Doomsday Warrior 06 - American Rebellion (2 page)

The attacker, holding the pistol at his side walked ahead a few yards and kicked at one of the bodies which rolled to the side, its rock hard arms stretched straight out in front as if it were reaching for something.

“Damn—almost all these fucking things are dead,” the robed man said, spitting out a gob of dark slime from between brown, cracked teeth. He kicked at another of the myriad bodies on the plateau and this time elicited a faint groan. The robed man bent over and looked at the wounded fighter lying prone on the bloody soil. But a quick glance at the missing right leg, torn off jaggedly at the knee, showed him that it was just a piece of garbage. Of no use to him, to anyone. He placed the muzzle of the pistol against the mortally wounded man’s temple and pulled the trigger. The head erupted into a frenzy of spiraling red pulp and the moans ceased.

The robed man stood up and glanced furtively around as the angrily burning sun rose above the horizon and sent down its killing radiation through the atomically thinned atmosphere of the earth, an atmosphere ripped apart by the thousand nuclear blasts a century earlier. Its entire molecular harmony disrupted, it now allowed in far more gamma, x-rays, cosmic rays and every other goddamned ray one could name than the old earth could have imagined. The robed-one winced at its brightness and spun his head around, suddenly noticing the man he had just been kicking seconds before, standing, staring at him with wide uncomprehending eyes.

“Fool,” the robed man said angrily, raising the blue nickel-plated revolver until it was aimed directly at the man’s chest. “Are you so eager to join your dead comrades here?” The wounded man looked down again at the dead and dying, at the endless stretches of arms and legs and body less heads. His comrades? He didn’t know them. Nor who they were, nor what war they had been fighting. Why couldn’t he remember anything. He could think, he could understand words. He could instantly comprehend the world in all its darkness around him. But beyond that—he knew nothing. It was as if his life had begun at the moment the robed man had begun hitting at him. As if he had been born out of those blows. Out of . . . out of what . . .

His confusion was shattered by the sharp crack of the pistol and the bullet that dug out a little hole in the hard-packed dirt next to his foot.

“The next one goes in your chest, scum.” The robed figure aimed the pistol right at him, dead on his heart, and closed one eye sighting down the dark barrel. The wounded man, not a seeker of his own death, turned and walked toward the group of about forty other wounded men surrounded by more robed flesh-takers. Ted Rockson, the Doomsday Warrior, his chest and arms covered with dried blood and a five-inch-long, deep gash across the side of his head, joined the prisoners being gathered by the gang of Slavers. The tank shell blast that had nearly killed him and Rona, cracking his skull like an earthquake fissure had done more than just rip his flesh—it had created a total amnesia in the still reeling brain tissue. His entire life history had been taken from him, sent into the dark recesses of his unconscious where the memory patterns lay dormant, hidden from his mental reach.

The fiery blast that had exploded just feet from the two Freefighters had singed the top of Rockson’s scalp down to the flesh, leaving only blackened hair stubs—and the hurricane of dirt that had knocked them both to the ground had flown into his eyes, leaving them puffed and bloodshot, the lids all swollen and red. Thus, even his own men who glanced at him as he joined in their ranks didn’t recognize him—his white streak of hair now blackened, his mismatched violet and aquamarine eyes, hardly visible beneath the grotesquely distended eyelids. He was just another lost soul, hurt and in shock, unfortunate enough to have been left behind as the Freefighting army retreated back to Century City to gather their strength and treat the wounded.

One of the Slavers pushed him brusquely into the crowd as he sauntered over. Rockson looked frantically around at the downcast prisoners, trying to remember, trying to recognize even a single face. If he had been with these men, had fought alongside them—perhaps they would know him, could tell him who he was, what had happened. He turned toward one of them, a large blond-haired fellow who didn’t seem too badly hurt other than a long gash along his right arm which he had covered with his shirt.

“I—I—,” Rockson didn’t even know how to phrase the question. “I seem to have lost my memory, mister,” The Doomsday Warrior said haltingly. “Do you know me?” The blond man looked him up and down, then stared long and hard into his swollen, purple bruised face. He shook his head slowly as he stepped back.

