Warlord's Revenge

by Craig Sargent

  “So we all talked, and we talked some more,” Singing Crow went on as the others looked on a little bleary-eyed but nonetheless in good moods. “And we decided that maybe we should stick together—for the moment, you know—”

  “Yeah, for the moment,” Bull spoke up, as did the others. As if it had to be known by all that it was just a momentary alliance that had been cemented largely by booze, and that even in their half-drunk states they knew it could ail unravel like rotting twine at any moment.

  “But the fact is,” Singing Crow continued, “we all know what it’s like out there. In small numbers anyone is a target. Even the tank—by itself—could be brought down with petrol bombs.” The Cheyenne spoke with great animation, sweeping his arms around at his tribe, pointing. As he talked excitedly, his black hair cascaded down from beneath the baseball cap he had been wearing. The thick black mane fell down both sides of his head and onto his shoulders. And suddenly he looked, for all his well-made leather clothes and boots—like an Indian of centuries before, primitive, fierce, with a face forged from a life of steel-hard survival.

  “We,” the Cheyenne continued, “can be vulnerable to heavy firepower—that the tank can take out. It only makes sense. If together we can be ten times stronger, then for survival’s sake alone we must unite our forces. Again—for the moment.”

  “Yes, of course.” Stone smirked. “For the moment.”

  “And you’re the elected chief, kemo sabe,” the Cheyenne went on with a little twisted smile. You’re the only one we could all even come near agreeing on to run the show. But you’ve gotten us through some pretty heavy shit already, and—”

  “Look, fellahs, I appreciate the gesture and all that,” Stone said, spitting out a huge twig from his coffee. “But I had been pretty much going to call it quits today and—” Even as he spoke. Stone suddenly saw that the unity was important to these men. That for the first time since the entire country had fallen into barbarism, things weren’t still breaking down continuously into smaller and more primitive units as civilization itself headed backward in time like a roller coaster going the wrong way on the express track to hell.

  Now two groups of men had joined together. Two un-fathomably different cultures, ways of life. Years, centuries, of hate. Yet they were all Americans. Americans on the side of survival, life. Against those who carried the disease of death. The crime lords and the bikers, the cannibal kings, the rapists and mutilators. All of the slime out there that was trying to drag mankind into a pit it would never rise from again. At least those seated around the fire knew that whatever else, they were against that. And in a world of existential blood and nothingness that common bond was worth a lot.

  “Look” Stone said, suddenly sitting up straight as he realized that their little drunken encounter group of participatory democracy had been an important moment. Suddenly he almost dared feel in a good mood. A much better mood than he had had the glimmerings of in a long, long time. Maybe there was hope for the fucking country, after all.

  “Maybe there is something you could do. The people downwind of here are all going to die unless they take… these.” He pulled out a canister of the pills from inside his jacket. “Here,” he said, passing it around. “Take one red, one blue, and one green. You’ll get your own batches to take.”

  “What the hell is that shit?” Singing Crow asked as hé took the vial from Stone’s outstretched hand.

  “Potassium iodide is one, and the others… shit, I don’t know what their names are, but they’ve been found to be able to almost completely fill the body’s needs for a large number of minerals and trace elements, so the lungs, blood, and digestive system don’t absorb any radiation from atomic particles or by-products of the bomb containing those elements.”

  “You really believe all that stuff?” Singing Crow asked, looking intensely at Stone.

  “Yeah, I do,” Stone replied. “Maybe I’m an asshole, and that’s certainly a possibility, but I’m taking them myself. I’m going to keep taking them for at least a month—and I’m feeding them to my damn dog as well.” As if offering a dramatic effect, the pitbull suddenly appeared from around a log and beelined toward an unattended cup of coffee, which he proceeded to slop up gustily. The entire fighting unit burst into laughter and seemed to relax appreciably. Stone knew why he had the mutt on salary.

