Doomsday Warrior 15 - American Ultimatum

by Ryder Stacy

  They toured the encampment for nearly two hours, going up and down every dirt passageway between the tents and covered trenches. Some “roads” were so narrow that the huge elephants could barely fit through even single file. Rockson was quickly getting an immense respect for the multi-ton beasts. They weren’t just huge—but smart—and quite graceful, all things considered. Nimble enough to get through passageways between sand dwellings with hardly more than inches on each side—doing it without sending any walls crashing in. He’d like to see one of them in a china shop. Rock’s beast, Kral, seemed to settle down once it got used to him being up top. And once it saw that he was basically going to let it do the steering. It’s like that in any marriage, too—compromises have to be made. And the Doomsday Warrior wasn’t about to argue with something that outweighed him by twenty to one.

  Rock filed away everything he saw in his brain. He still hadn’t the foggiest idea of just what he was going to do against the Skull, but at least the information was being fed inside, where he could feel it all whirring and clicking into the right slots. He just prayed they had enough time to work something out. If Killov attacked immediately, was able to break up this force into smaller groups, send them on the run in all directions without leadership, it might well be all over before it had begun.

  He banished such thoughts from his mind. Yet within his heart he felt a certain fear, a feeling that he hardly dared acknowledge. A fear that Killov was not human, that the Skull truly was in league with darker forces.

  The man should be dead by now. By all rights he was dead. Killov had been killed more times than a nine-lived cat—and still came back. Somehow each time he was more powerful and threatening than ever.

  This time Rock would make sure the bastard was terminated. He would stand over him and see his flesh and bones placed deep under the dirt. And then would wait a few hours just to make sure the KGB colonel didn’t crawl out again. Seldom did Rockson feel such an animosity, such a loathing for any living thing. But Killov was not of the living, as far as he was concerned. Rather, he represented the dead, dark forces of the universe. Surely the man had been born from under a rotting log along with the scuttling bugs and larvae. It didn’t seem possible that he could have sprung from a human womb, from a human mother.

  At last Rahallah told him that that was it. There was nothing else to see as they reached the very outermost sand tent a good half mile from the center of the circles of bivouacs where they had started. He led Rock back down one of the wider paths to the center of the camp, and stopped right in front of his own double-tent headquarers. Rahallah tapped his elephant on the side of the head, and it kneeled down on its front legs. He jumped down onto one of the great tusks, and then to the ground.

  Before Rock could say a word, his own war bull was down too, and Rock imitated the black man. Not quite as successfully, as he nearly tripped, getting his foot lodged somehow between tusk and trunk. He reached up, grabbing instinctively for the huge ear hanging down like a round theater curtain. And even as he made contact with it, grabbing hard, he suddenly remembered it was a no-no.

  The elephant let out one of its patented trumpet blasts sure to wake the dead. But whether it was a tribute to its training, or whether it was already getting used to the moron who was riding it, the great animal didn’t drive a tusk through Rock’s chest or lift him in its multi-yard-long trunk and throw him halfway to Timbuktu. It instead let him regain his balance on the tusk, and then jump to the ground hard. But Kral did give him a look like a shark staring at a minnow that had swum into its view.

  Rockson grinned sheepishly and mumbled a few inane words.

  “Sorry ’bout that, big fella. We don’t have elephants—in America.” Then he shut up as the beast’s squinting eyes narrowed even further. It clearly didn’t want to hear any bullshit.

  “Come on, Rockson,” Rahallah said, amused but not showing it beyond a slight uplifting of his lip. “Let’s check on your wounded compatriot. The danger period will either be over—or he will be heading into death—irreversibly.”

  Rock didn’t like the way the man was so cold about the statement. Yet it was undoubtedly true. Perhaps it was better to think like that, without sentiment. Just the facts. The truth was truer without sugar-coating all over it.

