Doomsday Warrior 12 - Death American Style (26 page)

The
Dreadnaught
burst into fire as the every seam exploded out, twisting like a jaggedly opened sardine can. Rockson watched men burst into fire, disintegrating in an instant. There was a second great explosion as the second tank went up, and this time Rock was knocked to the floor as the massive ship trembled violently for about ten seconds. When he looked up again the whole sky seemed to be filled with flames—the deck itself just a sheet of writhing red and orange and yellow. Rockson knew he had only seconds, and tore back down the metal stairs from the bridge to the smoky deck. He could see that the back portion of the ship wasn’t totally engulfed in flame—there seemed to be a path. He tore-ass down it as towers of fire burned to the sky on each side.

Then the whole boat was going. He could feel it, steel pulling apart from steel, as it melted, as it ripped seam from welded seam, rivets popping with bullet-like sounds by the thousands throughout the immense warship. Rock poured on the extra juice through his already straining legs and reached the edge of the deck just as the whole thing began tilting over. He dove headfirst as a hand of flame reached out right where he had been standing and evaporated the water to a depth of two feet, so intense was its heat.

But Rockson was already way down into the Potomac. And this time he hit with full consciousness, taking the dive easily, cutting into the river in a long, slow curve, and coming up about fifty feet out. He turned his head the second it popped from the water, just to make sure that he wasn’t about to be crushed by a million tons of steel—but the huge vessel was listing the other way. As he paddled as fast as he could in the other direction, the
Dreadnaught
began keeling over onto its port side. Slowly at first, but then picking up speed as water filled in below and another series of explosions rocked the vessel, sending whole eruptions of red hot metal sideways out over the far bank.

Then she was all the way over, slamming with a thunderous explosion into the Potomac, like a great elephant fallen to its death, sending out a mini-tidal wave that rushed to the opposite bank, flooding it for several hundred feet. And as the river’s waters gushed into every porthole and door frame, a great cloud of steam rose up from the vessel, extinguishing many of the fires almost instantaneously. The cloud of steam rose up high over the war boat, thousands of tons of vaporized water and petroleum atoms. The shroud filled the air with a thick stench and sent out a mist that rolled over the river and onto each bank like something out of a horror movie.

Rock gagged from the foul-smelling smoke but kept going forward. He knew his direction—away from the burning wreck. He found a piece of a wooden crate floating along, and swam up to it—only to encounter another body already hanging on. Ready to fight whatever son of a bitch was there, Rock held up his fist—only to see Archer’s waterlogged, bearded face come into view out of the mists of war.

“Archer,
you bastard, you’re alive!” Rockson wanted to hug the idiot savant—but it wasn’t quite feasible in the present situation. The mountain man coughed out a mouthful of Potomac River, but kept his head above the water and clenched his fist in the Freefighter’s symbol of victory. Rock clenched his fist in response, then let it go, as he and the giant kicked along, heading toward the shore.

Epilogue

S
crambling through the smoke-shrouded waters like some kind of diseased, half-psycho rat, Colonel Killov managed to remain undiscovered. He had barely survived the cannon blast that Rockson had fired against him—leaping into the waters an instant before impact. He hadn’t taken the full brunt of it or he’d be dead—but still the shock had opened up his whole shoulder, sending him careening down into the rough waters below. But then Killov had had experience in survival. The skeletal frame paddled around, searching for anything to hold him, kicking at corpses, floating heads, to get a push in the right direction. He knew that they would kill him—rip him apart—if they captured him. So the madman swam the other way. Into the flames, into the shadow of the great ship.

Somehow he made it to the opposite shore, using the smoke cover that rolled over the bank, dragged himself up like some kind of lizard onto a rock, and then crawled beneath some bushes. Here he let himself rest. But just a moment. Now, he had to run, to slither away into some hole where they couldn’t find him. The colonel had to live. There was only one thing that mattered to him now—escape. Escape, to survive; escape . . .
to return.

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