by Ryder Stacy
“I see,” said Danik. “Yes, of course.”
Rath had been working too. He had contacted a small Indian settlement in Arizona by subspace communication. The settlement, Yumak City, would have some horses, he said, for the final leg of the journey to Eden, if they couldn’t divert to that place. “I don’t suppose you hope to use sleds in Mexico. The snow is very light down there, though it’s six feet deep around these parts.”
“I was counting on you to arrange such a thing,” Rockson said. “Schecter told me you were working on it. Who do I see down there in Yumak?”
“Ask for Chief Smokestone.”
Six
At the first light of dawn, the eighth day after Danik had wandered into Century City’s domain, they were ready. The Rock Team was in the main exit tunnel on the south face of Carson Mountain about to set out. Under the greenish lights of the wide concrete waiting area, Rockson inspected the team of six ferocious wolf-dogs squirming in front of his sled. He hoped they wouldn’t all of a sudden decide they wanted human meat rather than some of the dried bear meat they were bringing along for them. He turned to see the two other sleds lined up behind him. The howling of the damned half-wild animals they were depending on for locomotion was abominable. He hoped the giant steel door would track open soon. The echo of the howling was unbearable.
If the dogs worked out, he was confident they could go a thousand miles. They had all the weapons and equipment he had wanted—and more.
There was always certain standard equipment on any trek—the shotpistols, the power batons, the Liberator rifles. But each Freefighter had his own set of special weapons of his own choice.
Rockson carried a versatile balisong knife in his belt, plus an exploding baton. He also had, on his sled, an aluminum power-bow and a good-sized quiver of killing arrows. It was a bow similar to Rona’s but with even more pull. For silencing guards, should they reach Eden and take on such opponents as would be there, he brought along a set of Greek garroting chains.
Archer was of course well armed—he even slept with his special homemade steel crossbow cradled in his arms. Rock knew he carried a grab bag of good weapons under those multiple smelly bearskins he wore. The bearded mountain man had, for one thing, lengths of rope and steel cable. He liked to combine his arrows and these cords for grappling purposes—or just to lasso some unfortunate enemy. Over his shoulder on a ratty leather strap, he wore a knapsack full of ancient musket weapons all loaded with grape-shot and nails.
Chen of course carried sixteen explosive and forty non-explosive shuriken. He also carried a yarawa stick—for jabbing pressure points—and a set of nunchaku.
Detroit Green carried twin bandoliers of grenades strapped across his brawny chest. Also, a set of throwing blades. Plus an ancient western Colt .45 Rock had given him on his birthday.
McCaughlin was the one with the power-brass knuckles. It added to the force of his fists; the explosive-bolt knuckles would do what the crushing power of his massive shoulders wouldn’t do to a door or wall or person. The big trail cook also had taken to carrying a boomerang—he had been taught its use by a friendly Australian comrade some time ago.
Rona carried her crossbow of aluminum and a quiver of arrows. Lighter than Archer’s heavy homemade weapon of steel and wood, yet deadly. Rona Wallender’s arrows were tipped with poisons. Lots of different poisons. Plus she carried her “lady’s weapon”—a tiny derringer-type pistol with .22 bullets in a handle clip. Bullets tipped with poison too.
Scheransky carried the Russian weapons of choice—the bludgeon, plus a Dragunov sniper rifle and the laser-honed short sword in his belt.
Thus armed, the Freefighters could take on platoons of Soviet special forces. And they might have to, Rockson thought. They might just have to do just that . . . For America was crawling with the Soviet invaders.
“Too bad we can’t take along a tank,” McCaughlin joked as the loaded sleds and their earnest drivers waited for the steel doors to open to the outside world of terror.
“Yeah,” Rockson quipped, “or a few pieces of artillery. Snow or no snow, I doubt the Soviets have stopped patrolling the area between here and Mexico. They like winter, right, Scheransky?”
“Indubitably, Russians like winter. Why, in Moscow, we even eat ice cream in weather like this . . .” Scheransky said.
“Make mine tutti-frutti,” said Detroit. “Look, the sun is out.”
It was out. The door slid open to reveal a clear day. There was a pleasant pink-ocher sunrise sending multiple beams of light up over the craggy ice-laden peaks of the Rocky Mountains to the east.
“Red sky in morning, sailor take warning . . .” Rockson muttered.
“What did you say?” Detroit yelled over the din of the eager wolf-dogs.
“The weather could change for the worse soon,” Rock rephrased.
Archer slid his sled right past the Doomsday Warrior’s the minute the three teams of six dogs each had gotten out on the slope heading down from Carson Mountain. The damned dogs obeyed his every mutter. Perhaps it was his smell that ingratiated the big mountainman to the dogs, Rock thought. Whatever it was, Archer was the only one who didn’t have to use a whip on the beasts to steer them.