  They walked into the field hospital where Sheransky had been transferred the night before from Rahallah’s special “treatment” room. Rock prepared himself for the worst as they walked through small elephant-hide-walled rooms where fighting men in various states of dissolution or recovery lay on papyrus hammocks swinging slowly back and forth. But he wasn’t prepared for what he saw as they came to the end of the sand-floored corridor and turned right. In his own private room lay Sheransky, surrounded by nurses who were giggling and making quite a fuss over the “wounded” Freefighter. He was puffing on an immense cigar and pretending to blow smoke out of his ears, eyes, and other parts.

  “Rockski—hey, what’s up, pal?” Sheransky said with a broad, beaming smile on his face. Food trays and empty cups lay around the bed, and it was one-hundred-percent clear that the man was in his element.

  “Jesus,” Rock mumbled as he walked to the side of the hammock while some of the squealing nurses—actually young women hardly out of their midteens—went rushing around the bed and the Russian Freefighter slapped at firm young buttocks, eliciting yet more squeals. “You’re looking fitter than a fucking fiddle.”

  “Whatever you did for me—by Lenin’s balls—it worked,” Sheransky said with some amazement, slapping himself on the chest. “I swear I was standing right in front of the dark door—and it was opening. But then—I wake up here where there’s food, beautiful women! I’m feeling like I’m seventeen again. Maybe I should get clawed by high-rad fish every day.”

  “Thank Rahallah here,” Rockson said, resting an arm on Sheransky’s shoulder and looking down at the man with a warm feeling in his guts. He had been dead sure the bastard was a goner. One case where his sixth sense had erred—thank God.

  “Thanks, mister,” Sheransky said as he turned and looked at the black man, who stared back down impassively. “I—I appreciate your saving my life. I wish there was some way to repay you since—”

  “Please,” Rahallah replied, raising his hand with a mild scowl. “Enough said. Just your coming here on such a treacherous journey to help us in our hour of need is far more than I could ever repay. It is nothing.”

  “Well, that nothing happens to be my life,” the Russian defector answered back enthusiastically. “And I’ll tell you the truth—it sure as hell matters to me!”

  Rahallah shooed away the cocoa-skinned nurses. As they rushed away, Rock admired how their skimpy swirling gowns of green and purple flowed around their perfect young bodies—and almost envied Sheransky.

  Rahallah opened Sheransky’s bandages so he could get a look at the wound. He examined it closely, pinching the flesh lightly between his fingers here and there, squeezing the already hardening scar tissue from the laser tool as Sheransky let out sharp barks of pain a few times.

  “Excellent, you’re doing extremely well. Better than I had hoped,” Rahallah said as he stepped back.

  “So I can get up and out of here now, right?” the Russian Freefighter asked with a broad grin, though just why any man would want to get up away from those doe-eyed, firm-fleshed nurse-ladies was something Rock couldn’t quite fathom.

  “No, at least another day, maybe two,” Rahallah said, firmly. “My medicine—antibiotics mixed with traditional African medicines—sometimes can do great things. But not miracles. Only the gods can perform them. You were very close to death, my friend. Closer than I let on even to Rockson here. Your body is healing—but it’s still in a state of shock. I’ll check you again tomorrow.”

  “Ah, Rock,” Sheransky said, looking over at the Doomsday Warrior like a little boy who wants another cookie, “I want out.”

  “Forget it, mister,” Rockson said, trying to make his face firm, but letting a n
arrow grin trickle through. “He’s the boss here. Besides, with all the babes you’ve got running around in here, I figure you’ll need at least a day or two just to get things sorted out. I never knew you were such a ladies’ man.”

  “I guess I figured all those American karate gals back at C.C. would kick my butt if I grabbed for anything. But here . . .” He glanced around with a dreamy look on his ruddy face, and suddenly realized that maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to stay in bed a few more hours. “Well, I guess I’ll survive.” And with that, the girls were back and all over him again, kissing, pinching, grabbing. Rock shook his head as he and Rahallah left the room.

