The Iron Dream (31 page)

As the vast armada of black-and-red Helder tanks surged down into the valley, cannon were leveled at point-

blank range, and a massed barrage of high-explosive shells blew thousands of the brainless giants into the air to return to earth as a red rain of bone and gore. Two more devasting fusillades were fired; then Feric led his troops straight into a boiling cloud of gunpowder, dust, rubble, and flesh. Machine guns opened up with a shattering clatter, and flamethrowers spurted rivers of clinging fiery petrol at the enemy.

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Feric homed the firing stud of his machine gun and held it there as the mighty weapon bucked and screamed in his grip like a thing alive. There was no point in aiming at anything in this roiling chaos. The tank was inundated in a vast sea of huge naked creatures with tiny, virtually faceless heads and limbs like tree trunks. These monstrosities fired their rifles wildly, clubbed at everything within reach with great truncheons, clawed blindly at their fellows or even the armor plate of the tanks, spitting and mewling. It was like plunging into a vast nest of enraged vipers.

The wall of Helder tanks pressed forward into this huge herd of mindless rampaging filth-caked protoplasm behind a river of flame and a gigantic drumfire of machine guns.

Warriors burned like tallow candles, screaming, urinating, and setting their own comrades aflame in their death throes, filling the air with the oversweet stench of roasting flesh. Like scythed grain, the putrid creatures fell before the massed machine guns of the tanks, and were ground to a thin bloody gruel beneath the steel treads of the Helder juggernaut.

Within five minutes, Feric's tank had gained the crest of the far ridgeline, with the huge phalanx of tanks close behind. In their wake was a vast steaming ditch filled with the crushed, mangled, and burnt bodies of ten thousand Warriors, nothing more than an immense smear of blood and flesh ground into the shell-pocked landscape. For the endless wave of motorcycle troops that roared along in the van of the tanks, there was no mopping up to speak of to be done. The ten thousand Zind Warriors guarding the border with Malax had been reduced to a carnage heap of pulverized bone and reeking gore by the overwhelming might of Helder air power and armor.

Best turned to Feric, his blue eyes shining. "My Commander," he said, "this is the greatest moment of my life.

To have fought at your side in this grand and glorious battle!"

Feric clapped the lad on the shoulder. "This is nothing compared to what lies ahead," he said. Nevertheless, his soul vibrated with joy at the thought of the manner in which the host of the Swastika had swept at last into Zind: on the heels of glorious and total triumph.

The countryside of Zind was a landscape of nightmare.

Vast putrid patches of purplish radiation jungle which 202

sprawled across the land like formless amoeboid carcinomas alternated with scabbings of scoured rock and bleak poisoned earth upon which not even the rankest mutated travesty of vegetation would grow. Here and there were fields of gray grass or scraggly rows of some crop mutated beyond all decent recognition clawing its way desperately through the surrounding matrix of seared wasteland and pestilent jungle.

These pathetic farms were presided over by the same sort of motley rabble that had made up the extinct Wolack and Borgravian peasantry—Blueskins, Parrotfaces, assorted crooked dwarfs, spindly giants, half—men with hides that seemed pure cancer, Toadmen; the usual revolting assortment of mutants. However, the slaves of Zind, unlike the countryside rabble in the conquered territories, stood their ground pointlessly, trying to hold off the Helder juggernaut with scythes, clubs, rocks, and an occasional firearm. No doubt each farmstead was enmeshed in the dominance pattern of the local Dom; the mutant rabble flung itself under the treads of the tanks by psychic order, not by choice. All to no avail, for every bit of farmland and radiation jungle in range of the huge army was purified with flame; the Helder force drove deep into the western farmlands of central Zind leaving a wake of fire ten miles wide and scores of miles long blazing like the shaft of some immense flaming arrow behind its sharp point of steel.

Into the afternoon and through the night, the Helder army barreled through Zind without meeting any serious opposition. The Zind horde assigned to defend this area was a bloody pulp far to the rear, in countryside now thoroughly pacified by the advancing Helder infantry. In effect, the border of Heldon was now the prow of Feric's tank as it thrust into the territory of Zind at forty miles an hour.

