by Ryder Stacy
When the sea of death passed the sixty-foot mark, Rockson heard the lapping suddenly increase and rushed to the edge of the hill. The black sea seemed to be rushing faster now as if spurred on from behind. There wasn’t a hell of a lot more breathing room and Rockson could see through the darkness that the river was glowing just beneath the surface. He didn’t have his wrist geiger with him—it had been ripped from him in the neutron blast—but he had seen enough of the atomic death in his life to know—it was high rad. Super high rad. If they fell in the stuff they would die. Cooked like lobster in an atomic pot. The three of them sat at the edge of the hill looking down as the sickly black tide rose higher and higher. Nothing that had fallen in its grasp lived. The bloated carcasses of animals were already floating to the surface, their eyes filled with oily mud, their bodies oozing with every radioactive poison known to man, their hides glowing from the megadoses of the atomic liquid.
Kim sat next to Rockson and put her arms around him. At least if she was going to die it would be with the man she loved. The flood slowed but continued to rise, relentlessly, inexorably as if its sole mission on earth now was to get them. Through the long night it moved, flowing more slowly as miles behind, the earth at last ceased its violent vomit of the underground sea of poison. The chasm closed up and the last of the black liquid surged forward. Slowly the sea of death dropped down, sinking once again into the loose soil, but this time dispersed over twenty-five hundred square miles, its power, its radioactivity broken down into less virulent levels.
As the pumpkin orange sun rose from out of the purple steam of night, it seemed to push back the waters. The morning sky was laced with a spiderweb of strontium green webs as clouds of radioactive dust circled high above the earth.
At last the waters sank, dropping back through a million burrows and cracks. Soon they were gone, leaving a slimy deposit of black tar on the prairie floor. The animals who had cowered on the plateau saw it was time to leave, and each did so, taking off in different directions, scampering down the hillside and onto the plains. The ground was smoking slightly and it burned their feet, but they would survive. They ran howling and baying at the brightly burning morning sun, happy just to be alive.
Rock got them organized or as organized as he could with a sick older man and and frightened woman. Kim had been really shaken by Mt. Ed’s death. Rock was, too. But he didn’t show things like that. There would be time for vulnerability later. Not now when death was on every side. He walked over to the dead mountain man and began a prayer that the freefighters said over the fallen bodies of their comrades—if there was time—if the Reds weren’t hot on their trail with their screaming MIGs and Blackshirt choppers. He looked down at the bloody corpse, his head bowed as Langford and Kim stood silently behind him.
“Take this man, God, into your heaven
Whatever and wherever it may be
And know that this man, Mountain Ed,
was a good and brave American
Who gave everything that he had
So that others might live. Amen.”
Rockson coughed gruffly, stuffing more shells into his pistol. Kim and her father shuffled awkwardly behind him.
“Okay folks, we’re going to get going. I know both of you aren’t feeling too hot—but—I don’t like this whole area here. There’s something about it. I sense that the land is poisoned beyond the norm.”
“You mean we don’t have time for a picnic,” Kim said trying to break the tension.
“If we stay here we’ll be the picnic,” Rock cracked back. They loaded up their remaining supplies, Rockson taking Mt. Ed’s backpack, and headed back down the hill onto the slightly soggy ground. The ground was hot as the boiling temperature of the waters slowly cooled. They walked forward onto a wasteland that seemed to have no end. Everywhere were the remains of death. All that the black flood had swept up and destroyed it had deposited again onto the caked prairie ground. Animals everywhere—their slime-coated bodies in frozen sculptures of death, some with their jaws still snarling, trying to fight off death to the end. Others were twisted into a fetal position, trying to pretend as the end came that it was all just a dream, an animal’s dark nightmare. They lay bloated, thick as waterlogged wood as flies began gathering around the rancid corpses.
