Doomsday Warrior 03 - The Last American (21 page)

“I sure am glad you didn’t hit any of our booby traps,” the red-faced guard said. “Didn’t they tell you about this whole place being wired since the spring? You’re supposed to come in over the North Ridge—where a regular trail has been opened.”

“Never got the message,” Rock replied.

“Well, anyway we’re proud to greet you in the name of the convention. You just keep going thataway ’bout half a mile—you’ll find the place.”

“Much obliged,” Rock said, pulling the reins of the big ’brid, which ambled off in the pointed direction. They passed through several creeks and a few low hills and then saw it off in the distance, barely visible through the thick forest—a tremendous log cabin, bigger than any Rock had ever seen, a good sixty feet high and nearly two hundred feet long. Other smaller cabins were nestled in the deep woods around it and the place bustled with activity as people carried food, wood, clothing, in all directions. They rode over to the front of the huge cabin and tethered their ’brids to a post where about ten other mounts were already tied. They had just stepped down when two men emerged onto the wide front porch of the cabin and walked over to them.

“Howdy,” the taller one with a cowboy hat on his head said, extending a hand, “I’m Dreze, the official welcoming committee around here. And I take it you’re Ted Rockson and crew—our video monitor’s been tracking you for hours.”

“I’m glad to see you’re so well equipped here,” Rock said with a laugh. He introduced the rest of the team and Dreze took them into the cabin. There were a few dozen delegates lounging around in the large anteroom, drinking coffee and talking. They each wore different outfits, from drab gray shirts and slacks to wildly outlandish looking getups with capes, long swords, even a turban. The many peoples of America—all brought together for the first time since the war.

“Did you have a rough trip?” Dreze asked, pouring them all cups of ebony-black coffee.

“You could say it was pleasant at times, unpleasant at others,” Rock replied drolly. As he talked he kept looking around—for her. Suddenly from behind his head a pair of silky arms sprang, and soft hands covered his eyes.

“Guess who?” her unmistakable honey-sweet voice asked. Rock spun around and threw his arms around her, lifting Kim a foot off the ground. Then he put her down and stood back, just wanting to look at her—that long, blonde hair, those doe-sized green eyes, her alabaster skin. They came together again and held each other for long, sweet seconds. She barely stood as tall as his chin. He was lifting her to kiss her again, when—

“Ahem,” a deep voice intoned off to the side. It was Charles Langford. “Could you put my daughter down for a second and shake hands with an ugly old politician?” Langford said with a broad grin. Rock let her go and turned.

“Mr. Langford,” the Doomsday Warrior said softly. “It’s a great honor for me to meet you—both as future president and as the father of such a miraculous creature as Kim.”

“Ah, you flatter me Rock,” Langford said, standing nearly as tall as the freefighter, a purple toga tied with gold sash covering him from head to foot. “But I’m just a crusty old talker—while you’re a fighter, risking everything, every day. Kim told me how you rescued her and then had to fight a veritable giant when you were both captured by the Crazy Alligators.”

“Just did what had to be done,” Rock said, self-effacingly. From out of the corner of his eye he suddenly sensed Kim looking at him sternly. Did her woman’s intuition tell her about the encounter he’d had with Barbarah?

“You’ve been a good boy, haven’t you?” she asked, squinting her perfect eyes at him.

“On my honor,” Rock said, holding up his hand in the ancient Boy Scout signal of truth, his other hand with crossed fingers behind his back.

Langford personally introduced Rock and his team around the room, remembering everyone’s name and city—expert politician that he was. But Kim and Rock kept stealing sidelong glances at one another, barely able to contain themselves until they could be alone. At last they were able to slip free and she took him to her bedroom, a small triangular-shaped room on the third floor of the “cabin,” with just enough room for a big old brass bed with a feather mattress.

“You’ll stay here with me,” she said, grabbing hold of him and pulling him down onto the soft mattress. “Let’s . . .”

