Doomsday Warrior 15 - American Ultimatum (13 page)

T
hey’d escaped, but Sheransky was seriously hurt. They all could see that once they dragged themselves ashore on a sandy beach. His arm had been ripped open. The flesh was gashed right down the middle from his shoulder almost to the elbow, a good three-inch-deep cut like a butcher starting to make the incision for the flank meats. He was out cold—lucky for him.

Chen took a vial from one of several packets attached to the belt around his waist and mixed it with sea water. Then he smeared the white paste all along the wound. It seemed to form almost a glue within a minute or two. Then he pushed the flesh together, and then wrapped cloth around it, tying it up the length of the arm. The wound seemed to cease bleeding so heavily. Sheransky was now conscious, but not too much, his head rolling back and forth as he moaned softly.

“Easy, pal, you’re going to live. I promise you that,” Rock said, laying a hand on the blond Freefighter’s shoulder. Sheransky’s eyes seemed to clear as he focused on Rockson.

“Yeah, sure I am,” he whispered back through pale tight lips. “I’m just faking it.”

“We’ll have to throw together a drag-rig,” Rock said, looking around the shore and seeing nothing particularly usable. “I don’t know how much traveling our friend here is going to be able to do.”

“Carryyy?”
Archer piped up, getting the drift of the problem.
“No! Meeee caaarrrryyyy?”
He looked imploringly at Rockson as if to say, “let me help out here, pal, let big, strong me make my contribution.” Rock pondered the idea for a few seconds. It would slow them down some, no doubt, but then so would dragging Sheransky on a makeshift travois. Rock scanned the shore back and forth, and then the skies above them. He didn’t want to wait around here either. The Reds—or someone else—could easily have seen their plane go down, seen the chutes descending. There could be troops coming.

“Okay, let’s try it, bigman,” Rock said. “But if he’s too much for you—stop—and we’ll build something.” Archer scoffed at the idea that it would be too much.

“Meee carrrryyy moooosse onnnn baaaacckk.”
He chuckled effusively. Rockson would have liked to have seen that particular event. They rigged up a kind of backpack using Sheransky’s Liberator rifle as a seat, and the webbed combat belt. Then Rock threw the whole contraption over Archer’s shoulders, getting the Russian Freefighter up on his back. The thing looked ridiculous, and Sheransky didn’t look all that happy hoisted up onto the near-mute’s back like an Indian papoose. But it worked.

Archer had to lean forward, pulling with both arms at the straps to get the right leverage. But after he tested the whole setup, walking around in a circle for ten seconds, even hopping up and down a few times, it appeared that Sheransky’s 175 pounds, plus another 30 or so of gear, weren’t about to present any major obstacles to a man who had carried a moose!

With Rock taking the lead and Chen the rear, they headed up from the shoreline and into the groves of palm trees that started several hundred feet from the water. Rockson was tense. He could feel his mutant senses all buzzing up a storm like a factory of alarm clocks going off. He didn’t know the terrain here at all—and he felt something, something dark. It was indistinct. He wasn’t even sure if it was nearby or far off. But it was somewhere around them, as definite as the very earth beneath his feet. He wondered if it was Killov’s evil vibes, but again wasn’t quite sure. Something, something bad, something that was only satiated with blood, and oceans of it, was around.

They made their way through the trees, which were closely bunched together—making the going difficult, especially for Archer with the heavy load on his back. Chen and Rock could duck down, but the huge Freefighter couldn’t bend too far or even his strength couldn’t hold up the load.

It wasn’t really the trees that got everyone upset, but a kind of mutant dwarf palm bush that grew around the base of the higher trees. These were prickly, with purplish thorns, and gave off a pungent odor not entirely pleasant. Bugs seemed to cover the spaces between many of the thorns, and Rock saw some big orange and black spiders prancing around, checking out their sticky web traps. But they all seemed more interested in the bug world than the human, so after several minutes he relaxed, at least about the spiders.

