Doomsday Warrior 15 - American Ultimatum (14 page)

For the elephants were suddenly out of the heat-haze—and coming straight at them at full charge. He could hear them now honking up a storm like a flock of deranged geese. The sounds were dispiriting, for the animals were clearly trumpeting out that they were the most powerful mothers around—and that anyone who had any ideas of messing with them could forget about it here and now. Rock could see now as the elephants drew closer that each of the somewhat ragged, rocking platforms atop the beasts held four men. A driver sat atop each beast’s immense neck and directed it with a long slim stick. The other platform riders were carrying spears with odd-shaped two-pointed heads. But what amazed Rockson even more—as the huge beasts of burden barreled down—was that their trunks had futuristic glinting metal devices poking out from the ends of them, as if they’d been surgically implanted.

Even as he hesitated, unsure of whether to have his men run or fight, the elephants split into two groups of three each, and within seconds had effectively surrounded them. The huge beasts stood about ten feet apart and faced right at the four Freefighters, their massive gray trunks flailing about. Rockson raised his right arm to show he was there in peace, but the motion apparently frightened the honcho on top of one of the oversized animals and he poked the beast in the neck with the riding stick. It lowered its trunk toward the Freefighters, and Rock could see now that the metal device was truly attached to the trunk surgically, with wires and diodes jammed in all over the place.

Suddenly there was a blinding flash of purple light, and as Rockson jumped back startled, the sand just a yard or so in front of him was hit by the light beam from the metallic trunk-device. It melted instantly, forming a pool of sizzling superhot crystal blob, a bubbling lava-like glass that he could feel the heat from. The man atop the elephant’s head raised his own arms and yelled down something that Rockson couldn’t understand a word of. The other beasts turned their trunks as well in their direction and aimed downward toward the four—but held their fire.

Chen caught Rock’s eye for a second and made the hand signal meaning, “Let’s get it
on.”
He reached slowly into his sleeve for some shurikens that could blow a man’s chest into pickup sticks. They might even damage an elephant. Might. But Rock made the counter-signal to “scratch it.” He glanced at Archer, who was also preparing to make a fight of it, but was not in a position to do so with two hundred pounds on his back. Besides, against these mega-monsters with purple lasers implanted in them, they’d be microwaved to charcoal in about a second flat.

“No,” Rock said, looking at Sheransky, who could barely roll his eyes open to see what was up. They’d have to hope for a better chance later, when they weren’t directly confronted by twenty tons of angry meat and tusks the size of sofas. He prayed he was making the right decision. “We’ll surrender.”

Fourteen

“I
think he’s trying to say, ‘Get up on the elephant,’ ” Chen said as Rockson looked up, perplexed at the screaming black elephant-handler twelve feet above him. One of the elephants was brought forward, and Rock winced as he swore it was going to disintegrate them all with the beam weapon embedded in its trunk. But at the prodding of its handler, it got down on all fours and waited patiently. It had a rickety platform like the others, but there was no one in it, just the “driver” of the beast, who was perched forward atop its head, his legs draped down over its immense tent-sized ears.

“Well, I guess we’d better do what he wants.” Rock gulped as he looked into the cold eyes of the elephant, which was waving its strange weapon-implanted trunk around like a conductor’s baton, ready to strike up some bloody music. Rock prayed the creatures never got the notion to use the things on their own. God only knew what might make an elephant mad. But the handlers seemed to have the beasts under firm control, kicking them in the ears and poking them with the guide sticks to make them move. The Freefighters walked the few yards to the kneeling elephant, which kept looking at them out of the corner of its eye, and mounted up.

It was a tight squeeze with Archer, and Sheransky, who was now unconscious again, had to be propped sideways. But they fit—and the driver sitting ahead of them tapped the elephant on the side of the head, and it rose with surprising speed. Rock glanced around at the inside of the platform they were riding on. It was woven from some kind of reed like a wicker chair, tightly meshed, about an inch thick, and clearly quite strong. The material gave a little as they moved, but he could see that flexibility would be a virtue on top of a rocking and bumping elephant. Anything really firm would probably have cracked after a few weeks of use.

