Doomsday Warrior 04 - Bloody America (11 page)

Rockson was looking forward to the meeting with the Grandfather, wondering just what the cagey premier had in mind. He was intrigued that Vassily had a black servant—with some power—how odd. The man was also, rumor stated, of above average intelligence and read profusely. He knew from his sources that Vassily was of late locked in a struggle to the death with Colonel Killov to maintain his power over who ran America. Suddenly Rock realized the reason for the trip: to be used by Vassily to defeat Killov. But two could play that game, and Rockson was an ace at no-rules poker.

The steel curtains over the windows rolled back, and Rock nearly gasped as he took in the view below. They were in goddamned space itself They were, Rock guessed, nearly twenty miles up, and the curve of the horizon above which stars dotted the sky was slow and beautiful. He had known the Ramjets flew high but this . . .

“Mmmm,” Archer groaned, suddenly rising and unsnapping his seat belt. The guards leaped up, leveling their pistols and Kalashnikovs at the giant, but Archer pointed to his groin and made a pained face.

“I think he wants to use your gentlemen’s facilities,” Rock said.

The Red guards motioned Archer forward but as he took a step, much to his astonishment, he began slowly floating up toward the cushioned ceiling, banging his head. He flailed his arms and kicked his long legs frantically as if trying to swim through the weightless air.

“Relax buddy,” Rock said, grabbing an elephantine ankle and pulling gently down until Archer reached his seat. The Red guard came over and gave them each a set of shoes with magnetic bottoms. Archer put his on, not quite able to close even the largest pair, and began, nimbly for him, walking up the aisle looking sick as a dog.

“How high are we?” Rock asked one of his guards.

“Twenty-eight miles,” the beefy soldier answered proudly. “Flying about seven times the speed of sound at ground level. Five thousand miles per hour. We are in free fall, as you say.” Rock heard the toilet flush and wondered if Archer’s huge deposit was now a meteor about to flash across the sky of the north pole. The Doomsday Warrior unhooked himself under their careful gaze—why they bothered to keep a gun on him was beyond him. If they fired it in here, it would blow a hole in the side of the jet, and they would all suffer explosive decompression as the air rushed out of the sealed jet. He slowly made his way down the carpeted aisle, passing Archer on the way, who looked a little happier but was apparently hungry again as he went up to one of the guards and pointed a finger at his own mouth.

“Fooooddd. Mooorre.” The guards quickly acquiesced, not wanting to face the wrath of the hungry mutant American.

When he had finished his trip to the men’s room, Rockson returned to the open passenger section. He was curious about the effects of weightlessness. Under the watchful eyes of the guards, he released himself from the magnetic shoes and leaped up into the air, tucking his legs in under him. He went into a spring that accelerated faster and faster the more he pulled into a tighter circle. His years of physical training and his martial arts abilities made him quickly understand how to move in zero gravity. The Doomsday Warrior took off like an acrobat, soaring around the interior of the jet like some airborne porpoise. Even the guards were impressed, lowering their rifles as they watched the gymnastic performance.

It felt wonderful, Rock thought—like being a child in a dream when one could fly by merely flapping one’s arms. He pushed his body to the limits, trying every angle, every torque of hips and arms that he could think of. He glanced down suddenly at the guards and realized that he could easily take them out. A quick push off the top steel-ribbed ceiling and he would be down upon them like a wolf among the chickens. But he wanted to meet Vassily. Who knew where such an encounter would lead?

After about fifteen minutes of weightless gymnastics, Rockson returned to his seat. Both guards smiled at him. They couldn’t help but respect the man—his abilities were almost superhuman. They looked at him with strangely friendly eyes. Rock returned the gesture. It was not the common Red troops who were his enemy—even if he did have to kill them when the occasion arose. No, it was the leadership. It had always been—since the dawn of time. Those few, power-mad men who had to rise to the top and let their primitive, sadistic impulses become the rules of life. It was governments that had caused all of man’s problems. Wizened old men who sent the young out to die while they stayed at home making pronouncement after pronouncement on the need to kill, to conquer, to destroy. Maybe the world would have been better off if man had never evolved civilization; if man had stayed in the trees, in small clusters. Hadn’t the industrial world given humanity myriad ways to die, culminating in the atomic bomb which had turned the blue and green paradise of earth into a living hell? What was it a great philosopher had once said—“Power corrupts—absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Rockson suddenly wished that every government official on earth would suddenly disappear—and just the people would be left—the workers, the farmers. They had no wish to destroy one another. Just to live and let live.

