Doomsday Warrior 03 - The Last American (11 page)

Willis’s thunderous gavel roused the assembled citizens and representatives of Century City to order. He coughed several times, pumped his chest up, and then began. “Now, everyone knows this is a momentous occasion. As meaningful as that day centuries ago, in 1776, when men just like us vowed to overthrow their oppressor. Now, a new Convention is being called A Re-Constitutional Convention, at which a new America will be born.” The audience cheered wildly, stamping their feet and whistling, fingers in teeth, as was the style at most Century City gatherings. “With organization across the country and a new president and Congress to lead us, with generals and synchronized attacks, our country has its first real chance in over a hundred years of blood and pain to win back its precious homeland.”

Everyone’s eyes were bright with fire. The fire of righteousness, of knowing one’s enemies, and of being willing, nay, happy, to die for the principles and the beliefs that set them apart from the barbarians of the Planet Earth. The words of Willis were like a fine liquor, harsh, biting. The people had been waiting, dreaming for years for this moment. Rona glanced over at Rock, who stood several feet away, his eyes intent on the Council president. She felt a confused mixture of anger and desire. She had felt his coldness during the night. Even as their bodies merged and undulated in the most supreme of mortal pleasures, she had felt that his mind, his heart, were somewhere else. What could have changed? Could there be another woman? Here? In Century City? She’d like to find out who, she’d rip the bitch’s hair from her cheating head. Rona’s eyes glowed violently as her fantasy of betrayal filled her beautiful eyes.

Willis’s voice began growing a little raspy. His age was beginning to show. At eighty-four, even the fieriest of orators was beginning to lose a little steam. He had been around in the days when C.C. was just a big hole in the ground. His parents had both died within years of his birth—cancer. The life expectancy for the original survivors had been fifty years, and then some form of cancer or lymphatic disturbance almost always ended people’s lives, taking them out of the postwar ball game. Willis had been one of the lucky children. He lived. Out of the first and second generations, seventy percent were born dead or severely mutated—with extra arms or legs, two heads, scales, or even, in a few cases, fins. Fortunately these all perished within a year or two at most. It was as if the gene pool of America was going wild, churning out every conceivable experiment in cross-genetic breeding and mutation in an attempt to give the race new abilities to survive. By Rockson’s time, three and four generations down the line, the survivor-genes were taking dominance over the self-destruct genes. Americans, at least the freefighters and those who lived out in the wilds and not as slaves behind the Red fortresses, were bigger, tougher, and more able to withstand any calamity from high radiation to disease than any generation before.

But even the strong must grow old . . . Willis leaned forward on the dais, resting himself from the emotional exertion of the night. He paused dramatically and reached inside his jacket, pulling out a white envelope, which he held up in front of the audience.

“I will read the letter I received from Charles Langford.” Charles Langford, the second most famous or infamous man in America, depending on which side you were on. Langford had traveled the nation for years—on mule, motorcycle, on foot, on anything he could get his hands on. He traveled from one freefighting city to another, often only learning of the location of the next one as he came close to each new place. The hidden cities ranged in size from just several hundred people clothed in hardly more than rags to such technological marvels as Century City. Langford quickly established a name for himself as he went from farm to town to hunting village, meeting and telling the people what could be done—what
must
be done to reclaim America.

“Hello, I’m pleased to meet you,” he’d say to each new face. “I’m Charles Langford, and I’m running for president of the United States, and I’d like your vote.” Before the first election had even been held everyone had already pledged to vote for him. But now the real election was here, for president and for congress, at a location in Wyoming that only Willis himself knew and would reveal only to the four delegates chosen to make the trek.

