Doomsday Warrior 02 - Red America (24 page)

The leader walked forward another thirty feet toward Rock and his team. They could see his full regalia now: a bearskin vest to the waist, a necklace of carnivore teeth falling in three rows down around his neck, long loincloth made of some dark hide, and high red plastic boots nearly to the knee. Around his waist the Indian leader wore a long knife on one hip and an old U.S. Army issue .45 automatic pistol on the other. The freefighters watched the approaching apparition with their jaws dropped half open. They had all, in their time, seen some strange sights but this may well have been the strangest. The Indian cupped his hands to his purple-painted lips and yelled out.

“I know you cats are up the ol’ tree—hey man—c’mon down—we dig you!”

“What’s that mean?” Rock asked Perkins, who was one of Century City’s archaeologists and linguists as well as part of the Rock Squad.

“Sounds like he wants to be friends. But Rock, I don’t trust him. This peculiarly evolved culture is obviously warlike—raiders, pirates—”

“I’m going out there,” Rock said. “Do you think they’ll recognize a white flag?”

“It’s a pretty universal symbol here in America, even among isolated groups. Rock, let me come with you—I can speak to them—translate.”

The Indian leader shouted out again. “Hey man, like cool out. You know we ain’t cruising for a bruising. You dig?”

“What the hell is he talking?” Rock asked Perkins. “It sounds like English but—”

“I think it’s a mixture of several things, Rock. American slang plus beatnik jive circa 1950s. Quite interesting, really,” Perkins said, reaching for small notepad he always carried with him to jot down observations of primitive peoples.

“Beatnik?” Rock asked.

“Yes, Rock. They were . . . It’s too complicated. I’ll tell you later.” The two freefighters used a handkerchief of McCaughlin’s to make a little white flag at the end of a small branch. They stepped from behind the tree, waving the symbol of peace, as a school of fruit bats fluttered out of the branches above them and off into the pink-mooned sky, round as a silver dollar.

“Hey you groovy cats, we dig you, hear?” the Indian said with a broad smile as the two Americans appeared. “Come on over here and slap five, daddy-os. It’s cool—you fool—send you back to school.” The other riders still perched on their bikes hooted and laughed at their leader’s words. Rock and Perkins walked slowly up to the warpaint-streaked leader.

“We’re here in peace,” Perkins said smiling.

“Groovy, the cat’s a hep dude. Peace man,” he said, stretching his lips to their widest to reveal a mouth missing half its teeth. The chief held up his right hand, making a V with his fingers.

“Do what he just did,” Perkins said to Rockson from the corner of his mouth. “It’s
important.”
The two freefighters raised their hands and made the ancient hippie gesture of greeting with their fingers.

“Hello,” Rockson said. “We’re fellow Americans and we come with peaceful intentions.”

“Hey man, the cat speaks hip talk,” the Indian leader said, slapping his hands together in glee. “Where you at, daddy-o? You hip to the dharma—the road—the oneness?”

“I think he’s asking if we’re religious and he wants a yes answer,” muttered the archaeologist.

“We believe,” Rock said. “And believe in the right to believe.”

“Man, that’s a strange way of grooving to the smoothness, but you dudes seem okay. At least you ain’t Ruskies—you know Redskys.”

“We’re not Reds, we’re freefighters, Americans—and you?” Perkins asked, as he quickly scribbled in his small notebook.

“Hell man—we are the People. The Kerouac Warriors, the beat messengers of ethereal poetry, the chanted-out Tibetan hipster kung-fu fighters from the Outer Galaxies. We, my square peopleitude, are
the Crazy Alligators.”
The Indian leader folded his arms across his chest in satisfaction as the tribe mounted on their bikes behind him yelled out in unison.

“The Crazy Alligators!”

“Where your pad, man?” the Chief asked, his smile suddenly turning a trifle icy.

“West of here,” Perkins answered, understanding the strange lingo.

“West? Crazy man,” the leader laughed. “There is a west—huh? That’s strange. First time we heard that.” With that he turned to the cyclists and smirked, receiving loud guffaws from the tribe. He turned back to the freefighters. “Now if you all would just drop your boomtubes like nice boys,” he said grimly, pulling his pistol and leveling it at Rockson’s chest. “I think we can parlay at the Ginsberg’s house—that’s our top cheese—dig?”