It took them nearly an hour to make their way through the thick junglelike terrain. The trees seemed to get bigger and the vegetation leafier and thicker. The air itself became moist as a sponge, and as the sun rose into the sky and heated up everything, the men felt as if they were inside a sauna. Rockson stopped every ten minutes or so to see how Archer was doing, but the giant Freefighter only grew annoyed as Rock stopped and turned each time.

“Noooottt ttiiirrreeed, Rroooccck!”
The Doomsday Warrior got the message after the third such response and didn’t ask again. The air grew even moister, and the ground as well, so their feet started making squishing sounds with each footstep. And as they came around a mini-swamp with a family of flamingoes taking their daily dipping, Rockson saw why it was so wet. They had reached a river as wide and quickly flowing as the Mississippi, and dark colored, so that it was apparent there was much dirt and nutrients floating by.

Storks and pelicans and birds of odder species waded in the shallows along each bank, stabbing beaks into the liquid for fish—which they came up with on nearly every attempt. A rich and vibrant ecological system in full gear.

Rock knew what it was. He had read enough pages about it in the C.C. library, seen enough mummy movies to know. This was the Nile—in its full sweeping glory. The most fertile strip of land in all of North Africa, if Rockson remembered his geography and history correctly. The entire Egyptian civilization had basically developed along a narrow stretch of farmable land that ran along both sides of the majestic river. Ninety percent of her population through the milennia had lived within a few miles of the Nile.

They took a breather by the fabled river. As hot as it had been inside the junglelike forest, it was blazing out in the full force of the sun. But at least there was a breeze coming down the Nile, and the moisture there seemed cleaner, almost like spray from a shower. The rushing water was about a half mile wide where they sat in the sand.

Archer lowered Sheransky and sat down, taking a breather. He would never admit it, but carrying the heavy load in this kind of humidity and heat was already taking a toll on the Freefighter. Rockson knew the guy would go on until he dropped on his face, dead. He’d have to keep a close eye on him.

According to Rockson’s calculations they were only two and a half miles from where Rahallah had directed them to meet him. It was near enough that he decided they’d march right up along the Nile banks to keep a little cooler than they’d be if they headed back into the jungle. It was more exposed out here—but at least no one would croak from the suffocatingly still air. He let Archer take ten, and then got them all moving again.

They marched past the water birds. The crocodiles floating serenely downstream seemed disinterested in them. But Rockson knew that they kept a beady eye out for anything that strayed too close to the water.

They’d gone perhaps two miles, and Rock was beginning to wonder where all the humans were since there was clearly plenty of animal life around. Then he saw several boats coming down the river. They were primitive things—long papyrus rafts with men poling their way along. The rafters eyed them suspiciously as they passed by about a hundred feet from shore, in the calmest and shallowest part of the river. They were dressed quite crudely, wearing what looked like hardly more than burlap bags cut into shirts and pants. There were about ten brown-skinned men to a raft, and they were carrying stacks of odd-looking vegetables. These were not dissimilar to bananas, but purple-skinned and much larger. The boaters pushed their rafts out a little farther as they drew near, obviously nervous about Rock and his team.

Archer waved benignly, glad to see that there were human beings in what he had already decided was quite godforsaken country. But the boaters didn’t return the gesture. They just poled out even farther, staring back at the Freefighters as if they were a landing party from Mars. All eyes were on them, heads turned around in their neck sockets, until the boaters disappeared around a bend in the river a half mile down.

“You ever get the feeling that you were a freak in a circus?” Chen shouted up from the rear.

“Since I was born,” Rock quipped back as he turned to see how Archer was doing. Sheransky was looking paler by the hour, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped completely—which was the most important thing. He’d have to hang on. There was no choice. They had nowhere to go until they made contact with Rahallah. This wasn’t exactly the kind of territory where you just drove up to the nearest hospital and pulled out your Blue Cross card.

They marched another forty-five minutes or so, until Rockson saw a landmark perhaps two miles to their left out on the jungle-bordering desert. It was something that caught his attention: three stone mounds, each about fifty feet high and shaped somewhat like ice cream cones that had partially melted. Rahallah had told him in the coded instructions that they would be met three miles up the Nile from the Mediterranean Sea, on the far side of the trio of ancient shrines to the Cat God, Omasis.

