by Ryder Stacy
“Water supplies will reach zero equation in precisely 17.6 hours at present rate of consumption,” Ullman said, looking up at Lang, who towered over him, with his glistening wide brown eyes. And as if the mere thought of being without the precious liquid filled him with trepidation, Ullman hefted his gourdlike canteen from his waist band and took a deep slug. Several of the ’brids eyed the fluid, licking their huge tongues out in the air.
“It’s there, I promise you,” Lang said. “I’ve got no interest in disrupting my physicality, as you say.” Ullman smiled for the first time in days at the human’s attempt at Technician talk.
“You are like the Rockson,” Ullman said, remembering the man who had taught him and his race about survival, feeding them from their own supplies, then taking Ullman and several of his people out into the wastelands where he had showed them how to survive, how to hunt and how to kill. “You are an equation of strength.”
Suddenly there was a wild commotion at the back end of the weapons train of hybrids. Ullman and Lang swung their heads around as they heard the frantic brayings of the pack animals. One of the black beam cannons, weighting nearly three fourths of a ton, had begun sliding to the side of the crude wooden wagon, made of branches thatched together with wire, that it rode on. As it tilted to the side, the front left wheel of the wagon cracked in two and the entire primitive vehicle began tipping over to the ground.
“The cannon must not make ground impact,” Ullman yelled out, “or its molecular structure will implode.” Lang tore back to the slowly sliding cannon as the team of ’brids in front of the wagon stopped in their tracks and jumped around in noisy terror. Lang saw that he would never reach it in time when he suddenly saw Erickson coming up from the back, running at full speed. The big Swede grabbed hold of the side of the wagon, trying to slow its descent. He grunted and strained with every fibre of his being as his muscles bulged and veins stood out on his face and neck. From the other side of the wagon, two Technicians threw thin nylon loops of rope around the front end of the cannon and tied them to the backs of several ’brids, keeping the cannon from toppling over.
Lang had almost reached Erickson, his hands outstretched to help his fellow freefighter hold up the great weight, when he saw Erickson crumble. Everything moved in his vision in slow motion—Erickson suddenly falling to the ground, his hands ripped and bleeding, unable to support the weight of wood and the black beam weapon. As he fell, the upper half of the broken wagon wheel followed him down like a shark pursuing its prey into the murky waters of the ocean. Erickson hit the dirt flat on his back and had no time to move as the full weight of the load came down on his chest. The jagged half-wheel ripped into his upper body and clean through him, severing the chest and backbone in half like a guillotine. Erickson jerked twice and then was still.
A bunch of Technicians ran over and placed a wooden support rod beneath the wagon and slowly, using the ’brids with ropes attached to their backs, righted it. They brought in a new wheel from their supply wagon and carefully replaced the damaged one. Within minutes the wagon had been repaired and the cannon was out of danger, tied down more securely to the back.
Lang kneeled down and looked at the dead Erickson. His life had vanished in a split second as the wheel had sliced through all his inner organs, his lungs and then the backbone itself, severing the entire nervous system in one swift chop. The freefighter’s eyes were still open, staring up at the sky as if trying to get a final glimpse of the beauty of the planet he had died trying to save. Tears welled up in Lang’s eyes. He wasn’t used to such feelings. Death came too easily on the plains of America 2089 A.D. to feel for those who died. But he and Erickson had grown close on the long trek out. And now—he was dead.
The Technicians secured the last rope around the cannon and the team was ready to move on. They placed Erickson’s body by the side of the ancient buffalo migration route they were following, leaning his head against the bottom of a tall sequoia cactus, rising like a dark spear from out of the gray plains. Lang stood over him, his jungle hat, for sheltering his head from the boiling temperatures of the daytime sun, held loosely in his hands while he spoke:
God, whatever or whoever you are,
take this man into your heaven
and know that he was a good and caring American
and a hell of a fighter.
When he finished, Ullman, surrounded by the rest of the Technicians, their faces somber with the reality of the sudden death of this harsh world, stepped forward. The leader of the Technicians stood motionless beside Lang as he spoke.
“He is subtracted from the reality equation but his formula lives on. His physicality will ascend to the ultimate logic where he will compute in peace.” The entire group of humans and mutants stood for several minutes, their heads bowed, in acknowledgment of one man’s bravery.
At last they headed back to the teams of still-nervous hybrids and got them moving again. There was not time to dwell on the dead. The living must always move on. The hybrid pack horses slowly picked up their pace, heaving with every step. Lang took one final look back. Erickson’s corpse looked strangely peaceful, as if it were just sleeping in the shade of the towering cactus. But as soon as the team of animals and humans was out of sight, the earth around the corpse began moving. Tiny holes opened up in the hard-packed dirt and shapes emerged from them—long and undulating. Nearly five-feet long and a foot thick, they wriggled their blood-red bodies toward the dead human. Their small, curved beaklike jaws snapped into the cooling flesh. Within minutes the body was covered with thirty of the flesh-eating blood worms. They consumed the dead freefighter until there was nothing left.
