by Ryder Stacy
Hanover did seem a little disgusted by Kim’s neanderthalic display as he ate. He seemed to understand that it was to alienate his affections, and so in his mind he dismissed the uncouth behavior.
“This is the finest steak, taken from the butcher’s storehouse,” he said, slowly cutting a piece of his and sliding it into his mouth. “It’s not factory-farm stuff. This meat comes from a calf that was allowed to roam, to be in the sun.”
“Yeah’s great,” Kim replied, spraying out a mouthful of juices right onto the table linens and a little onto his uniform. “Good chow, good.” She piled in everything she could find, wanting to build up her storehouse. God only knew just when she would eat again, if she managed to escape into the outside.
At last they both finished, as the servants stood with their hands clasped in front of them some yards behind each of the diners. General Hanover rose and holding a goblet of champagne in each hand walked over to her side of the table.
“Here, my dear I insist that you at least try some of this delicious bubbly. I had it opened just for this occasion. Don’t let it go to waste, I implore you.” She rose up and kept dancing away out of reach of the military madman. His very presence, and smell nauseated her, filled her chest with a burning anger. But she reached out and took hold of the glass and held it up.
“A toast,” she smirked, with a false smile on her face.
“Yes, a toast,” Hanover replied, his eyes widening as he wondered if she was at last softening toward him.
“To the biggest pig I’ve ever seen, to a fascist, a coward and inside, a wimp of a man.” She held the glass high as General Hanover’s eyes went from twinkling blue to arctic gray. He stared frozen at her as she suddenly tilted the glass forward and flung the contents at him, covering the whole front of his uniform, his medals with the bubbly.
“You bitch,” the general shouted as he looked down. “You’ve ruined this! I was going to wear it to officer promotions tomorrow. Now—” He reached forward—she wasn’t sure if it was to strike her or wrestle her to the floor. But as the meaty hands grabbed Kim around her shoulders she hefted the carving fork she had been hiding in her left hand behind her back and plunged it into his shoulder. He let out a scream of real pain as she pulled back out of his way.
Hanover stopped in his tracks and stared at the long ornate silver fork which was sticking right out of his right upper arm like he was a pre-nuke turkey about to be carved.
He reached for the handle and pulled it out with a wince of pain as blood began running lightly down the sleeve, joining with the material soaked in champagne.
“You are a wild creature,” Hanover said, his lips twitching. “I’ve got to give you that. Perhaps that is just what attracts me to you. Anyone else on this planet would be dead right now, after pulling a stunt like that! But you—I will let you live. Because you shall be my wife. You shall sit alongside me as I become the Supreme Commander of this land. You shall bear my children.”
“I’ll cut my ovaries out first,” Kim screamed, her face growing red as she rushed to the table and grabbed another fork.
“There is time,” Hanover replied softly, throwing the bloodstained fork he’d just removed onto the table top. Servants rushed over and began cleaning up. “There is much time. Years if need be. Enjoy yourself, my dear,” Hanover said as he strode toward the door. “I look forward to our next meeting, only perhaps then you can eat with your fingers, as clearly you haven’t mastered the etiquette of using a fork.”
“General, if all I have is my fingers then I’ll scratch, and if you rip my nails off, I’ll bite you and if—”
“Adieu,” he said, opening the door and exiting as the servants looked at her askance. It took them only a few minutes to clear everything out, even the linens which were stripped from the table after she had so rudely sullied them. They walked from the room and locked the door behind them with a loud clank. And even as she pounded her fists angrily against the wall there was a low hiss that came from a small vent high up on one wall. She knew what it was, it had been pumped in a few times before, in small doses. Gas. She could taste it at the back of her throat, feel the nauseating sensations begin streaming through her. Kim knew it wouldn’t kill her. Hanover had no interest in that. It would send her into a terrible darkness, a nightmare place where her mind had no will. It was his way of wreaking a little revenge, and a lot of pain on her.