Rockson stepped to the side and the chief pulled the trigger of his .45. But the slug hit empty air. Rock fanned the black beam over the whole assemblage of Crazy Alligators who fell from their bikes instantaneously as did the chief. Within a second every one of them was out. Perkins was groaning slightly and Rockson turned to him. The archeologist had his hand over his upper arm where a second shot from the motorcycles had hit him before the black beam had done its work.

“It’s just a nick,” Perkins said, gritting his teeth. Rock helped him tie a bandanna around the wound and the two freefighters joined by McCaughlin and Kim from behind the tree walked over and inspected their catch. Perkins, wincing occasionally from the pain of his scratch, had a field day going through the Indian’s saddlebags and taking notes on the decorations on their cycles.

“This is fascinating, absolutely fascinating,” the archeologist kept exclaiming as he noted the medicine pouches, the beat poetry books, yellow and disintegrating. There appeared to be three Indian societies represented among the motorcyclists: the Bear Claw Clan, all of whom had artificial bear claw scars on their left cheeks; the Coyote People, older men mostly with the mark of a coyote head cut into their left forearms; and the last group, mostly the young men including the chief who wore amulet necklaces containing Buddhist magical symbols and the long-feathered headdresses. Perkins clicked away with a small mini-camera he always carried in his jacket and wrote profuse notes. Rockson refused adamantly when Perkins wanted to take some skin and nail samples.

“But it would tell so much, Rock—”

“Absolutely
not.”
Rock shook his head. “These people, friends or enemies, are still people. I don’t want anything except a search for security reasons and some photographs for the archives—without their permission—got me?”

Perkins nodded gravely. “It’s a mistake, Rock. Science should—”

“Humanity over science, damn it, man,” Rock said a little angrily. “That’s how the war started—technology over decent human values. I won’t let us act in any way like the Reds.”

When the Indians awoke about an hour later they thought it odd that all their cycles had fallen over and they were lying beside them on the cold ground. It had seemed an instant ago that they were drawing their weapons. Now they had none in their hands. Immediately the chief picked himself up and shouted, “Magic! They are magicians.” He pulled the black protective amulet into his hands and began chanting
OM MANI PADME HUM
as fast as he could. The others joined in and the chorus of the ancient Buddhist symbology grew in intensity until Rockson yelled out.

“Enough—we are not magicians. We used a weapon we possess on you because you were about to fire on us. You’ve been unconscious for about an hour—but it isn’t magic.” The chanting died out and the chief, looking somewhat chastened, stepped forward again.

“You could have killed us cats. We understand man, that you are powerful mean dudes. And we want to be friends. Can you dig it, kemo sabe?”

“I can dig it,” Rock said, not without a trace of a smile on his dark rough-hewn face.

“Slip me five, Mr. Rock-around-the-clock. I’m Trickster Diety, and we are the craziest of the Crazy Alligators.” He held his palm out and Rock, having learned the ancient American form of greeting from Detroit, slapped him. Trickster and the Alligators let out a whoop of happiness.

“The cat knows the high five, look out,” Trickster laughed and slapped Rock back. Trickster invited the freefighters “No tricks from Trickster, man,” to their digs in a nearby mountain. With the Crazy Alligators taking Rock and the others on the back of their cycles, the party of thundering vehicles tore off across the dark fields to the Indians’ home. Rock kept his particle beam at the ready but the Alligators weren’t trying any funny stuff. At least not right now. The freefighters had never been on this type of vehicle and after a certain amount of nervousness at the speed of the things and the ground flying by so fast just beneath their feet they quickly grew to enjoy the ride. They made good time, with the cycles shooting across the terrain faster than any land vehicle Rock had ever seen. Rock was intrigued by the mobility of the cycles. He’d have to talk to Dr. Shecter about the feasibility of building some of their own back in Century City. Of course gasoline was the basic problem with any sort of combustion engine. The Alligators must have had some secret source of the precious fluid.

Within an hour and a half they were at the foot of a towering red rock mountain that Trickster yelled to Rock was their home.

“See that pile of boulders shaped like a man sitting in meditation to the left?” the chief yelled out above the din of the cycles. Rock, sitting on the rear of a cycle just behind Trickster nodded affirmatively.