Scout planes had reported that there was nothing of significance between the Helder army and the great Zind horde a hundred miles to the north, which even now had wheeled about and was moving south to greet the con-querors along a wide front. Feric estimated that the great battle would commence shortly after daybreak, about four hundred miles inside Zind and five hundred from Bora; at dawn, he would pivot his army to the north to meet the Zind counterattack.

To the north, wave after wave of Helder dreadnaughts 203

pounded the advancing Zind horde. The pilots had reported that this gargantuan force outnumbered even the huge Holder army by almost ten to one. Although the Helder planes had blasted every last Zind aerial dreadnaught from the sky and ranged over the forces of Zind at will, vast formations of the mutated flyers hovered over the horde like swarms of huge venomous insects. In addition to the usual Warriors, war-wagons, and dreadnaughts, the scout planes had spotted several hundred tanks, Puller-drawn artillery, and vast troops of Warriors who seemed somehow different from the usual variety. Truly, the hosts of Zind were on the move in unprecedented force; upon the coming battle would hinge the future of the world for all time.

The first rays of dawn illumined a ghastly landscape.

Here nothing grew but scraggly and putrescent patches of radiation jungle. Huge ponds had been dug in the unyielding, contaminated earth; these were choked with slimy gray-green scum which no doubt was processed for slave fodder. The reek of these algae pools was overpowering, indistinguishable from that of open cesspools. Among these ponds were scattered rude wooden corrals which confined a revolting assortment of genetically twisted livestock: bloated legless swine wriggling about in the muck like giant pallid worms, six-legged cattle with tiny vestigial heads and cloacae from which dribbled green-brown ooze, hairless purple goats that trailed gross blue udders in the mud, chickens with a syrupy coating of viscous green mucous in lieu of feathers.

The slaves tending this perverted travesty of farmland more than fit their surroundings; a more revolting collection of mutants it had never been Feric's misfortune to see. Here such as Parrotfaces, Toadmen, and dwarfs stood out as paragons of genetic virtue! Skinless creatures covered with red ooze through which bluish blood vessels could be seen pulsing were a common sight as were green bipeds with empty insect-eyes and arms ending in clusters of tentacles. Warted, frog-skinned mutants with flapping rubbery lips abounded as well as perambulating mounds of wiry black hair through which naught was visible save flaming red eyes and lipless drooling mouths.

Despite the importance of time, Feric slowed the Helder advance in order to assure that every last one of these abominations was blasted to bits, burned, or mashed 204

beneath the treads of the tanks and every putrid scum-pond blown sky-high with purifying explosives.

Only when his tank had left this ghastly farmland and entered a rolling plain of lifeless gray desolation, did Feric feel clean again. "I can scarcely believe that such horrors exist even in Zind," he said to Best. "How do the Dominators stand themselves?"

Best's face was pale, his lips trembling. "I can't imagine, my Commander," he said grimly. "My very cells cry out in nausea at such a sight."

"Enough!" Feric said. "Let's put an end to this filth once and for all. Head due north. Best! It's time to confront the putrescence of Zind with the full might of the Helder army!"

Soon the northern horizon glowed with orange flame along a wide front, and an immense pall of dust and dense black smoke hung over the dead gray hills like a monster thunderhead, replete with the flickering lightnings of the falling bombs. No doubt the Zind horde had spotted the dust cloud of the approaching Helder army—the two mighty juggernauts were at last within sight of each other.

As the wall of Helder armor hurtled toward the onrushing Zind horde, a spotter plane continuously broadcast updated coordinates, and the earth shook with the rumble of the tank cannon as wave after wave of high-explosive shells ripped through the leaden sky to smash the enemy.

Zind shells came crashing down in the midst of the Helder army, blowing tanks apart in sudden bursts of bright flame and metal fragments, filling the air with-bits of pulverized motorcycles. Now the Helder dive-bombers were clearly visible over the ridgeline, dropping almost perpendicularly at incredible speeds, letting fly with their deadly cargo, then zooming upward beyond reach of the resulting explosions. Hundreds of these magnificent dreadnaughts filled the sky—diving, swooping, soaring, raining death on the enemy like avenging eagles.