“Oh no,” she whispered, suddenly terrified in spite of her desire to be brave. “Oh Rock, Rock, where are you,” Kim whispered, suddenly unable to stand up any longer. She reached out and grabbed hold of some gold-threaded curtains. But they came down as she tumbled to the floor. And suddenly demons, demons of the mind, demons created from pure fear were everywhere around her as the fear-gas penetrated to her very soul.
Eleven
Rockson felt that he was falling down an endless tunnel. He was being scraped and gouged at from all sides by walls and sharp projections of stone. Somehow he stayed glued to the back of Snorter. The vertical fall became an 80° slope, then 70°. The flailing horse managed to kick and scamper almost right down the side of the opened earthquake fissure, half falling, half galloping. Rock could dimly sense the others just above and behind him. He didn’t know if they were still on their ’brids, and couldn’t look. Not when he was hanging on for dear life. Steam cascaded out all around him from cracks in the earth’s flesh. It was a fire-red world.
His breathing grew thick though he thanked God he had in the nose filters and the heat suit on. For it was getting hotter as they tumbled down slopes and banged along outcroppings for what seemed like a good thousand feet.
Rock’s mind worked feverishly as he fell. Perhaps the crevasse was some long hidden cavern. This couldn’t all be opening up now! It was too rounded, although rough around the edges. Each time it seemed like they could fall/stumble along no further, the ’brid was skidding down another impossible slope, raising up a bellowing storm.
Several times they rolled right over and Rockson felt the hybrid’s heavy weight bouncing over him. Then they tumbled more and the horse righted itself. He just kept being somewhat amazed that he was still alive, if numb with bruises.
Rock felt things scraping, ripping at his flesh and the hybrid’s too. Long gashes appeared here and there as they kept bouncing down like a golf ball in an endless hole. Rockson at last saw that the below ground was getting brighter. It was as if it were glowing pink below. He hit bottom hard, slamming off the mutant horse and rolled around on the hot ground. Rockson didn’t know where the hell he was for a second. It had all been like tumbling in a storm-tossed wave in the ocean. He was just a mixture of unconsciousness and sharp pain that struggled to claim him. He shook his head and lifted up.
He was lying in a black charcoal-like mixture, as if lying in the bottom of a fireplace. There were tunnels leading off everywhere, at least ten of them. And somehow he could see, even though he were far below the earth. Down one of the tunnels was the volcano itself. For it was white hot, brilliant, impossible to look right into. Not more than a quarter mile off was lava glowing like the furnaces of hell.
Suddenly Rock heard a frantic commotion and the rest of the Freefighters and their mounts came screaming down out of the dirt and stone skies. It was a mess. How all of them had not been ripped totally to shreds on the way down was a miracle in itself. But they slammed down into the black powdery ground all three still astride their ’brids. And all three flew off them. Right into the hardened lava walls that rose up around them like some dark fantasy world. Curved walls, with stalactites and stalagmites black as midnight poking out of everywhere like swords of the dead.
When it was all sorted out after several minutes, one of the ’brids was dead. Another had a hairline fracture of the foreleg. It could walk but couldn’t run. Archer had suffered a long and deep gash right down the side of his chest which kept flowing blood. But the giant made faces at it, like it was hardly worth bothering about.
Rock slapped so
me supersalve on the wound and then some glue bandage which formed a millimeter thick plastic covering saturated with vitamins and antibiotics and God knew what all that Shecter and his boys had pumped in.
Detroit had a broken hand but it was on his bionic arm. The original appendage was the victim of a team of expert martial arts assassins. The new one worked just as good, even better. And with a few quick adjustments with pliers and micro-screwdriver he’d have it in functioning order again.
“Where the hell are we,” Detroit asked as the three of them gathered around the remaining ’brids who were as shook up as animals could be and still stand. Their human masters weren’t faring much better either. All of them stood there reeling, dizzy to the core of their beings, pain covering every square inch. How could they be alive? Yet here they were!
“I must say I’ve never seen a place listed like this—even on the conjecture-maps,” Rockson muttered dryly. “I mean, it’s not normal for these formations to be in this part of the country. But what the hell do I know.”
