by Ryder Stacy
Zhabnov glared back up at the portrait as he stepped by. Damn thing took up the whole wall. He sighed as he walked up to the door of the Oval Office. Another Russian guard snapped to attention, holding his Kalashnikov straight out in front of him, his eyes glued on infinity. Zhabnov walked over to the “presidential” teakwood desk and collapsed into his chair. Aside from the present occupant, the building and grounds were still exactly as they were before the war. Washington hadn’t even been targeted except for four neutron bombs strategically dropped around the city. The Reds wanted to rule America from the same headquarters the Americans had. It would make the “transition” that much easier. Besides, the American president had been off in Oregon, cutting a ribbon for a new dam. That whole state was just layer upon layer of overlapping craters. The Soviet generals had gone mad in their fear that somehow the American president would survive to lead the United States in a counterattack. A pity! Zhabnov thought. Oregon was said to have once been the most beautiful of the fifty states.
The supreme commander was too fat for the presidential chair. These damn American presidents, how could they have been so thin. And his Russian antecedents in the office that he now held—Bulganin, Medledov, Orlovsky and the others—were they all so narrow, too? Bah. He picked up the ornate antique phone which instantly crackled to life. A male operator said, “Yes, sir,” in an excited voice.
“Give me Killov,” Zhabnov demanded.
“Home or office?” the new operator asked nervously.
“Office, office,” the supreme commander bellowed out. “Do I ever call my friend at home? Do you think I want to talk to his maid, his cook? Idiot—his office, of course.”
“Yessir, sorry!” the operator sputtered. The phone began ringing. Zhabnov coughed, preparing his warmest voice. Despite his bluster and sarcasm with the operator, Zhabnov had to admit he was a little afraid of this Killov. If Zhabnov hadn’t been the nephew of Premier Vassily he would suspect that Killov was being groomed by the premier to replace him.
“Yes?” an unmistakable voice answered. The cold, crisp diction of the head of KGB-Amerika—the dreaded Blackshirts.
“Killov, it’s the president.” Zhabnov used his title as often as possible. “We’ve got to talk!”
“Talk!” Killov replied coolly. Zhabnov burned red. Now, the KGB commander was actually challenging him openly. The general calmed himself. He had no desire to tangle with him.
“Well, it’s this little matter I have before me on my desk. I just got it actually and I thought I would call you about it so it could be straightened out—ironed out as the Americans say—before it got into the hands of the premier.” In fact, Zhabnov had been staring at the document from Killov for some days now. It was a request to use neutron weapons—neutron weapons—against some suspected rebel resistance areas around the country. This man Killov always overestimated the danger from these ragged bands of counterrevolutionaries, hiding in caves in the mountains eating berries and rats.
“Oh,” Killov said testily, “you only just received my urgent request to stop these scum who have attacked our forces with impunity. The army doesn’t seem able to handle it properly.”
“My staff downgraded its importance,” Zhabnov said curtly, fuming at Killov’s second dig at his command of all the occupying military forces. “I have been occupied with important matters for days.”
“Downgraded the report on clandestine resistance bases?”
“Downgraded the speculation you sent me about these so-called Freefighters.”
“I assure you, Mr. President, these Americans are much better armed and equipped than you can imagine. Several patrols have simply vanished without a trace in Colorado and Utah lately—and others are being attacked with increasing frequency.”
“And you think this is the result of resistance fighters?” Zhabnov asked, turning his chair and staring out the window at the front lawn, with its omnipresent row of tanks next to the rose garden. “Probably some of our green soldiers made a wrong turn in a magnetic storm or got themselves eaten by those toothy American wolf dogs.”
“Mr. President, wolves don’t make off with all the ammunition and medical supplies.” Zhabnov was such a fool.