Behind them the body of Mt. Ed shifted weirdly, the stomach moving in little waves. The eggs of the lizard-thing—nearly twenty of them that the creature had deposited into the human’s stomach with a flick of its long tail, a tail that doubled as its sex organ, moved inside the corpse, twisting and eating. Eating everything in their path, and when they had consumed their host whole from the inside out, they would hatch, little green lizard-things, a foot long, into a world of unfathomable danger.
On the surface of the corpse ants began crawling. First just a few, then hordes. Marching in long lines, the eaters of the dead converged, searching for the wounded, the rotting. They covered the cold mountain man with a blanket of moving blackness, a million little mandibles taking their piece of the pie.
Four
Flies were everywhere. Rock, Kim, and the president had to continually swat at their faces and hands. The creatures were in a state of frenzy at so much death to dine on spread out across the corpse-strewn prairie. The buzzing insects seemed unable to tell the difference between the living and the dead as they dove in kamikaze squadrons against the freefighters’ flesh.
“Damn, these fucking flies—they’re driving me mad,” Langford barked out suddenly. Rock stopped and looked. The president’s face was already swelling up from the countless little nips. The Doomsday Warrior took off Mt. Ed’s pack and pulled out one of two gourds of water stored within. Out here in the middle of nowhere water was more precious than gold, but Langford was obviously in trouble. Rock wetted down a flannel shirt from the pack and handed it to Langford who covered his head and shoulders. It worked. The flies buzzed angrily around the protective shielding and then tore off, too confused to waste more time. Rockson made two more instant shields for Kim and himself.
After three hours of marching through a virtual graveyard of rotting corpses, they came to the now nearly closed chasm through which the black bile had emerged. It was now only about six feet wide at its narrowest point. Rock could see instantly that they’d have to jump it or detour for miles around the jagged ripped earth that stretched off in each direction as far as the eye could see. He jumped first, throwing the backpack across and then taking a running start. He cleared the seemingly bottomless crack with ease and turned to help the others if they had trouble. Kim came next, flying gracefully over the divide and landing on both feet. Then it was Langford’s turn. He took a long lumbering stride and jumped. He cleared the chasm but his foot just caught the other side which crumbled out from under him. Rockson reached forward and grabbed the president just as he was sliding backward into eternity. He yanked him up and pulled him forward onto terra firma.
“I feel like such an idiot,” Langford muttered, looking down. “Everything I do seems to self-destruct.” The president was used to being a strong and vigorous man. He had spent half his life traveling around to the hidden cities of America, spreading the idea of a new United States, a president, and a government. A reborn America that would unite and throw the Reds out once and for all. His years in the wastelands, trekking across the heartland of the country, had made him tough, resourceful. But then—at the very moment of his greatest triumph—his election by the Re-Constitutional Convention to the office of president, the Russians with a spy planted in the freefighters’ midst had dropped two neutron bombs, wiping out nearly ninety percent of the delegates from every Free City in America. Langford was deeply depressed about the decimation of the newly formed government. It had lasted all of an hour before the mushroom clouds had fried flesh into crumbling charcoal. The shortest reign in history, Langford thought bitterly to himself. And his body didn’t feel too hot either. Ever after the Glowers had worked their magic on himself and Kim, his legs were wobbly,
his gums blistered and sore, his stomach constantly churning as if about to vomit. The human body could only take so much. He was falling into a deep depression made only worse by the realization that he, of all people, was the elected moral and spiritual leader of the free men and women of America—and he had nothing more to give.
“Please sir, don’t talk about yourself that way,” Rock said, looking nervously down at the ground. “You don’t have to apologize to me. As the commander-in-chief of the new United States, I and every other freefighter are at your command.”
“I’ll let you do the commanding, Rock,” Langford said with the first grin he had shown for days. “If you don’t mind, I’d probably guide us into quicksand or something.”
They headed on for hours. Rock carefully gauged the skin tone and breathing of his two charges. Both were putting everything they had into the endless walking. Rock remembered when Kim and he had first met, naked in a Russian jail cell. How she had offered her untouched body to him that night—before the KGB swine could get their hands on her the next morning. She was tough. In her own way as tough as Rockson.