Willis began reading the letter from Langford. “Five score years ago the rule of the greatest tyranny of one state over another began in an atomic day of infamy and megadestruction. Never were so many enslaved by so few, never did a nation so high fall so low so quickly. A reign began that according to the conquerer is to ‘last for ten thousand years.’ But far worse than the physical ruination and the mutations was the decline of the American soul. When the spirit rots, so the man must soon wither away. But still brave bands of Americans fought on, not willing to give their minds and souls to the Red grinding machine. All over America, underground rebel groups clung together, first for survival, then for attack, and at last for vengeance. But still we are alone, like small islands in a sea of blood, unable to come together. Gentlemen, ladies who are reading this letter, I say unto you, a house divided cannot stand—the day of reckoning is at hand.” Willis stopped for a moment as he felt suddenly dizzy, his heart pounding with the excitement of the moment. He took a quick sip of water from the glass that was always placed on the inside shelf on the podium and continued:

“It is now within our power to fight back—and win. The land has not changed, it is still ours. It cries out every morning, every night, as the sun passes overhead and looks down in tears. It cries out for the invader to be tossed out like so much rubbish onto the bonfire of history. Let the enemy, the Red Empire, feel the flames of our will, let its skin begin to peel and blister from these words.” The audience of toughened fighters mixed in with the civilian workers of the city broke into spontaneous shouting and applause. Never had they heard such stirring words. This man wasn’t advocating a new plan of attack or giving them a pep talk, Langford was telling them that the whole kit-and-kaboodle was theirs to go out and take back. Rock too, felt himself stirred, emotions filling his heart as deep as the feelings he had for Kim.

“These are the new days—days of the freefighter, days of a resurrected America. There are now over a hundred freefighting towns or cities in our country. Most of you only know the location of four or five of those closest to you. And so far this has been a necessity, to avoid total destruction by the Reds. But a new day must begin. A day when we no longer hide but can walk in our own valleys, and climb our own mountains without fear of death. A day of cooperation with one another, of government, of a military council that can direct coordinated strikes against the enemy. It is through this combined strength, through the use of all our minds and bodies, that we will be victorious.” Willis paused again to catch his breath. Even from the back of the room, Rockson could see that the old man was having problems. He could sense the sick, the wounded, feel the aura of darkness around them. Willis’s skin seemed to be taking on a chalky pallor. He wiped his brow several times and continued reading.

“I implore you, my fellow Americans, to not take this letter lightly. I know that there are grave risks involved for you to come to this convention—death itself. But you must all come. Every single freefighting city
must
be represented for this new regeneration to take place. I have spent my life working toward this day. It is the fruition of my dream to see you all gathered together—to share our experiences and our strengths. It is not for myself that I wish this. I am running to be the first president of the Re-United States. But if I am not elected—if all I have succeeded in doing is gathering you all to begin anew—then I could die a happy man. The date of the convention is September twelfth of this year. The location is secret, known only to the elected leader of your city or town. He will reveal it to those chosen.

“I wait for you, men and women of America. God willing every one of you will arrive safely and we can set to to work on the long, hard task that awaits us. Good luck and God be with you. Signed, Charles L. Langford.” Willis ended the letter and let his hand sink slowly to the podium. He shared the explosive excitement that he felt welling up in the assembly. But something else—a foreboding. If it all worked, it would be the greatest day America had ever known. But if it failed—if the convention was taken prisoner by the Russians—it would mean the destruction of many, even all, of the Free Cities. The destruction of the only chance America had left. The future was beckoning with an outstretched bloody hand.

“I think the letter pretty much speaks for itself,” the Council president said. There were few times that Willis could not find additional words to add to any proclamation, but this time he knew he would only sound foolish and trite were he to try and elaborate on Langford’s poetic call to arms. “The only question, then,” he went on, “is just which four citizens of Century City will be the ones to go?” There was a sudden and loud silence, filled with an electric tension, as the entire audience—now nearly five hundred people, jamming every aisle, hanging out the doors of the wide, oval-shaped Council Chamber, looked at one another. Suddenly people began shouting out names, one after another.

“Tina Williamson,” a voice said from the front.

“Garth Patricks.”

“Sanford Ferguson.”

“Dean Keppel.”

“Ted Rockson,” at the mention of which the chamber filled with deafening roar that made Rock look sheepishly down at the floor, but filled him with a great pride—a million times more than that acclaim he had received for fighting and destroying the enemy. Now they were placing their trust in him, their highest trust, their lives.

