Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style (16 page)

The big truck suddenly lurched forward like a bear darting out of a cave, and Rock could hear human and animal protests right through the steel walls of the cabin behind him. But then Scheransky settled down and they started down the highway, as he smoothly accelerated the truck from ten to twenty to thirty . . . They had been lucky, damned lucky. The diesel had been carrying nerve-gas cannisters—not that there were any left, they had all been deposited back at the depot for later shipment. Now it was empty—except for Rock’s men. And the insignia, the huge, red CCCP danger signs on each side of the truck gave them top priority on all roadways. And, according to the Russian defector—the privilege of not even having to stop at checkpoints!

“You’ll see,” Scheransky said, digging with his finger at the collar of the previous driver’s shirt, which was about three sizes too small. Rock, on the other hand, was engulfed in the obese Red’s jacket—it seemed to hang on him like a tent. “You’ll see—we’ll be able to breeze through the posts and be in your Washingtonski before you can say ‘the hair on Lenin’s balls.’ ” Scheransky laughed and the truck darted forward.

And sure enough, after they had traveled a good hundred miles on the wide highway, passing vehicles coming the other way every now and then, they came to a checkpoint with steel gate, machine-gun posts and a shitload of troopers—and Scheransky’s prediction proved to be true. The Reds at the gate opened the closed barrier as they saw the truck approach, and stepped out of the way so it could tear ass through without even having to give papers.

Once they were actually on the other side and moving away fast, and Rock had leaned around and looked out the mirror of his window—and saw that no guards were in fact actually pursuing them—did he relax enough to take his hand off the butt of his .12 gauge death-dealer.

“It’s just common sense, Rock,” Scheransky said. “They’re just men like me and you—well, like me, anyway,” he grinned, as the team was always teasing Rock about being a full mutant and somewhat “different” from the rest of them. “Aside from the fact that we have ‘Priority Transit’ markings on the truck, they also know it’s nerve gas. And for all they know, some of the shit is still lingering around. They’re just protecting their own asses.”

And that was that. The truck just kept going. Rockson’s plan was working out even better than he had hoped. He settled back in the leather seat and took a look out the window at the landscape that was left of America as the ribbon of highway snaked its way across the belly of the country.

Through Illinois, and what was left of the once-great industrial state. Not much. Her factories were all silent, chimneys that had once poured out smoke as mankind produced great machines and devices—all were silent now; dead. Only huts and little primitive towns could be seen here and there, far from the highway. Rusted cars and factories, their outer flesh of brick and mortar gone now, so that their rotting skeletons of steel inside could be seen for miles. Like great dinosaurs they were, ancient, dead, devoid of meaning any longer, other than to historians, to those who probed the past. But this past would never return.

Rock was just as glad to be out of the state, which he noted with the sign they passed: WELCOME TO KENTUCKY, THE HORSE STATE. The sign was old, faded, but somehow it stood, alongside the road, a remnant of an old world, and a new world where normal horses didn’t even exist anymore. Here, the land seemed to have reverted to extremely primitive conditions, almost junglelike in many places. Kentucky had always been a fairly lush and forested state, with its closely trimmed meadows and its stately mansions. It was all gone now, eaten away by the encroaching jungle-like woods, vines and weeds. For the state had grown a few degrees warmer on an annual basis, as well as receiving more rainfall. The mansions which had been overrun with creepers, were now a twisted chaos of vines and thorns. The place looked like one might see a stegosaurus or some close relative come marching out of the flora at any moment. And Rock, in spite of himself, felt his hand edging unconsciously back down toward his .12 gauge.

Every four or five hours they would come to another checkpoint, and though trucks and cars were all stopped along the sides—guards checking ID and travel papers—Rock and Scheransky were just waved on through—and they waved back, their faces bent forward so that their large Red Army hats completely overshadowed their features. In eastern Kentucky they came to what was an attempt by the Reds to get small farmers going again. For along the highway they could see men in white outfits, white hats, to protect them from the ultraviolet rays of the sun that now poured down on the earth, thanks to the depletion of the ozone layer that had once protected her. But though they looked like they had worked their asses off—as long rows of dirt had been plowed off to the horizon in every direction—there wasn’t a hell of a lot growing anywhere. The dashboard geiger counter clicked slowly. Radiation.
Still.

