The Iron Dream (33 page)

From several hundred yards off, Ludolf Best came roaring toward Peric on his motorcycle, gesticulating wildly and shouting with joy at the sight of his Supreme Commander, alive and triumphant. As Best sped toward Feric shouting and waving, he drew the attention of hundreds of Helder soldiers to Feric's person; these in turn began to cheer wildly and wave their truncheons in the air or fire their guns with sheer exuberance. In moments, the entire battlefield was aware both of the survival of their Supreme Commander and of his approximate location.

Over a hundred thousand triumphant Helder heroes shot their blood-caked truncheons skyward in the Party salute and roared "Hail Jaggar!" with a ferocity and fervor that thoroughly put to shame anything that Feric had thus far experienced.

As Feric leaned against the side of a tank beside Ludolf Best during a brief respite in the fighting, the Dominator strategy seemed all too clear. For two days now, the Doms had sent suicide waves of the new breed of Warriors against the Helder positions; each succeeding wave had been thoroughly annihilated, but at great cost to the Helder army in terms of life, ammunition, and especially petrol.

"They have no hope of matching us in mobility or firepower," he muttered. "Yet still they persist in the same tactic."

"I don't see why they don't try a flanking maneuver, my Commander," Best said. "Obviously, their goal must be to get around us and stop Waffing's troops from reaching us with petrol and ammunition, now that the oil fields have fallen."

Feric smiled at this naTvete. "No, Best," he said, "even the Doms know that the superior speed of our armor and our air power could cut off any serious flanking attempt 214

before it got properly under way. My guess is that they hope to overwhelm us before Waffing's forces arrive."

"What fools they must be to think that they can overrun the Helder army!" Best exclaimed.

Feric nodded agreement; there was no point in troubling the lad with the true situation. The Dominators had a limitless supply of twisted protoplasm at their command.

After two days of terrible carnage, the Helder losses were heavy indeed. Twenty thousand motorcycle troops and forty thousand infantry had made the supreme sacrifice.

Casualities among the fanatic heroes of the SS were particularly heavy, an irreplaceable loss to the gene pool which Feric deeply regretted. But the worst of it was that the unforseen magnitude and ferocity of the fighting had used up vast quantities of ammunition and had virtually exhausted the petrol supply. Another attack or two and the entire Helder army would be reduced to fighting with truncheons alone. Waffing had better arrive soon!

Still, the morale of the Helder army had never for an instant wavered. The higher the casualties, the greater the ferocity with which the true humans pounded the Warriors to pieces. After two days, it could still be said that not a Zind monstrosity had succeeded in fighting its way to the Helder trenches, nor had one of the creatures survived its suicidal assault on the Helder positions. Moreover, Waffing's troops were only hours away with vast quantities of ammunition and a limitless supply of petrol. The situation, after all, was hardly hopeless!

Best, Feric suddenly noted, had been studying his face with some concern during these musings. "Is something wrong, my Commander?"

"No, Best, nothing is wrong! Let's inspect the troops!"

As he drove his motorcycle up atop a small hummock after accepting the fervent salutes of a weary but inspired battalion of motorcycle SS, Feric noticed some great commotion going on in the body of the Zind horde a mile to the north. Best pulled up beside him and the two men stared across the desolation of no-man's land at the vast sea of naked mutated flesh which seemed to suddenly have been galvanized into frenetic mass motion, like a gigantic swarm of army ants.

"The entire horde is on the march!" Feric exclaimed.

"It's an all-out-win-or-lose climactic attack on our positions!"

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Best broke into a wide grin; his eyes lit up like blue coals, and his body radiated an almost mystical heroic strength. Feric understood what the lad felt exactly, for the last vestiges of his own fatigue had been annihilated by a surge of fierce joy. At last the climactic moment had truly come—the Helder people would engage the forces of Zind in one mighty final battle to the death for owner-ship of the earth. No man could ask for greater glory than to lead the forces of true humanity into this final Armageddon!

Scant moments later, Helder soldiers all along the front became aware of the vast Zind horde sweeping toward them, and a great spontaneous cheering went up. Without the necessity of an order, every motorcycle engine roared into life, tanks readied themselves to charge, every infan-tryman in the entire troop of heroes leapt to his feet, eyes shining, weapon at the ready. A massed chanting of "Hail Jaggar!" began somewhat raggedly, then merged seamlessly into the racial voice of Heldon itself bellowing its hatred and defiance at the enemy. There could be no question of holding a single man in reserve now; no true Helder could rightfully be called upon to accept such dishonor.