“Thank the gods we’ve got on these outfits and nasal plugs,” Chen said as he scanned around into the glowing tunnels, each lit with a different hue—blue, red, green, brilliant white. “We’d be dead men already. I can feel the sulphur and toxic gases on my tongue. Keep your mouths closed and just breathe through the nose gear. This stuff’s bad.”
“IT HOOOOOTTT,” Archer bellowed reaching down to rip off his oversized alumnu-jumpsuit.
“No, Archer! Leave it on!” Rockson scolded him, looking sternly at the giant. “You’ll really burn if you take it off.” The temp gauge on Rock’s Combat Watch red 115°. “It’s hot out there.”
Archer grumbled and made noises like a bear in mating season, but he kept it on, getting the message.
“We’re never going to climb back up there, man,” Detroit said whistling as they all gazed up. They couldn’t even see the sky, just too many twists and turns in the deep cavern’s corkscrew well. But it—the sky—was up there somewhere.
Rock looked down with disgust welling in his chest. Men who fell into deep chasms never came up. He couldn’t think of one. A whole C.C. expeditionary force had been lost just two years before in an earthquake zone. A hundred and twelve men, gone without a trace, like dust back into the earth.
Rock gazed down each of the tunnel systems. There had to be a way out of here. He felt it. Something was not natural about this place.
“What the hell makes this light?” Detroit wondered out loud.
“I’ve heard of natural formations giving off light,” Chen replied as he did some martial arts exercises, standing on one leg to center himself, breathing slowly and deeply into perfect posture. “Everything from green to blue to purple glows. But never in a volcanic formation. Should be dark as a dungeon, way down in the mines.”
“We’ve got to pick a tunnel, men,” Rockson said, addressing them all. “I don’t know which way to go, I can’t lie to you. So, let’s vote on it. Just close your eyes and all mediate on it for a moment. Try to feel your sixth—and seventh for that matter—sense. Between us, we should come out okay.”
They closed their eyes and tried to feel the way out. The way through the earth to air and light above. Already, though they didn’t want to think about it too hard, they were getting claustrophobic. It was like a tomb down here. Everything closing in, pressing down on them. The earth continued to rumble once in a while and shake them so everything got a little dusty. Then subsided quickly.
“I say that greenish tunnel with rounded sides,” Chen spoke up first. “Somehow it feels traveled to me. Ergo something—a stream of water or lava maybe—has gone all the way up and out many times. I just hope we can get through before it gets flooded with more of the hot stuff. It looks to me like these tunnels flood periodically, The walls are too smooth.”
“I’m with that,” Detroit piped in next. “My mind said the green one—’cause, you know, green’s my last name. Plus—the color of money.”
They laughed. Rockson looked up at Archer who he was never quite sure understood what the hell he was saying. “How about you, Arch?”
“GREEEEN OONNNEE,” the near-mute croaked out, pointing firmly at the one the others had chosen, so there’d be no mistaking his vote.
“Then that’s the one,” Rockson said softly. “Salvage what supplies you can from the dead ’brid and let’s be out of here fast, I hear rumblings again.” They looked around as the walls shook and dust came down, coating everything with a nice thick layering of black ash, as if it needed any more. Already their silver white heat outfits were coated with soot.
Frosty the Snowmen in black face, in a multi-colored hell!
They headed down into the green-lit tunnel, stamping up clouds of the black stuff with every footstep. Thank the stars their boots were impregnated with alloy elements to make them virtually impenetrable, Rockson thought, because the sharp edges of dried lava which formed the ground beneath their feet sliced and ripped away at the soles, trying to gouge their way in.
The tunnel glowed greener as they walked deeper into it. It was as if the luminous dials of a watch were all around them. As a matter of fact he heard that watch.
Rock checked the rad meter on his field watch. It wasn’t all that accurate, he knew from past experience, but would give him an idea. The meter was ticking, but the radiation level read practically zero. Whatever was making the glow had nothing to do with radioactivity.