  He checked out Chen and Archer, both of whom had apparently found things to occupy their attention. Chen was being shown the Northern Army’s unusual laser-weapons and demonstrating some of his own. Archer was out demonstrating his crossbow on targets hundreds of yards away. Rockson retreated to Rahallah’s headquarters, where they went over maps of the whole of North Africa. The black man showed him where Killov had struck already, where his forces were believed to be concentrated, everything that a general would need to know to plan a campaign of counterattack. But by the end of the day Rock was more confused than ever, and hadn’t even begun to get the slightest inkling of a plan to go against the colonel. Neither had General Tutankhamen.

  “Let’s stop now,” Rahallah said sometime after dark as Rockson was bent over yet another map, staring at it as if in a hypnotic daze. “Too much concentration can make a man go mad. Come, Rockson, tonight we have prepared a little banquet for you and your men. It is the least we can do to show our gratitude.”

  Even as Rockson opened his mouth to protest, Rahallah turned down the oil lamp in the map room and nodded for his guest to follow. Rock shut up and walked after him. He couldn’t even tell what he was looking at anymore. A respite would be nice.

  But he was hardly prepared for the dancing and drumming, the horns blowing, the elephant-hide rafters just about falling down!

  Rahallah had led him several hundred yards to a low but quite wide and long sand tent. The place was rocking. Rahallah grinned at Rockson’s double take. Clearly he had been expecting some rather more low-key meal with an extra date or two, not the free-for-all that was being played out within. Men were dancing on tables, flipping over each other’s heads. In the center of the floor barely clad maidens were undulating out the Dance of a Hundred Veils—and most of their veils were already deposited on the floor.

  And the food! Rockson could smell it even as they walked in. And as he saw the whole goats and cows turning on huge spits and being basted with spices and honey, saw the vats of nuts and fruits and the table filled with gourd vessels of homemade beer and wine—Rock knew he’d come to the right place.

  He was seated with Rahallah on one side and General Tutankhamen on the other. Young women greeted him enthusiastically with wet kisses on both cheeks and multitudinous expressions of joy at his attendance. They all sat on firm silk cushions of brilliant coloration, and as Rockson looked up and down the table, he saw Chen and Archer at the far end, about thirty feet away. Their hands were filled with food—their mouths as well. Both spotted him and waved with crazy smiles on their faces.

  “Goooood,” Archer screamed out above the din of the goings-on. Rock had barely gotten himself comfortable when food was thrown down in front of him. And thrown was the word for it. Whole sides of lamb, their juices dripping, gourds and bowls filled with yogurts and cheeses and fruits, and alcoholic concoctions Rockson couldn’t even begin to imagine the ingredients of. He took a deep gulp of his fiery white fig-wine, and dug in.

  It was delicious, along with every bite of whatever he tried. They sure as hell knew how to cook out here in the middle of nowhere. Maybe because there wasn’t a hell of a lot else to do except count the sand grains.

  As he ate, the place seemed to grow even wilder. There was a whole band of drummers on one side of the thirty-by-hundred-foot sand tent. And they were banging away at trees, stones, logs, all kinds of things, creating a cacophony of sound that took a few minutes to get used to. But once he did, Rock could hear that it was a mix of complex rhythms all blending together into one great motion of sound. The sound of the rhythms of life itself. Or—he was getting drunk!

  Warriors with their fierce nomadic faces and hieroglyphs painted all over their stripped-down sweating bodies were spinning around like whirling dervishes, racing around the center of the place which had been cleared for dancing. They leap-frogged and did somersaults, performing feats of amazing agility and gymnastic prowess. First one group, then the next. At first Rock thought they were all the same—but he saw after a few minutes that they had slightly different colored beads and body paint. They were probably from different tribes. Tribes that had perhaps once battled one another in the past—but now lived and fought together under the banners of Tutankhamen’s Northern Army. Now they competed against one another in dance and song rather than bloodshed.

  Rockson stuffed his face with something from every platter and goblet that was brought before him, realizing as he ate and drank just how much tension he had been storing up in his body. He felt himself getting more than a little drunk, with everything spinning slightly in a pretty nice way. But as the saying went—eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die. Not that he was expecting it—or wanting to die—but you might as well be prepared. A good meal to last an eternity. It was the least a man could go out with.

