by Ryder Stacy
Next he opened to full every oxygen valve in the place. Before he left the area, fresh, cool air came whooshing out of every duct in sight. It headed out all over the dome.
That should clear out a few brains, Rock thought. He didn’t really believe that he was going to take on this whole damn crew of this madhouse by himself, especially feeling this dizzy! He rested for about a minute, still affected by the traces of the gas continuing to float in his skull. But every second was bringing back more clarity, an understanding of exactly what had happened. Rock started getting madder than ever.
He headed out the door, managing to break the lock with a few kicks so no one would be able to get down into the valve area easily.
Many lobbies and corridors away he could hear the booming voice of someone introducing the Great Nominee, then wild applause pouring over the loudspeakers of the stadium. It was beginning, the whole mysterious event had started. He had to hurry.
Rock headed down the corridors, searching his still-sludgy brain for information. Where were their weapons? Somewhere in this direction . . .
A guard appeared ahead, this one actually carrying a rifle on his shoulder, unusual for this lot. He raised his hands to stop Rockson. “Where are you going, mister?” the grim-set lips intoned. “All workers should be inside the stadium listening to the Great Nominee’s speech.”
“I know,” Rock said just as slowly, as he stood there at attention. “I am new here, I became lost. Please guide me on my way.”
The guard looked him over slightly suspiciously. Perhaps his eyes were looking a little funny—too clear.
There was a touch more clarity in the guard’s fogged eyes too, and pain, great pain, for it hurt to be receiving pure air from the vents. Hurt to start to become conscious from the oxygen Rock had sent out all over the dome. The guard mumbled out directions for the “lost” delegate and then slumped against a wall.
Rock thanked him and headed off, making a right instead of a left turn and reached the end of the corridor. He had remembered the direction of the weapons storage area. Logic was crawling back into his brain. It felt great. Logic said he had to get the weapons and find his men. That was what he should do.
He came to a large door that read “Arriving.” That was the first room to which they’d been taken. He walked in and grinned as the two guards on each side of the door did double takes.
“Hey! What the hell are you—” both men said, jumping to their feet. “No one is supposed to be in here—no one.”
Rock glanced quickly around—and could see that there were weapons stacked everywhere, from handguns to huge missile-type monsters. A veritable arsenal—but too much for one man to carry. The whole crew that now filled the dome, screaming out their guts to greet the Great Nominee, had been pretty well armed when they showed up from all over.
“Oh, it’s all right,” Rock said, with a wave of his hand, “I’m cleared!”
They both started toward him, coming around from each side. These were big boys, presumably able to stop any would-be entrants by just standing up.
But Rockson had taken out tougher men than these two. As the one on the right reached out to grab him, Rock just flicked up with his right leg. The tip of his boot caught the guy in his groin. The man let out a scream and fell to the floor in agony.
The second one came storming in as well, and leaped up in the air right at the Doomsday Warrior. Rockson just stepped slightly to the side to avoid the drop-kick. At the same time, he pushed the man along in the air. The guard went flying forward at full speed, without the slightest chance to throw his arms up to protect himself. His face slammed into the concrete wall with a terrible crunching sound. Then he didn’t move.
Rockson had to act fast and he knew it. If the others discovered the closed gas valves and stopped the oxygen from cleansing everyone’s brain, the enemy would get the whole place back under control. The delegates were probably all feeling a little funny up there in the auditorium already.
Rock looked quickly around at the shelves, and found the Freefighters’ weapons. He felt elated to strap on his belt, and holster his death-dealing shotpistol. Then Rock took up Archer’s steel bow and his quiver. He grabbed Chen’s Liberator, and Detroit’s bandolier filled with grenades. He knew they’d all be happy as a skunk in a tree-trunk to see their stuff. In this world you didn’t want to go around without protection.
He loaded up his emptied magazine fast and made his way out of the room. The guards weren’t going to be functioning for at least half an hour. His mission would either be over—or it wouldn’t matter by then what they did or said about him.
