Doomsday Warrior 08 - American Glory (7 page)

“Come on, Eisenhower,” Jed yelled to the hybrid. It had large hooves, as wide as dinner plates, and fur that covered them like those of some prehistoric mastadon or equivalent shaggy mammal of the Ice Ages. “We got a long way to go, fellow,” Jed said, “and no time to do it in.” After years of riding together, Jed swore that the animal could hear and understand him. They had an almost telepathic relationship, as many men and their animals do who’ve been through hell and back together. He could tell when the steed was tired, strong, thirsty, or just plain pissed off and ornery. And today, it was the last. For ’brids, like their human masters, had moods as varied as the terrain they rode across—and it was vital that Jed understood them—and could use them to his advantage. Today, he knew that Eisenhower was mean. He had that wide-eyed look, that frisky bounce to his stride that Jed knew meant the creature was feeling its oats—probably thinking about some sweet mare that it wouldn’t have minded spending a few passionate hours with. But Jed would use that energy. For like all living creatures, the animal’s sexuality was the motor that drove it, and it could be channeled to other functions if one just knew how.

“Come on, boy, go, go,” Jed said, leaning so close against the ’brid’s side that he could feel its blood pumping, its iron-hard muscles pounding and coiling as it slammed its steel-shod hooves down on the parched prairie ground. He knew the ’brid’s horniness gave it that extra strength, that electric energy that meant it could go and go fast. The landscape shot by them in a blur of sand and cacti as the Pony Express rider held on for dear life, keeping the reins loose and his legs tight as steel clamps around the sides of the speeding behemoth.

The sun tumbled from the sky in a bloody red mess and collapsed behind some far mountains as its silky white compatriot, the full moon, all decked out in her shining crater-pearls, rose into the rad-violet sky to take its place. Night was upon them in a flash as the sky grew as black as the bottom of the sea and a trillion speckles of silver paint splashed across night’s ceiling. Tumbleweed blew across the flatlands like bubbles as the cool night wind whistled out the lonely song of the desert. Jed loved it out here. He wasn’t meant to be around people, never was no good with women. But give him a fast ’brid, lots of ammo, and a wad of good chewing tobacco, and he came alive. Out here in the middle of nowhere with not a soul around, Red or American. Only him, the ’brid, the vast curve of the earth, and the moon lighting the way with a beacon of purest white, just for him.

They rode for hours, nothing changing, nothing seeming to grow closer or farther away. If he hadn’t actually known that they were in fact tearing ass at a good 35mph, Jed would have sworn he and Eisenhower were mounted on one of them treadmills a farmer showed him once—used rats running inside, chasing food, to turn a small generator and light up his whole barn. But all that modern technology was too much for the Pony Express man. He fell into the trance of the long-distance rider, blending with the stars and the sands around him until he couldn’t tell where he began and they left off. But he never tired or fell asleep. Not for a second. His eyes were wide open, his ears, all his senses reaching out to encompass every shadow, every howl in the dark. This was what he had been born for—and would die doing.

The ’brid suddenly slowed slightly and turned its head up and around toward him, moving its oversized lips furiously.

“Thirsty boy, huh?” Jed whispered in the animal’s ear. “Yeah, you deserve a break.” He sat up and scouted the terrain ahead for any signs of danger. There were no trees or hollows for predators to hide behind—just a few low moonlit hills off to the right—but he didn’t see a living thing on them. He pulled the reins back slowly, patting the ’brid on the side.

“Whoa boy, whoa. You’ll get your drink.” The hybrid came to a complete stop and flung its head around from side to side, spittle flying out in a spiraling spray. Jed laughed at the animal’s expression of thirst and jumped down from the saddle, grabbing one of five large gourds he had tied around the top of the ’brid’s back where a whole array of supplies hung precariously from ropes and bags, somehow never quite falling off. Jed walked to the front of the towering creature and pulled the wide top off the gourd, holding the cool gallon of spring water up to Eisenhower’s lips. It plunged in, slobbering half of it off in every direction as it attacked the gourd with a tongue the size of a first baseman’s mitt. It got only half of the liquid down its gullet, but looked satisfied nonetheless. The big head arched around toward Jed and licked him along the face from neck to scalp, leaving the side drenched.

