Doomsday Warrior 11 - American Eden (19 page)

“Use whatever level of violence the situation demands. No more. If you must use the disintegrators, use low power. Don’t entirely burn them up. There must be enough left to torture, and to display in the Square.”

Bdos Err saluted smartly, and he and his grim companions in terror exited the apartments.

Stafford was now restless. He would not return to the steam; instead he had Mannerly hand him his tunic. He put it on and went into the entertainment area.

No one in Eden lived as well as Stafford. No one had a steam bath, an entertainment area, or the other amenities. But then again, no one else had the
guts
to seize power and
take
what he wanted, Stafford mused.

He sat down in a lounge chair in the artificial wood-paneled room and pressed a button activating the wide screen. The lights, sound, and action of a Hollywood movie of the 1980s swept across the screen.
The Night of the Grizzly
, his favorite movie began again. He had seen it 102 times.

He leaned back to watch the dangerous creatures of the surface walk again, terrorizing and tearing flesh.

To think that these creatures existed even before the nuke war. What hideous things Danik must have seen, what terror must have driven him back into the arms of his executioner now, in this age of mutations above. Yes, the surface had been dangerous even before the radiation mutated the creatures into more hellish forms. These movies proved it.

He wondered now, a look of concern crossing his face. Were those footsteps that Bdos Err had told him of
human?
Or were they . . .
monsters
from the surface world?

Rockson and his group came stumbling out of the narrow fissure into brilliant, whitish sunlight. At first Rockson thought somehow they had returned to the surface, but then he saw the reeds waving in the cool winds from the cavern behind them. They were green, and so were the lily pads, with their multicolor lotus flowers.

It was winter, and even at this latitude, the plant life was all dead on the surface. Another tip-off was the sun above—it had a paleness, an unhealthy quality, that the real sun never had. It was a lithium-boron flame. Burns for a thousand years . . . The air smelled stale and malodorous, like a closed tomb. That’s what Eden was—a closed tomb.

“We must be in Eden. Pretty foul smelling.” Rock stated. His eyes were adjusting to the harsh artificial sunlight. The others commented upon the foul air—and the restrained sunlight also. Rona said, “Why, if the hole into the caverns didn’t exist, they would have suffocated here.”

“Long as the air’s breathable,” Detroit said as a way of breaking through the delay, “let’s get going.”

Danik said. “You’re right, I know the area ahead well, it’s a shallow lake; we can wade along in the reeds till we reach the flowerbeds. Then we can filter into town, and contact my friends, plan our attack.”

Rockson, favoring his injured leg, turned to look back where they had come out of the fissure. It was almost invisible at this angle. Just the flutter of the grass near what appeared to be a solid rock wall gave any indication of the hole. No wonder so few in Eden knew of it.

Bdos Err had kept his men quiet and low in the barge for a half hour. And his patience and stealth was rewarded. The sounds of men wading, rippling the water in the reeds not far off. He knew he had his catch. And better still, the fish were walking right into the fisherman’s lap.

“Halt, and don’t move for your weapons,” he said, rising and pointing his disintegrator forward. His soldiers, scattered about the reeds up to their knees in the waters, did likewise. Twenty disintegrators leveled on the seven strangely garbed intruders—before they could raise their odd weapons.

The intruders, a strange lot, stood there in the waist-deep waters. Danik was among them, but these others—they were not the dissenters he had expected to catch. They were bizzarely appareled men of strong physique not unlike his own. And there was a tall woman among them, a woman who put the women of Eden to shame in her strong beauty.

“Stafford’s elite guard,” Danik exclaimed, a note of hopelessness in his strained voice. He was soon cringing behind the Rockson. “We have come so far and now we are doomed, Rockson. Those are disintegrators they are brandishing.”

“We are not dead yet,” Rockson snapped, and in the Anasazi language, he muttered to Detroit Green, who stood nearest to the Doomsday Warrior. “Well that saves us the trouble of finding Stafford—as I hoped.”

Detroit nodded slightly.

They made no move for their weapons. Bdos sent some men wading to disarm them while the rest kept watch, their disintegrators poised. Bdos kept a careful eye on the one with the white streak through his dark mane of hair. He stood so straight, he had
bearing
. The bearing of a warrior. He wondered if the man would surrender his odd weapon—a long-barreled ancient-style pistol. If not, Bdos Err would take the man’s holster off with his bullwhip.