  The evening seemed to get wilder as it grew ever darker outside, the dancing more frenzied, the food and fruits flying through the air. Then there was a momentary lull while one group of dancers left the center floor before the next had come on. Rock watched in amazement as he saw Chen and Archer both rise up from their pillows and come flying right across the top of the table out onto the rug-covered sand floor. Archer started to do some kind of insane jig, spinning his legs this way and that, like an Appalachian madman. Chen did back flips, forward flips, rolls, and wild twists as if he was competing in the Olympics. Then a kickoff, and he was soaring through the air right up on top of Archer’s shoulders. Archer caught him up there, even as he kept his own wild leg-snapping dance going.

  Rock shook with laughter as the whole place erupted in roars of approval and the high-pitched shrieks the desert people were wont to let out, like steam escaping from a kettle. That noise happened whenever they got really excited. Even Rahallah’s usually stern and stoic face broadened into a wide grin, and then he burst out in belly laughs. Rockson wondered when the hell the two Freefighters had worked out such a mad routine. But as he watched on, taking a deep swig of a honey-flavored beer, he saw that they hadn’t worked it out, for Archer suddenly tripped and went right over on his face, even as Chen flew through the air a good twelve feet, landing in a roll on the ground. But as the drums continued to pound and an off-key flutelike instrument rose above it all, swinging out an ancient melody, they were at it again, linking arms and square-dancing, down-home style.

  Rockson started to get up to join in, his own inhibitions definitely getting lost in the shuffle of brews set before him. But even as he rose, ready to dive across the table and join in the fun, he felt a soft touch against his shoulder and the smell of a powerful fruity perfume that instantly sent his senses reeling and made him stop in his tracks.

  Neferte. She had appeared out of nowhere, and instantly was cleaving to his side, rubbing her soft hands over his shoulders again and again with infinitely soft tugging strokes.

  “No—do—do not go,” she said in halting English. Then she smiled at him, batting her doelike eyes so that he felt himself nearly swoon with the power of the pure animal sexuality the woman was putting out. “You need—save energy for love!” She grinned openly, without shame or embarrassment about her desires.

  Rock let himself be swept away by her warm softness and scent. He let himself be led up from the table as he saw everything revolving around him in a wonderful, dreamy kaleidoscopic way. Let himself b
e led by the softness of her hand through the back of the great banquet tent with nearly fifty upright tusks set all around the inside to hold it up. And out into the cool desert night air.

  Then they were back in his tent, and she was all over him. She was like a cat, arching and mewing out little sounds that drove Rockson to the point of madness. Her smell was like the first ripe flowers and fruits of spring, rich and intoxicating. Her body was like a classical sculpture with perfect breasts which literally sprang out as she untied her skirts of silk. And then her pure softness!

  It always amazed Rockson just how soft a woman can feel against a man’s hard body. Passion was like fire licking logs, or water slapping stones. And he didn’t know where the hell he was, except that it was somewhere near heaven. Heaven on earth.

  Eighteen

  Rockson didn’t know what time it was, or for that matter quite where he was. Just a world of perfect bliss somewhere between Coney Island and paradise. So it was even more unpleasant than it might have been on a normal night when he suddenly felt himself pulled out of the dreamy darkness of his sleep. It took him a few seconds, with the six glasses of liquor in his blood, and the hours of lovemaking having brought his body to exhaustion, to quite figure out what was up. There was a thundering noise, as if someone was slamming a sledgehammer right down next to his head. And he swore he could feel the very desert vibrating beneath him.

  Rock opened his eyes as he felt Neferte’s warm arms wrap around him. She muttered some words in her own language, which Rock couldn’t understand but which were clearly utterances of fear. And even as he held her, listening for what in his dim state of mind he assumed was thunder from a passing storm, the elephants around the camp began letting loose with blaring trumpets of fear. The sounds increased by the second until the whole camp was alive with the thundering roars. Rock knew the animals were not easily spooked. They knew they were the toughest things around. So if they were scared—something was wrong, really wrong.