They just kept on going, the countryside moving like the blur of a fan as Rock lost track of where the hell they were. Scheransky seemed okay, so he didn’t hassle him about taking a break. If the man could keep it up—let him. Likewise—no screams or banging on the cabin to have them stop from the men in the rear. Whatever “elimination” problems the men and hybrids might have, apparently they had been able to figure out a way to deal with them.

By the next morning, two days after they had hijacked the truck, they were at the outskirts of West Virginia and Rock checked the map again. They were making incredible time. He was ahead of the schedule he had set for himself to do some reconnoitering before attending the D.C. conference—if he did attend at all.

West Virginia had been hit hard with nukes. Whether the Russians had hoped to dig up a shitload of coal and harvest it by dumping a few dozen warheads around—or whether they had just gone off course—who knew? But the poor state of West Virginia looked like something on the dark side of the moon. The inhabitants who he saw occasionally peering from behind hovels or atop hills were extremely primitive—with long, shaggy hair and animal-hide clothes that scarcely looked as if they would stay on. Again Rock felt a deep disgust well up inside of him as he witnessed what had happened to his fellow countrymen. Damn the bastards back in 1989 who had started World War III!

They drove hard down I-70 as a dust storm rose up out of nowhere and swept across the highway. It obscured their vision, so Scheransky was forced to slow to about twenty, but they were able to keep on. Both men rolled up their windows as the stuff was gritty, cutting. But even so, some managed to get inside and soon they could feel themselves itching all over as the myriad grains of dust circulated through every bit of their clothing.

But at last the storm passed and they were into Virginia, just a few hundred miles from the capital. Here the Russians had put some time and money into preserving the state, probably because they knew that all the bureaucrats who ran things from D.C. would want to live out in the suburbs, as their predecessors had. With their little lawns and driveways. Everything had been preserved, even a mansion or two, pulled far back on rolling acres of land. Pink flamingos and black stable boy statues stood firmly rooted in the fronts of many of the houses. Why, one could have come suddenly from out of the last century and felt right at home here in Virginia, the state for lovers.

Fifteen

K
illov stood alongside Dhul Qarnain in the bridge as the oil tanker moved slowly out of the Chesapeake Bay and up into the Potomac. The KGB colonel didn’t like the fact that the Arab was taller than he was, much stronger as well. He appeared a vision in his white robe, his stern messianic face. Killov knew he was a mere scarecrow of a thing compared to the fierce fighter. When Killov had had power, had run the Blackshirts in America, his size had meant nothing. Power had flowed from his every pore then. But now—except for Qarnain and his fanatical followers—Killov was virtually without forces. Thus he felt more vulnerable, more insecure than ever. So, although he would talk to Qarnain out of the corner of his mouth, he wouldn’t look at the man.

Hidden behind his dark sunglasses, for his eyes had become sensitive to light in his travels over the last few years, Killov stared out the window at the waterway ahead of them as he popped a few more pink and then green pills, swallowing them down with vegetable juice. He gulped hard, as if barely able to get the load through his constricted throat, and then burped. He thought he might throw it all up again, so tense was his stomach now that they were actually entering the very jaws of the enemy. But in several minutes the warm glow of the Darphein painkiller, and the tranquilizing effect of the Thaliums he took, hit the KGB colonel full force and a satisfied smile settled over his lips. Now, even the strength of the Arab was of no consequence to him. Just the destroying of Vassily, Zhabnov—and most of all, oh,
most of all—
Ted Rockson.

“We are ahead of schedule, Colonel,” Qarnain said as he stared over the captain’s shoulder, keeping a close eye on things. Two tugs had come alongside and were guiding the big tanker, which was unable to maneuver in the Potomac waters on its own. Just as planned, the Zhabnov forces assumed the tanker was carrying needed oil to port. The men were below deck, except a few of them, garbed in normal seaman’s gear. Killov knew that the tug’s crew, any of the river workers for that matter, had no reason whatsoever to even take note of them. It was just another big tanker, one of two or three a week up this river. But still,
the mission
was at hand. A man would have to be dead to not feel a knot in his stomach, a clawing in his chest when battle, the possibility of annihiliation, was so close.