Once they were disarmed, the commander of the guard ordered that they be tied by their elbows behind their backs.

While this was done, Nunchaku-man came up alongside his leader in the barge and whispered. “Are they surface people? They look somewhat like us.”

“Maybe looks are deceiving,” said Bdos. “Maybe they look like us but are monsters underneath.” That comment brought a grin to the tall multi-scarred face next to him. “Maybe they can take more torture than our citizens—maybe they will last longer. Their eyes are strange . . . especially that one with the white streak through his hair. And that woman—have you ever seen such a tall woman—of such coloring? Maybe they are humanoid, but they are not human.

“Keep your weapons accurately aimed, men,” Bdos ordered as the prisoners were helped aboard the barge.

Twenty-Three

T
he barge motor was turned on and the flat wide boat that had lain hidden in the reeds slowly moved out low in the water, carrying its prisoners back to Eden City. Rockson and the tall muscled bald man who was the leader of the Civil Guard, the man they called Bdos Err, had a sort of staring contest. Rockson sensed the man was not like his two henchmen. No, this Bdos Err had some sort of nobility. What was it? A sense of purpose? What purpose could an intelligent man have in serving a mad dictator? No, it wasn’t purpose he saw in the burly man wearing the metal armor. It was—duty. Yes, duty propelled this man. Not avarice, or cunning, but simply duty. The perfect soldier—obeys orders. Obeys anyone in authority, even the mad. Even to commit atrocities if so ordered.

Rockson spent less time on the two henchmen. The one they called Nunchaku-man was of an estimable height, and like his boss, the man appeared well muscled and alert. But that half-grin he wore, the curl of those lips under that long twisted black moustache . . . Sadism, pure and simple. He was in his position because he was terror incarnate. Men who would not fear Bdos, despite the man’s power and his blind obedience, feared the wrath of Nunchaku-man.

And at the stubby bow of the barge, his face to the warm foul wind, stood Dedman. Dedman—what an apt name for the gray-faced expressionless killer with the sword stuck jauntily into his scabbard. He held that long metal spear of his—Rock noted the bit of dried red on its tip—as if it were a part of his physique. He had a rigid posture; his eyes were like that of an automaton.

Danik whispered information about the three Civil Guards. They were raised in an abnormal way—the result of genetic experiments, they had been created
in vitro
, in petri dish fertilization. They had been kept by machines, fed intravenously for ten years, fed a special vitamin formula that made them stronger than all the others of Eden. All the others in the experiment had died but these three. They’d been taught the arts of death by an old man, the last of his warrior class, some dozen years ago.

Rockson paid scant attention to the rest of the thin crew that had disarmed and bound him and his friends. They would be nothing without their disintegrator sidearms. And probably not very good with the weapons, either. The three leaders showed their disdain for the lower ranks by not carrying any modern weapons. If there was a showdown, the coiled bullwhip of Bdos Err and the nunchaku and the sword and spear of his henchmen would be the difficulty.

The water vessel approached the docks now. Before Rockson, in a chemical-brown smog of stale air, stood the oddest city Rockson had ever encountered in all his journeys. It was so damned squalid. Sooty five- or six-story buildings, totally devoid of adornment; featureless, storeless streets perfectly perpendicular to one another.

The gray-brown buildings seemed to eat up the faint artificial sunlight that poured down from above. No building, as far as Rock could see from the barge, had any design or style except the geometric—cubes, triangles, pentagons. The building blocks must have been cut from gray basalt or like volcanic rock. And built according to some simple, unimaginative, functional formula.

No, that wasn’t
quite
true . . . Rockson saw, at the far side of the cavern-city about five hundred yards down the broad main avenue, a taller building. A seven-story job. The other buildings in the city had no glass; this one seemed to be made
entirely
of black glass. It glimmered bleakly in the eternal sunlight.