After nearly a day of stumbling across the parched land on the other side of the chasm they reached higher ground where there began to be a little more life: wildly colored flowers, shrubs that rose nearly twenty feet into the air. They had gone from an almost dead zone to fertile terrain in just over fifteen miles. The three of them looked around in amazement as the lushness of the land grew in leaps and bounds. Here, fruits—pink and red and green—hung down tantalizingly from vines and trees, fields of rainbow flowers, petals as large as dinner plates, blazing with a glory all their own, slowly closing as the ochre sun beat down from the late afternoon western sky.
“Can we—” Kim asked, reaching up and plucking a greenish pink banana-shaped fruit from a stalk.
“Yeah, these are all right,” Rock answered, grabbing a few himself. “I remember eating some like these a few years ago. Didn’t die—but they were sour.” They peeled back the thick moist skins and took tentative bites.
“These are sweet as sugar,” Kim said, taking bite after delicious bite. The three of them gorged themselves, having not eaten for nearly two days. The fresh fruit and leafy rich vegetables they found growing wild everywhere made them feel much more positive. Even Langford’s face seemed to relax and glow with color. Not everything was wasteland. It was as if nature was giving them a reprieve—a moment’s rest and nourishment before the realities of a harsh world would again bare its fangs.
“Must have been farms here once,” Rockson said as they walked slowly on through fields of edible produce now bizarrely twisted and colored from the low rad radioactive soil. “See how things are growing in their own geometric areas—mostly squares.” He pointed out the nearly straight-lined fields. “All pink fruits there and these green leafy plants here—looks like—lettuce I think they used to call it. This must have once been a big farm belt. Probably didn’t take any direct hits—just enough rads to kill off the farmers but not the farms.”
“Enough radiation to produce some pretty strange breeds,” Kim said, picking up a tomato nearly as large as a grapefruit. She cut it open—just like the real thing—seeds spat out as big as grapes. “Now, if we just had some spaghetti.” She smiled. “I’d fix us all a real down-home American meal.”
They picked as much of the fruit and vegetables as possible so they’d have fresh supplies. Rockson knew this kind of paradise couldn’t go on for very long. But he noted their approximate location on his pocket mapgrid. Back at Century City, agricultural researchers were trying to assemble a nationwide picture of the remaining fertile areas. Someday large-scale agricultural production would begin again. Someday.
They rested for the night under a grove of the fragrant banana trees filled with a small fingerlike fruit that was even sweeter than the others. They fell asleep, Rock with his pistol in his hand, fingers gripped tightly around it. The night sky was unusually clear with nary a trace of the strontium clouds high above. The endless galaxies flickered like lights on a shore signaling the weary traveler’s return to peace and safety.
In the middle of the night they were awakened by movement all around them. Rock leaped up, his pistol at the ready. Above him, rustling through the high fruit trees, he could see sets of eyes and little rows of pearly teeth. Suddenly a face darted close—monkeys. Goddamned little golden-skinned monkeys. Rockson had never seen one live but had perused scores of pictures from nature books of the last century. Not to mention the Tarzan movies, among the two thousand films in the Century City archives, shown three times a week, rotating the entire collection. Rock had seen more films of the mid-twentieth century than most people of that time had. He was religious about only one thing—knowledge of the past. After his parents had been killed, tortured, and murdered by a roving band of KGB thugs out for kicks, Rock had made his way armed with just a knife across the vast plains of the American heartlands. When he had reached Century City he had been amazed at the size and scope of the underground complex and had quickly taken advantage of its offerings, spending months in the library and film rooms. Though a constant truant at the C.C. school, his rebellious nature chafing at the bit at having to follow rules and sit in one place all day, Rockson had quickly amassed a great store of information on his own. Knowledge was power. He had known even as a teen that every little fact he could assimilate might someday save his life.
“What are they Rock?” Kim asked nervously, standing closely by his side for safety.
