Doomsday Warrior 03 - The Last American (22 page)

“Then I hereby declare you p-p-president of the Re-United States of America.” The crowd erupted into wild cheers. Rock and Chen, Archer and McCaughlin and Ms. Shriver, decked out in borrowed finery, all clapped and whistled along with the others. All they had been fighting for years, all the sacrifice, the pain, the death among them and around them—it had all been worth it. What they had been and would continue to fight for was even clearer now than ever before. The country was real again. Not just a bunch of isolated hamlets all pursuing their own narrow lives—now they had strength. They had a heart again, and a leader—a president.

“Our first order of business,” Langford began, when they had all quieted down, “is to have the new Pledge of Allegiance read. This has been written in conjunction with a number of writers and political thinkers from around America.” A young woman rose from behind Langford and put her hand across her heart. The entire room of delegates stood up and crossed their arms over their chests. This was their new allegiance. They were swearing to a nation—to a government that was more powerful than their own villages, their own communities. This was a higher good, a higher evolution in their return to wholeness. They pressed their hands tightly against their flesh, feeling the oath, the ties that would bind them.

“I pledge allegiance,” the young, long-haired brunette began. She wore dark green army fatigues and carried a Thompson submachine gun across her shoulder, a formidable-looking weapon, which had obviously been well used by her. “To the flag of the Re-United States of America.” They all drew in their breaths as two men came forward carrying the new flag of the U.S. on a ten-foot pole, which they set into a notch at the front of the speaker’s platform. It was similar to the old flag, but had a hundred stars, representing each of the hidden cities, on a purple background, representing the high-rad areas of the country, where most freefighters lived. There were still thirteen stripes, homage to the past, but they were white and green now—for purity and the growth they would return to the land, once they had driven out the Russians and removed the poisons that filled the soil and water. This was the new flag and the new purpose. The delegates repeated after the brunette, every man’s and woman’s eyes fixed like beams to the brilliantly colored flag.

“Of the Re-United States of America,” the woman said.

“Of the Re-United States of America,” they repeated in unison.

“And to the one hundred Free Cities for which it stands.”

“A detoxified America under the Divine Being.”

“With liberty, justice, and the inalienable right to reclaim our own land.”

“Our own land,” they finished, echoing behind her, like the chorus of a Greek play.

They had barely ended and the large trophy room was eerily silent for a few seconds, when the main doors burst open at one end and a guard came roaring in, pulling Charlie Whiskers by the throat. The trapper/Red spy was gurgling as his eyes rolled around in his head. The man dragging him, Varga, was immense, one of the largest of Langford’s personal fifty-man military force, and he had the hundred-eighty-pound Whiskers half off the floor. He threw him down in the middle of the assembled delegates and snarled out, “Yeah, happens I fell asleep on guard duty down behind a log near the creek. Next thing I know this here fella’s talkin into his donkey’s stomach. So I go over and have me a look and what do you think I found underneath?” He threw a small transmitter with a fingernail-sized microphone in the middle onto the platform. “Oh yeah, he was speaking Redski, too.” The menacing Varga looked down disapprovingly at the rat squirming on the wood floor, his hands still around Whiskers’s bruised throat. The Russian was already turning a deep purple from the squeezing fingers of his captor.

“Damn,” Langford said, as the delegates looked up to him for leadership. “We’ll have to get out of here. Immediately! On foot is best—less to spot from the air—and spread out. I wish we could have accomplished more. But don’t be discouraged—we have begun again, I promise you, to be a nation. I will make contact with you all as soon as I can. Now go. They’ll be attacking at any time. God be with you.” The delegates saluted their president and then tore off in every direction out of the meeting hall. Rockson ran over to Kim and her father.

“You’ve got to escape,” he said. “You two must live. Don’t even go for your things. There’s no time. I know them—they’ll be here soon. That bastard spy was probably calling in the attack.”

“But my papers, my—” Langford began protesting.

“They can be replaced,” Rock said firmly, pulling them both toward the opened doors. “You must live—you have a duty to us all. Now run, run!” He pushed them rudely toward the front steps. It wasn’t a time for subtlety. Kim stopped and turned back, looking at the man she loved with poignancy.

