Doomsday Warrior 07 - American Defiance

by Ryder Stacy

  “Listen, you Australian bastard,” Rock screamed out, his face growing red, “it doesn’t matter what I call you because every damned one of you is going to be dead within five minutes if you don’t do exactly what I say.” Rock pointed at the approaching cloud of pure death. “That ain’t no regular rain coming this way. That’s a smoking, burning acid rain that will melt tissue like it never was. You hearing me, pal?’ Rock yelled, trying to shock the man into reacting. “You may have your boomerangs and kangaroos and whatever the hell all God on a bad night might have created down there—but over here we got us a thousand ways of dying—and one of the worst of them is coming this way.”

  “All right, all right,” Boyd said, tapping his camel so that it lowered its forelegs, enabling him to slip easily over its side and to the ground. He motioned for the rest of the Australian fighting force to do the same. “So, what’s the plan, matey?” the Aussie lieutenant asked, sidling over to Rockson.

  “There is no goddamned plan,” Rock bellowed, angry because he didn’t know how in hell he was going to save these looney bastards who had come to save him. “We got that tent to protect us—that’s it. Somehow we’ll have to squeeze your men in—but not the camels, no way.”

  Boyd folded his arms across his chest, got a very obstinate look on his face, and said firmly, “No camels, no Australians. These are our mates, matey. We been through ’ell and back with these ’ere whining dinkums. Can’t leave ’em. It’d be bad taste. Wouldn’t leave your mule creatures over there now, would you?” Rockson knew he wouldn’t—not if there was any way in hell to avoid it.

  “I’ll make a deal, Boyd,” Rock said through steel-tight lips. “My men in first, then yours—then our ’brids, then the camels. That’s all I can do. Take it or leave it.” He started to walk away toward the front of the shining metallic tent as Boyd looked up real hard at the approaching storm cloud. It was just coming over a nearby mountain range perhaps eight miles off, and even from here he saw the black curtains of liquid it dropped from its smoking innards. It didn’t look good.

  “Okay, okay there Mr. Ted Rockson,” Boyd said, running over to Rock and catching him by the shoulder. “You got yourselves a bloody deal. Though I must say that your whole bloody country is not receiving us in a very welcome manner. I daresay as ugly as our platypuses and ’roons and whatall are—you won’t find them all trying to bite you and claw you the moment you set foot on Down Under.”

  Rockson rushed forward to the opened flap of the large but stable tent draped over the super-resilient plastic ribbing that the men had quickly snapped together.

  “In, in!” he yelled, half shoving Detroit, Chen, and the rest of his ten-man team through the flap. Then the Australians. Boyd stayed outside, offering to help with the camels. Rock accepted the assistance readily, having seen the mangy beasts in full operation. The ’brids were the first to go in, pulled up to the flap by the reins and then taken inside by the Freefighters and led to the very back end of the protected enclosure. While still colts, they had received rigorous training at Century City and been taught how to lie down flat and stay completely still. And though nervous, they complied, piling atop one another in a jigsaw of furry heads and thick legs. As Rock pushed the last of the mutant steeds in he took a look through the flap. It was already nearly filled and the place stank to high heaven.

  An ominous clap of thunder that seemed to shake the very earth beneath their feet hit Rockson’s ears and he pulled his head out, glancing up at the source. The Clouds of Death were almost on top of them, just a mile or so off, and moving at a rapid clip as if eager to get to the finish line. The curtain of black rain was clearly visible, darkening the whole mountainside in a waterfall of murder.

  Rock turned back to Boyd. “How the hell are you going to get these things in there? If even one of them goes crazy and jumps up and knocks part of the tent out, we’re all dead. Every one of us, I guarantee.”

  “Not to bloody worry,” the Aussie replied with a cheerful grin, slapping Rockson on the back. “We’ve got our own contingency plans worked out too, you know.” He flipped his hand over the long blonde hair that kept threatening to cover his deeply tanned face and yelled inside the tent, “You blokes ready in there or what?”

