Doomsday Warrior 02 - Red America (6 page)

Four

I
t took nearly nine days of cautious riding, almost entirely at night along mountain trails thought impassable by the Reds, for the freefighters led by Rockson to reach Century City. They had gone down from the mountainside attack point to check out the damage they had caused the Russian truck convoy and had managed to capture five soldiers who had somehow survived the hellfire, one of them the second ranking officer of the fleet. The Rock Squad had then retreated back into deep wooded valleys and mountains toward the west where they had tethered their hybrids: large sturdy mutated horses that freefighters throughout America used as transportation. With the Russian prisoners tied up, they had made their way back to Century City, one of the most powerful of the seventy-three hidden rebel cities.

Three pine trees next to three aspens was the only sign of the main entrance into the underground fortress, home of Ted Rockson, Doomsday Warrior. The squad rode silently past the trees and into what appeared to be nothing but dense underbrush. But the brush parted easily and the party headed through a tunnel of vegetation and camouflage netting. A bluejay screeched just ahead of them.

“That’s the signal this month,” Detroit said to Rockson who rode lead. Detroit, who was the birdcall expert of the Rock Squad, put his hands over his mouth and gave out rapid renderings of a hoot owl. The jay screeched two times rapidly—and the owl responded with a long drawn-out hoot. The Russian prisoners marching behind the hybrids looked on curiously. They were short of breath at these heights.

Suddenly there was a grating noise. The huge granite boulder in front of them slid sideways and there appeared a quickly sloping concrete ramp lit by faint green phosphorescent overhead lights. Ted Rockson, the attack squad, and the Red prisoners headed down the tunnel entrance into Century City, home of over fifty thousand souls, comprised of twenty levels, with thirty thousand miles of electrical and water systems. As the hybrids’ stone-hard hooves beat out symphonies of clatter in the long smooth-walled tunnel, Rock saw a glint of brightness ahead. The second doorway to the Debriefing Center—a large chamber where medical doctors and intelligence aides were seated. Rock and his men handed over their ’brids to members of the debriefing staff and walked through the wide door where Intel Chief Rath, his familiar gaunt face and hooked nose bobbing up and down, greeted them excitedly. He was anxious. So much depended on the success of the mission.

“Did it go well?” he asked, unable to contain his questions.

“Scratch one Red convoy,” Rock said laconically. “And I mean scratch. We could hardly find any wreckage to look at when we went down to check damage.”

“Wonderful, wonderful,” Rath said, rubbing his hands together and beaming as if he’d just received his longed for Christmas present.

“The particle beams perform miracles,” Rock continued. “Even knocked out their heavy metal tanks—the Soyaks—though it took a second to melt through their thick skins. That’s one shipment of supplies that the Reds will never see again. I’d say it took us a total of ten minutes from commencement of attack to complete destruction of the fleet. It was something to see, Rath. Almost frightening. I felt as if I were seeing a new energy source being unleashed on the earth.” Rock looked down, a strange expression on his face.

“You were, you were,” Rath piped in. “A weapon that will drive the Reds from America. Oh Rock, this is a great moment. Perhaps one of the greatest in my life.” Rath looked positively glowing. Unlike Rock he was not one to hide his feelings.

“Destruction, Rath, so much destruction,” Rock said softly. “All my life I’ve spent fighting the Reds. Yet suddenly when I was holding that particle beam weapon in my hands and firing down I realized I had the power of God at my fingertips. The power of lightning, of earthquakes. I just wonder if man was meant to ever possess these kinds of weapons. For the first time in my life I actually felt unsure about what I was doing.”

“But Rock, for God’s sake, man. We’re not killers. If the Reds would leave, we wouldn’t follow them back to the Kremlin. We’re not bent on world domination. This is our land for Christ’s sake, and these weapons will be used to get it back.” Rath was almost shouting.

“And if the Reds should get their hands on these or discover the energy source? Then what?” Rock stared at the intel chief with glowing eyes, purple and aquamarine. Almost too intense to look into. “Can you imagine if the Reds had them?”

“They won’t. You can be damn sure of that,” Rath said firmly. “That’s exactly why Dr. Shecter built in the explosive charges. The weapons can be blown up within seconds.”

