Doomsday Warrior 07 - American Defiance (2 page)

The second he could see sky, Rock rolled over onto his stomach and without sighting up pulled the trigger all the way back. The gun jerked in his hand like a python trying to escape. Only Rockson’s steel strength kept the mini-cannon from flying right into his face as it sent out a stream of shells, firing automatically every half second. Behind him Rock heard the crack of Rona’s Liberator in between the thunderous blasts of his own death dealer.

The first of the .12-gauge packets of shot spread out only an inch or so before making contact with the rear end of the lizard lion, which hadn’t even landed yet, as it had flown a good twelve feet past Rockson on its second abortive attack. Pieces of shot dug into the thick black leathery tail like teeth flying at the speed of light and gouged out a whole section of the two-hundred-pound, seven-foot long appendage, nearly severing it, so that it dangled by thick pulsing arteries that continued to send their streams of swamp-colored blood through the wide veins. The mutant predator let out a roar of pain which seemed to shake the very skies above, filled with a vast, slowly floating mosaic of green strontium clouds, changing, rearranging themselves constantly into soft, heavenly paintings. The second stream of whistling death caught the thing in the left thigh, ripping into the bone and tendons and exploding the leg off the creature in an eruption of blood and green scales. The third, fourth, and fifth shots tore into the thing’s side, and with one leg gone, it hobbled for a moment, unable to escape. The alloy shotgun pellets ripped into the mutation’s stomach and chest like a scythe splitting its whole side open. The two-inch-thick reptilian hide opened like bloody doors and the entire contents of the killer sprayed out in one whooshing wave. Organs, miles of arteries and muscle and nerve, bones, and skulls from the undigested food in the thing’s stomach and gallons upon gallons of blood splashed out in all directions as if fired from a cannon. Rockson covered his head and face as some of the revolting stew landed on his back and shoulders.

He waited a second and then opened his eyes, looking up. The thing was dead. Of that there was no doubt. It was barely recognizable as something that had once been alive, but looked more like a mass of green moss that had been covered with the ground-up remains of a whole forest of animals. Only the proud head still remained, atop the shattered hulk of the thing, the golden fur streaked along one side with bright red, the other side untouched, one eye still open, staring, too stupid, perhaps, to even know that it was dead.

The Doomsday Warrior stood up, brushing off the slime and pieces of organ with a look of infinite disgust on his face. The streak of white hair that ran down the center of his scalp—one of the signs of the true mutant, the
Homo Mutatiens,
as Dr. Shecter had designated them—was drenched bright red as if Rock’s own skull were oozing its life’s blood.

“Rock, jesus, are you all right?” Rona half screamed out as she ran over to his side. “Your head, it’s—it’s bleeding!” She put her hand over her mouth in horror as she stood just inches away from the man she loved, staring at him. Rock lifted the hand of his right arm, which was moving again, though still tingling with streaks of pain from the fall he had taken, and ran it through his hair.

“No, my brain’s still there,” Rock answered. “As much as I began with, anyway. It’s that thing’s lunch and dinner and every goddamned thing. It’s all over me.”

“Oh Rock,” she cried out, throwing herself toward him, wrapping her arms around the Doomsday Warrior. “I thought you were—were dead.”

“Shhh,” Rockson said, putting his fingers over her lips as he felt her firm melon breasts crushing against him, the warmth of her soft perfect body, enveloping him like a golden blanket. “Don’t ever talk about someone dying, my dear. It’s bad form. Gives death a chance to stick a word or two in itself.” He stepped back from her, taking her shoulders in his weathered hands, which were lined and baked and hammered like driftwood, floating, ever floating, as the waves of the world slowly, indelibly, etched a violent picture of life on them.

“Besides,” he continued with a smile, “you’re a descendant of the Great Wallender Trapeze Family—and I know that those brave people never talked about death on the high wire.”

“That’s why nearly half of them died,” Rona said with a quick pout, stepping away and mock-punching Rock’s face.