  “Send the bloody biters on in,” a voice screamed out. Boyd grabbed the first in the line of camels who stood relatively peacefully, looking curiously at the metallic tent. The Aussie leader yanked hard on the Backbiter’s reins and pulled its head far enough down so that it could just fit through the tent opening. Inside, his men threw a piece of rope around the forelegs, disabling the creature. It fell forward on its side and another man ran quickly to the back and got its hind legs knotted up as well. Five of them dragged the head camel, head flailing but otherwise disabled, across the dirt floor of the instant tent and deposited him next to the snorting ’brids.

  Rock looked on, amazed at how easily the Australians were handling the big critters, moving with such precision, tying them up so rapidly that there was hardly a bit of commotion or danger to the tent. But time was running out. The mountain range of clouds roared again, sending out streaking bolts of lightning that seemed to land all around them, sending up showers of sparks and flames from the cacti and thorn trees that they struck.

  “There’s no time,” Rock screamed as he dove through the flap. “It’s here, it’s here!”

  “Just a few more,” Boyd yelled down. “I swear—just a few.” Somehow he kept them coming—two, three, four—pulling them down and kicking them through the flap into the darkness within, taking only seconds for each. He heard the rain, just ahead of him now, heard its sizzling descent, and the death cries of the plains animals in the near distance who screamed as it burned them slowly, turning their lizard and scaled hides into smoking bubbling fire.

  Boyd half dove through the closed flap, dragging one more of the camels with him. He landed hard on his side, pulling the beast’s neck down like a rodeo steer wrestler. “Tie the bloody bludger down,” the Australian lieutenant screamed out in the darkness. “Over ’ere, I got one’s ready to go bonkers.” Two of his men dove over the pile of bodies in the center of the tent and latched onto the struggling camel’s legs, tying them together before it could do more than kick a few humans in the face.

  The stench inside was almost unbearable—human sweat mixed with the scent of fear, the pungent animal smell of the ’brids and the indescribably acrid, sharp, urine-like smell of the camels, who, as the rain slammed down on the alloy roof of the tent with loud pings, began setting up a roar of disapproval.

  Outside, the remaining eight camels who had not been brought in felt the first of the penny-sized drops on their backs. It took a second or two to sink in to their disgruntled brains. Then they felt it—the exquisitely painful sensation of their own flesh dissolving right from the bone. The drops of bubbling black rain ate away at whatever they landed on, sending up a mist of burning skin, blood, leaf, cactus. Whatever it was that it destroyed was of no concern to the Acid Rain. It had no conscience, no consciousness—just chemicals. Chemicals sucked up from the radioactive strontium clouds, from the poisoned rivers and seas—which it deposited with a vengeance back on the planet that had created them. But those whom it dissolved with unrelenting tongues of liquid fire did have consciousnesses. Camels could feel pain as surely as any creature that has ever lived. And they died screaming.

  Inside, the tent seemed as if it were about to explode from the pent-up panic of so many men and animals. The camels and ’brids each started their own howling choruses of fear as they heard the dying cries of their brethren outside. They drove each other to louder and louder heights, as if thriving on the noise, the madness. The men were sweating, covered with the foul stench of the place. Above them, all around them, the tent rippled as the tens of thousands of death drops bounced harmlessly off the protective material. To feel it—death—so close, actually repelled just inches from your nose, was quite an unnerving experience for the men inside. Only
Rockson, Detroit, and Chen, who had been through a dozen such attacks, took it all in stride, keeping an eye on the dull greenish glow that filtered through the sides and on any ’brids or camels that might make a break for it. But even dumb creatures know when skeletal fingers are reaching for their throats. Soon they calmed down and lay atop one another, breathing heavily, occasionally letting out with a howling sneeze or cough.

  “How bloody long do these to-do’s go on?” Boyd yelled from out of the semi-darkness.

  “Anywhere from a minute to two or three hours,” Rockson shouted back over the driving roar of the Acid Rain pour.

  “Ain’t this a pisser then, mates?” the Aussie lieutenant said with a laugh. “Say, did the bunger with the brew make it in all right?” Boyd suddenly asked with concern.

  “Got ’em over ’ere, sir,” one of his men spoke up. “He’s keeping real nice and quiet. I’m ready to shoot ’im, sir, if he makes a break for it.” Even Rock’s men laughed at that one. The Aussies obviously regarded their precious tins of amber brew as a much higher priority than the life of one nervous camel.