“Someday there’s got to be an end to war, Rath,” Rock said. “I’ll fight. I’ll fight until the day I die to free this land. But someday, someday,” he was whispering, with a look in his eyes that Rath had never seen before. “Someday there must be peace. We can never forget that that is what we’re fighting for. Never!” He looked sternly at the head of intelligence who shrank beneath the stare. “Anyway, the things work. That’s for damned sure.”

The phone rang on the wall and Rath reached over, picking the cordless receiver up. “Hello? Dr. Shecter! When are we expecting them?” He smiled at Rockson who let his own features soften. Rath certainly wasn’t his enemy. Rock let a slow grin fill his face as Rath handed him the receiver.

The other end was a nonstop series of questions asked so fast that Rock could barely understand “Yes, things went well, sir. No, no casualties. Yes, the camera we brought to film the attack functioned perfectly.” Rock waited a few seconds for the voice to stop and catch a breath. “Sir, instead of going over all this on the phone, why don’t I come up and talk to you in person . . . good.” Rockson put the phone back down on its mount. “I’ll see you later after you get a look at the Red prisoners we brought in, including a top brass.”

“All right Rock. And listen, I know—know what you mean. We do lose track sometimes of just what we’re fighting for and why. But don’t think that means we have forgotten—we haven’t. Not a man in this city or I’ll wager any other city. That’s what defines us, Rock. Makes us different from the Reds. We fight in the name of life. They fight in the name of death.”

“Thanks Rath,” Rock said simply and headed toward the elevators and Dr. Shecter many levels below, in the bowels of Century City, built entirely beneath a mountain. He pressed his thumb into a lit glass square and the stainless steel elevator doors opened and shut the moment he entered. Rock descended the eighteen levels rapidly, the bottom dropping out of his stomach. He stepped out into the main level of the science section of Century City, and, as he strode down the antiseptically clean white floors, (Shecter was a stickler for cleanliness), he realized that he hadn’t bathed for nearly three weeks and probably smelled like hibernating bear. Ah well, Shecter would have to put up with the earthy odors to assuage his curiosity.

Far down the curved hall, Rockson suddenly saw Shecter, his tall lean frame half stooped over in his omnipresent neck-to-ankle white smock, sliderule and calculator in his breast pocket ready for service at a moment’s notice. Funny, the man has no title except scientist, Rockson thought, and yet everyone snaps to it, even he, Ted Rockson, when the doctor called for them. But after all, everything in the Free City had been made by the man: the power sources, the hydroponics, the weapons. The man was still churning out his technological innovations daily even at the age of seventy-eight and appeared to have no intentions of slowing down.

Dr. Shecter firmly shook Rockson’s hand. “Good to see you back safe and sound. I had a funny feeling about this mission. But I’m glad to see that I was wrong.” His fierce brown eyes stared straight into Rockson’s own multi-hued eyes. He was one of the few who could or dared try. “Well?”

“You should have seen the attack. Those beams—they’re beyond weaponry. I can only think of the word punishment,” Rock said, “to describe the damage created by those black beams.” The two men walked about a hundred feet back down the hall to Shecter’s office where the scientist sat down behind his immense mahogany desk with as many drawers as he had ideas and every one of them neatly expounded, coded, and filed for future investigation. Rock collapsed in one of Shecter’s overstuffed armchairs, resting his six foot three inch, two hundred twenty-five pound frame of steel-sinewed muscle for the first time in weeks. He glanced around at the doc’s collection of scientific gadgetry that adorned the walls of the office. Models of the Liberator automatic rifle now in use by freefighters throughout America and Century City’s main export to the other hidden cities. Miniature versions of his thermal engine which channeled steam and heat rising up from beneath the bedrock of Century City and turned it into enough energy to power Century City’s living needs and industry. And oddities as well. Things in jars, floating in murky liquid that gave Rock the creeps. He’d seen some strange mutations in his day, but Shecter seemed to have gathered the most hideous ones and kept them on perpetual display. Embryos with scales and puckered little faces out of a nightmare, snakes with feathers and nearly human features, a bird the size of an eagle, black as midnight and covered with icepick sharp spikes. Things half hidden behind the clouds of liquid in which they were encased. Rock pulled his eyes away with a shudder.