Twelve
Rock and Archer could hardly believe it—there in front of them stood the high, cloud-slicing shape of Mt. Carson, beneath which Century City had been built. The truck they had taken from the dead Car Ones had held up for five days, at last sputtering out of fuel. But another four days of fast walking through the northern Rockies, terrain which Rockson knew well, had brought them home. The two men who had been through a lifetime’s worth of death and pain in the last two months turned and looked at each other, bursting with the emotions of those who have survived and returned to tell about it. Then they reached forward simultaneously and clasped one another, wearing big shit-eating grins, and headed toward one of the many camouflaged entrances to the hidden ultra-modern fortress city that housed over fifty thousand men, women and children.
“Halt—who goes there?” a voice snapped out in the semi-darkness of the ramp leading down into the constantly guarded security checkpoint that was just inside each of the entrances.
“Rockson,” the Doomsday Warrior said softly. “I’m afraid that I don’t know what the password is for this week.” Two guards cautiously peered around a rock wall, their Liberator automatic rifles clutched in sweaty hands, at the ready.
“God—it is Rockson,” Calvin Jones, one of the city’s one thousand-plus black population said. “We thought you were d-d-dead,” he stuttered.
“Not yet,” Rock said with a thin grin.
News spread quickly around the city, by phone and grapevine. Everywhere, the workers of the city, in the Liberator factories, the hydroponics facilities, even Dr. Shecter’s science labs, came rushing from their jobs to see the returning hero. For Rockson was more than just a man to them. He was a symbol to the freefighters of the city—and to all America. That a single person could make a difference. That even the overwhelming military superiority of the Russian occupying forces was just a paper tiger. For Rockson had stood up to everything they could attack him with—and he had survived. More than survived—he had dealt them a crushing blow on their home ground, the first time since the outbreak of war that the Russian continent had been attacked. Ted Rockson, the man whose face hung on Wanted posters in every military barracks in America, was proof that the Red bear could be cut down to a bleeding bearskin rug on the floor.
By the time Rock and Archer reached the main thoroughfa
re of the underground city, crowds were already beginning to gather. The smiling and screaming throngs, yelling out his name as he entered, were held back by a struggling crowd of security officers. Reporters from the city’s two newspapers, The Century City Gazette and The Freefighter News, stampeded through the security ring, snapping at the two heroes with cameras, yelling out questions about what had happened to them. Before Rock could speak the crowds surged through and lifted the two freefighters on their shoulders, carrying them in a triumphal procession around the underground square.
Detroit Green appeared from out of the milling thousands, his ebony face beaming.
“Well, look who’s here,” he shouted up to Rockson perched on the broad shoulders of two machinists. “Get tired of all those Russian girls?”
“The food, pal, the food,” Rockson yelled back down, clamping his hands over his mouth like a megaphone to be heard. Suddenly the Doomsday Warrior saw Chen, the Chinese martial arts expert of Century City and one of his closest friends. The master of six fighting arts bowed and then looked up at Rockson with a relieved expression. The last time any of the Rock team had seen their leader was six weeks earlier when they had been attacked by a Red regular army commando force. With the president of the Re-United States of America, Charles Langford, and his daughter, Kim, the woman Rock had fallen in love with, traveling with them, the Doomsday Warrior had decided to create a diversion so the two of them and the Rock team could safely escape. He and Archer had run out of the cave they were hiding in, screaming their heads off. And it had worked—the Reds had followed them and the rest of the freefighters had made their way to cover. And that had been the last they had seen of Rockson—until now.
Rock made a slight bow to Chen, who then walked quickly away, not wishing to partake in such emotional displays. Rockson understood, they would talk later.
McCaughlin pushed his way through the crowd, his wide girth knocking people aside. He came up to Rock and looked up with a big Irish smile.
“Thought you was bear meat,” the big man said.
“A few tried, but they spit me out.” Rock motioned to be put down and the carriers at last complied.
“Come on, folks,” Rock said, feeling a little sheepish at all the attention. “Time to get back to work—I’m sure there’s plenty to do around this place.” But they paid little heed to his words. His return had given them hope. Rockson was alive.
Suddenly a shape darted out of the masses straining to get a look at him, and threw itself on top of him. Rockson instinctively wrapped his arms around the person and prepared to throw him over his shoulder.
“Hey, you mismatched eyed mutant, it’s me,” Rona Wallender, the statuesque, acrobatic redhead who had been in love with Rockson since their teens, said. She reached over and landed a big kiss on his lips, oblivious to the crowds around them who laughed at the display of affection. She threw her arms around his wide shoulders like a she-cat refusing to let go. She had missed the only man she had ever loved too much to let him stray even an inch now that he was in her grasp. Even though he was in love with Kim, Rockson had to admit to himself that it was good to see and hold her, pressed to close to him, her firm big breasts crushing against his chest.
“After this is all over—you know where my room is.” She pressed the magnetized card key in his palm. “Just come—and plan to spend the night.” She let him go only when he nodded yes, and then was lost in the press of people who had come everywhere from the multileveled city that swept Rockson on, in a flood of adulation. Rock and Archer gave up and let the river of humanity release their stored-up feelings. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of good news that hit these parts, Rock knew, so he might as well let them have their moment.
