Doomsday Warrior 02 - Red America (8 page)

“And I’ll be there when he does attack,” Killov mumbled aloud. My KGB has the right to know what the hell Zhabnov is up to anyway. It could affect my chances to ascent to the premiership. For I and only I have the vision—a total empire—total subjugation of all the world. And the complete eradication of all resistance. Vassily was too softhearted to do what was necessary and Zhabnov too stupid. No, it is up to me. It’s my destiny to create the first total world empire that the earth has ever known.

Yes, he would lay a trap and get hold of the super weapons that Rockson now possessed. They would attack—he knew it. He would lay a trap with elite troops. He had to be damn sure that Zhabnov didn’t get hold of the super weapons. Whoever had them would win the fight of succession that was already increasing in intensity in the Presidium and would soon spread to worldwide confrontations as supporters of the different factions began battling it out. His men had been able to sway ten more pro-Zhabnov delegates to the hastily assembled party summit in Moscow, and tonight a plane carrying nearly fifty pro-Zhabnovs back to Russia from the president’s sex parties would be blown up over Siberia. But still it wasn’t enough. Once Vassily kicked off, and that would be any day now, since Killov had his men feeding poison to the premier in his sickbed in the Kremlin, the struggle for succession would come to a head.

It would all be decided within the next few weeks. He would win or face execution. He had thought the rotund Zhabnov a total fool—until Captain Yablonski had tried to assassinate Killov two months earlier by lunging at him with a hypodermic filled with cyanide. Mindbreaker probes had failed to reveal who had given the command to him. Yablonski had been under some sort of powerful mind block that literally destroyed his brain when the mindbreaker went to work. But there was no doubt that the order had come from Zhabnov—to eradicate Killov before the ailing premier died.

The Grandfather was more concerned with the life of some trees than with the survival of the empire—trying to block the use of any more nukes. The man was a throwback—good thing he was near death. And when he finally passes away I will help carry the casket in Moscow as it parades through Red Square as will Zhabnov and the others who are vying for power, and we will all weep crocodile tears. And then the battle of succession.

He stared out at the snow-covered peaks of the Rockies which now blazed as if aflame from the brilliantly clear rays of the sun. I will rule everywhere. The world—the whole world. But he must have those super weapons. Every thing depended on it. There was no need for advice on this matter. He would order Gernik and the other KGB generals to assemble a joint force of elite fighters with 3-4-5 gas to take over Pavlov City. According to conventions still in effect—three hundred KGB members must be permitted within any army fort without advance clearance or special permission. This would be the battle that would win the world. Like the trojan horse of the ancient Greeks he would get his men in and then . . .

The rest of the morning and afternoon he made plans for the takeover. Detailed maps and plans of the huge Pavlov City complex were brought into his office. At three o’clock he assembled his top staff and told them of the attack. He himself would lead it. This was too important to leave to underlings. The generals were eager to at last display their power. At last they would be allowed to fight their rivals—the regular Soviet Army. Russian against Russian—it had to happen.

The meeting had just ended, the last few officers getting final instructions from Killov when the red scramble phone from Moscow rang.

“It’s Menzies, sir. Dr. Menzies of the Kremlin Medical Institute,” a voice said nervously thousands of miles away.

“Ah yes, doctor,” Killov said with as friendly a tone as the KGB chief ever got in his cold voice. “How is
it
going?”

“I’m afraid I have bad news, sir,” the doctor said quickly. “The Premier is as tough as a steppes’ rat. He’s just not succumbing to our treatments.”

“But you’re still injecting him with the poison?”

“Yes, Your Excellency—but—”

“Increase the dosage. Double it—triple it.”

“But, sir, an autopsy would immediately detect that amount of poison. We—”

“I’ll worry about the autopsy, doctor, you worry about getting the premier into the next life, or you may see it yourself much quicker than you had ever thought possible. Vassily must die within the next two weeks. You hear me—MUST!” Killov slammed the phone down. Damn—was he the only one who knew how to get things done? It seemed like every job he had given to an underling recently had been botched. If those fool doctors didn’t get cracking, allowed Vassily to linger on, even get stronger, Killov’s situation could deteriorate drastically. If the premier died today he could swing the votes necessary to take control. But a few more weeks and . . .