He walked out and tore down the corridor, trying to balance all the weaponry and ammo in his hands and on his shoulders. Rock didn’t need a map, that was damned sure. He could follow the noise. He flew up the two levels to all the screaming people. The crowd of ardent Nominee-worshippers was outdoing itself. The noise grew louder and louder until Rock stepped from a side door and saw the gathered delegates. There were balloons by the thousands—red, white, and blue—dropping from a net on the ceiling high above, and trumpets and drums were keeping the chanting, screaming hysteria going.
Suddenly, a guard started to touch his sleeve, but Rockson shot an elbow right into the man’s face. He didn’t know what hit him.
Rock saw the Great Nominee down on the platform. And gasped. Yes, the man from the movie wasn’t human. Maybe he had been human long ago, but not now.
The Great Nominee, his huge, decayed body wriggling around beneath his overflowing robe of red, white, and blue, was standing there at the podium, holding both greenish flabby arms up, accepting the ovation. He was trying, Rock thought, to look like Moses or Jesus or something like that. No, the way he shook his jowls and waved his arms the attempted imitation was clear—he was trying to look like Nixon! Shaking those jowls, giving a crooked smile!
Finally the band stopped playing. And the Great Nominee spoke: “Perfection, that’s what this campaign means! Over the past century, we of the party have achieved great things, but I say to you now, we are reaching higher, achieving more and more. There is no limit to our goals, to our accomplishments.” The Great Nominee’s voice bellowed out over a thousand speakers, his voice tearing around the stadium like thunder from the angry clouds. “It is through our rules and regulations,” he continued, “through the order we have created to replace the hell outside, that we have created a great society. Repetition, triplication, is the answer for every problem, every question.”
While the applause broke in, Rockson glanced around the audience to see how the drones were taking in the oxygen.
They weren’t clapping much anymore. As a matter of fact, confusion reigned. There was a new, unsettled look in their eyes as the oxygen began to really get into their systems. And three new delegates looked very confused. His Freefighters! The Doomsday Warrior tore down the middle aisle as the Nominee went on haranguing the zombies of the Bureaucracy.
“Archer! Chen! Detroit!” Rockson screamed, as he picked them out of the sixth row. He came rushing up to their chairs. “It’s me, Rockson! Come on, boys, get it together!”
Guards were coming in from everywhere now as the Nominee stopped speaking for a moment. It was a pretty bizarre sight as the entire stadium grew as quiet as a desert. Everyone watched the scene unfolding. There wasn’t a second to waste.
Rockson’s voice and the sight of their firepower seemed to push the three Freefighters from the brainless state to total clarity.
“Rock, what the hell is going on?” Detroit said, rubbing his eyes. He actually fondled his grenades before he strapped the bandolier around his chest. Rockson smiled and held the Liberator mini-machine pistol up and slammed a mag in. He had his men. Now he was ready.
Even as the row of cannon-firing carts came tearing down the aisle right toward them, the Rock-team moved into action. As the delegates all around them were blown to little bloody pieces by the carts’ fire, the revived Freefighters and their com
mander headed for the platform.
The loathsome Nominee regained his composure as the Freefighters came toward him, and he started directing streams of still mindless blue-jacketed Republam officials to stop them. Screaming, “Protect the Nominee!” they came at Rock and his men. The blue-jackets started tearing their hats with their teeth, to expose the razor-sharp brim-weapons. But before they could throw the hat-knives at the Freefighters, they were cut down by Rock’s burst of submachine gun fire.
“So, you wish to play games with me?” the Great Nominee laughed, and he threw his robe off. Rockson gasped when he saw the man’s naked skin.
It wasn’t just that there was a pile of fat, a landfill of sludgy, greenish skin that moved around in every direction as he walked across the stage. But now Rockson saw just how the Great Nominee was able to move that diseased relic of a body so easily. All over the fleshy mess of a body were electrical wires. The man was part robot!
Bionic mechanisms around his elbows, knees, and ankles gave the Great Nominee power-boosts to his atrophied, aged muscles. The man was all geared up, super-wired, with a million computerized additions to his physique. Now, with the robe off, you could hear the hum of all that high-tech motor-equipment.