“You like my collection?” Shecter asked, stoking and lighting his pipe. The sweet smell of cherry tobacco wafted across the room like a perfume. One of the few privileges of power that Shecter had taken—to take one of the hydroponic tanks for the growing of tobacco—a product he swore he needed in order to think. Nobody had dared object.

“Like
isn’t the word,” Rock said, leaning back in the chair and letting his whole body just relax into the plush softness. It was only when he let his defensive systems down for a moment, his radar, that Rockson realized just how wound up he was. “I’m horrified and fascinated at the same time. I don’t know if I’d want the damn things staring down at me all the time.” Rock grimaced, looking up again at beady black eyes peering out of countless containers.

“These are my friends, Rockson. These are the inhabitants of our new world. Many of them will die out there. But some will survive. Oh yes, of that you can be sure. The world is changing, perhaps faster than any of us realize. The radiation that was laid down around the globe a hundred years ago is just now beginning its second stage of ‘mutation-evolution’ as I like to call it.”

“Mutation-evolution?” Rock looked across the wide folder-covered desk at the brilliant scientist whose head was nearly enshrouded in a halo of smoke. “I’ve never heard you use that expression before.”

“It’s something I’ve been musing over for the last several years Rock, and only just now am I starting to formulate a theory as to just what’s happening out there. You see, there are two distinct stages in the mutation process from radiation. First, comes the immediate mutations caused by radiation. The next generation that is born—human, lion, plant life, whatever—will produce many disfigured and usually unviable creatures. Most of these will die out. These generations, those that survive that is, will also produce mutations similar to themselves, and most of these will die. But after about three or four generations, roughly a hundred years, the survival quotient starts evening out. Those mutations that remain have not just survived—they have become a new species adapted to life in this post-nuclear world. Those are not monstrosities,” Shecter said, sweeping his hand toward the shelves containing the creatures. “Those are the new inhabitants of the earth, Rock.” He looked at the Doomsday Warrior with an intense expression. “The old days are gone forever. The old species are extinct. People still think in terms of returning to the old days. Recreating things as they were. This is all a pipe dream. I don’t talk about it too much. People need their illusions. But that’s not how it’s going to be. We’re heading into a new phase in the history of the earth. For the first time, every creature on this planet will have evolved not from the hand of God, but from the hand of man. The atomic hands. We have repopulated the earth with our own ‘monstrosities,’ as you call them. But now they
are
the animals of our world. Just as you, Rockson, with your blue and violet eyes, your white streak of hair down your scalp, your strength and almost extrasensory perceptions. You are an adaptation of the human species as well—to deal with this strange new world. My people are dying out.” Shecter looked down at his own skin and pinched it. “This flesh is not made for the world of today. There are two distinct species alive at this moment, Rock. Two human species. Just as Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man competed for survival a hundred thousand years ago and the more equipped and intelligent survived. So today there are two species: Homo sapiens and homo mutations. The first is dying out; the second will take its place. I am extinct,” the scientist said with stinging sarcasm. “Your people will live and rule the earth. The Russians don’t even realize it but their days are numbered. Their bodies which are protected from the radiation have not evolved as the freefighters have out in the hotter zones of America. The Reds need elaborate survival gear to operate: masks, anti-radiation pills, decontamination. You can’t go on like that forever. It’s all just a holding action. In another hundred years, mark my words, there won’t be a Homo sapiens alive on this planet. You, the homo mutations, will rule.”

Rockson didn’t know if he liked the sound of all this but he knew and respected Dr. Shecter as the most intelligent man he had ever met. The man was not in the habit of shooting off with half-baked ideas.

“Ah, but enough of all this endless speculation. Speculation is for old men like myself who have time to sit around and ponder the imponderables. It is men like you who act, make things happen. How did it go, Rock?” He leaned forward, putting his knobby elbows on the shiny desk and waited. “You said successful—how successful?”

“The mission was one hundred percent successful,” Rock said simply. “I’ve never witnessed anything like it. It wasn’t a battle—more like a shooting gallery. The Reds must have thought the Christian Gods were rising from the grave and extracting vengeance. We let a few get away so they could scare the shit out of Zhabnov and Killov. Let those two fine gentlemen stew in their own juices for a while.”