“That’s the entrance, man. We got guards stationed everywhere. In the rocks. Though you can’t see ’em, they can see you. If the Reds show their head, they’re dead.” He laughed at the end of his little rhyme and motioned with his hand for the troop to move forward. There was a narrow shaft of darkness among the boulders and they rode into it, barely slowing down. Once inside the bikes moved single file through a narrow canyon. At first they turned on their big lights on the front of the bikes but within a minute or so they clicked them off again. The very walls of the solid rock tunnel glowed with a shimmering blue iridescence bright enough to see by. They rode for about five minutes when the narrow trail suddenly widened before them and they came into a vast stalactite-filled cavern that made the freefighters gasp. The place was gigantic, and absolutely porcupined with the glowing blue spears of rock that made it look like some immense jewel.

“It’s so beautiful, Rock,” Kim said, on a cycle just behind Rock’s, as she sat behind a madly bedecked Indian with an almost Jackson Pollock type pattern of paint covering his bronze body. The cavern sloped slightly and the bikes rode through it as the hanging mounds of pure blue stone dripped luminous fluid that formed streams of glowing water. They came after several minutes to a tranquil black lake that disappeared in the distance. There was some sight of light far off at the other end.

“Heavy place, cats, right?” Trickster asked, as the Alligators brought their cycles to a stop on the banks of the lake.

“Heavy, man,” Rock said, dismounting from the steed of steel.

There were twenty outrigger canoes on the white sands of the shore of the lake which stood quiet and shiny as a mirror. The canoes had bizarre names painted on their bows like
Disneyland One
and
Roadrunner Three.
Perkins ran around frantically jotting the names down, muttering it had something to do with the lost legendary city of Hollywood. The cyclists split up into groups ten to a boat. Rock and his team were in the lead canoe with Trickster and several Indians who grabbed oars from the floor of the craft. The canoes were long, nearly thirty feet, but very slender with a balancing outrig to the right of the boats. The glow of the rocks faded as they paddled out across the black water. Soon it was utterly black except for the glowing compass dial that Trickster held in his hand at the front of the canoe. He muttered to Rock, “Compass doesn’t tell north—it just points to the Great Hall. There’s so much spiritual energy around the Ginsberg—the leader of our underground Pueblo—that the compass always leads us home. And good thing, too, man, because there’s a huge waterfall off this lake about a mile to the right. Bottomless, the legends say.”

“How big is this lake?” Perkins asked.

“No one knows. We are content, man, to groove on the area we have and be happy. There are stories that these glowing people roam the unexplored edges of the caves down here. Have you dug on these glowing cats?” Trickster asked as he paddled slowly and smoothly with a long wooden paddle.

“Yes—the Glowers—many of our freefighters have seen things in the distance,” Rock said, his arm protectively around Kim who seemed a little cold and scared in the immensity of the lake’s darkness. “But never face to face. If they are real and not just some apparition created by radioactive conditions, they seem to not want to be too social.”

“Well, they aren’t human,” Trickster said a trifle nervously. “They sail their huge boats out there on the lake, glowing in the dark. I saw one as a kid—gives me the willies to even think about it. But they don’t bother us thanks to the power of the Ginsberg.” When Trickster stopped talking, all that could be heard in the impenetrable darkness were the grunts of the men and the oars lapping away at the flat water.

They arrived, after about twenty minutes of rowing at the opposite bank where the glowing blue rock again permitted them to see. As they hit the sand and jumped out, the freefighters could suddenly see that what had at first looked like a sheer black face of a mountain was in fact the cliffside city composed of hundreds of adobe buildings piled atop one another in an immense hodgepodge of sand and stone.

“How many people live here,” Rock asked Trickster as they walked along the sandy shore toward the city.

“Four—five thousand. I don’t know, man. We don’t keep track of that sort of stuff. We found this place seventy years ago—that is—my grandfather was wandering in the wilderness when he found the hole in Red Mountain and came inside. The Chumec Indians built this whole thing for protection some ten thousand years ago and we moved in like cockroaches into a tenement—dig?”

The cliff dwellings of the Chumecs, now occupied by the Crazy Alligators, had been hand hewn into the mountainside. Rock looked up, taking in the impressive living sculpture. The rock had a brownish almost rusty appearance, he noted, probably containing a high iron content. That explained the magnetic pull—hence the compass that Trickster used to guide them in. So it was the iron, not the supernatural powers of the Ginsberg, that made the needle always swing toward the mountain city. But superstitions were best not challenged, as Perkins was always telling him, so Rock would keep that fact to himself. But it made him feel a little more at ease since he had been beginning to wonder whether there might actually be a psychically powerful monk at the head of these beatnik Indians.