“No, dagnabbit—you can’t get your oats now. When we get to Foster Station—then you can eat like a pig. But this is it, pal, and I ain’t eating either. And you know
I
like to eat. So we’re in this together. Understand?” The ’brid whipped its head around the other way in disgust and stood there, obviously pissed off.

Jed had put one foot up in the stirrup when he heard the noise. A low growling sound with a teeth-snapping edge to it that the Pony Express rider didn’t like one bit. It was a carnivore—and it had him sighted.

“Easy boy, easy,” Jed whispered, continuing to rise up toward the saddle, but slowly, very slowly. At the same time, he reached around with his right hand and pulled one of the three rifles slung around his shoulder forward. By the time he was fully mounted on the ’brid, he had the hunting rifle under his arm, finger on the trigger. Jed kicked the ’brid in the sides with both boots and the animal started slowly forward, looking nervously over in the direction of the sound.

Suddenly it came again, but ten times louder—and attached to the hideous scream of hunger—the thing that had made it. Jed’s eyes open wide in disbelief. He’d seen everything in his years of riding the Express—saber-toothed mountain lions as big as bears, snakes with wings, packs of rats that stretched off to the horizon. But he’d never seen a mutation like this. It had no face—or rather, it was all mouth. A row of jagged spiked teeth stretched from just below the ears, all the way across the bottom of the head. Hundreds of teeth in a set of jaws that looked like they could chomp a watermelon in half. Humanoid in shape, the thing’s body was at least seven feet tall with legs the size of tree stumps, dark purple in color, and with arms as long and strong as a gorilla’s with curving claws at the ends.

It came at Jed from about a hundred feet away, moving at amazing speed for a thing with its size and bulk. Jed knew he couldn’t get the ’brid up to full speed in the semi-darkness with rocks around before the thing would catch them. They’d have to duke it out. He pulled the dusty Browning .8mm up to his shoulder and fired at the monstrosity, which howled as the slug caught it just beneath the shoulder—but it kept on coming.

“Oh shit,” Jed muttered into the rising wind. He pulled the trigger again and again, sighting up the thing’s head since its chest seemed impenetrable, covered with a thick leathery hide. The ’brid was rearing back now, unable to contain its fear any longer. But Jed hung on and kept shooting. Just ten feet from them, the thing stopped in its tracks, its head bleeding in torrents from the top of the skull. It let out a loud gurgling sound and toppled straight over toward them, its claws—which looked as if they could pluck a heart from a man—falling only inches short of the ’brid’s hooves.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jed shouted, turning the hybrid around and heading east again. But they’d gotten only fifty feet or so when more shapes emerged from the surrounding low rocks as if they were coming right up out of the earth. Jed saw one, then another—and within seconds a dozen of them, all as ugly as their deceased pal, all with the same thresher mouths, burning silver eyes, bright and wide as a cat’s, staring at him—at his flesh—their teeth dripping with foul saliva.

“You ain’t eating this Pony-Man,” Jed screamed at the advancing line of carnivorous mutants. “You can forget all about that shit.” He patted the ’brid softly. “Boy, you do this for me and I’m going to give you a whole bushel of applemelons—you hear me?” The ’brid had stopped in its tracks and was pacing nervously, slamming its front right hoof down on the hard-packed ground as if declaring its strength, its right to go ahead, to the approaching nightmares. “That’s right—you and me—we’re going to get outta this thing.” He pulled both of the other rifles around front so he was cradling two under his left arm and one under his right, which also held the reins.

“Go, boy, run like your goddamned hairy ass never run before!” He kicked the animal hard in the sides and let out with a wild rebel yell, the kind his dad had taught him—a vocal vestige of pre-war days.

Eisenhower stood up on its hind legs and pushed its forelegs toward the meateaters like a boxer, ready to draw blood. Then it came down and shot forward, accelerating like a missile. The dozen or so surrounding mutations rushed at them from all sides, their claws slashing at the blur, their fangs snapping wildly at the air like meat grinders ready to pulverize anything. Holding himself atop the weaving back by squeezing his legs as tight as he could against the ’brid’s side, Jed fired all three of his rifles at once. Two of the attackers fell to the ground moaning, as a third kept coming—but with the whole side of its face missing as if it had just dropped off. Claws dug in along the hybrid’s flank and Jed felt a stabbing pain in his right thigh as a row of six-inch daggers sliced along his side like a carving knife into Thanksgiving turkey. But the ’brid just kept going as if nothing was there and suddenly they were past them.

