by Ryder Stacy
“And?” Rockson asked coyly.
“Incredible, a thousand times better than I imagined. And as well—I wanted to become pregnant, to have a child. A woman—even one like myself—has needs. Now I will fulfill them.”
“How did you people, you, become like this?” Rockson asked tentatively, not wanting to break the soft mood between them. “You must be descended from humans and—”
“Yes, we are. A number of miners, men and women, were trapped down here over a hundred years ago; when the nuke-bombs fell, the tunnels collapsed on them. They tried to escape but couldn’t. But somehow some lived, surviving the gases and the heat. The radiation made us change— This is the second generation. As I said, we are sterile. The men anyway. We have found ways to the surface, but we stay. There is nothing for us up there. We have become used to it down here, to our world.”
“Tell me,” Rock began again, as he seemed to have countless questions welling up in his chest, “about the division in your society. Tell me why some live high, and others—”
“Shh,” she said suddenly, putting her marble streaked finger to his lips. She closed her eyes and seemed to go into a kind of trance and Rockson looked closely at her beauty. After a few seconds she opened the stone lids again. “There is trouble,” she said with a look of desperation. “Ta’klak, the high priest, does not trust you or want you here. He has convinced the king that you must be killed, thrown into the Ni pit.”
“How the hell can you—”
“I can read their thoughts, too. Though they don’t know it. A secret I have kept to myself for obvious reasons. Come, I must help you and your men out, fast. Before you are thrown into the red lava and become the glowing stone that never returns to life.”
“That doesn’t sound too promising,” Rockson said, his brain spinning in circles. Now that they had made love and he had gotten used to the strangeness of the experience Rockson didn’t want to let go of her. She was special, with a kind of warmth and deep tenderness that permeated her soul. He felt like smacking himself in the head with his fist. All he needed was to fall in love with yet another maddening member of the female species!
He quickly dressed as she stood there. She had a sad look on her face and Rockson telepathically knew what she was thinking. That whatever happened they would never see each other again. He swore he saw a single golden tear ooze out of the corner of her right eye and roll slowly like a bead of mercury down her face. But then it was gone. It might have been the light.
“Come,” she said with a sudden urgency as she dragged him by the hand out of the lovemaking chamber and back through the narrow tunnel. “We have very little time. The king’s men are already heading toward the steam prison.”
They got back within several minutes, moving fast, and Rock noted with relief that there were still just the two guards standing in front of the narrow opening in the gushing steam circle. Shi’sa said a few words to them and they relaxed slightly. Suddenly she reached out with both hands and grabbed each man around the neck. They both went stiff for a second and then limp. She pulled back and both dropped to the ground, apparently dead. Rockson was glad he and she had made love, not war. For clearly the woman-creature was possessed with powers he couldn’t begin to fathom.
They rushed through the steam opening and Rock’s men jumped up at the commotion.
“Got to go, boys,” Rockson yelled. “We got company coming pronto and they ain’t the kind bearing gifts.”
“What about her?” Detroit asked suspiciously as Shi’sa stood there staring at all of them with a look of urgency in her stone face.
“She’s on our side,” Rockson replied gruffly, not wanting even the slightest bit of suspicion cast over the marble lover he had just spent an hour of bliss with. “Now move, we’ve got zero time.”
The man quickly threw their gear back into the ’brids’ packs and got the half asleep animals up on their feet.
“This way,” Shi’sa said as she led them back out through the opening in the steam prison. They quickly led the ’brids around the outer edge of the thing just as a whole detachment of guards came shooting across the cavern floor from a hundred yards off.
“Move! Move! Move!” Rockson screamed as he tried to get the whole operation to speed up. Shi’sa took the lead and began running across the hot lava floor of the cavern. The surface was sharp and pointed but her hard feet crushed over it like it was candy-ice. The ’brids let out whinnies of pain as even their hard hooves weren’t used to this kind of pointed ground.
