Doomsday Warrior 02 - Red America (17 page)

The dredges stared at Rock, seeming to take too much notice of him. He wondered why with some apprehension. His disguise surely hid his true identity. He looked down at his clothing. What had seemed back in Century City like torn garments, hardly distinguishable from any other untouchable, now appeared to be a rich man’s apparel compared with the shredded rags that clothed the hordes along the sides of the road. That was why they stared at this man who looked like he must be rich. But then why was he walking. His disguise already didn’t hold together. And if they noticed something wrong, the Red guards at the entrance to Pavlov City would too.

Rockson walked off the road, over to a group of men playing checkers on the ground, having gouged the board into the dirt with twigs and using light and dark pebbles for pieces.

“Anyone want to trade clothes with me?” Rock asked the group. Three men jumped up instantly, surrounding him.

“And who would you be, mister, wanting to trade? Maybe you got some riches in that there satchel of yourn,” the largest of the three, a bearded greasy-looking lout with huge blubbery lips said with a sneer. Rockson stared the man hard in the eyes.

“I’m not looking for trouble, mister, and I’d advise you not to start any. I just want to trade these clothes of mine for one of your sets of duds.” The big man reached out with a hand covered with brown warts toward Rock’s shoulder bag. Rock grabbed hold of the wrist and twisted it quickly over and down. The man fell to the dirt screaming in pain.

“You broke me hand, broke me Goddamned hand,” he moaned. The others stared at Rockson with consternation. He had just taken down the local bully as easily as if he were a child. One of them piped up.

“I’ll go for the deal, mister.” He eyed Rockson’s pants and jacket with greedy eyes. He had never had a set of clothes like that in his life. A little dirty, but not even one hole. He’d be the envy of the shacklands. They went behind a hut and exchanged garments. Rock could feel the bugs crawling around the lining of the man’s ripped and filthy shirt but sacrifices had to be made. He looked down at himself with new appearance. Yes, it would do fine. Torn, riddled with holes, stained with years of sweat and filthy toil. Rock thanked the man and headed back down the road toward the fort. The newly clothed untouchable paraded around in front of his neighbors who jealously eyed his new appearance: blue jeans without a hole, a light blue workshirt with just a few threads showing, and an amazingly perfect khaki jacket. The man kept his hand on a long icepick inside the inner pocket of the jacket. He would die to protect his new acquisitions. In the camp of the poorest he was suddenly a man of means.

Rockson headed toward the fort which grew closer and bigger by the minute. The outer walls that formed the defensive perimeter were nearly forty feet high, concrete two feet thick with barbed wire running along the top. He walked up to the main entrance, manned on every side by submachine-gun-toting guards. They eyed him without really taking much notice, just one of many untouchables who came and went. Rock passed the first defensive perimeter with a big lump in his throat as he walked into the enemy’s camp. If any of these soldiers knew who he was . . . At a second checkpoint a Red Army sergeant stopped him and asked in a weary voice.

“Where you going, scum?”

“Garbage detail, sir,” Rock said in as meek and terrified a voice as he could muster. He looked down at the soldier’s feet and wrung his hands together in a gesture of submission.

“Oh, get on then,” the guard said, turning away and spitting. That had been easy enough, Rockson thought. Almost too easy. He headed down the long open streets of Pavlov City, head bowed down as were the heads of all the imprisoned Americans, for even looking straight into the eyes of a Red soldier could mean death. But he saw everything from the corner of his eyes, saw the work crews marching, the lines of prisoners being taken to the brainwashing center. Rockson blended in easily with the other untouchables who walked around pushing wheelbarrows filled with waste. No one noticed the most wanted man in America. They were too busy building their wretched city.

Rockson walked around for what seemed like miles, taking mental notes on every structure, on the troop quarters and munitions dumps. They must be building the place day and night. Zhabov must have been pouring every ruble he could lay his filthy hands on into the city. Obviously he saw the products of Pavlov City as something that would give him a big edge over Killov in their ongoing power struggle. To confuse matters even more, Rock began noticing what were without question KGB. They wore the feared blackshirt uniform and the death’s-head patch on their shoulders. What the hell were KGB doing inside a Red Army fort as important to Zhabnov as this. But if that sight shocked him, Rockson nearly did a double take as he rounded the next corner and saw a squad of about one hundred men wearing a type of Russian uniform he had never seen before, darker than the usual with an American flag patch with a rifle through the center. They marched by in double time and Rock knew instantly they were Americans. Americans in Russian uniforms. A sight that made him want to vomit.

