black and white snake down the middle—the religions of long ago merged now in meditative understanding that all is one—the cosmic mind and the individual mind all inexplicably one.
Rock came in silently as Rona sat yoga style on the floor lost in the subtle state of transcendence as Chen had taught—the peace of the void—luminous, empty, friendly, indifferent. He walked over to her and kissed her softly on the forehead. It was like the stars falling from the firmament above into her expanded mind, a mind that at that moment was all things and nothing. Without further words Rock sat about five feet away from her and they both were soon riding in that celestial realm of near death, their pulses slowed, their agitations halted as all men and women need from time to time to restore themselves to the basic thought of life—it is good. The creation, the essence of life . . . good.
The session, which she was already a half hour into when Rock arrived, lasted until the automatic meditation gong’s sonorous chime pierced the air softly but insistently, demanding that the meditators return to the real world. Slowly they came round and stood up, shaking out the stiffness of their joints. They embraced softly, tenderly and then they walked arm in arm silently towards Rona’s living quarters on C level. Still without words, only smiles and the glow of each other’s aroused eyes they undressed one another as soft music—a composition of Rona’s (formed after a deeper than usual meditation a year earlier), streamed out from speakers mounted high on the walls. Strange yet soothing sounds from a synthesizer, sounds of nature—of whales singing, of stars spinning with a sizzling symmetry across the skies, of grass growing, of opposites joining together.
They lay down on her bed and pressed one another close, flesh against flesh and descended onto the cool purple sheets of bliss. Rona’s long supple pale body, her flaming red hair strewn across the pillow, her large firm upturned breasts crowned with the cream-colored white aureoles so prevalent among mutant women, pushing up, demanding Rock’s lips and tongue. He caressed and sucked the hard nipples and slid his powerful hands down along her spine, sending shivers through her body. His violet, aquamarine eyes met her bright clear green eyes as she pressed her full strawberry lips to his. The passion swept over them and her hand searched for and found his manhood now swollen to its full size. She groaned the groan of the female about to be entered, reveling in the feeling. He moved his lips over her face, her neck gently perfumed with the scent of her moist sex. He moved her thighs apart with his dark veined hand and opened her with his fingers, sliding the fleshy lips apart. Then he rolled on top of her and drove home.
He woke with a start, the insistent beep of his belt beeper still attached to his pants which lay thrown on the floor. The beeps came every second, demanding his attention.
“Damn! Won’t they ever leave me alone,” Rock snarled as he detached himself from the warm Rona, her eyes still closed, her arms trying to hold onto the man who seemed to always be leaving her.
“Rockson here,” he snapped into the mike on the small square beeper. “What the hell do you want?”
“Rock? This is Rath,” the voice on the other end said somewhat surprised at the vehemence of the Doomsday Warrior. “I’m sorry to have to disturb you. I know you haven’t even had a chance to rest up but—but I think you better get down here. We’re using the mindbreaker device we captured from the Reds on that Red officer you took prisoner and—”
“All right, all right, I’ll be there in ten,” Rock said and snapped the off button down. He turned back to Rona who was sitting up now, looking angry.
“Oh Rock let them screw off. Stay with me.” She sat up, the sheet only covering her legs. Her large breasts stood straight out, bright red hair draping down over them as if coyly hiding them.
“I’ve got to go, Rona. This officer is the highest ranking Red we’ve ever captured. The information he reveals could be incredibly important. You know we must come second, Rona. Our desires, our needs, must be subjugated to the needs of our country. Someday, perhaps someday—”
“Oh fuck off then,” Rona said, her eyes filling with tears. She dove under the sheets, hiding her pain from the man she loved. She hated to show any weakness to men, especially Rockson. He dressed quickly, confused, angry himself, but knowing he had to go. He kissed the shape beneath the sheet and said, “Sorry baby.” Then he headed out the door without looking back.
Rockson made the trip to the interrogation area within five minutes of receiving the call from Rath. He walked into the brightly lit room, antiseptically clean, where the captured Russian officer was now strapped into one of the Red mindbreakers that had been taken from a convoy several months before. It was the newest addition to the Russian armory of torture devices capable of producing exquisite pain in the brain of anyone strapped into the wretched machine. It had already been used successfully by the Reds to break through the hypnotic mindblocks of several captured freefighters from other cities, forcing them to reveal the locations of their hidden headquarters. And as soon as the Reds had found out, they had sent out bombers with neutron bombs and blown the populaces back into the dust from which they had been born. So there was a touch of ironic revenge which all the Americans in the room felt while watching the Red officer strapped into the large globe.