“That’s it, boys,” Rockson said, pointing over toward the crumbling shrines. They were so disintegrated now after the passing millennia that it was hard to tell that they’d ever been statues of cats—or that they were manmade at all and not some termite mounds long since abandoned by their micro-citizens. He steered them away from the river, and within a few hundred yards, once they had gone through a dense grove of shore-lining trees, they could feel the heat from the beating sun as if they were inside a blast furnace. Rock noted how the reeds and green growth that ran parallel to the river on both sides disappeared abruptly once they reached its edge. Back in America he was used to abrupt changes in vegetation patterns. But here it was alive with all sorts of life, and then
boom,
it was desert, all within the space of perhaps twenty yards. Just sand with nothing growing anywhere. They could have been suddenly dropped down onto the moon for all there was to see ahead of them.

Although the three crumbling stone monuments had seemed just over the hill, once they hit the moving sands the going was rough. It was like stepping in place—feet sinking in several inches and the body hardly moving forward, however much effort one put into one’s legs. It took them nearly an hour to go the mile and a half to reach the sides of the three monuments.

They headed on past them, as Rahallah had instructed, marching into what seemed like endless rising dunes of yellow. Rockson couldn’t help but wonder if they were heading into some sort of trap. If Rahallah
had
suckered them into something, they were going to have a harder time getting out of it than they had walking in. But he trusted the nobly born Rahallah. Rock felt that, inside, the African was basically a good man. He was trying to influence the Soviet premier, as his closest confidant, toward the side of life, not death. Anyway, it was sure as hell too late now to be having any second thoughts!

They reached the rock-strewn field that Rahallah had described. It was recognizable by the fact that rocks were sprinkled all over it, in a roughly triangular shape—a distance of about five hundred feet on each side. From the totally rounded edges of the stones and their ghostly white faded appearance, it looked to have been laid down thousands of years ago. A football field for the early pharaohs? Rock wondered. The Mummy Super Bowl four thousand years before prime-time TV? If so, this was a quiet half-time. No players on the field. And no bands either!

Rock and Chen helped Archer get. Sheransky down off his back harness, and laid the man down. The Russian Freefighter was out cold now, and Chen sprinkled some water on his face and lips as they rigged up an umbrella out of one of Shecter’s reflective blankets. They all sat down on the rocks, their buttocks instantly warming up from the sealed-in heat, and waited.

They didn’t have long.

“What the hell is that?” Chen blurted out as he put his hands over his eyes as a sun-shield, trying to see off into the distance. It was hard for any of them to see at first as the heat fog was rising everywhere, making the whole desert around them shimmer and almost seem to move, like the surface of a wind-rippled lake. But as they watched, they saw that something was indeed coming their way—and fast. A cloud of dust was rising up above the approaching shape—whatever the hell it was.

“Dust tornado?” Chen wondered out loud.

“No, it’s men—and I’m not all that sure they’re friends. I can sense a lot of violence,” Rock said nervously as he glanced down at Sheransky. “Maybe we should . . .” He looked around. There really wasn’t a hell of a lot of cover, unless one was a sand beetle and could dig straight down. “Maybe we should head back to that broken-down trio of cat condos back there. At least it would offer some maneuvering.” He turned to see how far away the eroded cats were—about five hundred feet. They seemed way too far suddenly as the dust cloud grew larger and came right at them.

“Let’s move, man,” Chen said as the dust swirled up into the burning sky. They got Archer loaded up again fast and started trying to double-time it back to the three fallen mounds. Suddenly the dust storm was moving very fast, and as Rock squinted through the heat haze, his eyes widened in shock. If he wasn’t going completely blind or mad from the sun—a definite possibility—it was a herd of elephants. A half dozen of them were tramping along as if they were in a race for the finish line at the Jungle Olympics. Even as he watched he could see there were men riding atop them on shaking platforms made of reed and papyrus.

“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Chen screamed out as he ran right behind Archer, pushing him along with a hand in the middle of his back. “Should we prepare for defensive-spread formation?” But the question was hardly out when Rock saw that not only were they not going to reach the cover—but that they didn’t have time to get any kind of fighting formation set up either.