Suddenly the endless low buildings gave way to a large exercise and marching field where thousands of soldiers were going through every kind of battle exercise: obstacle courses, firing ranges, march drills. The trainers were all Russian but the troops were Americans. Every last one of them. Rock walked along the perimeter of the field, picking up little pieces of refuse as if he were one of the eternal garbage pickers who wandered around the Red forts cleaning them as surely as barnacles cling to rocks, sucking every bit of loose waste from them. Totally unnoticed, Rockson took in the bizarre sight of Americans training to be Russians. Then he saw their eyes, when he got close enough—the eyes of the Americans—and it made him shudder. It was the eyes of the dead. Their bodies were still functioning but their eyes stared straight ahead. Rock remembered reading about a creature from the past history of America, South America, if he recalled correctly. They had had a name for men like this—zombies, they had called them.

So the Reds were turning American workers into zombie soldiers to go out and kill their countrymen. His worst fears were confirmed. And by the looks of it they were turning them out by the thousands. The men’s heads were all shaven and had those telltale puncture wounds at the very top of the skull. Little bumps that would never completely heal where the mindbreaker probes had burned out their past identity and instilled a command more powerful than love or hate—a command to obey their Red masters.

Rockson felt his entire being tremble. His hatred for the Red beast was at a new peak. He vowed at that moment to destroy the entire city. Somehow, some way he would stop this hideous experiment from being carried to fruition. He made a complete reconnaissance of the city, totally unnoticed by the overconfident Red troops, as he pretended to pick up little bits of paper. As the sun set Rock hid near the large concrete building in the center of the fortress, inside a garbage dumpster filled with construction waste—bits of woods, sawdust, rusting buckets filled with hardened concrete. The dumpster was about two hundred feet from the barbed wire fences surrounding the forty story building. Guards patrolled around it in groups of five, submachine guns cradled in their arms.

Rock waited nearly three hours until activity in the Red city had died down to virtually nothing. They would all be sleeping now. Even the guards would have their senses at their lowest readiness. It was time to strike. He took out his bowie knife and headed toward the fence. They had set up a defensive perimeter which for the normal man would have seemed impenetrable, but Rock’s eyes took in the machine-gun emplacements, the guard towers, the bunkers with slits of light and immediately saw the weak spot. To the right, in the space between two towers, the lights of the floodlamps faded to a dark gray. He headed toward the blind zone, crawling along on his arms and legs, his dark filthy clothes hiding him among the shadows. The moon, thank God, was packed between immense jagged brown and purple clouds that filled the skies like radioactive boulders. Rockson got right up to the fence which was electrified. He took out a piece of thick material from his pack and wrapped it around his hands. The fence was nearly ten feet tall. Rock slid right up to the base of the steel mesh and watched the two guard towers. Not a sound, nor a movement. He braced himself for the shock and leaped the height of the electric fence, grabbing the barbed wire at the top. He pulled himself over with every ounce of his mutant strength and soared over the top. The surge of electricity passed through the thick burlap material around his hands, and he gritted his teeth as he soared in a perfect arc over the top, landing on the other side in the dirt. He rolled instantly into a darker shadow created by one of the towers and waited a few seconds to see if he’d been spotted.

Nothing! Rockson made his way, creeping among the dark spots until he reached the base of the ominous brainwashing building. He spotted an entrance of some kind below ground. Some sort of service access, he thought, for taking care of the subterranean machinery of the building. He slid down the steps to a door that was chained shut with a padlock. He fitted the bowie knife between the lock and its chain and pushed with all his strength. It took three minutes but finally the small metal lock had enough and popped off its chain link. Rock pushed the door open and headed into the monolithic structure.