Rock sat down next to Rath who stared intently at the officer, the mindbreaker covering the top of his head as the once strong Russian captain screamed in mortal terror as the laser probes dug deep into his smoking brain tissue. Two white-smocked assistants slowly adjusted the knobs on the control panel several feet from the strapped Russian soldier, making th
e probes dig into the memory cells of the man’s brain.
Rock winced as he watched. Though he had killed countless Russians, he was not one who believed or liked torture. That was for the Reds, yet, they had no choice. This man knew too much. He could imagine what the officer was going through. He had seen what the full force of the mindbreaker had done to some captured Americans.
The officer, Ivan Smolineck, was dreaming. He was on a boat on the Odessa with Karenina, but the boat was crashing into rocks and she was going under the waves. He dove down, down into the darkness. He couldn’t rise, the light above him seemed to disappear, he was being sucked into a whirlpool of pain, spinning, agonizing. His worst fears began emerging as the technician adjusted the knobs several feet away. Rats were gnawing at his hands, then his face. Razor teeth were ripping at his eyes, then moved down to his genitals. They tore away, ripping his manhood from his body, running across a nightmare red floor with the bloody organ, tearing at it, biting it into pieces. He tried to move, to punch, to kick, but his body was tightly bound in the chair.
Suddenly he heard a voice. “What was in the convoy? Where were you bound? Answer and the pain will cease.”
“Stop the pain, yes, I will talk.” He didn’t even know where the voice was or what was happening. Perhaps it was the God the Russians said didn’t exist. “We were carrying mindbreakers to Pavlov City under direct orders from President Zhabnov himself.”
“How many?” the disembodied voice demanded.
“Two thousand,” Smolineck screamed out. “Stop the pain! I beg you.”
“What for? What were the mindbreakers for?” the voice asked.
“For Plan Lincoln,” the Red officer cried out. “For the Plan Lincoln that is being carried out in Pavlov City.” Shecter and Rock looked at each other. They had never heard of the city or the plan. What were the Reds dreaming up now?
“What were the mindbreakers for? What is happening in this Pavlov City?”
“I don’t know, I swear,” Smolineck moaned as the rats came at him again. “It is some huge plan directed by the president himself using thousands of mindbreakers. Workers are being brought in from around the country for some sort of brain modification—but I don’t know what—I swear. Oh please God, if you are God, free me from this pain.”
“For what? Just tell us for what and your pain will stop.”
“I don’t knooooow, I swear. Please, please bring back the Odessa, the boat, my Karenina in my arms.” The technician at the control looked over at Rath for orders. The intel chief nodded and turned his hand to the right. The assistant turned the dial on the panel up one more notch, forcing the probes deeper into the officer’s brain. Everyone in the room could now smell the highly unpleasant odor of burnt brain tissue as a small stream of smoke drifted up above the man’s skull.
“Ahhhhh. Oh God, God, God. I don’t know any more.”
Rath made the off sign with his hand and the technician abruptly switched the torture machine off. The Russian’s head slumped down onto his chest. It wasn’t a pretty sight what one of these blasted devices did to a man, every American in the room thought to himself, looking at the Red officer. Thin trickles of blood ran from his eyes and ears. Small veins broken during the interrogation covered his face and arms, swollen, bright red as if the very flesh of the man were about to explode. His mouth hung open limply. The man’s mind would never be the same, that was for sure. God knew what they would do with this shell of a creature. Rath vowed never to use the mindbreaker on anybody but KGB in the future. They had earned it. Two of Rath’s assistants dragged the stumbling Russian away back to his cell.
But at least the freefighters knew that something was up. Something big! The Reds were bringing large numbers of workers into this Pavlov City, a city that hadn’t even existed until several months ago. And all under President Zhabnov’s personal direction.
“What the hell are they up to?” the intel chief turned to Rockson who sat next to him, a concerned look on his rough-hewn face.
“Something new, that’s for sure. Some damned trick and I don’t like the sound of it at all,” Rockson replied. “I didn’t think that fool Zhabnov had it in him to do any independent thinking. It may well have something to do with the power struggle we know is going on between him and Killov. But what sort of information would he be trying to get from factory workers? All they know is how to survive with nothing. It doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t Rock. At least with the information we have. And I think we got all that officer knew. No one is capable of lying with one of those damned devices strapped to their heads. But look at the numbers—thousands of mindbreakers—tens of thousands of workers being shipped in. What did Lincoln do again, Rockson? You’re the historian.”