Their elephant was marched into line with the others, three in front, two behind, the armed riders letting their prisoners know that they were being watched at all times and shouldn’t even think of trying to escape. Rock studied the men as the elephant line picked up speed and began heading right back out into the desert, seemingly into the middle of nowhere. The riders were a cocoa-skinned group, with proud angular faces and straight-looking Greek-type noses. They wore gray and light-brown robes that stopped at the knees, with geometric designs covering them. Atop their heads they all wore what Rock could only think of as a Napoleonic-type tricornered hat. But it was made of gold, hammered into shape. He knew they were wearing some sort of padding underneath the hats, for no one could have endured the metal hats touching directly against their skin under the stern gaze of that burning North African sun.

The elephant men watched the Freefighters as well, looking around at them, studying them like bugs under a microscope, not even pretending to disguise their abject curiosity. Were the looks saying, “Aren’t we going to have fun cutting off your balls!”—words which Rock had seen in the eyes of other groups which had managed to take him prisoner over the course of his violent lifetime? No. Maybe they were sent by Rahallah after all. Yet if so, why didn’t they say anything friendly, or act a little friendlier? Why did they come in on the charge, ready to melt anything in sight? And those weapons! How the hell did a primitive bunch of elephant-riding nomads get hold of such advanced technology? The questions flew through his skull like a swarm of stinging wasps.

Whatever and wherever their destination was, it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. The elephant caravan just headed straight across the sand as it swirled around their tree-trunk-sized feet. From a good fourteen feet up where the Freefighters were located atop the woven platform, they could see for miles. But there was nothing to see but more white desert and the rising curtains of heat.

Rock was impressed by how easily the elephants traversed the sand and the dune slopes. He would have thought them not suited for desert travel, but their huge feet, which acted like snowshoes, spreading their weight out enough so they didn’t sink in all that deep, and their tremendous strength allowed them to move along as if they were cruising down a four-lane highway.

As the afternoon wore on and the sun grew even meaner, Rock reached around to take out a few things from his hip pack. The driver saw or sensed the motion and shouted, reaching back with his long two-pronged spear, which stopped just inches from Rockson’s chest bone.

“Just taking out something for him,” Rock said slowly, moving his hands in slow motion as well. He pointed to the ailing Sheransky, and slowly took out the folded aluminized Shecter blanket, showing it wasn’t a weapon as he unfolded it. The elephant driver let his beast move along on full auto and kept the spear hovering just over Rock’s heart as he watched with curiosity and not a little fear. The unknown is always fearful to men, even if it’s the peeling of a banana!

Rock got the thing unfolded, and with Chen’s help spread it out over the prone Russian Freefighter, covering every part of him, even his head. The driver suddenly grinned as he realized what the function of the glittering blanket was, and smiled at Rock, the first time any of them had done anything friendly—which gesture encouraged the Freefighters a little. The driver pointed to his own metal hat and nodded, saying something totally incomprehensible to all of them. Then he tapped the side of his head and nodded approvingly. In any language that was clearly translatable as: “That’s using your noggin.”

The elephant caravan marched through the burning afternoon—if anything, picking up speed as they really got into their full open stride. Again moving slowly so as not to alarm anyone, Rock and the others took out food pellets and water from their packs. But as long as they did nothing too fast and showed their driver just what was being taken out, he allowed them to get what they wanted and move around within the confining papyrus-wicker platform with its surrounding three-foot-high walls.

Archer started getting a little moody after a few hours—he hated being confined, and apparently didn’t much care for riding elephants either. He kept grumbling, which grew louder as he shifted around, more and more ill at ease—which the driver began getting as well when he saw the commotion. But Chen rested a hand on the giant’s shoulder and talked softly to him, calming him down after a couple of minutes. Archer buried his face inside a corner of the reed platform and made low gurgling sounds.