“Monkeys they were called. Came originally from Africa. There must have been some sort of zoo or circus around here once. These things escaped and survived—and seem to be doing quite well. They sure can breed.” He looked around—there were hundreds of eyes peering down from above, hidden in the twisting vines of the banana grove. The small, furry, big-eyed primates didn’t seem frightened by the human presence nor eager to attack. They leaped from branch to branch, eating their fill of fruit. They chirped wildly to one another in a chorus of monkey gossip beyond the comprehension of the human species.
Somehow the three freefighters fell asleep again, amused by the monkeys and in a strange way, reassured. They dozed more easily as if protected by their chattering childlike relatives and slept soundly through the long night.
They awoke early just as the blazing blood-red sword of the sun arched up into the black and blue flesh of the dying night. They walked for days, the land slowly changing from fertile to a more desolate terrain dotted with thorny shrubs and an occasional jackrabbit. The sky became somewhat overcast which suited Rockson just fine. As long as the big brown and purple cumulus clouds were hanging up there like boulders about to fall, the Reds would have a hard time using their spy drones: those buzzing pilotless cylinders with nothing but stubby wings and video cameras mounted in the nose and stomach of the metal craft to spy down on the world below them. If the Russians caught them out here in the open . . .
By the fifth day after the black flood, Rock knew they were getting near the location of the president’s now bombed-out ranch where the convention had been held. The land grew more rocky; small hills were beginning to turn into the very edge of a mountain range.
“Do you want to go back to the convention site?” Rock asked President Langford as they headed up and down the sloping crabgrassed hills.
“I have to, Rock. Whoever’s left there—there must be some who survived—you did—we did. I’ll reorganize. There’s no other choice. We can’t stop this journey of ours. Our trip toward liberation and freedom. There’s no turning back—only one way—forward.” Langford seemed to be regaining his strength, both physical and mental. His eyes burned once again with the fire of leadership.
“Yes, I know,” Rockson answered softly. But he wasn’t thinking of Langford, he was thinking of Kim. Being separated from her again—not knowing where she would be or what was happening to her. In many ways he didn’t like being in love. It hurt. It created an Achilles’ heel in his
otherwise almost impenetrable psychic shield. He never had to worry about anyone before. And he never worried for himself. His death was a matter for the gods to decide. He had seen enough to know that when death came knocking, no creature on earth could keep the door closed. The Doomsday Warrior kept his thoughts to himself but turned and looked at her with a feeling of infinite tenderness.
They marched through the lower hills and then up onto the higher rocky slopes by the second day. Mountain goats sure-footedly jumped around them as eagles and hawks flew slow deliberate circles far above, searching with their razor-sharp eyes for the flash of a cottontail or the rush of a raccoon. The land was again rich and vibrant here and made them relax. They took in the perfumed scents of wood and sap and life itself. Out there on the wastelands it was as if they were on an alien planet with something out to get them. But here—this was their land. Tall trees and green everywhere, wildlife crashing through the thick forests, all in harmonious symbiosis.
They were just coming over a rise above a narrow wooded valley as the sun sank into the cloud-covered pit of night, when Rock held his arm up for them both to be quiet.
“I smell smoke—just ahead. Stay here,” he whispered, motioning for them to lie down in the thick, blue-tinged grass. He edged forward cautiously, his shotpistol in his right hand, and rolled quickly over the top of the rise and down a few feet behind a grove of thornbushes.
Voices! He could hear mumbles and the crackling of a fire ahead. And food—the sizzling aroma of fresh-killed venison. It couldn’t be Reds. The Russians would never be camping out in the wilds. They preferred a protective circle of tanks and choppers flying overhead. But he had encountered enough bandits, even cannibals, to know that just being Americans didn’t guarantee safety from strangers. He slid down the hill at the north side of the two hundred-foot-deep valley, darting from shadow to shadow. It was English all right, he could hear as he drew closer, and laughter.