“Hold on! hold on!” Willis yelled, banging the gavel down like a sword on top of the shiny red-toned podium. He felt a little surge of glee now that the crowd was back to the usual bickering and jockeying. This was the world he knew, and he knew just how to deal with it. “Slow down, now,” he intoned firmly, “we must decide this in a calm and orderly manner. First there will be nominations, then seconds, then voting. We will assume that those of you who are here are a representative enough selection of Century City to make the voting legal.” It was true, it did seem like the whole spectrum of humanity was there—fighting men, cooks from the great kitchen, engineers, with their pencil-marked smocks, and working men, with their jeans and flannel shirts soaked in grease and oil from tending the vast network of underground machinery and power units of the city. The melting pot of America lived on, a stew of colors and names and accents and dress. Here, people could still be unique and individualistic, and this was the greatest freedom of all.

Over a hundred names were nominated, including Rockson and most of the Rock team—Detroit Green, Master Chen, McCaughlin, even Archer, the seven-foot mute who had just joined Century City within the last year, after Rock had saved him from an imminent death in quicksand. Archer, with his ever present crossbow cradled on his arm and his quiver of two-foot hunting arrows slung behind seemed quite amused by the honor and kept laughing silently, smacking his lips together and moving his tongue without a sound coming out.

Most of the nominees were the most famous personalities of the city, in different fields—politicians, newspaper writers, heads of factories, artists, educators, even some of the more well-known actors of the theater company that regularly performed to appreciative audiences. Dr. Shecter, who stood off to the side in his floor-length lab coat, watched the proceedings puffing on his oddly curved pipe, which seemed almost an appendage to his hand. He waved his hand to the crowd when his name came up and nodded curtly. But he and they knew it was an honorary mention. The world outside was far too harsh for any but the toughest to survive in.

When the nominating process had finally been completed, Willis began to start the voting procedure, but a voice suddenly piped out from the crowd and cut sharply through the fog of talk.

“I think I should say one thing,” the voice said. A somber shape moved slowly down the middle aisle, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea. It was Rath—head of intelligence of C.C., a tough man and a realist. He walked up to the podium and Willis stepped aside. As head of security and one of the five most important men in the place, Rath’s authority to speak to any point was unquestioned. Rath smiled wanly to Willis and addressed the crowd. Rath had the vaguest resemblance to a weasel, with his long, angular face and small mouth that seemed to suck each word back in as he spoke it, as if he might be revealing something top secret. He was not universally liked.

“My fellow citizens,” he began crisply and the room quieted. “It is well and good for you to pick your favorite to go on this crucially important venture—who you think is the brightest, the freest, the best-looking,” the crowd chuckled at Rath’s obvious reference to Lloyd Holston, the dandy around C.C., with his coiffeured hair and Beau Brummel outfits—even he had received a nomination. “But I must remind you of one thing. It is hell out there. A living hell. I think you all know that, but, somehow, in the midst of all this democratic enthusiasm,” he said the words with the slightest of sneers as if further democratization of America would somehow only make his job more difficult, “you seem to have forgotten it. Well, I’m here to remind you again. This is not some little trek out a few miles to gather meat or wood. This isn’t even an attack on a Red convoy fifty, a hundred miles away, then tear-ass back to C.C. through the brush. No—we’re talking a
thousand
miles or more. Most of you don’t even really know what it’s like out there. In our locale we’re not doing too badly. There are forests, brooks, wildlife all around us. But once you get into some of the heavier nuke zones to the north—I assure you—things are quite different. And quite horrible. There are creatures out there you haven’t seen in your darkest nightmares, deserts, swamps of the foulest putrescence, stretching for hundreds of miles, with fungus and growths that literally attack and consume human flesh. There are . . . but need I go on? I fear that once again some of you will think that I am over exaggerating. Rockson!” Rath yelled out to the back of the chamber. “I ask you as a man who has traveled throughout this ravaged land. Are my words true or not?” The crowd turned as one and looked at Rock, who met the thousand eyes upon him.