The broad avenue leading to it filled with activity. From the hidden side streets poured a crowd of squat, pale, listless people. They headed toward the docks, not with excitement, which would be the expected response, but with a measured, almost parade-like cadence. When they reached the concrete abutment bordering the landing area, they stood about looking at the strange doings with almost-glassed colorless eyes. Most were of the short variety, the common mold of Edenites, Rockson saw. But some were tall and ungainly slender, with pink eyes like Danik’s. This was a dismal group.

They were summarily unloaded, their captors herding them soundlessly up the ramp. The crowd of onlookers parted to allow them to be marched down the broad avenue toward what, Rockson supposed, was Stafford’s Government Building. The edifice at the end of the avenue.

As they approached Stafford’s headquarters, Rock felt that this particular building seemed to exude evil from its volcanic-glass bricks. Its stolid structure glinted ominously, absorbing and bending the unhealthy “sun’s” light.

The leader of the Freefighters could see himself and the others twisting and turning grotesquely in the poorly cut glassy stone walls of the building. They were paraded around to the rear, and up to the wide staircase entrance. The stairs were high. and entered the building halfway up. An odd thing, Rockson thought. Perhaps it was done to intimidate. This structure
was
intimidating.

They were urged along with the disintegrators at their backs, told to ascend the long staircase. Each Freefighter had his own guard holding him.

There was no bannister, and by the time one reached the open doorway it was a bone-breaking drop on both sides of the stairs. Rockson considered that he could easily shove his particular guard off the precipitous topmost step and manage to land upon him, but what would that avail him? More Civil Guards stood below with their disintegrators leveled. The city was an armed camp. No, best to wait—for a better time to make a move. Though he didn’t know how he would manage, with the elbows-together, awkward way he was bound. It hurt. His circulation was being cut off. Plus, he still favored one leg.

Into the circular chamber of the black cube building strode the captors and their charges. A crowd of gray-robed short men—dressed somewhat, Rockson thought, like Roman senators—were milling about the large chamber. They noted the new arrivals well, and then reset their eyes upon the center of the room.

Bdos Err pushed himself through the crowd of “senators”, who were truly eager to give the metal-wearing giant the right of way.

The milling robed crowd became hushed. Rockson could see the man seated in a black onyx glass chair at the center of the room now. Stafford. He wore a big gray-jewel ring on each of his fat fingers, his hair was short and sparse and combed forward—a bit like Nero. He was flabby under that blue tunic, Rockson guessed. At first Rockson thought he was old, but then he realized it was just the thinning hair color and his grayish pallor. The man could be just in his thirties, judging by the smooth skin of his flaccid, unwrinkled face. An unhealthy man. And sick men in power do sick things. His gray eyes were unfocused.

“Sir,” Bdos Err reported, saluting smartly, his left hand crossing his chest of metal. “We have apprehended Danik’s party as they came into our paradise.”

Stafford smiled. “Wonderful. Wonderful. Bring them forth.”

Bdos snapped out rapid orders, and the Freefighters, with Danik in front, were brought before the chair and lined up so that Stafford could view them. “What’s this?” Stafford said, rising from his black chair in surprise. “Who are these people? They are most strange . . .” He rubbed his chin, stepping over to Danik. Stafford put his face near the tall albino and said, “Danik, what manner of beings have you brought back with you from the surface? Some sort of radiation mutations, no doubt. Eh?”

“These are my friends,” Danik said. “And they are proof that the surface world is livable. And not only livable, a paradise of light and color and fresh air.”

“Heresy,”
someone muttered, and then a chant went up among the senators, “Heresy, heresy, heresy . . .”

Stafford waved his hand in the air, and the chant subsided.

“Well, well. Friends, you say? Let me look these odd mutants over for a moment.” Stafford walked slowly down the line as if he were reviewing an honor guard, as if he were going to say, “Tighten that collar, mister; straighten your posture, recruit.”

But he paused an extra long time when he reached Rona. He looked her up and down. Not with sexual desire, but with curiosity.

“A woman of the surface? Indeed, she is too well built for a woman. She is definitely a mutant.”

Then Stafford came to Rockson. “Mismatched eyes, huh.” Stafford commented. “And a white streak in your hair. My, my, another mutant.” He lifted his flaccid many-ringed hand and pressed a finger to Rockson’s chin. Rockson twisted his face to the side. Stafford smiled. “And a spunky mutant at that, eh?”