The three conspiring doctors, Sverdlov, Minkin, and Menzies were in their meeting place, an old inn ten miles outside of Moscow where they could be assured that the premier’s ever-present microphones were absent. They had each come by a roundabout route to insure they weren’t being followed, and they sat huddled over bowls of borscht which none of them ate but merely stirred the thick muck with their forks. They sat next to one another, discussing what had gone wrong with their poison plot. They spoke in whispers, turning every minute or so to see who was near them—only a few old peasants soaking up gravy from their greasy bowls with big crusts of bread.

“He’s healthier than ever,” Minkin said nervously, running his hands through his long white beard. “It doesn’t make sense. The poison was supposed to accumulate in his system.”

“Do you think that servant of his, that nigger, might have had something to do with it? It’s rumored that he has Rasputin-like powers. The premier trusts him totally. He is the only one the Grandfather lets come near him,” Sverdlov said bitterly.

“No, that’s ridiculous,” Menzies said, sweeping his hand across his face as if sweeping the thought away. “The nigger, Rahallah is his name, is just a slave. The premier cannot be that senile that he lets a slave tell him what to do.”

“But the Grandfather won’t even let us get near him anymore to give him the injections for the cancer we told him he has,” Minkin said angrily. “The closest we can get is to that damned nigger who swears he gives the premier the doses. But how do we know? How the hell do we know? If he was getting the doses he would be dead by now.”

“Killov is asking what’s going on,” Menzies said, his eyes darting around nervously. “He said if something doesn’t happen soon to our dear premier, we may take his place in the ground. What am I to tell him?”

“Tell him we can’t get access to the premier anymore, that the plot has failed,” Sverdlov, the youngest of the conspirators, said.

“No! No!” the other two doctors both croaked out at once. “He’ll have our hides if we say that,” Minkin said, his eyes opened wide in horror at the younger man’s suggestion. The fool!

“No, we must tell him that suspicions have been raised at the Kremlin and that it is more difficult but that we are working on it and shall soon succeed,” Menzies said firmly. “That the premier is sinking fast—maybe a miracle will kill him and save us. Because, gentlemen, in case you don’t realize it, it has come down to that—either the premier or we shall soon be dead.”

“Do you know what I think?” said Sverdlov, the youngest, stroking his cherubic red cheeks, his face eerily cast in the overhead shaded light that hung just above them, twisting ever so slightly in the breeze that leaked in under the doors and windows from the freezing Moscow night. “I think the black man is a wizard—that he’s part of a world conspiracy of niggers to take over when the premier dies.” The others laughed for a moment. Then all the breath seemed to go out of their laughter as they stared at the youngest’s milky eyes.

“Seriously?” asked Menzies. “You believe that?”

“I do. Even as a scientifically trained physician I do believe in magic—witchcraft. These blacks, they should have all been killed right after the war. Why we let the darker, inferior races survive is beyond me. The world should have been totally cleaned when we had the chance. The dark races have the power to steal a white man’s soul. My grandfather told me many tales of—”

“Enough! Enough tales of terror in the night,” Menzies snapped. “I’m returning to Moscow. We must all insist we treat the premier personally. Put every bit of pressure we can on his senior staff. Perhaps even tell them we think the nigger is poisoning the premier’s mind. When we gain access to the Grandfather—a triple dose. Do it right once and for all.”

“But what of an autopsy?” Minkin asked, his voice trembling.

“Bah! Once the premier is dead, Killov will take power and we will be protected. And then we will be rewarded handsomely for our risks.”

They agreed to use every connection they had in the Kremlin to directly administer the poison. They set up a meeting for the following week and walked out to their separate limos parked outside. The drivers were roaring the engines to keep warm as snowflakes began falling. It was minus twenty degrees and dropping fast. They’d have to get back to Moscow quickly or the roads might well become impassable. That was all they needed now. To be stuck in some twenty foot high snowdrift and not be found until the following spring.