  Singing Crow looked defiantly around at his own people, then took out the three pills and downed them with a swig of coffee. He handed the vial to the next man and the next. Everyone took them except one—Fat Possum, the brave who had been Leaping Elk’s lackey. Though his master was dead now, the basically stupid Indian somehow felt he had to keep the tradition of stupidity inspired by the late Elk going, even after he was gone. Thus, though he had been triply exposed to radiation as he had breathed in the radioactive particles, drank water right after the bomb, and eaten of the high-rad snakedogs, all in imitation of the dear departed, he didn’t take the lifesaving pills.

  His choice, Stone thought, reminding himself to keep an eye on the man. There were going to be a lot more cases of radiation madness. Of that he was sure.

  But the rest of the Cheyenne—and all of the NAA recruits, who, having recently been in the ranks of General Patton Ill’s army, were used to taking whatever medicines were doled out—took their doses.

  “All right, then, you want to do something that will really help the poor bastards who live two hundred miles within this blast zone?” They looked at him expectantly. Then distribute these pills to them. Tell them to take them for one month. Not to drink any water that falls in the next week, and after that to only use spring water, not running water, for at least a month. And finally—not to eat any animal or plant life from this area for at least the next year.”

  They looked at him as if he were a little on the crazy side.

  “People don’t give up their food, their homes, so easily,” Singing Crow went on. He seemed to have become the unofficial spokesman for the Cheyenne, and they nodded as he spoke.

  “I know,” Stone said, watching as Excaliber finished up the cup of coffee in about two seconds flat. The pitbull’s head rose up like a periscope and swiveled around, trying to search out any errant cups of coffee or bits of food that had been left lying around “unguarded.” “That’s why most of the people—at least those downwind of here—are probably going to die,” Stone continued. “But we can try. It’s their only chance. Those that stay—I guarantee you—are doomed. And their children, if born alive, will be mutants, clawed things, blind, scaled, who will curdle their mothers’ milk in their breasts. You all saw what happened to Leaping Elk. He went mad. His brain was melted by the stuff, his guts turned to blood suey. That’s radiation, man—pure and simple.”

  It had been hard for the Cheyenne to really take seriously the idea of radioactivity—after all, it was something you couldn’t see, taste, smell, touch. How could you even know it was real and not just another of the white man’s illusions? But they had seen Leaping Elk. And more than that, they trusted Stone. So they took the pills, popped them down, each with a swig of coffee or water to carry the foul-tasting U.S.-government-issue generic pills into their guts, where the radiation demons were hiding, their atomic claws glowing in the darkness of tubes and capillaries.

  Chapter Nine

  “What do you mean you’re not coming?” Singing Crow blurted out after they had all just agreed to carry out Stone’s request to distribute the anti-rad pills to the south.

  “I can’t, man,” Stone said as he finished drawing a list of the nos when it came to avoiding radiation poisoning. “My sister’s in trouble. Bad trouble. If I don’t get to her, she’s dead. She’s the last of my family. I have no choice.” For the Indians, family was the strongest tie. They had nothing else. Thus they understood his need to go, to drop all other things.

  “But I’ll meet up with you,” he said, handing* them the radiation warning poster that he had written. “As you travel, write up copies of this and put them u
p everywhere. Give out the pills to the local town rulers, mayors, chiefs, whatever the fuck is out there. Tell them the whole truth. Then it’s up to them what they do. A lot will die, but for those who listen to you, it will save them. You men could save thousands of lives, you understand me? Thousands.”

  The importance of their task did start to dawn on the combined strike force, and looks of pride slowly appeared on their faces. They were actually doing something. A hell of a lot more than anyone else in this whole barbarous country.

  “I know that area well,” Singing Crow said. “My father and I used to hunt there. There are about a dozen Indian settlements, an equal number of white towns. We can hit all of them in a few days. Travel fast.”

  “And remember,” Stone added as he stood up, addressing the rest of them, who remained seated. “Listen to the words on those leaflets you’ll be putting up. ’Cause I don’t want to see any of you suckers die. You’re good men. A lot better than most out there. This country needs all it can get like you. Use your common sense—and maybe you’ll all actually get through this.”