“But the others—I have to—”

“It’s all taken care of,” she said, stopping his words with a deep kiss. They kissed and caressed for a long time, both of them in a dreamlike state of bliss. It felt as good as it had before—even better after their absence. They were like magnets of opposite charge, pulled toward one another with explosive intensity.

He undressed her perfect body and then removed his own dirty field clothes. He felt her body straining, arching to meet his on the soft bed. He found her moist and giving to his manhood. They made love rhythmically, ever so slowly, and both were nearly silent until he could hold it back no longer.

“Kim, Kim,” Rock whispered, “I love you.” She grabbed him even tighter, kicked her legs out high and wide, and they moved together for a long time, her eyes rolling back in ecstasy. The intensity of what was to come built and built, then her whole body began a long, shuddering vibration that exploded in climax at exactly the same moment he did. She let out a gasp of pleasure and wrapped herself around the only man she had ever loved.

When they at last were still, both dripping with animal perspiration, blissfully exhausted, he said. “It feels so good to be inside you. A bit of heaven on this hellish earth.”

“Not just a bit, Rock—all of it, all of heaven, here between us and in us. I love you so much,” she looked at him, her eyes filling at the overwhelming emotions. In a short while their passions grew again and he entered her. She moaned, panted, urged him on with unintelligible half-utterances of passion. This time he took her more fiercely, wanting to possess her, every part of her. He held her and slammed deep into her receptive body, taking her plaices she’d never been. Her cries of pleasure grew louder, more frequent, and finally broke into short, exultant screams of ultimate pleasure. Then his steel hardness pushed deep into her and he released, again just as she did, their bodies melting together, inseparable, indistinguishable.

She sighed deeply when their breathing had returned to normal.

“I hope no one heard us—I mean—I was—”

“They will know we make love with beauty and passion,” Rock smiled at her. “They will wish they could be here—wish they could be me.”

“Never, Rock,” she said. “You’re the only man I will ever love. The only man who will ever again touch me. Until the day I die.”

Seventeen

N
ever had so much depended on so few. The very future of America—the fate of the planet itself—depended on them, what they did, how they voted. The delegates assembled in the main meeting hall that had once been the trophy room in the more glorious days of Americana. Presidents and power brokers of the twentieth century had once come out here to hunt and relax and make deals. Teddy Roosevelt’s name shone down from a brass plaque on the thick log wall, beneath the head of an elk, its immense horns jutting out over the room. John F. Kennedy’s name rested below the head of a dark and ferocious-looking boar with tusks that looked as if they could slice a man in half with a single twist of the piggish head. The brass plaques read like a
Who’s Who of Twentieth Century Life
, with the heads of the animals each had bagged staring down with dull eyes from everywhere around the great hall—moose, coyote, wolf, grizzly, mountain goat . . . proud specimens of their species preserved forever on the walls, even if their line had long ago become extinct or had been mutated into monsters. And beneath each head, the name of the hunter—Rockefeller, Eisenhower, Cronkite, Steinbrenner, DuPont—now as dead as the creatures they’d stalked.

In this historic setting, rich with the collective spirit of the nation, the delegates from every part of America gathered. They talked in small groups, dressed in their finest, as they waited for the Re-Constitutional Convention to officially begin. Men from the Far South, in their gentlemen’s duds and sporting wide white mustaches; cowboys from the land once known as Texas, with six-guns on their hips and Stetsons on their heads; the Hollywood people, dressed in the bizarre costumes of the movie studios they had been forced to survive in after the war. The delegates represented every conceivable type of American man and woman in 2089. Black men wearing dashikis, representing the three black freefighting “Hidden Nations,” as they called themselves; the “Detroiters,” wearing the engineering smocks and workman’s clothes that their forefathers had passed on—still experts in car making, they had driven across the country in small, one-man vehicles no larger than a child’s wagon.

From every niche and corner, every pueblo, cave, cabin, and underground city they came. In twos and threes, carrying weapons of every imaginable variety—sabers, dueling épées, samurai swords, .45s, derringers, uzi machine-pistols, even bazookas. They were the toughest of America, the smartest—the living soul of the nation, who personified its strength and determination to carry on. The America that the Reds would never be able to exterminate.