Six

M
orning began peacefully enough in Fort Nijinski. Or as peacefully as it ever did for the American slave laborers of the Russians. Every Red military fortress was built next to a large concentration of factories where American workers were forced to labor six days a week in return for half rotten food, drab clothing, and what were called “worker’s housing units” which the Russians had put up when they first came in with their occupying armies nearly a century before. Shantytowns in fact was what they were. Pitiful hovels made of rusted tin, disintegrating cardboard—whatever the Americans could get their hands on to create some sort of shelter. The original two-story concrete housing units had long ago crumbled into dust, and the Russians had henceforth not paid much attention to their American worker’s needs. That was their problem.

The world of the American workers of Fort Nijinski was dog eat dog at best. There were nearly ninety thousand of them crowded into a twenty block area of ruins, hovels, subterranean lairs. Dirty, disease ridden, the American workers were expected to put in twelve hours a day in the Red factories working at grueling labor: making clothes, operating canning machines which packed agricultural produce into cans by the ton, simple machine manufacturing, and the dyeing of animal hides. Virtually all the goods would never be used by those that made them—Americans, that it. The production was destined for Russia—the all consuming, mother empire. The center of the world that sucked in goods from its slave states around the globe, leaving little behind for those who produced them. Nearly five hundred million people working to feed the Russian bureaucracy of seventy-five million which ruled the earth. What little that remained after the shipments back to Russia and after the Red occupying armies had been fed and clothed the Americans were allowed to have.

The workers put in their sweaty, back-breaking hours and then returned to their filthy lairs each night. Rats as big as cats ran through the tortured, twisted alleyways of the American sector. Gaunt dogs fought with one another for the few grim scraps that filtered down onto the dirt streets. And the American workers, always hungry, always on the verge of illness, their eyes long devoid of color or hope, struggled to live. Yet somehow they survived. They had no choice but to keep going even in these horrible circumstances. The instinct to survive is maddeningly powerful, even when the mind wishes to end it all. Only one thing gave them hope—the freefighting Americans. Even in their downtrodden condition they swapped stories of the freefighters; how they had blown up another Red convoy, how they had committed daring acts of sabotage inside the Red fortresses around the country. Too terrified and beaten to actually stand up to the Reds themselves, still they cheered their warrior brothers and sisters on, daring somewhere deep inside themselves to hope that perhaps someday . . . Occasionally one of the workers, slapped around too much, fed up with such a life of nothingness, would escape from the Red forts and make his way through the high-rad wilderness. A few survived and eventually made contact with freefighting forces where they were interrogated thoroughly to make sure they weren’t Red plants. Then they were welcomed with open arms.

But more often those who tried to flee their living hell were consumed by the harsh world of 2089: eaten by one of the many carnivores that roamed the nuke-lands or destroyed by the broiling sun, the freezing nights. Their lives as dumb servants for the Reds had hardly prepared them for the dangerous life of the outer world. Their lack of decent food for so long made them weak, unable to sustain more than simple actions for very long.

Thus were the workers of America condemned to lives of suffering, lives that usually ended before the old age of forty-five or fifty. Born into poverty and slavery, living out their lives in the dank factories and then dying, skinny, starving, often alone, in the back of some Godforsaken alley.

Yet even within this framework of suffering the Reds were no longer content to let things proceed as usual. According to President Zhabnov’s directives sent out to all the midwest fortress cities Plan Lincoln was now in full effect. Each fort was responsible for shipping half of their workers to Pavlov City for processing in the mindbreakers. They would be turned into zombie soldiers and sent out to fight their own freefighting American brothers. Their Red masters, pulling the puppet’s strings, would stay safely behind the walls of their impenetrable military enclaves.

On the morning of Nov. 15, 2089
A.D.
, a morning like a thousand others—gray-pink sky cracked with spiderwebs of glowing green from low flying strontium clouds, still highly radioactive after a century, Smith-14 woke with a start on his small sweat-stained cot. Where was he? He had to shake his head to try to remember. In bed! He had been drinking last night. Drinking alcohol from stolen medical supplies from the Reds. He looked around the filthy gray basement dwelling where other sleeping workers lay on blankets, towels, pieces of cardboard, or just the hard-packed cold dirt floor. They lay strewn like the dead, arms stretched out, legs twisted weirdly behind them in impossible positions. The living dead. Smith-14 shared this subterranean “home” with twenty-five others, all of them men who worked in his factory—the Norsky Uniform Plant—where they produced uniforms for Russian Army troops.