  Stone went back to his Harley and unloaded the boxes of pills, handing them out in equal numbers to each man, so that a total of a thousand doses for about two weeks were at hand. It would have to do. It was all they had. Whoever got them first out there and was clever enough to take them would survive. The rest—

  The sky began darkening as if turning to night, although it was not yet ten in the morning. Stone reluctantly zipped up his jacket and whistled for the pitbull to get his ass on board. Meyra walked over to him as the Cheyenne checked the ties on their threewheelers so their loads would not come apart on the bumpy journey south.

  “I think I’ll miss you,” she said, standing just inches from him. She rose up on tiptoes, kissed him softly on the lips, then pulled back again so that just the lightest of touches was left behind on his mouth, like a flower petal rubbing across his skin, a piece of velvet flesh.

  “Well, if there’s anything that’ll keep me going out there,” he said with the edge of a smile as he nodded over at the slate-black sky to the north and east where he was about to head to try to track down April, “it will be the thought of your delicious body in my arms. It’s an image a man can carry for the rest of his life, a carrot to lure him forward like some sort of dumb mule.”

  “That’s how I like my men.” She smiled slyly as she stepped back from the Harley, which suddenly roared to life like an uncaged mountain cat. “Dumb and able to fuck even when they’re wounded.”

  “That’s me to a t.” Stone laughed, throwing his head back. “There, we’ve been computer-matched. See, I have to make it back. For a second date.” She turned suddenly without another word, as she didn’t want Stone or the others to see the moisture forming in her eyes again. She hated feeling vulnerable, her emotions out there for all the world to see. That she was in love and terrified. Terrified, not for herself but for the man she had to admit she was in love with. Terrified that she would never feel his body against hers, or his stiffness deep inside her, like the sword of King Arthur unlocking her deepest woman’s secrets.

  “Where is that damn dog?” Stone spat out as he spun his head around, trying to sight the pitbull. But even as he spoke the words, the canine appeared out of nowhere and, with a wild kind of leap, jumped over a pile of empty pill crates and onto the back of the Harley. He just made it, his front paws landing at the very back of the leather seat. But his back feet slammed into one of the higher empty boxes, and it went tumbling off. With a yelp of pain the bullterrier lunged forward with a second effort and managed to pull himself through sheer flailing motions up onto the seat. When he had finally settled down, he looked up at Stone who was staring at him shaking his head from side to side. The pitbull let out an almost inaudible whine and buried his head in the seat, gripping hard on both sides with his legs. It had not been his greatest effort.

  Stone glanced around, searching for Meyra, but she had already walked off and wouldn’t look back. He eased the big bike ahead and down off one of the declinations so they were both almost at a ninety-degree angle to the ground for a few seconds. Then the front wheel of the Harley caught the slow curve in the earth below, at the base of the rise, and they landed almost smoothly, the motorcycle suddenly shooting ahead as soon as both wheels made contact with the earth. Stone didn’t look back, either. There were only tears in the past. God knew what in the future.

  He headed due east, along a series of open fields with low slopes and not too bumpy a surface grade, so he made some good speed. The sky looked so bad, he didn’t even want to look at it. But every few minutes, unable to help himself, he would glance up and take another peek. It wasn’t even noon yet, but the day was as dark as the inside of a thundercloud. It was as if it were twilight, a polar twilight. The swirling fallout clouds had smoothed out now, spreading into long, flattened rings of radioactive debris that looked miles thick as they twisted slowly off to the east and south. The cloud above felt as if a solid object had been hammered up overhead, a curtain of steel, a wall of solid black iron.

  Stone could just see without the headlight of the bike, of which he’d just as soon save the power. There weren’t any more supplies to replace those he had in the bunker. And already items were getting low in a few areas. He was going to have to get greedy. The days of using up every damn thing were over.