They both turned and looked down at the head of the dead beast sitting atop the red mess below it. It wore a somehow regal air, proud, uncowed. It had lived as it had died—in utter and pure violence—and perhaps that was its destiny. Those who live by the claw shall perish by the claw. The two Freefighters stepped through the death-swamp of red-and-green on the ground and walked up to the head, the one eye staring back, as cold and vacant as the vacuum of space. The saber teeth, two on each jaw, white as ivory and curving up nearly a yard, were awesome. With a ton-plus body weight behind those deadly tusks, the thing—alive—looked as if it could have taken on a tank—and bitten through it.

“You ever seen one of these fellas?” Rona asked, as she reached down and ran her hand along one of the smooth glistening saber teeth.

“Never,” the Doomsday Warrior answered, reloading his shotpistol, taking a full barrel-load and slamming it in—one of Shecter’s designs. The turn chamber was disposable and could hold seven shells of .12-gauge murder. When the last shot was fired, the pistol automatically ejected the magnesium/tungsten chamber, and Rock could slam in a new barrel within seconds. It had saved his life more times than the Freefighter liked to think about.

“They’re beautiful, Rona said softly, looking at the immense tusklike teeth from different angles. Then, with a look of fierce determination, she said, “I want one,” and whipped her tempered-steel hunting knife from its sheath at her side.

“Want what?” Rockson asked, as she bent over and began hacking away at the base of one of the upper saber teeth with the edge of the razor-sharp blade. Bits of bloody bone from the jaw flew out all around her like shavings from a saw.

“What the hell are you doing?” the Doomsday Warrior asked, his jaw half dropping open at the sight.

“I’m taking one of these teeth here,” Rona answered in a matter-of-fact voice. “It will look great on my wall—just like an elephant tusk. Oh, Rock,” she said excitedly, “it will be so beautiful next to my red bedspread.”

“Gimme a break,” Rockson muttered under his breath as her blood-splattered hand moved at lightning speed trying to uncover the root of the great tooth.

“Gimme a hand, would you, Rock dear?” Rona said in her most seductive little-girl tone. The Doomsday Warrior shuffled over to the female Freefighter, who had a somewhat mad look on her face as she cleaved into the thick gums and jaw of the dead beast like a novice butcher not quite sure which end is the rump and which is the ribs. Rockson put his thickly veined arms around the top of the yard-long incisor and pulled with all his might. Slowly, like a great tree unwilling to give up its roots, the tooth bent over and pulled free of the jawbone. With a sudden loud snap it ripped completely out, dangling red-coated tendrils and nerves. Rockson nearly fell backward, but jumped as he went and regained his balance. He reached forward with a bow and handed the mutation’s dental work to Rona, who took it with a smile.

She hoisted the nearly-seventy-pound tooth up onto her shoulder and began marching back toward their hunting camp about a half-mile away. Rock looked after her for nearly thirty seconds with one side of his mouth lifted up in a wry grin. Then he walked several yards and lifted the already skinned and filleted spotted elk they had shot before they had been attacked. Meat. Meat for the beleaguered Century City, nearly destroyed by a neutron bomb which, a month after the attack, was still reeling from the devastation as it dug itself from the rubble, salvaging whatever remained. Rock and Rona, one of fifty hunting expeditions, had been out for three days and accumulated close to five tons of meat, salted and loaded for transport on a pack of twenty hybrid horses, stronger, thicker, and more resistant to radiation than horses of the pre-War era. This had been their last trip out before heading home. They had nearly joined someone else’s meat-gathering foray.

As the two Freefighters walked off, small green scaled bodies peered cautiously from a hole between two large boulders. Hearing nothing, they grew bolder and dashed out. The young of the dead thing. Replicas in miniature of every aspect of her hideous being, down to their own small curved saber teeth, only inches long, that protruded from their light golden-haired faces. They walked over to the puddle of scales and lizard insides that had given birth to them and flicked their blue forked tongues in and out, tasting the air. Somewhere, mixed in with the stench of blood and death, was a familiar odor—but the raw sensation of so much meat and puddles of blood like sweet wine lying before them in a smorgasbord was too much to resist. Six of the little beasts, the largest only two feet long and about fifty pounds, dug into the bloody swamp. They opened their jaws wide, running them along the blood-soaked dirt, collecting everything before them like a vacuum cleaner. Back and forth they went, sucking in the reptile pudding, swallowing gallons of the stuff. The ate until they couldn’t move and then collapsed near each other, forming a little circle. They fell asleep, ugly heads resting on equally ugly bodies, wondering dimly in their peanut-sized brains when the Feeder would return. But their dark red dreams quickly overtook any budding thoughts as they lost consciousness, lying in the fly-covered slop that had once been their mother.