Feric drew the Great Truncheon of Held, the focal object of the racial will, and held this mystic weapon as high above his head as his arm could reach, feeling the power in the huge gleaming shaft merge with the power of his own will, and with the racial consciousness uniting him with his troops in this moment of destiny.

Then he gunned his engine, exchanged a final glance with Best, pointed his great weapon defiantly at the onrushing enemy, and with a savage battle cry, led the hosts of Heldon forward into battle.

There was no point in worrying about petrol or ammunition reserves now; the immense Helder army advanced behind a tidal wave of flame as well as solid walls of artillery shells and machine-gun fire. Inspired by the stirring spectacle below, the Helder dive-bomber pilots redoubled the speed and ferocity of their attacks, plummeting to within a hundred feet of the tiny heads of the Warrior horde with machine guns blazing, letting fly with high explosives or incendiaries, soaring through the crown of the ensuing explosion and into the sun, then diving once more to strafe the enemy until their machine guns were empty. The Zind horde advanced straight into an inferno 216

of bullets, explosions, and flame; each foot of ground was paid for with the mangled bodies of thousands of Warriors.

As Feric's motorcycle roared to within a hundred yards of the onrushing sea of blood-drooling giant Warriors, the Helder tank cannon ceased firing, and the flamethrowers were stilled, having expended the last drops of precious petrol in their reservoirs. Nevertheless, the incredible massed firing power of nearly two hundred thousand Helder machine guns was still enough to cut every successive rank of Warriors to bloody pieces 'the moment they became the front wall of the advance. Zind machine-gun bullets whistled all around Feric as he led his army over the last hundred yards, but there was no fear in him, only the absolute iron conviction of his own invulnerability; he was Heldon, he was the instrument of destiny, he was the Swastika, and nothing could harm him.

Then he plunged into a world of screaming, reeking, madmen who foamed bright red at the mouth, and swung huge steel truncheons through the air without regard for anything but the chance to destroy one more true man before perishing.

Advancing slowly in low gear, Feric swung the Great Truncheon of Held in a steady rhythm before him—right, left, right—without skipping a single beat or giving any red-eyed Warrior the least chance to get a stroke in past his guard. At each swing, a score or more Warriors were clove in twain at the waist, erupting gore and slimy greenish intestines. In moments, the blood on the slick shaft of his mystic weapon was so thick that it ran down his arm and baptized the spotless black leather of his fresh uniform with the life juices of the enemy.

Taking a sidewise glance, Feric observed Best close behind him, hammering away at Warriors with total ecstatic abandon, his eyes blazing with ruthless, self-sacrificing fanaticism. To either side of Best, tall blond SS motorcyclists advanced in an unbroken line, throwing themselves upon the enemy with superhuman courage and true Helder dash. Great swarms of grunting, drooling giants smashed at the Helder tanks with their truncheons in a futile frenzy, and ripped their own hands to bloody tatters trying to claw their way through steel armor plate, while the machine gunners snug inside the mobile fortresses riddled their bodies with a million bullet holes and the 217

heavy steel treads of the dreadnaughts rolled inexorably forward over their still-thrashing corpses.

For Feric, the death struggle took on a mystic beauty.

Heldon and Zind were locked in climactic combat in this desolate place, not individual Warriors or human beings; the true human genotype fought the genetic perversion of the Dominator mutation for nothing less than sole mastery of the earth and the universe for all time. Every Helder soldier fought with the full meaning of this struggle buming like a naming swastika in his brain, his soul afire with the fighting racial spirit that Feric had kindled, his being and will totally merged into the racial identity that was Heldon itself. This immense reservoir of racial courage, will, and consciousness was channeled directly through Feric's own soul, so that Feric Jaggar was Heldon, and Heldon was Feric Jaggar, and both rode a juggernaut of fate that could not fail.

The blood of the enemy that covered Feric and his metal steed and ran in rivers from the uniforms of his men united them in the holy communion of righteous battle. Every inch of advance was a concrete step forward toward the goal of an earth inhabited entirely by tall, blond, genetically purebred supermen totally free from even the possibility of racial contamination. Every drooling monstrosity that fell beneath Helder truncheons was one less cancer cell in the body of the world gene pool.