Directly around the back side of the steam prison, perhaps fifty yards off, was a single opening, nearly circular. In the base of the wall. Two guards stood there, still relaxed, as they were unaware of the chase that was transpiring. Their eyes opened wide within their lava masks when they saw the party coming at them.
They raised up their spears to defend the passage into the tunnel, but Archer’s crossbow snapped off an arrow and Chen’s hand released a star-knife. Both lava men tumbled to the ground, one pierced in the head by the armor-piercing arrow the other blasted by the star-knife in the neck, the only real vulnerable part of their lava-armoring.
“In here,” Shi’sa exclaimed as they reached the opening. “This is the sacred Du’zhi tunnel. Supposedly for the Gods to migrate beneath heaven and hell. But it is also a way out. The only way to the surface that a man could make without climbing a thousand feet or going through the red lava pits. I will take you part of the way, as there are numerous turns for the first half.”
She rushed in, stepping over one of the bodies of the guards and the Freefighters followed suit, Detroit taking up the rear. They had gotten in a few hundred feet when they heard the excited shouts to stop from the lava-men, who were heading into the tunnel behind them.
Detroit ripped two pineapples from his bandolier and heaved them backwards just as they reached a curve. Seconds later there were twin explosions and then screams. But it didn’t stop the pursuers.
Shi’sa ran like the wind and even when they mounted up, Rock doubling with Chen, it was all they could do to keep up.
Rock saw what she meant about turnoffs. There were dozens of them. It was more like a honeycomb passage but she seemed to know it all without hesitation. They had gone about a quarter of a mile when he sensed the guards gaining on them. The ’brids were slowing the Freefighters down as they got skittish in tunnels and wouldn’t open up to full speed. Even with their sophisticated weapons, Rockson knew there were too many of the lava troops for them to be able to stop if the enemy caught up.
Shi’sa stopped just as they came to a large boulder imbedded right in the side of the tunnel.
“We must stop them,” she said simply. “This will do it. We must pull it out. Behind it is a river of red lava stopped up many years ago by my people. You have the things that make thunder. Take a bunch of them, put all around the sides. Fast. They are coming.”
Rockson didn’t need any encouragement in that department. As Detroit ripped off half his belt and they placed the grenades all around the boulder, they could hear the pursuers coming around a curve in the tunnel perhaps a hundred feet off.
The Freefighters tore ahead up the tunnel as Detroit pulled the pins and took off. They had gone another fifty feet or so when there was a deafening roar and then the boulder itself seemed to just break apart. A river of glowing red came pouring out. It flowed downward, a flood, a burst damn of molten stone.
The Freefighters could feel the heat, even as they tore ass uphill in the tunnel, which was at a steep enough angle to stop the lava from heading that way.
The red-hot rock moved fast and within seconds had inundated the pursuers. There was hardly time for screams, just sharp pops as their flesh, or whatever lay under the lava coverings exploded out under superheated pressure.
Shi’sa led them a few hundred yards more to where the tunnel suddenly widened. She stopped.
“This is as far as I go,” she said, addressing Rockson with a look of deep tender
ness in her black marble eyes. A look that all women have for the man who has just taken their bodies and souls to a place of perfect pleasure, only to leave.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Rockson asked, not wanting to leave her behind to face the wrath of the king.
“No, this is my world down here,” she replied. “Your world is above.”
“But they’ll—kill you,” Rockson exclaimed nervously as the rest of the Freefighters looked on. “For helping us escape. For killing the guards, for sending the lava down into the tunnel, taking out dozens of lava troops. They’ll throw you into that damned fire pit and somehow I don’t think even your marble body would survive. Come on!”
“I will say you took me prisoner,” she laughed. “Besides,” she laughed again. “I am the Shi’sa, the perfect one! They can’t touch me,” she muttered scornfully. “The only crime I may be punished for is killing the king. And I have no intention of doing that. I need him, and he needs me. He worships my beauty. I am beautiful . . . I shall live. And if the Gods will it—I will have your child.”