“It’s clean,” Rockson said, as he led the nervous ’brid on reins through the tunnel. “But this tunnel is not getting any bigger.”
Suddenly that was the understatement of the day. The tunnel started getting much narrower, fast, like they were being funneled into a tighter and tighter opening. The sharp lava protuberances reached up and down from all sides, like black clawed hands with daggers for fingers. The remaining 3 ’brids had to move along with legs half crouched, as if trying to do the limbo.
Suddenly it seemed a lot brighter around the bend. And as he walked around pulling the recalcitrant steed, the tunnel opened up into a wide cavern that glowed twice as bright as where they were coming from.
“Holy mother—” Rockson muttered under his breath as he led Snorter into the football stadium sized cavern with glowing outcroppings of immense limestone hanging down from the four-hundred-foot-high lava ceiling. It was a stalactite city of impossible size and shape. The huge structures, with windows and doors hung down from the ceiling stretching in rough symmetry a good hundred feet down.
And Rockson’s eyes grew even wider in real puzzlement. For he saw figures moving, humanoid shapes in those windows. Just as the rest of the Freefighters came in behind him, Rockson saw movement behind some pillars of black lava about a hundred feet to the right of them.
“Company,” he yelled out, reaching for his shotpistol and slightly amazed to find that it was still there. Now the figures were coming at them shrieking wild guttural cries like cavemen. They were men covered with the black lava rock, like scales all over them. And it was hard to tell, so tightly joined were the black scales, if it were a manmade armoring—or actual hard flesh that had grown up over them like scales of stone.
Across their lava-faces were shining triangular pieces of shimmering black stone that angled out to each side, covering all but their eyes and a slit for their mouths. They weren’t the prettiest of sights, especially holding long swords and spears made out of the shining black rock.
They were primitive weapons, but Rockson knew a lot of things will kill a man. And every second that Rockson backed up toward his men, he could see more of the lava-beings. They were coming out like ants now. They’d somehow stumbled onto a fucking colony of volcanic beings. And from the way they were closing in, stabbing their polished obsidian spears in the air and screaming incantations in an unknown language, Rockson wasn’t too optimistic about his life expectancy over the next few minutes.
Twelve
“Mughh!” one of the lava coated beings screamed as i
t came tearing up to Rockson. It suddenly stopped in its tracks and looked suspiciously at him, sniffing at him through the narrow slit in the lava mask. And it looked like it had a snout, not a nose inside there, which fact Rockson didn’t like at all.
Great numbers of the agitated beings surrounded the Freefighters and the ’brids which were rearing and making noises like they were in a punk rock band. The lava men waved their swords and spears as if they were thinking of deploying them at any second. Archer swung his crossbow around and slammed in an arrow, raising it to fire.
“NO!” Rockson shouted over the noise of a thousand screaming and grunting lava coated madmen, “don’t do a thing. We can’t even begin to take down these boys. Hold on!” He held up his hands to show he meant peace, letting the .12 gauge shotpistol slide into his holster, but ready to rip it up if that’s what was happening.
“Mugh, Mugh,” the seeming leader of the volcano people said, this time prodding with his three foot long glistening black tipped spear. It was like a dagger, thin and sharp as a razor on both sides. But strong! Rockson suspected it could slice right through him if the man pushed. These lava rocks were some of the hardest substances in the earth, right alongside diamonds. All their weapons were made with this glistening obsidian.
The Freefighters let their hands move away from their weapons realizing Rockson was right—they were vastly outnumbered. It was like stepping on an ant colony. Rockson saw that there were thousands more in the huge cavern, hanging from their giant stalactite buildings that dotted the ceiling, staring out round windows.
“Mugh,” the leader shouted again and pointed with his spear to one side.
“I think we better do as he says,” Detroit spoke up. “These guys don’t look like they have the highest patience levels in the world.” But Rockson could see they were as scared of the Freefighters as the men were of them. Maybe they’d never even seen “normal” humans before. Or at least for a long time.