“Can’t say that I do,” the man said. “But you must be from Century City. A Freefighter—those are the only people—the only Americans who would be lying around here. Although I did hear that detachments from some of the other Free Cities had come to our aid. So I suppose it’s possible you’re from one of them. Although, to be perfectly honest, mister, you look a mess. I don’t know if your own mother would recognize you right now.”

“Century City? Freefighter?” Rockson asked almost in a whisper. “The words sound so familiar, yet—I can’t—”

“Yeah, you took a bad wound there,” the blond Freefighter said, pointing at the side of Rock’s head. “You can’t remember nothing, huh?” He looked at Rockson again, trying to see beneath the blood-coated face, trying to place him. “I just don’t know you, man—though there is something vaguely familiar.” He looked at Rock with pity and then trying to reassure him said, “Don’t worry about it, mister. From what I read once about amnesia—it usually disappears once the shock to the brain wears off. You’ll remember in time—though I don’t know how much good it will do you—we’re prisoners of the Reds now. Not the Regular Army—these guys are Slavers. The Russians let them take the remains of their battles. We’ll probably be sold off to some Fortress City to work out our lives in some godforsaken sweathole of a factory making underwear for Russian officers.” The blond man smiled grimly, a sardonic look of ultimate resignation crossing his broad face.

“It’s kind of ironic,” he went on, softly. “We, that is, Century City won—and yet those of us here—lost. I guess we just have to think of ourselves as sacrifices for the greater good. Shit—if I’d just woken up a few minutes earlier. Took a bad shot myself,” he said, showing Rockson a swollen deep wound on his upper chest. “Anyway—name’s Swenson, Craig Swenson—glad to meet you.” He held out a meaty hand which Rockson took, happy for the momentary human friendship in the midst of the death and stench of the charnel grounds around them.

“Wish I could tell you mine but—”

“It don’t matter much, anyway,” Swenson went on. “You won’t be needing your old name soon. Once we’re put into work gangs in the factories or out in the radioactive rubble, clearing off land for their agricultural stations—they’ll give us new names—slave names.”

The Slavers, in their filthy dark robes that swirled around them, concealing countless pistols, daggers and other devices of dealing pain and death, continued racing around the battlefield that had once been Forrester Valley—before the battle that had killed upward of 300,000 men in less than five hours. It was the largest number of soldiers killed in such a short time in any battle in the history of human warfare. But no one was around to record such statistics anymore. Survival in post-nuke war America was its own reward. Most of the fallen troops were just dead, half devoured meat around the mountain tops, slopes and the valley floor itself. But here and there among the carnage the human scavengers did manage to rouse a few dozen more souls.

The moaning and tattered crowd of America survivors grew to nearly 80 men, surrounded by dozens of the Slavers who took chains out of a beat-up old Red Army supply truck and attached them to the prisoners’ feet and hands. Several resisted—but they were slammed to the ground with rifle butts and locked up along with the rest. Rockson himself felt the deep urge to fight back—but it was suicide to try anything. He felt as if he were in the middle of a nightmare where nothing is known, and death is everywhere.

Who am I? Who the fuck am I?
But his probing thoughts met only a wall as hard as granite beyond which was only swirling blackness. He was without a single recollection of his past life.

At last the Slavers had gathered all that was worth taking from the death fields and herded the prisoners out, heading down an ancient dirt road toward the north. The captured Americans walked in single file, chained to the man in front of them. Many of the more seriously wounded were barely able to walk—the clanking chains around their ankles only adding to the weight they must drag. But they all knew that to fall meant death—instantaneously. The Slavers screamed out curses at them to move faster, to stay in line, frequently slashing out with long leather whips at any recalcitrant prisoners. They headed off down the winding dusty dirt road, created nearly two hundred years before by cows and horse drawn wagons. A time when America had belonged to Americans. Their eyes rested heavily on the ground, their heads unable to rise, to look at the mountains that lay ahead, to look toward a destiny that none of them wished to contemplate.

Two

H
ours before Rockson was kicked into consciousness and imprisoned, Rona had waked from her blast-induced sleep and staggered to her feet. Her combat outfit was ripped and shredded by the tank shell. It had been light—now the moon was low in the sky. She had been out for hours, many hours. Her body felt like death warmed over, as every muscle protested any motion in throbbing stabs of pain. Rock? She suddenly remembered—he had been there with her.