The Great Nominee turned toward the Nixon-statue which was all lit up like a neon Christmas tree. It was probable that the statue was responding somehow to the electrical and magnetic energy of the Nominee’s fantastic body-systems.
What the hell was he doing? Rock wondered. But then he found out.
“Everyone look here,” the Nominee shouted, “and see that I am all-powerful and that I am the sanctified one! You must all obey me!” He reached out and grasped the hilt of the Nixon sword, the most sacred of their symbols. And a hush fell over the pandemonious masses. Somehow Rockson remembered from his indoctrination-brainwashing film session that the sword was more than a sword. It was a death weapon with great destructive energy. The Great Nominee must not be allowed to lift it up, for it could shoot rays of ultimate power out. It could destroy them all!
“Stop him,” Rock shouted, “or we’re history! He must not get the sword.”
The Nominee pulled on the shiny hilt of the sword as the Freefighters charged toward the podium. Evidently, it was no easy trick to get the sword up, so they still had a chance. But then the Republam blue-coats responded to the attempted assault on the Nominee by launching hundreds of their bladed straw hats at Rock and his men.
“Hit the deck,” Rock shouted. He and his men all dove down and the hats sailed overhead and missed. Archer twisted around and managed to get one of his steel explosive arrows notched and let it go. He skewered a row of mindless fanatics who were headed his way. They fell, all stuck together in a row, impaled on the seven-foot-long arrow.
Rockson decimated a flock of protectors with a series of shots from his shotpistol. They fell, peppered with the “X” patterned explosion of the weapon’s bullets.
Chen downed another three protectors with a single shuriken explosive star-knife. And as the black Freefighter lobbed grenades to keep the other enemies back, the rest of the Freefighters once again raced to grab the Nominee.
“Oh, Great Agnew, why have you forsaken me,” the Nominee gasped, still struggling to free the sword from the flickering Nixon-glob. He gave it one more try, veins sticking out all over his flab-body, his circuit wires shorting and sparking with the extra effort.
The Great Nominee couldn’t understand it. He had lifted the sword several times in the past, and shown the delegates that he was the Chosen One in that manner. Why wouldn’t it budge now? He gave it one more try, as the enemy once again assaulted the stage.
And the sword came free. Snarling triumphantly, he began to lift it up, and turned in a swivel to direct its point at the infidels. “Oh Great One,” the Nominee muttered, “destroy mine enemies, smite them down!” And with those words, the Nominee had Rockson and his men in a direct line down the blade-weapon. But when he pressed the button on the sword’s hilt, nothing happened.
“NEEED HEEEELP?” Archer asked, smiling as he approached the Nominee now. The Nominee dropped the sword and started to fumble in his bejeweled girdle for a hidden pistol. But Archer grabbed his wrist. The mountain man squeezed until a green pus was oozing from that wrist, and the Nominee was down on one knee, screaming in pain.
Rockson ran to pick up the sword. Maybe, even if it didn’t seem to work anymore, just holding it up would stop the masses of delegates from mobbing the stage. He found the sword was fifty times heavier than he imagined it would be, and it took all his muscle power to lift it. But he did.
And the delegates that were again attacking suddenly froze in their tracks. “He’s lifted the sword. Maybe he is the True Nominee!” someone shouted.
All the delegates stopped in place and just stared at Rockson, then at the piteous sight of the fat man bending under the pressure of Archer’s mighty grip. They were confused by this turn of events.
Rockson turned slowly, letting the whole assembly of disoriented delegates gaze at him holding up their sacred symbol of power and righteousness. The light from the Nixon-statue flickered and danced over the huge sword.
“No!” the Nominee shouted, breaking free of Archer’s grip for a moment at least. “The Infidel is not holy! This man Rockson uses a trick to hold up the sword. He changed the gasses in the air, shifted the negative/positive electrical polarity between the magnetic field that held the great sword down! Kill him!”
The near-mute Freefighter now seized the Nominee once more, and they struggled. The Nominee’s wire-circuits again sparked and flared as he struggled with the mountain man. His face turned bright red.