“Don’t worry about them,” Killov said, noting Qarnain’s constant glancing over at the guiding toylike boats on each side of the bow. “They’re mere underlings, pigs, unable to even conceive an original thought let alone notice anything amiss. The Red bear is a
fat
bear, Qarnain—stupid, slothful, wanting its bread at dinner, its vodka in the evening and a warm bitch every now and again. We have nothing to fear from these.”

As they moved into the main course of the river, brilliant cherry trees suddenly appeared in rows of each bank, twenty feet or so apart. They were in full bloom, their pink and white blossoms virtually exploding into the sunny afternoon air. Qarnain, who fancied himself a lover of beauty, noted the flowers, not unaware of a certain irony that a man who was about to launch a maelstrom of blood and death was greeted with flowers.

“Quite beautiful,” he said, leaning to one side to get a closer view. With the green grass behind them and the blue river in front, the picture was almost paradisical. Not dissimilar to the vision he had had of Paradise. There would be such flowers there, and flowing blue rivers so that all his camels would never want for liquid. It made his heart suddenly flutter to see his vision so near—and real. It meant that his death, too, was approaching. He knew it. Knew that it was true—for the first time.

“Flowers are for assholes,” Killov snorted, not able to relate at all to the aesthetic sensibility. “That pig Zhabnov had them planted, undoubtedly,” the KGB colonel went on with the deepest contempt in his gravelly voice. “It is like him to spend time, money, on flowers—instead of guns and fighters. He shall pay the price for such a stupid set of priorities. And the first thing I shall do when I take power,” Killov vowed, almost under his breath so that Qarnain hardly heard the words, “is dig the damned things up and burn them—and take the pig’s body and all his top echelons, and grind them up and plant
them
there.” The thought made him a little delirious, as the drugs were hitting him full force. He laughed and couldn’t stop, white drool falling from the corners of his mouth. His lips grew dry as chalk and he almost began shaking, but clamped the force of all his will down on his trembling physicality. Qarnain
couldn’t
see him shake. He knew that, even in his drugged state. Nor any of the Arab fighters. If they should believe for one moment that Killov was weak—or that there was something wrong with him—the whole mission could explode in his face. He could be weird, but not weak.

The tanker moved slowly up the Potomac, as boats of every size, carrying myriad cargoes, passed them on all sides. It felt good to be home, Killov had to admit it. A surge of—not patriotism—but perhaps of reclaimed ownership swept through his heart. For it had all been his—and he was back to take it.

They moved up toward the berthing that Qarnain’s captain had radioed to the tugs—an unloading center off-route, out of the way, that Killov had indicated would do nicely.

Good: It was his ace in the hole—a hide-out right in the middle of the enemy’s camp. They would wait until all the players were present, until the first act of the farcical theater of peace had begun—and then they would strike. The bastards wouldn’t know what hit them. Killov could taste it—destruction. Then: total and complete power. It was so close. He licked his lips over and over, his lizardlike gray tongue like a windshield wiper lapping over his lips again and again like a carnivore salivating before the creature it would kill. Savoring the moment for as long as it could, that there was food, nay a banquet waiting for it—and that soon it would feast, its face wet with blood.

The Washington Monument, then the Capitol Building itself came into view a few miles off as the boat slid slowly through the city of enemies, unnoticed, just another beat-up oil tanker. Both men stared at the great stone and concrete icons with a kind of morbid fascination. For only they, of all the men who rode the river around them, who worked its shores, knew the truth: That it would all be rubble within a week. Ashes, broken bricks lying spread out in a shroud of dust. America’s greatest shrines—turned into a garbage dump.

Sixteen

A
s usual, life played out its black humor on Rock and the team at the least expected moment. They had driven across half of America without being really challenged, had breezed their way through every damned checkpoint the Red Army had set up. But then at the very gates of the citadel—the shit hit the fan. The rig had come to the very outskirts of D.C., up to the bridge that spanned the Potomac and led into the city proper, its White House dome shining like an overcooked egg in the noonday sun. Another checkpoint awaited them at the far side of the bridge and Scheransky drove up to it, slowing down a little as he waited for the guards to open the barrier when they saw the Nerve Gas Priority Passage symbol on the sides of the big diesel.