“So these patrols fell down some crevasses, or died in one of those sandstorms. Killov, you are too excitable. The premier—I know this for sure, I talked to him in person at his granddaughter’s wedding in Minsk, only last month—wants to limit military action. You must get out in the fresh clean air of Mother Russia more. The premier pulls me aside at the reception and tells me, ‘Nephew, please’—he is so polite—‘Please, don’t use any more atomic weapons in America. There is enough radiation in the world.’ Now is that not what you are planning to do, Commander Killov? Use those Enhanced Radiation Neutron Devices?”
“Small atomic devices. Flashes of radiation that only destroy life and rapidly diminish in a few days.”
“Killov, no more radiation! That’s what the premier wants. He is a conservationist, an ecologist, a humanitarian. We can’t go dropping atomic bombs on a few ragged—” Killov was silent on the other end. His lips were tight and pale. Finally he spoke.
“Mikael Ivanovich,” he said using the familiar, “just do me one favor. Bring it to the attention of the premier that we may not have a United Socialist States of America for the centennial next year if I am not able to discharge my duties.”
“Your duties are intelligence. Intelligence, Killov. Intelligence, counterespionage and internal security. You have expanded your function, with my—and the premier’s—permission. You have expanded your Blackshirt force to over five hundred thousand, with, I must say, a tremendous budget. Do I not let you send in your Deathhead paratroop commandos to destroy these wretched freedom brigades—which, as I’m sure you know, many of the other generals do not appreciate at all, considering it a usurpation of their authority. And now you want still more. Can’t you do the job without pulverizing the country that feeds Mother Russia?”
“Approach the premier,” Killov continued firmly, as if he hadn’t heard a word of Zhabnov’s tirade. “Tell him I need more troops, more weapons if he is against using these neutron weapons. We have a situation here in America, a critical one!”
Zhabnov let the KGB leader sweat for a minute as he admired the bright cherry redness of the roses that surrounded the White House. Why, they almost disguised the barbed-wire fence that ran through their delicate petals. “I’ll tell you what, my friend,” Zhabnov spoke up briskly. “I’m attending the annual party meeting in Leningrad next month. I will personally intervene with my uncle at that time and persuade him you need more of everything—”
“Including the neutron devices—”
“Including a few, two or three, neutron devices to destroy these annoying American bandits once and for all.”
“Thank you Mikael Ivanovich,” Killov said. “I will, of course, repay you for this favor.” He hung up.
Zhabnov let the phone drop from his fingers and fall onto the receiving hook with a snap. Of course he had no intention of letting the KGB expand its operations in the United States. It was already too large, a threat to the normal military channels and control. Zhabnov pleaded with the premier at every opportunity to reduce Killov’s Blackshirt force, but Vassily would only smile in that grandfatherly way and say, “You worry too much, nephew. I only let Killov play with his toy soldiers in America to occupy him. He is not . . . normal, you know. He likes to hurt, to destroy things, people, land. So, we in the Presidium asked ourselves: where can such a person be useful? And the answer: America. Let him destroy these Freefighters. They seem afraid of nothing except such as Killov. And does not Killov keep his part of the bargain—sending over good breeding stock of American females with their fertile bodies and radiation-resistant genes? I think you had best put up with the Blackshirts and just keep the production of wheat and corn in line with the five-year plan. That is your job. I know you can handle it, can’t you?”
So it wen
t like that. Vassily wasn’t letting either him or Killov get too powerful. He was using them to balance one another, leaving the ultimate control back in Moscow. So be it! This job did have its compensations after all. Indeed.
He pressed the intercom. “Prepare the bedroom.” Zhabnov smiled. The last one had been a little Negress. Delightful. Absolutely delightful. Too small for breeding purposes. Not meant for Russia’s cold winters. Soft, frightened, the kind he liked most.
Killov paced back and forth in his office—a cold, stark, ultra-modern gray-and-white affair. He wore the tight, black uniform of synleather, emblazoned only on the collar with the insignia of his rank—five red stars and the KGB red death’s-head. That fat imbecile Zhabnov was probably raping one of those little American waifs right now instead of attending to business.