“I’ll join you shortly,” he yelled to her. “Run to the north, over the mountain—I’ll meet you there. The Reds will be using neutron bombs—probably two. Get on the other side. The rock will protect you. When you hear the jets coming in, hide behind something—a rock, anything—just get over the top.” He half yelled and half pleaded with her until at last she turned and she and her father ran as fast as they could, disappearing up the side of the thickly wooded mountain behind the cabin.

Rock turned back to the other freefighters—Chen, Archer, McCaughlin, and poor Ms. Shriver, standing between the fighting men looking quite confused and upset.

“We’ve just volunteered to save some of these relics,” Rock said to his team, who stood waiting for his orders. The hall had already emptied out, and they were the only ones left.

“Detroit—get the flag! McCaughlin, why don’t you grab that bible there.” They spread out, grabbing the things that would one day be the history of the new America.

Whiskers, almost forgotten in the commotion, leaped up from the floor and ran toward the door. Chen saw him at the last second, just as the spy was making daylight, and the Chinese warrior whipped out one of his smaller star-knives, letting it fly like a bullet. The Red mole jumped from the top of the steps toward the ground just as the death blade made contact with his backbone. The whole midsection of his spine and guts exploded out in all direction in a spray of blood and bone fragments. His head twisted at an odd angle like a broken rag doll, and his body jacknifed in half at the severed spine. The man was dead before he hit the ground. Thus ended Colonel Kozlovsky’s dreams of paradise in a mansion by the Volga.

The last of the sacred objects gathered, the freefighters tore-ass out the door and into the woods. Within seconds they were deep inside the protective green awning. Rock stopped and set the ’brids free. He slapped the palomino hard on the thigh and it took off. The Doomsday Warrior turned and raced after his team, already far into the woods. The maze of branches and pinecones filled the air around them. They ran as fast as their legs could carry them, thinking about nothing but the impending explosion that they knew must come. They had to get over the top of the granite mountain—almost another six hundred feet up. As the woods thickened and the incline steepened they became separated from each other but kept calling out to check on one another’s whereabouts as they ran.

“Detroit?”

“That you Rock?”

“No, it’s me, McCaughlin.”

“Over here,” Rockson yelled from about a hundred feet to the left in the ever darkening woods. “Wait—I think—” his voice died out as the Doomsday Warrior saw what he swore was Kim’s bouncing blond hair off in the distance. He ran quickly to the left and stumbled off a drop about eight feet, but landed in leaves unhurt. Where was—?

Suddenly he heard the terrible roar of jet engines. In the slight opening of a mountainside clearing he saw the silver streaks of the spear-shaped Red bombers. He saw the parachutes open as they each dropped a silver ball that glided gracefully down, rocking back and forth in the wind. Then, both jets took off at Mach-3, pushing their acceleration sticks to the max. Rock glanced quickly around for any sort of cover. There—about fifty feet away, a large boulder with an indentation in the ground behind it. He ran in great strides, half leaping across the leaf- and cone-strewn clearing. He made the boulder and glanced up—the parachutes were still falling. They were about a mile away, he gauged, and the wind, thank God, seemed to be pushing them away from the mountain.

He checked out the boulder—it was a good ten feet thick and high, with a slight lustre of metal-bearing rock. He had a chance, anyway. He lay down behind it and tried to squeeze himself into some sort of rodent-dug burrow—something had been digging for ants or trying to make a home, but it was gone now and it would get Rockson nearly down into the earth behind the truck-sized boulder. He wedged himself in as far as he could and then reached up and covered the exposed portions of his body with handfuls of dirt. Then he curved into a fetal position and waited.

Suddenly the roar came. Much louder than he had expected. God, it must have been close. Even with his eyes closed he could see as if he were staring at the sun. The boulder above him seemed to tilt slightly over and press against him. Then the winds roared and he could feel the heat coming. He took the deepest breath he had ever swallowed, covered his head with his arms, and waited to meet his maker.

Eighteen

H
e felt himself spinning, falling down a long, endless corridor of pain. Around him were screams and melting flesh. It seemed as if the very earth was being swallowed in fire and blood. The pit grew deeper and darker and he fell, twisting around like a leaf in a tornado. He fell and felt that he would never stop falling. The darkness was utter, without a trace of light, a glimmer of reflection. And at the very bottom of the pit he could see what looked like an even denser darkness, undulating with waves of blackness so intense that they sucked the very light from the universe, letting nothing escape. He was heading toward it. If he touched it he knew he would never rise again.