“Good, good boy,” Jed laughed out loud, rubbing the hybrid’s ear furiously. He slung all three weapons back around his shoulder with one toss and grabbed hold of the reins, leaning forward again around the animal’s shoulder to protect himself from the now-freezing midnight winds. With much of the protection of the atmosphere gone now, burnt away by radioactive acids, the nights were much colder in America. It was as if the dark seas of space itself fell onto the earth at night, chilling it to the very granite marrow of its bones. But protected by the golden mane and the wide neck of the hybrid which shielded him from the wind, and wrapped up in five layers of longjohns, shirts, feather vest, and beaver coat, he figured he was ready for everything, including the next Ice Age.

They rode through the night, Eisenhower flying along as the animal found its perfect pace. The encounter with the maneaters had, if anything, pumped some adrenaline into its system and it galloped in a perfect synchronization of legs and breath. Puffs of frosty smoke blew from its mouth and nose like the mechanized releases of a factory. Even through his clothes Jed could feel the immense amount of heat the beast was generating through its efforts. The stars moved slowly like weary travelers searching for but never finding a home to rest in along the lonely reaches of the galactic highway. The moon sank to its bed, tired, ready to curl into a fetal ball in the black blankets of Mother Earth. And then the sun inched into the sky, bright and ruddy, promising the world the warmth of a new day.

But Jed felt a sensation other than heat—a pain in his leg—and in his guts. He hadn’t stopped to check the wound he’d suffered from the claws of the “big mouth,” and the ’brid hadn’t complained. But now—now the leg felt—strange. Within seconds of the initial burning sensation of pain, Jed’s eyes grew unfocused, his head soft and confused. What was happening? Poison—somehow the thing had released a poison into him. He tried to stop the ’brid, reaching forward for the reins, but felt his limbs become paralyzed, his muscles tight as steel cables. The last thing he remembered was his face falling into the soft golden mane of Eisenhower.

The hybrid knew something was wrong. Master was still, hadn’t moved for hours. The animal felt the edges of a numbness in its body—the poison injected from the hollow claws of the unhumans—but its powerful system, able to take just about anything that nature had to offer, kept on ticking. It slowed to a medium trot, keeping its body as straight as possible so that Master wouldn’t fall. It couldn’t help him, give him water, minister to him in any way; dimly it knew that. It had only an instinct—to get to the next Pony Express station some fifty miles ahead. This was the most treacherous part of their journey—earthquake chasms as easy to fall into as a pool of quicksand. But it had traveled the route for as long as it could remember, and the highly intelligent animal knew the ground by heart. It moved on, carrying the unconscious rider as carefully as a load of eggs.

There—the stream. It always felt happy at the stream, for there was clear pure water and it meant that the desert part of their trip was over. It stopped by the banks of the rambling trout-filled cascade and carefully lowered its head, inch by inch, making sure that the Master didn’t tumble headfirst into the wetness. It drank, long and hard, letting the water chill its long throat, pour down into its stomach until it felt almost bloated. At last it stopped and raised its head high as if acknowledging the noonday sun. It was hungry, starving. But there would be food later. It had to move on.

Two hours later, it recognized the start of the winding rocky trail that led over the edges of an ancient A-bomb crater—a contender for title of heavyweight atomic crater of the world at twenty megatons. It had a mouth as big as a primeval volcano, nearly two miles wide with steeply sloping sides that rose up half a mile into the air. The ’brid carefully made its way around the side of the war mountain, rising higher and higher along the man-made trail. At first the going was easy, but as it rose into the sky the narrow path grew steeper and rockier until every step was tricky. The ’brid remembered that once it had almost fallen down the side of this crater. It had come too near the edge of the yard-wide trail and its hind leg had gone off the side, releasing a mini-avalanche of rocks and debris down the slope below it. But somehow, with Master pulling and the animal frantically clawing with its other three legs, it had gotten itself back up. The memory glowed as if branded into its brain.

At last it reached the summit and turned around for a moment on the rimwall, surveying the land they had traveled across. Jed always did it—and now the hybrid did it as well, from habit. Then it started across the wide lip of the crater, where all sorts of small flowers grew and birds had chosen to build their nests. The feathered creatures put up a chirping chorus of indignation and alarm as the giant passed through their twig-and-straw condo’s. It walked the craters edge, reached the other side just as the sun hit the horizon and started down.