She turned around with such force that her skull and neck lit up with a literally blinding pain, almost knocking her out. But she didn’t care about pain—just Rockson. She lowered herself to one knee and looked at the badly wounded man who lay there bathed in the cold rays of the moon, still and ghostly looking. She lowered her head to his chest and listened—the heartbeat felt strong. She knew his strength, his deep physical resources—either something would have to kill him outright or he would live through it. But he was obviously hurt, breathing slowly and deeply, mouth open in complete unconscious relaxation. She tried to reach out with her mind, as he had taught her to do. Again, the screaming pain went through her head, but she continued. To no avail. Either she wasn’t sending properly or he just couldn’t receive. She had to get help and fast. She would never let him die.

Rona rose to her feet, again almost losing her balance as every movement seemed to go right through her central nervous system. All around her was the devastation of the Battle of Forrester Valley—big holes gouged out of the living soil, bodies and parts of bodies strewn wildly around, trees leveled into mounds of toothpicks. She walked over to the edge of the plateau from which the Freefighters had been firing on the Nazi forces and looked down. The moon’s vibrant blue rays illuminated the vast carnage below—burning tanks and half-tracks, craters a 10-ton truck could drive through, and bodies, endless piles of corpses. It was hard to believe that so many people existed, let alone that so many had died.

Suddenly she saw a flash of light, then several, glinting along far below through the graveyard. It could be Freefighters, Rona thought, straining to see—or it could be Reds. She glanced over at Rockson, just yards away, who lay as still and calm as a statue, bathed in the faint light of the moon. She’d have to take a chance. She scoured around and found a coil of rope in a dead Nazi’s backpack, and headed over the edge down the steep mountain slope. The valley floor was nearly 1,000 feet down through loose gravel and treacherous footholds, but by using the rope as a guide Rona moved like a mountain goat, having trained in rapelling and other rope climbing techniques.

She had barely reached the death-strewn valley floor and started toward the moving figures some half mile off when she heard a familiar thudding sound—a Red chopper—and it was heading right toward her, its huge searchlight mounted underneath scanning the ground searching for something. And from the other flank, coughing vehicles suddenly lumbered forth—five flatbed trucks with a hodgepodge of different-sized tires beneath them, and various rusting machine guns nailed down to their flat carriages. Riding in the cabs and on the back were fierce-looking men with bald heads, gold earrings, immense mustaches and beards, and long curved swords dangling from their sides. She knew what they were—Slavers—human slime who preyed on the wounded.

She looked around for a place to hide and dove into a .100mm mortar-created hole nearby. But voices instantly rang out over a loudspeaker from the helicopter which stopped and hovered above her, aiming the blinding light down.

“She’s there—right below us. A young one—looks like a mutant.” The chopper, which Rona could now see wasn’t a Red chopper but an old U.S. Army helio, outfitted with all kinds of half-falling off armaments, kept the tower of light on her while the scar-covered and tattooed Slavers jumped down from the trucks and surrounded her. Inside the 15-foot wide, six-foot high crater Rona grabbed a knife from the outstretched hand of a Nazi corpse and turned slowly around, ready for all comers.

“Careful,” a voice yelled out. “A goodlooking healthy mutant woman would be worth her weight in gold.”

“Yes, better if she has all her limbs,” another growling half-human voice screamed out. “Don’t rip her.” They came down the crater edge from all sides moving slowly, their hands outstretched to grab her. One of them, a big one, with practically no face at all, leaped at her—and got a 14" bayonet blade through his kidney, pancreas and various other organs. He tumbled to her feet as Rona whipped the blade out, wiped it twice on her already blood-soaked khaki trousers and held it up again, the moon bouncing slivers of crystal light off the razor-sharp knife.

“Next,” she said, motioning for them to come forward with her other hand. Four of them leaped at once, screaming and spitting to frighten her. She lashed out twice and the blade ripped two thick bellies. But something was hitting her from behind. Again—she fell back into the darkness from which she had only minutes before awakened.