Rock’s semi-photographic memory went into action. “Abraham . . . Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States. His election on an anti-slavery platform divided the nation, leading to the Civil War, which was finally won by the Northern States in a four year war with the Southern States or the Confederacy. After the war he was shot by a mad actor. One of our country’s greatest presidents, an inspiration to read about.”
“What do you make of the name? A coincidence?” Rath asked, stroking his bony adam’s apple absent-mindedly.
Rock thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. The Reds usually use functional names for their projects. There’s definitely a clue. Let’s see, the American workers are slaves—and that’s puzzling—somehow the Reds are going to free them? Doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe something else about Lincoln—” Rath said as he motioned for his assistants to tidy up the area around the chair that the Red officer had sat in, which was now dotted with specks of blood. But Rockson was thinking about burned down Atlanta, Sherman’s march through Georgia in the war to save the Union. The freed black men and women following the Union soldiers en masse, many of them trying to help the bluecoats fight.
“That’s it—fight!” Rock yelled out, startling the intel chief.
“What?” Rath stuttered.
“The Reds want to use the enslaved Americans against us. Who are the secessionists from the Red hegemony—us!”
“Rock are you serious—the mindbreaker has no such ability to control men’s minds, just to destroy them. You’ve seen it all for yourself.”
“Couldn’t it be modified?” Rock asked grimly. “Somehow altered so as to change the memory patterns of a man’s brain, even affect his loyalties?”
“Anything is possible, Rock. I’d be the first to admit that, but it sure as hell would be a hit and miss situation. They’d have to use thousands of workers to get hundreds who could successfully be controlled. And those would most likely be zombies more than real fighting men. This is all guesswork, of course. But, I can’t believe the Reds could have advanced the technology of the mindbreaker that quickly. I know how their science staffs work and frankly, they’re not the brightest or most innovative of minds around.”
“But they don’t care how many lives they waste. Thousands of workers dead means nothing to them, that could be why so many are being shipped in. We’ve got to find out what’s going on in this Pavlov City and find out fast.”
“I’ll call an emergency meeting of the council for tonight, Rock,” Rath said. “I agree with you—this situation calls for some sort of immediate response—before things get out of hand. Good God, we could be seeing American fighting American—another Civil War orchestrated by the Reds.”
Eight
The Council of Century City came to order slowly. The democratic process that was adhered to religiously was often loud and boisterous—yet somehow the work got done. The freedom to argue, to disagree were the freefighters greatest legacy from the past glories of America. Something the Reds could never know or even imagine—the taste of liberty. Council President Willis, the head speaker of the council, walked slowly to the front of the meeting hall. Bart Willis, tall, eloquent, the most respected member of the council
and at seventy-five, the oldest. He was the son of one of the original founders of Century City—George Willis, an executive with a computer company who had been trapped along with hundreds of other cars and trucks in the tunnel when the bombs hit. Willis often told stories of the early days of Century City to spellbound audiences of children and adults. How it was before they had had all the conveniences of the last twenty-five years—since Dr. Shecter had performed his miracles of science and transformed the underground city into the technologically most advanced of the Free Cities in America.
Willis banged the gavel on the wooden slab of the speaker’s lectern and coughed loudly several times. The many voices talking and arguing around the nearly hemispheric chamber slowly quieted down as the one hundred elected representatives from all the sectors of Century City came to order.
The gray-haired Willis looked down over the now attentive assemblage. “I’m glad to see we’re all so energized tonight.” He smiled wanly. “It will serve as well in the discussion we’re about to engage in. The first item of the evening is Rockson’s report on the mission to test the particle beam weapons. Rock . . .” Willis stepped away from the wooden speaker’s platform as Rockson bounded up the steps at the side of the raised platform three at a time and walked quickly across the stage to the center.
“Good day,” Rock said softly with a slightly cynical expression as he looked out over the upturned faces of the assembly. He and the council members knew each other—friends, adversaries—they fought for the same goals with different intensities and philosophies. Rockson believed that the way to fight back against the Reds was with force—the only message they understood, while many of the council members thought that perhaps some sort of accommodation could eventually be reached with the Russians. That America could be shared by both American and Russian occupying forces. That it was unrealistic to really believe they could kick the Red armies out lock, stock and barrel. Not with such overwhelming forces.