"Here it comes. Best!" Feric shouted, getting his first sight of the enemy. Out of the north soared a huge flock of nearly a hundred of the Zind flying monstrosities, their membranous wings glistening wetly, with a dozen Helder planes in hot pursuit, machine guns blazing. In moments, the aerial battle was directly overhead. Acid dribbled down from the creatures' bloated sacs, sending clouds of choking yellow smoke into the air where it touched the metal of the tanks. Flyers crumpled and exploded in 205

midair as the fiery bullets of the Helder planes ripped them to pieces.

But there was no leisure to contemplate the battle in the air, for in the next moment, the great horde of Zind was visible hurtling straight toward the onrushing Helder armor; Best cried out in wordless awe tinged with something akin to terror.

The army of Zind filled Feric's field of vision from east to west and covered the gray desolation to the north as far as the eye could see. A skirmish line of giant muscular Warriors backed up by reserve ranks that seemed literally infinite marched forward along a front too wide to display end points; interspersed in this front line of ten-foot giants were dull green tanks not dissimilar to the Helder design.

Behind the front, thousands of war-wagons were drawn along by Pullers amidst a solid sea of Warriors marching along in that daunting Zind unison. Dimly visible far to the rear behind Puller-drawn artillery, trucks, and steam dreadnaughts were huge swarms of Warriors that seemed to be moving forward with simultaneous randomness and overall direction like soldier ants. The sky above this monstrous horde was thick with Helder planes and Zind flyers; boiling clouds of thick black smoke were everywhere. Patches of the horde were huge flaming infernos; vast numbers of uncontrolled Warriors ripped and surged mindlessly through the rear ranks of the enemy. From the war-wagons, tanks, dreadnaughts, and artillery came a continuous barrage of shells that began to take their toll of the Helder tanks at this close range.

As the two armies closed to within a hundred yards of each other, Feric saw that Best's face was frozen into a determined battle mask. "Spread out!" he ordered his tank commanders; the gaps between the Helder tanks widened and into them poured the vast divisions of motorcycle troops. Feric rammed home the stud of his machine gun and roared "Fire at will!" into his microphone as his weapon spurted fiery death at the onrushing horde. The tanks lowered their cannon and sent a final wave of high explosives into the front rank of the Zind horde, sending an avalanche of earth and flesh and metal fragments into the air.

Then the two armies were upon each other, a ringing clash of massed flesh and metal. The Zind battle tactic had not changed, save that the huge Warriors who marched forward in unison in wave after limitless wave were now 206

armed with submachine guns. The wall of bullets into which the Helder army plunged chattered harmlessly off the armor of the tanks, but took a heavy toll of the motorcycle troops who roared at top speed straight into the fray, with heroic disregard for their own safety.

Flamethrowers inundated the marching Zind horde with flaming petrol; thousands of the creatures became shrieking torches who nevertheless surged forward to be smashed to pieces by the Helder machine guns and ground to a pulp beneath the treads of the tanks, helplessly loyal even in their terminal agonies to the psychic commands of the Dominators.

Zind tanks surged forward, firing their cannon straight through the bodies of their own troops to blast Helder tanks to pieces. Still firing his blazing machine gun into the solid press of protoplasmic robots that surrounded his tank, Feric issued terse orders to his tank commanders:

"Fire cannon at point-blank range! Knock out the enemy tanks at all cost!"

The Helder tank cannon roared defiance; shells ripped through the riot of flesh, smashing Zind tanks to atoms.

Apparently, these tanks held the Dominators, for as they were destroyed, great formations of front-line Warriors suddenly became drooling, undisciplined animals, running amok in the very forefront of the battle and adding to the incredible chaos.

Feric found himself isolated with Best in a timeless universe of fiery battle, a world filled with foul Warriors surging forward, firing their machine guns, tearing their bare fingers to pieces against the steel armor plate, bursting into flame, ground to a thick red gruel beneath the treads of the tanks. His nostrils were filled with the aroma of roasted flesh mingled with the heady stench of gunpowder. His ears were deafened by a continuous surf-pounding of machine guns, cannon, engines, shrieks, grunts, groans, and squeaks. His flesh was a direct extenf sion of the machine gun he fired; the bullets seemed to emerge in a fiery stream from the depth of his own being, he could all but feel them ripping into the flesh of the Warriors who went down before his spurting weapon.

Through the tremors of the onrushing tank, he could feel the bodies being crushed beneath the treads.