The Doomsday Warrior sat back in his seat and stared out the window. Far below, earth could be seen—its oceans and continents, like a child’s jigsaw puzzle, fitting perfectly together. The planet seemed so beautiful, fragile from way up here. The devastation that had been done disappeared at such a height. The Doomsday Warrior felt a surge of tenderness toward his planet. It seemed so small, so vulnerable from twenty-eight miles up. A living, breathing thing that wished only to heal its wounds and create life once again.

Rockson sat back in his seat and remembered what the “Glowers” had taught him—how they had taken him on a mind excursion into the energy currents of the earth. He closed his eyes and sank deep into the meditative state that the strange race had taught him. It took time without the Glowers’ help, but after about ten minutes he felt his consciousness begin to rise up and drift free of the physicality that was Ted Rockson. Pure energy, he drifted through the molecular structure of the jet and soared down through the atmosphere. He could feel the cosmic rays shooting down from space, the gravitational pull of the planet like a billion arms grabbing, pulling all solid objects into itself. He flew like a shooting star across the vast cleansing oceans, feeling their tidal swells, the undulations of the waves as they traveled from continent to continent. He dropped lower onto the countries that had once been Europe and saw the people in all their misery—ragged and ill-nourished—hopelessness etched in their eyes as all that they had was consumed by Russian state. He felt their hearts bursting with pain, their children dying. He dropped lower and lower onto the planet and felt it, the soil, the rocks moving just beneath the surface, taking the radioactive poisons deeper down into its burning core trying to neutralize them. In spite of the charnel ground that the war had created, the planet forgave and tried to return to its pure state, tried to purify the soil and the streams in an attempt to recreate itself in the image of a century before.

The Doomsday Warrior saw the thousands of villages, the people reduced to primeval state of savagery—the Russian military fortresses never more than one hundred miles apart with their hordes of food and purified water. He felt that his heart was about to burst—so much pain and suffering. It was beyond the ability of a man to change—so much, so much destruction. And yet in the midst of his anguish, Rock heard the singing voices of the Glowers as if from a million miles away. Encouraging him, pushing him on, sending out their own power and mental strength to give him the will to accept it all.

“Yes, Rockson, yes. You must see it all.” He heard their voices in his brain in rippling harmony. Like a memory flying on the winds of the world. “See it—don’t turn away. This is the earth as it is. You must understand it all. For you are the man whose destiny it is to change things.” Their spirit filled him. And somehow in the midst of his visions of death and de-evolution came a new feeling. The spirit of the heart of man. It never stopped trying to survive. It glowed like a diamond, like the very core of the sun taking what is was given and trying to make it better. This was why it was all worth it. The soul of man itself. The mind, the greed—that was the poison. But the soul, the eternal essence of the human creature—this was the indestructible thing—more brilliant than the exploding supernovas that he could sense far above him, deeper then the oceans. He felt the purity, the nobleness of humanity, and it filled him with a glowing fire that he had never known.

Renewed, Rockson let himself drift back up to the skies, borne aloft by the winds, the heat rising from the sunbaked plains. Like an invisible balloon he floated back up into the thin reaches of the atmosphere. Ahead he saw the Russian jet piercing the dark heavens and somehow, without even knowing the power that enabled him to leap among the very molecules of space, he made his way back through the metal fibers of the craft. He saw his body seated, eyes closed, and entered back into it. Slowly his lids opened and he was back in himself. He felt his body again, and the weight of it took a few seconds to get used to—after the absolute freedom of the mind excursion.

Rock heard a sound at his side and turned. Archer was looking over at him with immense dark eyes beneath jet-black eyebrows. The huge man pointed to his mouth.