What was the life of any man compared to the magnitude of this sacred cause? To die in this battle was to attain the ultimate pinnacle of heroism in the entire history of the world; to survive it victorious would be to bask in the gratitude of a million generations of humanity to come. No moment in human history had ever or would ever offer a man glory to match this. Those who fought here today would become racial paragons for all time; the contemplation of his own place in the pantheon of the future filled Feric with a wonder that transcended both humility and awe.

Thus fired to glorious acts of superhuman heroism and tireless fanaticism, the racial entity that was Heldon tore like a god possessed by demons into the vitals of its total antithesis, the obscene carcinoma in the world gene pool that was the soulless, life-denying anthill of Zind. For their part, the Warriors of Zind fought with a ferocity that 218

had been imprinted in their genes by a foul mutant race which held all flesh in total contempt save its own.

The battle, therefore, was the most ferocious confrontation that the world had ever seen, a true Armageddon between all that was noble and uplifting in man and the basest perversion imaginable of what were once human genes. Good waged absolute war on evil under the banner of the Swastika, and evil replied in equally uncompromising kind.

At the very point of the Helder forward thrust, Feric found himself set upon by twenty, forty, even fifty Warriors at a time. No doubt the Dominators directing the horde realized that to slay Feric Jaggar was to slay the racial will of Heldon itself, for the great presses of Warriors virtually clubbed each other aside with their truncheons in their savage frenzy to fell him.

For his part, Feric welcomed this concentration of the forces of the enemy upon his own person, for it only fired the fanaticism of Heldon to ever greater heights of heroism and ferocity, and the incredible speed and vigor with which the noble weapon in his hand dealt with the challenge and annihilated the enemy buoyed up the fighting spirit of the greatly outnumbered Helder warriors.

In his grip, the Steel Commander seemed imbued with Feric's own mighty life-force, metal come to godlike life through the transcendent power of the racial will it served. Effortlessly, he swung the weapon whistling through the air, leaving a comet's tail of smashed flesh and flying gore.

But still the Warriors of Zind came at him with undiminished fury, spitting blood, rolling their fiery pig eyes, and swinging truncheons as thick as a man's thigh and as long as he was tall. Twenty of the creatures came at him from the left. Feric met them with a swipe of the Great Truncheon that tore through their barrel chests, bursting lungs, and tearing the still-beating hearts out of their bodies. At the same time, ten more came at him from behind; as he finished his swing, he pivoted his motorcycle about his right foot, and instantly reversed his swing to catch these mad-eyed giants at groin level, hewing their legs from their bodies so that they fell like stones and lay thrashing in agony on the bloody ground while scores of Helder motorcycles ground them to pieces under their wheels.

But as Feric successfully fended off this assault, a score 219

more Warriors were upon him from yet another angle, and as he dispatched them with an over-the-shoulder sweep of the Steel Commander, the huge truncheon of one of the creatures landed squarely upon the rear wheel of his motorcycle and smashed it to flinders, forcing him to dismount and fight afoot.

This spurred the Zind Warriors on to even greater frenzies, but almost at once, Ludolf Best had leapt from his own motorcycle to fight at Feric's side. At this, a score of tall, blond, blue-eyed supermen in tight black uniforms spattered with blood as red as their swastika capes followed suit and formed a phalanx of SS heroes flanking their Supreme Commander, inspired by him to feats of valor that nearly matched his own. This squad of racial heroes rallied about the incarnation of the racial will hacked then-way through the onrushing Warriors with a force and fanaticism the sight of which spurred all the surrounding troops to fervent emulation.

Soon a whole great section of the Helder advance had crystallized into a superhuman brotherhood of racial heroes around the person of Feric Jaggar. Motorcyclists rammed their machines into slavering giants, leaping off them into the air to fly at more of the Warriors with their truncheons, moving with a speed and hysterical strength which made them seem invincible. Infantrymen dashed fearlessly into veritable forests of massive hairy legs, smashing furiously about with their truncheons to bring the Warriors down to their level, then crushing heads and stomachs with their truncheons, steel-soled boots, and fists. Tanks barreled forward at greater and greater speeds, grinding their way through solid walls of Zind protoplasm like armored bulldozers.