Then a sound—a whirring at first, an annoying, mosquito-like buzz that grew louder and louder until it filled his head like a huge chiming gong only inches from his ear. Slowly the sound became intelligible and turned into words.

“Wake up fella, wake up.” Someone was shaking him. Slowly he opened his eyes and the darkness disappeared. The black pit vanished in the light streaming through the cabin door. The sun hurt. His eyes winced tightly shut again and filled with moisture. He remembered—he was Rockson. He had been out in the blast. He—Kim! The president! He tried to sit up, but the pain slammed into his body like a thousand fists intent on destruction.

“Easy there, mister,” a deep voice said. Rockson slowly opened his eyes again, this time shielding them with the palm of his hand. An immense mountain of a man was standing over him with a big smile on his basketball-sized face. He had a black beard that started midcheek and grew halfway down his yard-wide chest. He was the largest man Rock had ever seen, making even Archer seem normal, and was covered with a crazy quilt of different-colored furs and skins that had been insanely sewn into a pair of pants and a jacket. He looked like some sort of out-of-control hybrid animal that couldn’t quite decide what species it belonged to. The huge man let out a bellowing laugh that hurt Rockson’s ears at the same time it gave him a strange comfort. He had a headache to end all headaches.

“You’re lucky to be alive, fella,” the man said, walking over to Rock and handing him a dented canteen. Rock’s lips felt dry as parched bones, and he took a big swig, then another.

“Easy there—don’t drink too much,” the towering mountain man said. “You been delirious for days. You gotta get used to being back with the livin’.”

“What the hell happened? How did I get here?” Rock asked, again trying to rise but falling back onto some sort of cot covered with animal-smelling beaver furs. His skin was red, hot, burning with fever.

“I heard the blasts of them Russkie bombs and waited till the mushrooms blowed away. Then I went out. Loads of people was dead—fried to a crisp. But I found you, moanin’ and groanin’ beneath this big rock that looked like it was thinkin’ of settin’ on you for a long spell.”

“And who might I thank for saving my life?” Rock asked, looking up at the bearded oak tree of a man.

“If you be askin’ what be my name, folks round here just call me Mountain Man Ed—Mt. Ed for short. I growed up in these here mountains my whole life. Guess I feel more mountain than man anyway. And who might you be?” he asked. “I been takin’ care of you like you some sick pup or something. Didn’t even know if you’d live or die.”

“Ted Rockson’s the name my folks gave me,” Rock said, easing himself up a little on the bed so he could see the room he was in. He lay on a long cot that was nothing more than two long oak poles with animal hides stretched between them. The log cabin they were in couldn’t have been more than twenty by twenty feet, but it looked as if the builder had stuffed every last thing he’d ever found or stumbled across inside. The place was chaos, with knives, pots, and pans, big blunderbuss rifles lying haphazardly against walls and around the floor. The walls—logs piled one atop another, had never really been fine-finished, so a constant stream of air and sunlight filtered through a thousand small openings and cracks. By the front door sat three big hunting dogs, their fur black and sleek as a panther’s, their tongues hanging far out of their wide open mouths as they rested in the morning sun. Flies and mosquitos as big as grapes buzzed and flew through the curtains of sunshine, searching for morsels of food that they knew lay everywhere around the cabin.

“Rockson—the Ultimate American?” Mt. Ed asked, his face freezing in astonishment. “Damn, even
I
heard of you. And I ain’t heard of nothing back here in these woods. So I been coddlin’ the goddamn Rockson. Ain’t that a kick in the pants.” Rock tried once again to rise, but fell back onto the pelts with a thud. He felt incredibly weak, as if his blood were thin as water. He must have been at death’s very door, and knocking loud. It was probably his mutant genes that had been able to absorb the high dose of radiation the N-bombs spat out. He couldn’t bear to think about the possible deaths of Kim and her father. Somehow they had survived. He knew it, could feel it in his guts. He would know if they were dead. As for the rest of his team, somehow Rock felt they were alive, too. They were too tough to kill. In his deepest heart, he felt sure. But he silently prayed that it was so.