Am I the only one, the KGB commander asked himself for the hundredth time, who understands the real threat these American resistances forces pose and the only one who takes forceful action? Zhabnov and his general staff have all grown fat and complacent. Content to mount an offensive here and there once a year. An offensive, ha! Killov snickered. Sending out ten thousand troops surrounded by cranking vehicles. Why, the rebels could hear them coming a hundred miles away. So, of course, they never run into opposition. So, of course, there is no resistance.
And yet even I don’t know the full extent of the danger. I only suspect—based on disappearing ammunition, fuel, and medical supplies. Based on whole platoons of my men sent out on search-and-destroy being swallowed up in thin air out here in these mountains. He stared out the window at the mist-shrouded Rockies off in the distance. From the eightieth floor of his KGB command building in Denver he could see a good forty miles—when the day was clear of the duststorms or the mists. I get report after report hinting of a vast network of underground infestations of rebels armed to the teeth and trained to barely leave a trace. Americans who, until the Mind Breakers, would just recite nursery rhymes when captured, even when tortured. They seemed to have learned some sort of mental process—a hypnotic block that let them literally be murdered slowly by my expert interrogators rather than reveal a shred of information. That is, if he could even get them before they swallowed one of those damn cyanide capsules they always carried. That was something he found hard to fathom. The way they died, instantly, without hesitation, when his Blackshirts would have some surrounded and close in. And when they broke down the door or poured into some cave, guns blazing—just bodies, already turning cold, faces blue from the cyanide. Would he do that—for Russia? Give his life if captured? But then, of course, he would never be captured. Not with his precautions, his elite guard.
Killov glanced down at the request for the use of atomic weapons he had received back from Premier Vassily in Moscow, a big “NYET” stamped on it in red. The intellectual fool, always reading a book on Napoleon or Caesar or Nixon. Always quoting “what other great men have done before me,” to tight-mouthed underlings who had to sit and listen in total silence. Sometimes Killov thought that Vassily wanted the Americans to wipe out the Red forces in America. The premier of all the world was a fanatic about American lore and history. His respect for America and her past was too great for him to sanction effective countermeasures. Vassily and his books, Killov thought, like Nero and his fiddle . . . while Rome burned.
Is that how we won world domination? By waiting to be destroyed by the might of America? No! We acted before they would have the upper hand. Our scientists figured that quite accurately. By 1990 the military situation would start turning back in America’s favor. She would have nuclear superiority. It was all there in graphs and charts. There would be a war sooner or later so . . . then-Premier Antonin did it. Did it! Launched a pre-emptive strike—over the vehement objections of the party functionaries. And we had won. The Americans hadn’t known of the twenty killer satellites the Russians had managed to slip into space in the early 1980s. When they went to counterattack, the killer sats, using laser sighting and particle beam rays, had been able to knock 93.7 percent of the U.S. nuclear missiles right out of the sky. There was devastation it was true, but history vindicated—posthumously—Premier Antonin’s decision.
Now, almost a hundred years later, Premier Vassily was about to let it all slip away and permit these mutant Americans to take over the world. They would. He knew that, unless the one man who saw the peril correctly was made president of the United Socialist States—and when the “benign” Vassily died, premier of all the Russias. Premier Killov. But he’d have to wait, have to hide his ambitions or the other leaders back home would have him destroyed from fear. He knew that. And somehow he had to defend that fool Zhabnov from being overrun by the rebels, so when the time was right, there would still be a White House standing.
Killov stopped pacing. He would win. He would win because he was the stronger. It was nature’s way. He looked out at the mountains caught in the sunset’s purple rays. Beautiful. America the beautiful. And in those purple mountains majesty—nests of resistance—somewhere up there, he’d give his right arm to know where, was Ted Rockson, “The Ultimate American” the populace called him, scrawling his name on army barracks and alley walls. How many were out there? He tried to pierce the mist with his mind, to see, to know. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? And at what level of attack capability were they? There were disquieting rumors among the itinerant panhandlers and trappers, passed on to him by his operatives among the masses, that the technology of some of these hidden Americans surpassed the finest in Russia. Then why were they hanging back? Why didn’t they attack? Killov knew the reason. They were growing stronger while the Russian Empire was growing weaker, more decadent, more lazy, more off-guard every day.