  “Throw me a tinny would you, then, mate?” Boyd pleaded through the darkness. “Don’t want to be entering the dark beyond without a few swigs of Queensland’s best in me guts now.” Cans of Foster’s went flying through the air, hitting men and beasts alike, setting up a whole new commotion.

  “Are you all mad?” Rockson screamed out over the rising bray. “All we need is one of these damned animals standing up and—”

  “Mister Rockson,” the Aussie commander yelled back, “you Yanks are just too bloody uptight. Down Under, we have the more mellow approach.” Rock could hear the pop tops snapping again in the green dimness. He gritted his teeth as the storm sent down its worst.

  The Acid Rain slammed into the tent for nearly thirty minutes before finally slowing down and then dying out completely. A few parting bolts of searching lightning knifed the ground nearby. Then it was gone. The Aussies reached for the tent flap but Rockson yelled out, “No, don’t touch it. Even the drops sitting on top of the tent and on the ground will burn you—they go right through shoes or clothing. Let it evaporate. The stuffs so volatile it can only exist in liquid form for minutes. Besides, the sun’s coming out. It’ll clean things up.” They waited nearly fifteen minutes, and then Rock poked his head carefully through the straight shining flap.

  It was a new world out there—a world of steaming death. A world of smoking bones lying in piles, the flesh that had once concealed them gone—gone completely. The cacti had all collapsed into a glowing putty on the ground, so that as far as the eye could see, the Acid Rain had cleared a path nearly three miles wide of every living, breathing thing it had caught in its acid grip. And behind, it had left only death.

  They came out of the tent, slowly at first. Then, as the animals realized they were going to see daylight again, in a mad rush that turned into a stampede, tearing right through the side of the metallic tent and ripping one of the alloy sheets. It took nearly twenty minutes for the bedlam to at last get straightened out.

  “Well, I guess we’ll be making our departure then, matey,” the Aussie leader said, offering his hand. “No hard feelings then. We can see we’ll just be in the way.”

  “I can’t let you guys go off alone,” Rock said, mounting his ’brid. “You did after all come all the way over here to help us, and I’ll be damned if I could stand the thought of your bodies melted by acid rain somewhere, or digested in some saber-toothed wolf’s stretching belly. No, you ‘chaps’ will be riding with us—at least till I can drop you all off at some Free City that’s big enough to handle you all and your bloody camels.”

  Rotund President Zhabnov was cutting a rose in the White House garden. He hummed a stupid ditty as he snipped the Forens excelleza—his own red hybrid with an orange-edged blossom. “Excellent, excellent,” he murmured. “I’ll send a bunch of these to the ailing Premier. The Grandfather will remember the kind gesture and repay me someday.”

  A Russian Regular Army officer came running from the White House. “Your Excellency,” he gasped, handing a telegram to Zhabnov, “the Rebel President Langford and his daughter have been captured.”

  Zhabnov opened the telegram. A gentle mind-scan had shown that the two prisoners at the remote Ft. Svetlanya in Montana were indeed they. What luck. What a beautiful day this had turned out to be. The Forens excellenza bloomed, and these two were captured. He felt so good he handed the startled officer a rose, albeit one of the slightly faded ones. “This is a gift. Now—be gone!” The officer thanked Zhabnov profusely and ran back toward the mansion, holding the rose carefully in one hand.

  The Red President gathered a few more blossoms, enough for an air delivery bouquet for the Premier, and then waddled back toward the White House. When he reached his office, he picked up the phone and ordered the captives to be flown immediately to Washington for a Deep Mind Probe in the Octagon. The Octagon, his brainchild, was the newest and most modern of his Prison/Interrogation/Mindbreaking facilities. It was equipped to handle up to two thousand prisoners at a time in assembly-line fashion. Today it would have only two, Zhabnov thought to himself. But they would receive all the hospitality the establishment could provide. And when the Mindbreaker had finished with the so-called President of the Re-United States, Zhabnov would know the location of all the Free Cities in the country. Then the slaughter could begin.

  Ah, what a lovely day, the Russian President of America thought as he walked to his bedroom. Perhaps he would have the Siamese twin virgins he had been saving until the banquet next week. No—tonight—he must have them tonight. He deserved a celebration. This life was too short to be putting off the sure pleasures of today for the unknowable sensations of tomorrow.