“Ungry,” he said, “Archer ungry.” Rockson let out a laugh that brought the guards to their feet. Life was ugly and it was beautiful. But it was also a joke. A humor beyond understanding.

Eleven

R
ock was surprised that there were no curtains on the windows of the twenty-foot-long sedan that carried them from the airport. He and Archer stared out the windows in fascination as they zoomed along a superhighway filled with traffic toward the Emerald City-like vista before them. Never had he imagined Moscow would look like this: two hundred-story skyscrapers with rapier tops, the sun glinting off the spires which seemed to pierce the low strontium-tinged clouds. But as they drew closer the vision tarnished. Instead of glitter he saw many of the windows of the huge buildings were broken, some of the towers partly in ruins. He noted rust marks down the sides of the smaller stone structures. The stench in the air began to rise—garbage and raw sewage flowing into the Volga River’s turbulent waters. The highway ran along the edge of the mighty river, passing groups of sullen workers carrying loads of firewood and produce on towering baskets balanced precariously on their heads. Then he gasped as did Archer. All along one section of the riverbank were crucifixes. Nailed on them were nearly naked men and women, most motionless and slumped forward, their hands and feet nailed tightly into the blood-soaked wood. Hundreds of them, with but a few still alive enough to gaze up at the passing car with unfathomable pain in their foggy eyes.

“Who are they?” Rockson asked one of the guards seated across from him, holding a pistol at the Doomsday Warrior’s chest.

The guard leered. “Dissidents—you know, social revisionists, artists, hooligans, gypsies.” He glanced out the window at the spread-eagled corpses. “No Americans today. That’s unusual—for often the women brought from your country for breeding revolt and kill their masters. Then they are—well. There are none now, for this is a special occasion. You are the premier’s special guest. You and your foul friend—and there will be no executions of American women until after you leave. Maybe never, I’ve heard rumors, if negotiations—but you will see, Ted Rockson. You will see.”

“Bastards!” Rock muttered under his breath.

Several miles off Rockson noticed a large dome rising from the flat land around it.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the futuristic structure.

“Classified,” the guard answered curtly. Then he added with a smirk, “It’s why we beat you Americans a hundred years ago. Our technology was more powerful than yours.” Rockson filed the information in his brain. He would have to try and find out more about the mysterious complex.

They drove through the crowded streets of Moscow at high speed, forcing pedestrians to leap out of the way of the speeding sleek black limo, red flags on the hood snapping crisply in the wind. Then they entered Red Square, filled with throngs of Russian sightseers. Rock gazed with fascination at the capital of the Soviet Empire: the high walls of the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Church with its bizarre, domed towers—a museum, no longer a church—and the tombs of Lenin and Drabkin, the premier who had ordered the strike on America, surrounded by elite color guard with rifles, frozen at attention as still as the dead.

They drove through an ornate iron gate at the Kremlin’s back wall and were quickly ushered inside, guards surrounding them, down a plush, spotless red carpet. The air was frigid, air-conditioned—not that it was hot outside—but for the smell that permeated everywhere in Moscow from the garbage-filled Volga.

“The premier will see you shortly,” said a white-tuxedoed black man who came up to them, moving gracefully across the vast marbled entrance room. His ebony intelligent face immediately struck Rockson.

“I am Ruwanda Rahallah, the premier’s aide and advisor. I welcome you to the Kremlin on his behalf. I trust you have been well treated since you were informed of the meeting.”

“Very,” Rock answered as Archer nodded, looking around for possible bowls of food. The two freefighters followed the elegantly dressed black man through a series of immense chandeliered rooms filled with wall murals of the revolution. Finally they came to a small book-lined room.

“The premier’s study,” Rahallah said softly. “Do make yourself comfortable, gentlemen. Perhaps some wine? Chateau Neuf de Pâpe ’78—that’s
1978,
gentlemen. Care to try some?”

Rockson nodded and they were poured generous glasses of an exquisitely fine wine over a century old. Archer gulped his down to the obvious distaste of the cultured Rahallah.

“A wine beyond price,” Rahallah said, gently admonishing his charges, “must be savored, tasted—not gulped.”