Five
The Freefighters marched through the night as the terrain was fairly passable and Rockson wanted to try to make up time lost spent in the thicker woods. The men nervously ignored the gallery of eyes that peered at them from behind every tree, every shadow. They could hear the rustlings and growls of the forest creatures—some sounded quite large, but they appeared to find the party of Freefighters a little too big or too unknown to attack and stayed in the darkness. As the morning sun began its weary ascent through pink-clouded skies, Rockson ordered his men to stop. They found a grove of very dense palm-like trees that surrounded a pool of cool, blue water and the men threw their supplies to the ground and collapsed in exhaustion, happy to be resting for a few hours.
Within minutes they had stripped down to their birthday suits and were yelling and splashing in the fresh, cold water. After cooking breakfast and feeding the hybrids, they formed a group around the edge of the bank and told stories. Tall tales, the toughest fight they had ever been in, stories of Russian atrocities, gossip about who was sleeping with who at Century City. It felt so good to relax. Life in 2089 A.D. America did not usually allow moments of complete relaxation, total tranquility. But here in the middle of the chirping, shadow-and-sun-dappled woods, tranquility seemed to be the order of the day. There was a harmony here, a perfection, a wholeness that most of them had never experienced.
McCaughlin made a crude fishing pole from a birch branch and twisted a safety pin he used to hold his constantly splitting pants together into a hook. He probed around in the dirt until he found a big, juicy, black beetle and skewered it with the pin. Using nylon thread, he dropped a line into the pond water and lay back on the sandy bank in a state of ecstasy.
“Fishing, now that’s my style,” the smiling Scotsman said, looking over at Rockson who sat silently, lost in his own thoughts.
Suddenly, about twenty feet out, the water in the tranquil pond was broken by a great splash. “What the—?” McCaughlin began, nearly losing his pole which was being yanked wildly in every direction. He sat up and pulled back on the line as something thrashed violently just under the surface, whipping the blue water into a cauldron of boiling foam.
“Got me a big one, goddamn it,” McCaughlin exclaimed and whistled loudly. The other men gathered ar
ound to cheer him on. The big Scotsman pulled and yanked but the thing on the other end of the line pulled back just as hard. Suddenly it broke the surface, whipping wildly—a horned, multieyed, ten-legged, green, scaly creature nearly two-and-a-half feet long with a row of spikes running the length of its back. It shook and whipped its head this way and that trying to free itself from the safety pin hook solidly embedded in its snapping jaw.
“Damn, that’s ugly,” Carter said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fish that ugly.”
“That’s what your mama said when she first saw you,” Detroit snickered.
“I don’t care if he’s ugly or beautiful,” McCaughlin choked out, “I’m going to get the little sucker.” The Scotsman stood up and, using all his three hundred pounds of strength, pulled the pole high over his head. The green fish-thing came flying from the water straight up at him, snapping rows of razor-sharp teeth like a cutting machine.
“Look out!” the Freefighters yelled, scattering in all directions as the biting, sixty-pound thing flopped on the sand, twisting its hard body around violently, biting at everything in sight.
“Damn, he’s mean,” McCaughlin said almost proudly, jumping back himself and letting the pole drop to the sand. The fish saw the motion of the branchpole and pushed itself with a thrust of its powerful tail at the object. It slashed at the wooden object, snapping it in two with a single bite of its toothy jaws.
Rockson walked over until he was about six feet away from the thrashing creature. “Come on, boys, it ain’t right to torture living things. That’s for Russians.” He pulled out his twelve-inch bowie knife, reached down and with a single powerful slash cut off the fish’s head. It stopped moving, the tail twitched a few times and then it was still.