Charles Langford walked into the room to five minutes of thunderous applause from the nearly three hundred delegates—freefighters representing ninety-one of the country’s one hundred known freefighting enclaves. What had happened to the other nine was not known. They could only pray that the Reds hadn’t been able to pry anything from them if they’d been captured. Langford’s letter had contained specific instructions for suicide in the event of capture and had contained several cyanide capsules with each. It was hoped that the act would be carried out if necessary. Once again men and women were sacrificing their lives to save their beloved land. The Nathan Hales, the Betsy Rosses were alive—unsung heroes who died painful deaths, giving their flesh to a greater cause, a greater unity.

“Let us pray,” Langford said, standing at the front of the cavernous log room, nearly a hundred feet long and a good seventy feet wide. Towering pines grew over the building, hiding it from the air. The entire area appeared from above to be nothing but uninhabited forest land.

“Let us pray for those who did not arrive,” Langford continued. “Their souls are surely in heaven. For every man and woman who came here performs a noble deed.” The delegates bowed their heads, as each prayed to his God. Off to the side, Kim was taking the proceedings down on a video camera. As an expert in film and video, she had been selected to be the “official” recorder of the event. There were only paintings of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But this time it would all be preserved in living color—the future generations of America would be able to watch their new Founding Fathers and Mothers in the flesh.

“Ladies and gentlemen—delegates of the hundred Free Cities,” Langford roared out, in his deep speaker’s voice. “I call this meeting to order.” Langford knew that he had an unruly set of representatives in front of him. Freefighters were profoundly independent—and this group contained both highly educated, well-dressed delegates and some of the more primitive cave-dwelling types, with grubby beards and oily .45s strapped around their waists. Still, they were all Americans, and every one of them had fought against the Reds.

“The first thing on the agenda,” Langford continued, “is the very nature of this meeting. Is it agreed, then, that this body will in fact constitute a legal and binding electorate of the different cities, so that we can form a government, elect a president and a military council?” All the members of the convention stood up from their wooden chairs and raised their arms high.

“Yes—it’s agreed,” came the reply, loud and clear.

“It is so noted in the record,” Langford said, his eyes soft and solemn, shining with the light of one possessed. He had devoted the last thirty years of his life to this moment. To this one moment. He was still a handsome, virile-looking man, with graying hair that swept back over his ears. A rough Andrew Jackson sort of face—a mixture of the woodsman and the statesman in one man. Strong, self-assured—if there was anyone fit to be elected president of the new U.S., that man was Charles Langford.

From the assembled delegates a man yelled out, “I nominate Charles Langford for president. Goddamn it, he deserves it!” Before the words had died the crowd let out a collective roar of approval. They shouted his name: “Langford, Langford,” over and over, stomping their feet so that the entire resort cabin shook. It was clear that there was no need for a lengthy discussion, debate, nomination process, or any of the formal trappings of the old days. At least on this day, June 17, 2089, the choice was clear. Charles Langford was the forty-second president of the U.S. and the first president of the new America.

The elder statesman’s eyes grew moist at the tumultuous reception. His quest was at an end. If he died the next second, he would die a happy man. He had accomplished the two goals of his life, and he suddenly and for the first time felt complete.

“I am honored, deeply honored,” Langford said, “at the trust and power you have placed in me. I pray that I’m worthy to succeed the past great presidents of our nation. May their immortal souls and wisdom guide my hands, as the spirit of democracy will guide my heart.” The convention chaplain came forward to swear in the new president on a bible. Langford placed his hand on the black leather-bound book and repeated after the young chaplain, a machine gun strapped around his shoulders. His voice stuttered as he spoke.

“D-do you p-p-promise to uphold the Constitution of these R-Re-United States?”

“I do,” Langford replied solemnly. Off to the side, Kim zoomed in on her father’s face with the video camera. She had never felt so proud in her life.

“And to protect her c-c-citizens to the best of your ability?”

“I do,” Langford said, staring straight off as if seeing the past glories of the country.