Two

T
he shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But not in the Colorado Rockies. The snow-covered peaks rose high into the pinkish-tinged sky as if trying to spear one of the dark cumulus clouds that swam by, making straight line walking impossible. A soft green blanket of fir trees covered the slopes, their branches filled with the odd life forms of Post-Nuke America. Hummingbirds with razor-sharp beaks, three-winged owls with long curved talons, hordes of chattering squirrels with mottled black-and-white-dotted fur and spiked tails, armor-plated skunks, single-horned elk with straight spikes rising up eight feet from their skulls—bringing back to life the long-dead mythical unicorn. Everywhere in these mountains life abounded in all its bizarre variety as the earth’s damaged ecology tried to create a new balance, a new harmony among its mutated species.

Down these steep sharp-pebbled slopes, moving along narrow trails barely wide enough for an ant, two humans marched slowly, followed by their pack team of twenty hybrids. From the towering peaks high above them, they looked like little more than insects. Mere dots hardly discernible in the panoramic range of granite mountains that stretched off in every direction, competing with the heavens above for room to stretch their raised stone arms.

Only when one soared closer, as if looking through the eyes of a hawk swooping down from its cloud-shrouded nest, did one see the face of the man who led the team. There was something about the face, something different from other men. Perhaps the eyes. Eyes in which one could see no fear. Not a trace, not a glimmer. Eyes that had loved and knew love, but now as they surveyed the trail, the thousand-foot drop below, and the sky above, were as clear and cold as a panther’s, a snake’s. Eyes of pure perception unclouded by the neuroses, the fears, the trembling nightmares of twentieth-century man. For those alive in 2089
A.D.
lived
the nightmare. Every second it threatened to strike out of nowhere. One had to be able to react with the speed of a striking snake, the strength of a cat, to live.

As Ted Rockson walked along, carefully placing one foot in front of the other, letting his weight sink, never faltering, down the winding 45-degree trail—he
was
the world. He existed in a state of perfect harmony with it, sensing, reflecting every branch that snapped above him, every scurry of chameleon lizard into its hole in the mountainside, every nuance and subtle shading of life and motion around him. He was a mirror of existence—in a state of perfect warrior enlightenment.

“Rock, I’m getting tired,” Rona shouted from about twenty yards behind on the trail, where she took up the rear of the hybrid horse team. The ’brids frantically tried to keep their balance on the narrow trail, piled high as they were with the freshly killed carcasses of elk and deer. They bayed constantly in whining horn-like choruses, protesting their labors. “And these damned ’brids,” she continued, “are shouting up such a storm back here they’re spraying me with their goddamned spittle. When the hell do we stop?” she whined, joining in the bray of the beasts.

Rockson was wrenched from his mental communion with the mountain and its life forms by the female Freefighter’s disgruntled words. He had tremendous respect for her as a fighter—he had seen her wade right into the thick of it with Red troops and send them flying. Her years of martial arts training with Chen, the instructor of fighting arts back in Century City, had made her the equal of most men—if not their better. Except for Rockson. Whatever move she tried on him, whatever clever trick she had thought up—somehow he just wasn’t there when she attacked. Maybe that was why she loved him. And though he thought that perhaps sometimes he might love her, her frequent lapses into childish histrionics, particularly in the middle of the most impossible situations, made him want to put her right over his knee and spank some sense into her. The Post-Nuke world was not a place to play games in, or sink into infantilism.

“Rona,” the Doomsday Warrior said with sarcasm dripping from his lips, “great idea. Why don’t we just stop here and camp for the night? This foot-and-a-half-wide trail is plenty of room to set up some tents, tether the ’brids, and cook up a—”

“Oh shut up, Mr. Know-It-Fucking-All,” Rona yelled loudly, slamming her hands against her hips in a fury of frustration. The sound merely pushed the team of hybrid horses into increased paroxysms of fear and panic. The animal—and human—howls continued nonstop for nearly an hour, until they reached the bottom of the mountain and hit a relatively flat plateau that stretched on for several miles.