Sixteen
After a tremendous kiss, the Doomsday Warrior watched her leave. Then Rock positively flew up the ascending tunnel with the others. They were able to see the way by its glowing veins of marble.
Their way was well enough lit even after they had gone around enough curves to lose the red glow of the lava stream far below. The ’brids were tearing ass once they had felt the taste of fire on their flanks, and the Freefighters just sort of hung onto the sides of the hairy beasts as they careened from one wall to another back up to the surface. It seemed to take forever getting there. Of course they had been going down before.
The air began growing cooler and Rock told them they could take off their nose gear after he tested the air without his first and found that it was much better now.
“Damn, I hated how that thing felt in my nose,” Rock commented to Chen who was doubled with him on Snorter. Both sucked in air without a trace of labored breathing. Detroit removed his nose gear as well and Archer, seeing what was happening, did likewise.
They all moved a lot easier, their lungs filling fast and not feeling like they were breathing through twin straws rammed into their nostrils.
At last as they rounded a bend natural light came streaming down. Lighter than the glowing walls around them which quickly faded as their eyes adjusted to the higher illumination. All four men had big grins on their faces when they saw blue sky. It was like walking out of their graves. Having a second chance, being buried alive and returning to talk about it. Even the ’brids had sort of stretched-out jaw expressions that could be interpreted as smiles.
They came out into the vast chasmed prairie they had slid down out of recently. A different section, Rock could tell right away, as there were low mountains to the north. He guessed they were closer to Pattonville already, by perhaps fifty miles. For once the fucking fates were patting them on the back instead of kicking them in the ass.
“All right,” Detroit laughed, slapping high-fives with Archer who loved to do the hand jive, since it made him feel coordinated and slick, neither of which he was.
“RIIIGGGHHHTT,” the near-mute laughed, letting a little drool cascade down his mouth and chin in a high state of excitement. He slapped the black Freefighter’s hand so hard that Detroit let out a mock scream as he pulled it back fast.
Rockson made a quick scan of the prairie as he stopped them just a few yards up onto the cracked land. He climbed up on Snorter’s saddle, and surveyed the entire region with his binocs. It looked the same, endlessly the same. He held out the field compass but it spun wildly. Some of the flatlands had crazy magnetic patterns since the war. The compass was useless. But Rockson hadn’t spent his entire life traveling the mountains and wastelands not to know how to find out direction by dead-reckoning or even instinctively.
“We’ll head on for a few hours,” he said, addressing the men. They continued to be in high spirits even out in this chalky nothing of a land which looked like it had been ground up in a blender and then baked to within an inch of its life. Several miles behind them they could see plumes of smoke and what looked like a mound of the red slag bubbling up and flowing out. Had the lava filled their escape tunnel?
They were alive. But Rockson couldn’t get the image of the marble-bodied Shi’sa out of his head. He had fallen for something that wasn’t even of this earth, or on it anyway. What would become of her?
They rode hard for about four hours, Chen and Detroit now doubling up on a ’brid, as Snorter shouldn’t have to do all the work. They had to dump some supplies down in Hell, but there was enough. Rock wasn’t going to worry about bandaids, that was damned sure.
The sky was nearly as white as the wasteland that flashed beneath the hybrids’ pounding hooves—once the ’brids got up a good head of steam. Small funnels of the white sand rose above the salt-plain as they headed inexorably north.
They camped on a rise full of scrub pines when it grew dark, and were again surrounded by countless eyes, staring, glaring out of the darkness wanting a leg or an arm. Rock posted three-hour guard shifts; the usual routine. But found himself unable to sleep. The events of the underground city and the lovemaking with Shi’sa seemed to have hypnotized him. He was coming out of it now.
“Wow!” Rockson said, as he zipped himself into his sleeping bag, “never thought we’d get out of there.”