“What do we do?” someone shouted. “Who do we believe? Who do we follow?” The oxygen had taken hold over their gassed brains. Suddenly everything that had seemed so mercifully clear to the delegates just a few minutes before was now crumbling. Their minds felt too clear, their thoughts too logical.
It was then that a tremendous burst of power from the Nominee’s imbedded servo-systems helped him throw off Archer’s grip once more. The Nominee lunged for Rockson, and with a burst of superhuman strength, snatched the weighty sword from the Freefighter’s grasp. “I am the One!” the Nominee shouted. “And I say kill the infidels!”
Some of the delegates responded, others didn’t. A huge mass of them began racing down the aisle, throwing their steel-tipped hats. A few of the carts came careening forward, firing their cannons. How the hell they could shoot and not expect to hit the Nominee, Rock didn’t comprehend. But he saved his analysis for later, as he hit the deck.
Archer didn’t dive. Instead he lunged for the Nominee and wrestled with him for the sword.
And to Rockson’s amazement, Archer managed to wrench it from him.
“Here, Archer, bring the sword here,” Rockson said over the booming of cannons. “Give it to me, Archer.”
Rock knew that if he held up the sword, the crowd might again stop attacking. So he ran along the stage, his .12-gauge weapon blasting down opponents, heading toward Archer.
It was then that the Nominee stopped his struggle with Archer and found that hidden derringer in his belt. He placed it right at Archer’s head, just as Rockson hit him full force with a drop-kick.
The flab-man fired, but the shot went wild as he was knocked down. Then, with a superhuman flip, the massive monster got on his feet as fast as Rockson did. The Nominee leveled the gun at the Freefighter leader. And fired. But it didn’t go off.
It was the break Rock needed. The Nominee was coming at him and the smirk on his face signaled to Rockson his intention. He was going to crush Rockson with a full-slam of his body. In an instant, the Nominee’s mechanically assisted legs let loose with a great jump. The man spread his arms and legs like a diver doing some gargantuan belly flop down in a pool. But Rockson, using all the strength he could find, managed to grab the sword next to him, and get the Nixon-sword pointed upward. He rolled away just as the 800-pound mass of t
he Nominee came down on it.
The point of the Nixon Blade went right through the Nominee’s chest and out the other side. A geyser of blood came shooting up, half-covering Rockson. The Nominee groaned and twisted his face around at Rock. He spat out some pieces of bone and gristle and tried to say something. Then his eyes glazed over. He was dead.
Rockson sat up, his head spinning like a bloody top. He looked around. Bodies lay all over the place, some without heads, some with gaping holes in their chests or stomachs. Chen and Detroit were back to back, holding forth their smoking weapons, daring any more comers.
Archer stood on the far side of the stage. He was pulling a steel arrow as large as a harpoon out of a pair of attackers he had skewered. Once released, they fell lopsided onto the red-stained podium. And no one else charged at him. The remaining delegates were thunderstruck by the death of the Nominee.
Suddenly the nearby exit doors flew open, about a hundred feet away. Rockson moaned. Not more enemies. Not now. Please, God, no reinforcements! But it wasn’t any enemy!
Rock could hardly believe his eyes and ears. A ’brid cavalry was riding in! And McCaughlin was at their head. The missing Freefighters were alive and well, and had come to the rescue—a bit late in the game. The Freefighters atop the mounts screamed and hooted as they raised their Liberator autofires and went tearing down the rows, blasting anyone who moved.
“McCaughlin! Sheransky!” Rockson screamed in sheer delight, as the remaining Caucus people looked at each other with fear and confusion, perhaps realizing that the odds had changed dramatically.
“Watch it on your right,” the big Scotsman yelled out as he let loose with a stream of slugs from his Lib. The man who had been sneaking up on Rockson fell, nearly cut in half by McCaughlin’s bullets. Evidently there was still fight left in some of the delegates.
As the other riders piled in behind the Scotsman, they gave their rebel yells. Their ’brids jumped over whole rows of seats. They were determined to get the handful of delegates who hadn’t thrown up their arms in the age-old gesture of surrender. The riders dove from their mounts and engaged in hand to hand with the few delegates that didn’t want to give up.