  “Your hear that, dog?” he asked, half twisting his head around toward the pitbull. “We’re going to have to be frugal with supplies from now on. F-R-U-G-A-L—do you understand what that means, dog? It means one biscuit when you might want two, one side of steak when three or four would have hit the spot. We’re all going to have make sacrifices. You hear me, sacrifices!” But the animal either was sound asleep or was pretending to be, and thus not subject to the lectures of human beings.

  After about an hour of driving, Stone saw more dead animals. A tribe of raccoons, about fifteen of them. All of them were burned hideously, their fur pelts scarred and pitted like a sofa that someone had used as an ashtray. Then a whole hillside of deer; the damn things must have been on the rise and caught by the blast waves of the bomb skimming over the highest tips of land as it sent out diminished but still deadly energy past its thirty- and forty-mile destruction circles. As he drew past the family of deer, Stone’s guts rocked with nausea, for the still half-furred creatures were covered with brown blankets of roaches. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands, rushing over the corpse feasts, grabbing out little brown pincers of deer meat and then taking them back to their grubby little holes in the desert floor.

  He gunned the bike, not wanting the things even to take note of him, though Stone was sure they were only after dead things. There seemed to be more and more bugs and roaches. He prayed they were just a localized phenomena and not yet another problem to worry about. If the roaches started growing as big as cats and added on wings and fangs, Stone was going to pack it in, he decided right then and there.

  But soon there was far more to worry about than bugs. The black clouds above had thus far been high up, not yet beginning their descent to earth to release their store of radioactive poison. But as Stone moved further east, a whole portion of the sky suddenly seemed to start dropping fast, as if diving off from the rest. He could suddenly smell moisture in the air, dank and chemical-tasting. Excaliber sat up straight, eyes wide open. He growled hard, his muzzle just behind Stone’s neck. A wind started blasting down from the heavens, and Stone did everything he could not to lose control of the Harley. Bushes, small trees, and cacti all blew far over on their sides, up and down the low foothills around which the Rocky Mountains loomed like the homes of the gods, the Himalayas of the North American continent.

  The blackness seemed to descend on them like someone slowly decreasing the current of electricity to a light bulb until they could hardly see a thing. The feeling of being crushed by a huge weight was overwhelming. It was as if a mountain were descending, just a black line of writhing moisture that
dropped yards per second, coming down on the earth like a press.

  “We’ve gotta stop, pal,” Stone suddenly screamed out to the canine as he threw the brakes on hard. This time, though it barely sufficed, the pitbull at least had a little warning that they were coming to an emergency stop. He dived back down to the seat, wrapping both front and rear legs around the cushioned leather and held on for dear life as Stone brought the huge Harley to a skidding stop, digging his heels in so hard that they dug up little furrows of dirt for about ten yards on each side of the bike.

  Then he was off the Harley and running to the back, throwing open one of the biggest of the supply boxes, which he had mounted on a rack unit there. He pulled out a long silver poncho—a specially made “space blanket” Stone had dug up back in the bunker’s supply room. It was supposedly impervious to caustic substances. Well, he was about to find out. Anchoring one side to the motorcycle, which was standing on its wide autokick pads on each side of the frame, Stone looked around and saw a fallen tree about a foot thick, ten feet long. He rushed behind it as Excaliber followed along curiously, his ears flapped behind him, the secondary lids on his eyes dropping down to protect him from the wind-borne sand and dust that was now flying through the air like hordes of stinging insects. Stone rolled the log back to the flapping end, and by pulling it evenly beneath the length of the tree section, he was able to anchor it solidly.

  “Come on, we don’t want to get caught in it,” Stone yelled as he heard a sound from above and a streak of blue lightning swept across the black clouds from side to side as far he could see. He got inside the lean-to and unzipped the flaps on each side, anchoring them down with rocks. Barely had he closed them both when there was a sound like another A-bomb going off and the entire earth seemed to shake beneath them. Then there was a deluge of rain. It seemed to just release all at once, and the space blanket sagged noticeably as the first sheets of gale-blown radioactive rains came pouring down on them.