Rock checked Sheransky every hour or so, and decided he had to change the man’s bandages around mid-afternoon. The elephant ride and its rocking, jarring motion as each large foot came crashing down had gotten the bleeding going again, even with the glue-like suturing of Chen’s miracle salve. The two men pulled back the Shecter blanket and took a look at Sheransky’s wounded arm and shoulder. It was bad. There must have been some sort of poison or high-rad toxic chemicals which the mutant fish had injected into the wound, for it was festering quickly, and had already turned a vibrant purple color. Rock swore he could almost see the damned thing throbbing. Whatever was happening was happening too fast. At this rate, the Russian Freefighter wouldn’t make it more than a day or two.

“I’m worried about him, man, really worried,” Rock said to Chen, who cleaned the wound as best he could with canteen water, and then put more of the white salve all over it. The color seemed to subside slightly, and the tension in Sheransky’s face relaxed just a touch.

“We can only do our human best,” Chen said softly as he bandaged up the wound again with fresh cloth and then set the Schecter space blanket back over the man. “The rest is fate.” The talking caught the driver’s attention and he nodded vigorously, pointing ahead with a broad smile on his face and slapping at his arm.

“I think he’s saying—there’s help ahead,” Rock muttered, not too convinced. Rock was dubious about just what kind of help there might be that could really be of any use to Sheransky. He needed nothing less than Century City’s modern medical facilities and a team of surgeons to get in there and root out the poison.

They seemed to move on forever, not a landmark or change in the stark desert scene. How their captors even knew where the hell they were going was beyond Rockson. There was absolutely nothing to get any bearings on, except maybe the sun!

Fifteen

T
hey marched on into the night, the great bull elephants with their tusks like immense sabres of bone glowing white in the light of the crescent moon and the trillion-starred heavens. Rock was awed by the beasts. It was a powerful feeling to sit atop one and feel its strength pounding through the sands. He could see why the handlers of the great proboscidans sat tall and proud, with looks of supreme confidence. Up here on one of these suckers, with its destructo-beam snout, there probably weren’t a hell of a lot of things that could take you out, even in this eerie wasteland of a world.

They had reached the end of the desert, at last. Rock kept a sharp eye on their surroundings, trying to pick up the slightest object that could be used as a mark later, in case of escape. A tree here, a moldering palm that had fallen over on its side, the carcass of an elephant—this one perhaps only a child, as it was but half the size of the monster he was riding. Anything that he could file into his mind for the return trip. Sheransky was out cold, even with the bumping ride. Archer slept through it all, his head back against the side of the mini-cabin in the sky. Chen, as usual, was taking his own silent notes with half-shut eyes, seeing everything.

Around midnight, as Rock looked down at his weather-, earthquake-, and acid-resistant longitude-self-adjusting combat watch to see just what time it was, they heard a thundering noise coming far from the west. It sounded like great booms, mountains falling atop one another. Rockson had never heard anything quite like it, even in a few major earthquakes he had lived through. Even the handlers lost their look of ultra-confidence as the elephants themselves grew agitated.

But they drove the beasts harder, and the sounds seemed to diminish as if going past them far off, perhaps twenty, even thirty miles away. Rock felt a terrible premonition deep in his chest. There was a feeling so dark contained within the sounds. So final! Then the thunder died out completely. Still, Rock swore he could feel the very earth move, right up through the elephant’s bones.

Rockson awoke with a start several hours later. He had fallen asleep despite his best efforts not to do so. He heard a sound, and turned to see what had awakened him. It was almost dawn. They had marched all night. They were approaching a village or—something. He rubbed his eyes as it looked most peculiar: tentlike structures in the shapes of small pyramids, ranging anywhere from ten to thirty feet high. They stood in concentric circles, nearly a hundred of them. They had to take up ten acres or more. Yet because they were covered somehow with sand or a sandlike material that coated them completely as if glued on, they appeared almost invisible. Rock realized that they were trying to hide themselves from aerial detection. From a few thousand feet up, these mounds were just more dunes in an endless, shifting desert. Even ground troops would say the same, unless they came very close. And with the heat put out by the sands, even the body heat of their inhabitants within would be concealed from infra-red detection.