“Out of where?” asked Detroit. “You were dozing in the saddle even since before the volcano. Did you dream something?”
No one remembered about Hell, or the naked stone woman, they claimed. And they all claimed one ’brid had broken its leg in a hole and that Rock shot it!
Rock decided they must be putting him on, but they stuck to their story.
Archer shot and skinned a jackrabbit at dawn. Chen threw it in a frying pan and added spices and egg powder. They had rabbit and egg souffle, and started the day brimming with energy.
They rode for another eight hours straight north, through valleys and prairie land, through stunted trees that extended for miles. Fortunately the weather was with them. There was no indication of acid rain, or black snow or any of that stuff. The sky was bland, overcast with purplish haze high in the stratosphere where the radioactive rings kept circling, circling eternally over the earth. Schecter had said it was like a beacon to all the galaxy that we had fucked up.
They stopped twice for food and some rest, but Rockson pushed them hard. There was no time. He could feel it. Things were coming to a head fast. If whoever was running the sick gas show at Pattonville started taking over large numbers of cities, fast, in a kind of blitzkrieg, he could win before they had time to fight back!
Rockson was starting to wonder just where the hell Pattonville was. On his map it should have been almost dead ahead, but there were so many large mounds of debris mixed in with half rusted and disintegrated junk from a century ago that it was hard to get a good sighting. They plodded along a furrowed dirt road that had had some traffic recently. Tire tracks not a day old.
Suddenly a figure appeared ahead, stumbling along. The Freefighters pulled to a nervous halt, taking out their various weapons. They didn’t trust anyone these days. But it was just a single filthy looking man. No guns, or much of anything for that matter. His shirt was torn, his pants as well.
He wore only one shoe which he dragged along behind him in a twisted manner of walking. He reminded Rock of nothing more than one of the wide-eyed horror-film zombies he’d seen in C.C.’s film archives from the old days. The man’s face was frozen, the eyes staring straight ahead with a red rim around them like the blood might burst through. The man’s right arm was held straight out and it looked like such a caricature of an extra from Night of the Living Dead. Rockson had to grin, even as he raised his shotpistol just in case. He must be putting them on. It had to be an act!
“Hey, this cat for real?” Detroit laughed, ripped up his Liberator as he sat on the front of the ’brid, Chen behind
him. A couple of shuriken were slipping out from under Chen’s sleeve into his hands, nevertheless.
“He’s for real, all right,” Rock replied as the stumbling dazed man came right up close to Rock’s ’brid and then started past them all like he didn’t even see them standing there.
“Whoa, whoa, slow down there just a minute, fellow,” Rockson said as he slid down from the saddle and got in front of the man, gently bringing him to a stop. “What’s up, old man?” Rock asked. “If you keep walking in that direction like you’re going you’ll be dead in a few hours.”
“Dead,” the man replied with a glint of understanding. “Dead,” he repeated it almost happily like a child reciting its first words. “I am dead,” the man went on.
The Freefighters looked at each other a little nervously. The guy sure as hell acted like a real zombie.
“I think this sucker might be dead,” Chen said with a look of concern on his face. “There’s things about his skin, the green tinge—the way his eyes are so distended and bloodshot. You see what I mean?” Rock held his hand against the man’s chest. The fellow stood there, and didn’t seem to mind being talked to or touched. More like a lost dog that was vaguely happy someone had found it, or at least resigned to accept whatever happened.
“He’s got a heart beat, but not a hell of a lot,” Rock said. “One thump every few seconds.”
“Gaass,” the man croaked. “Hanover gas us.” He held his hands up around his throat and gasped hard showing them a charade of the event. “Now, can’t think good,” the man said. “Can’t, can’t.”
“What’s your name pal?” Rock asked with a smile, trying to be gentle with the mindless fellow. He could now see that the guy was telling the truth. His mind must be mostly gone. There was just something missing in the man’s eyes; the something of life.