  Ten

  It was noon when the first tremors hit. For a moment, the ground felt strangely soft beneath their feet, almost like walking on a field of thick springy grass, to the combined Freefighter-Australian force of nearly forty men and God-knew-how-many beasts of burden who had been walking across the sunbaked prairieland for nearly two days. But it only felt pleasant for a second—then the harder quakes hit, knocking the mounts to the ground, sending their riders flying through the air, flapping like so many wingless birds. Once fully unleashed, the earth shook violently—cacti, ant hills, thorn trees, all vibrating and jumping back and forth as if having a fit. The ground cracked open in all directions, creating a spiderweb of chasms whose sides groaned and grated against one another. It was as if a madman lived just beneath the surface, and holding a God-like axe, was smashing away at the fragile earth intent upon completely obliterating it.

  Rockson felt the ’brid stumble beneath him, losing its front footing. He kicked his feet from the open-sided stirrups and pushed up with his hands on the saddle to get momentum. For the other men flying around him, it was as if they were in the middle of a cyclone, unable to find their bearings or even which way the ground was. But Rockson—who had taken a thousand falls at the hands of Chen, and his enemies, that had sent him flying topsy-turvy through the air—knew exactly where he was and hit the spasming earth in a roll, spinning end over end nearly fifteen feet before he came to a stop. Rock knew there was no sense in even trying to get up as the ground increased its rate of thunderous turbulence every second. He spread himself out as far as he could, lying face down on the dirt, his arms and legs creating an X. He kept only his head up, trying to see what was happening to the others.

  There isn’t a hell of a lot that a man can do in an earthquake. It reminds him very quickly that he’s just a piss-poor ant on the face of this earth. All any of them could do was pray and be buffeted about by the rolling waves of the planet’s surface. Pray that in five minutes they would be alive to feel like more than an ant, to feel important again. The animals had gone into their own brand of frenzy since they didn’t have the intelligence to just lie still, and as a result, they flailed furiously while trying to right themselves. Those few camels or hybrids who s
omehow managed to stumble to their feet were instantly knocked down again by the violent turmoil beneath them. Rock heard several screams above even the earth-cracking roar of the quake as a wide chasm opened beneath two of the camels. They fell in as if sucked down by a vacuum cleaner, disappearing instantly from view. Everywhere was dust, chaos, as the most solid thing that one can know in this life came apart beneath their feet.

  The earthquake lasted for nearly a minute—a long time for such a high-intensity one. Rockson had been through quakes before, but this was perhaps the worst. His body was vibrating like a brass bell as he rose from the finally motionless ground. The dust clouds that had been raised slowly drifted down again, covering everything with a layer of fine sooty particles. The sound of the terrified animals was deafening as they jumped to their feet and ran wildly in circles and into each other, not realizing that the danger was past. Slowly, the rest of the men got up, brushing the dirt from their pants and shirts. For all the noise, there didn’t seem to have been too much damage beyond the loss of the two camels and some supplies that had toppled from the backs of the mounts.

  Rock walked quickly around the white-faced fighters, first checking his own men. Ashton and Douglas, the MindBreaking experts, seemed to have gotten the worst of it since they weren’t used to such rough endeavors. They gave Rockson weak smiles and slowly stood up, bruised but not otherwise hurt. The rest of the Freefighters were already trying to calm their ’brids, patting the frisky creatures on the nose, slipping them some sugar cubes to take their minds off the quake. Chen stood next to his two martial arts students—Du Soo and Lenny Brown—with something resembling a proud smile on his oriental face. His two trainees had taken the falls perfectly. They were the first of a new breed of fighter in Century City, raised to fight from the time they were children. They had attended all the normal educational facilities of Century City, but on top of that had, since the age of five, had spent six to eight hours a day training in every aspect of warfare and fighting techniques. Chen’s heavy-duty classes, his constant pronouncements that “it is not fun and games but your lives and the life of your country that are at stake” were already paying off their dividends. Rock walked quickly by the rest of his team, barely glancing at them. Archer, McCaughlin, and Detroit had all been through hell and back countless times.