Century City had been born out of death. September, 1989—when out of the skies, thousands of needles of flaming death, multiple warhead nuke missiles rained down on America. The attack had taken everyone by surprise. Everyone knew times were tense, but both sides continued to talk peace, even while they prepared for war. Until at last the nightmare of the twentieth century came true in a maelstrom of blood and fire that even the darkest imagination could never have conceived.
On Interstate 70, winding out of Denver and into the mountains toward Utah, thousands of vehicles—cars, trucks, tractor trailers—were moving through the five-mile tunnel bored through the very core of the surrounding mountains. The nukes that hit Colorado Springs, Longmont and Ft. Collins shook the Rockies. The tunnel entrances were lost in an avalanche of rocks and boulders, sealing off the stream of drivers in their Mack trucks and Chevys and VW buses—but saving those trapped inside the eight-lane tunnel from the effects of the blasts going on outside as well as the immediate rain of fallout blotting out the sun for days.
The survivors, men and women and children from all the broad crossections of American culture and races, got together and planned. They divided up the small amount of food and water that some of them had happened to be carrying—fortunately for them, two long diesels filled to the brim with supermarket goods had been trapped inside as well—and tried to figure out just what the hell to do. Five days later they dug small holes through the eastern entrance to the tunnel for air which they filtered through makeshift charcoal filtration systems. But they quickly understood the enormity of what had happened—and, even worse, the first man out spotted giant Soviet airlifters dropping paratroopers over Denver. The Reds weren’t content with blowing up half of America, now they wanted to take it over as well.
They sealed themselves off again and worked on survival—that was the name of the game now. All the goals, careers, loves and hates that had meant everything to them just days before were now but dust blown into the stratosphere by atomic destruction. They worked at building some kind of base, a headquarters to live in and from which they could strike out at the Russians. But soon leaders emerged—men like Bonne, Ostrader, Taggart—who elected to do more, they would build an actual underground city, linking up some nearby mining tunnels and the tunnel of Interstate 70. They would construct lighting, ventillation, even hydroponic tanks so they could have their own food supply, for amongst the involuntary inhabitants of the new subterranean world were experts in almost every field: doctors, chemists, mechanics, scientists in almost fifteen different fields. After all they were Americans, a people whose country had been born out of hardship, pain and an eternal struggle for freedom. And they would one day be free again—of that there was no doubt. Even if it took a hundred years—hence the name Century City—a city born out of the ashes into a world of flames and unimaginable ferocity.
Rockson couldn’t help but think of those early years as he was rushed along at the head of the swell of people past the brilliantly lit Liberator rifle factory which shipped out nearly one hundred rifles a day to other freefighting cities; past the giant central library; past the Museum of America’s Past, filled to overflowing with artifacts of Americana—everything from bicycles to cowboy boots, rock posters to football uniforms, dug up on scouting missions for supplies; past the entrance to Dr. Shecter’s science labs where miracles of technology were turned out on a monthly basis, the aging Shecter responsible for the ultra-modern conveniences and weaponry that Century City now possessed, making it the most advanced of all the hidden cities throughout the country. Rockson took it all in as the crowd pushed him forward, and realized for the first time just what a marvel the place was. And how glad he was to be in the only place he called home.
At last the crowd reached the largest open area of Century City—Lincoln Square, with its steel sculpture of the famous president, ten-feet high, sitting in its center. There, it seemed that half the damned city was waiting to greet him. They edged him forward toward the speaker’s platform, a big aluminum and wood affair where the politicians of the city loved to exercise their oratory skills. It was nicknamed “the soapbox” as any of the city’s inhabitants could get up on it and make a speech on any subject that his heart desired. Free speech was alive and well though living
underground, in a world where for most people, under the Red rule, even one wrong word overheard by a Red soldier or the dreaded KGB meant death—violent and instantaneous.
As the throngs pushed him toward the wooden stairs to the twenty-foot-square platform, Rock saw Shannon, the well-endowed blonde who was assistant security chief, and Rath, her moody, dour boss, come from out of a doorway straight toward him. Rath eyed the crowd nervously. He didn’t like dramatic displays and this group was getting out of hand.
“Rockson I’ve got to—” the security chief began to say, but was cut off by the crowd which pushed Rock up the stairs, yelling, “Speech, speech.”
The Doomsday Warrior quieted them down after a minute with waves of his hand.
“Well, I really don’t know what to say,” Rock said, looking out at the parade of faces he knew so well.
“Say anything, Rock, we just want to hear you talk,” Betty McCarthy yelled up. “So we know you’re actually alive.”
Rock looked down for a moment at a loss for words and then began.
“Well, I guess I can tell you a little about what Archer and I saw out there in the unexplored North. Going through South Dakota, Iowa and God knows whatall, we met a lot of people. A lot of good and evil. But America is as alive out there as it is here. The entire North is growing stronger—if not always nicer.” The crowd laughed. “Now I don’t want you to think it’s a picnic out there—cause it ain’t. We came in contact with everything from Amazon women warriors, to car-driving cannibals. But I will say this, on the positive side—we didn’t see a damned Red anywhere.”