The basement halls were dimly lit by unshielded lightbulbs, and, seeing no one in sight, the Doomsday Warrior moved swiftly through the labyrinth of corridors until he reached the fire stairs. He bounded up them three at a time. He’d start on the second floor and work his way up until he found just what the hell was going on. Rock opened the steel door to the second floor slowly, his knife in his hand, cocked and ready. A guard about thirty feet down the hall sat facing him but his eyes were closed as he dozed, dreaming undoubtedly of vodka flowing down the steppes of Mother Russia. Rock slid into the hall, silent as a cat. He headed straight for the Russian who somehow sensed the motion and opened his eyes. The Red soldier bolted upright in his chair and grabbed wildly for his pistol at his side. Rock’s fourteen inch blade spun through the air like a whirling blur of death. It entered the Russian’s throat sticking clean through. The man’s eyes bulged as big as apples and he dropped to the floor spitting blood and gurgling out death noises. Rock ripped the bowie knife from the corpse’s throat and headed down the corridor.

Bells! Everywhere! He heard doors slamming and loudspeakers blasting away in Russian. They were on to him. He rushed back toward the fire door through which he had just entered but heard a click just as he reached it. Locked! Rock tore down the long neon-lit hall toward the far end some two hundred feet away. He reached it and swung through the door just as a squad of Reds rounded the corner to the right. He veered to the left away from them just yards ahead of them. He sprinted with all his strength, and within a few seconds tore ahead of them, coming to another intersection of halls. The place was a Goddamned maze, he muttered mentally, and took a left, down a corridor filled with glass doors announcing Lieutenant this and Major that in gold letters. Ahead of him another squad of Reds suddenly appeared. He was cut off.

The Russians closed in on him from both sides and as they approached, Rock noticed that they weren’t regular Red Army at all—every man was dressed in the dark brown fatigues but they all wore the hideous emblem of the death’s-head on their shoulders. Elite troops—the officer closest to Rockson smiled and spoke in broken English.

“Ted Rockson, I presume! You may as well surrender. We have been expecting your presence for days. I promise you you cannot escape. The floor is filled with over two hundred of our elite troops. Please—no fuss—yes?”

“Oh no, no fuss,” Rockson said, walking down the hall toward the paunchy officer, so handsome in his crisply pressed uniform. When he was about ten feet away Rock rushed the KGB man. It was time to die. For all of them. Rock knew his days of survival were over. He couldn’t let them take him alive. But he’d get ten, maybe even twenty before they took him down. He suddenly zigzagged down the corridor like a wild animal, reaching the officer as the man was still trying to find the American in his pistol sights. Rock slammed the long-bladed death dagger through the smart uniform jacket, through the rows of medals on the officer’s chest, through the man’s heart. The KGB brass fell to the white tile floor, blood spurting from his neatly carved chest.

Rockson turned toward the other troops who fired wildly hitting one another, ricocheting bullets off the walls.

“No! No! Don’t shoot! Don’t kill that man or you die!” screamed the officer leading the second squad of men from the other end of the hall. Rockson slammed into the cowering elite troops jumping around in confusion behind the body of their dead commanding officer. He slashed away with his blade, a whirlwind of suicide-seeking death. He caught one man in the shoulder, nearly severing it with the heavy razor sharp bowie knife. A Red rushed at him, a bayonet attached to the muzzle of his Kalashnikov. Rockson sidestepped the soldier and brought the knife down on top of his head. The blade pierced the skull, pushing nearly four inches in. Rock withdrew the blade in one even motion as the officer continued walking forward for two more steps, not even realizing he was dead. Then his body fell like a sack of stones to the slippery red floor.

Rockson slashed everywhere around him, kicking backwards when he felt flesh approach. Troops fell around him like blades of grass cut with a scythe—their bodies cut, smashed, bones broken and pushing through their own skin as if seeking daylight. But they hit back, too, slamming at Rockson with the butts of their rifles. The squads closed in from both sides of the hall. He killed and killed but at last the bodies just piled up around him and over him. The KGB elite troops hit at the murderous whirlwind of a man with their guns and fists until he felt himself sinking into a bloody darkness from the combined blows. Goodbye world, he thought with a detached irony for just one second before he slipped beneath the waves of unconsciousness.