Those Freefighters who weren’t driving the sleds rode alongside, tethered by rope, sliding along on their short steel skis. Danik was apparently having a ball on his skis, despite very little training in their use. He slid up alongside Rockson and said, “The sunrise is so beautiful. So many colors. It’s sad my friends are not here to see us and this beautiful day.”
“Just a typical sunrise,” Rock smiled, “Evidently you like the surface world.”
“Yes, it is most fascinating and beautiful.”
For hours they traversed country Rock knew well. The landscape was muted by gentle deep waves of brilliant white. The snow goggles—slits in plastic—helped shield their eyes. Still, Rockson was relieved when some clouds showed up to dim the scenery a bit.
“Mush, you mutated Americansky huskies, mush,” Scheransky cried out. It was his turn to navigate the first sled and he was doing it with relish. Rona steered the second sled expertly alongside him. Rock trailed, happy to give up the lead. The wolf-dogs howled their triple-tooth best and pulled the sleds mightily. At first they were difficult to control, but then the “dogs” settled down. They pulled the heavily laden sleds like they were lightweight paper.
“I think this is going to work fine.” Rock yelled over the snorting and howling to Rona. “If they stop making so much noise.”
“They’ll quiet down—they’re excited and happy to be out in the real world, that’s all.”
With cracks of the whips, they were speeding along at fifty miles per hour, sliding down the steep incline of a blanket of hard packed snow. The best way to travel, Rock thought.
Rockson considered the plan rather loosely conceived. Lots of things never done before were being attempted here. He hoped to god it would all work. The sleds, for instance. Would they hold up? Sure, they’d last for the trek to the damned President museum or whatever the hell it was. But if they went further—would they hold up? And Danik—he was doing fine so far, but he was a delicate sort. Might not fare well in hardships to come. And the mission would have to be aborted if the notebook they were after was missing. Or if the notes in it didn’t have useful bearings. And things were even vaguer for when—and if—they got to Eden. Danik wanted them to hide in the lake area of the underground biosphere and wait for members of his dissenter group to join them, and then make plans in concert with these Edenites. Rock didn’t like this plan. He would think of another one, if and when they got there.
He half-laughed. Only the fate of the world hung on these many variables. God, what if Stafford had already decided to release the deadly vial of germs into the atmosphere? Nobody knew what fiendish concoction Factor Q was, or how to immunize anyone against it. The one thing Danik did know about the deadly virus was that it took only one day to kill after a person was infect
ed. Great. Rock watched the parka-clad woman slide along on skis.
Rona had earned her entry into the mission. Without her initiatives, it would never have been possible. She was some lady. And Rock looked forward to sharing his sleeping bag with the leggy redhead. A bonus for having her along. The guys would understand—wouldn’t they? Of course, McCaughlin would tease—but what the hell. And Scheransky—Rock was proud of the man.
The Russian was an asset. A man who Rock had come to admire, as much for his courage and open-mindedness as for his technical knowledge. Rockson couldn’t get over the change in Scheransky. The Russian defector was quite different from when Rock had first met him, right after he’d parachuted down from a Soviet plane. Then, Scheransky had been a pudgy techie, brainwashed into believing most if not all of the Communist party line. Now he was lean and hard, a seasoned veteran of the Freefighter forces. His allegiance was to freedom now, freedom and strength. The rest of the team were friends and worthy members of the human race. Rock worried that some of them might not survive the whole journey. Just a hunch. Who?
It was near dark when Rockson decided, by taking sightings with his navigation equipment, that they were nearing the Hall of President’s museum. The Freefighters had shuffled positions again. Now, Detroit and Chen were hanging onto the sled that the Russian drove. Each wore the short metal skis that had special almost-frictionless bottoms under their boots. That lessened the weight the dogs had to pull.
Rockson’s sled followed. He drove its six fan-hitched wolf-huskies relentlessly, and they never tired. McCaughlin and Archer were sliding along holding on each to their own handle behind him.
Rock hoped that at the end of each day’s trek they could find some sort of shelter—a rock overhang, anything. They had a survival tent, but there was a suspicious wind rising from the east. The worst storms came out of the Great Plains, where they could build and build, unencumbered by mountains. He feared the worst.
Seven
Rock watched the towering black clouds building over the hills. Though it wasn’t snowing, the increasing winds coming from the blackness ahead whipped through his down coat and threatened to tear off his fur-flapped hat.
Most snow clouds are gray. Black snowclouds could mean acid snow—the conical-flaked death snows. No one could predict when the black snow would come to devastate an area, they just came out of nowhere.
A biting cold hit just as the sky became totally dark. It was as if the sun had set, and yet it was an hour before sunset.
Rockson, anxious to make their goal before all hell broke loose, pushed their teams to the utmost. The cold ate into his hands, his arms, his legs, despite the thermal layers of synseal and goose down. The others too by their grim expressions were feeling the sixty-below temperature—and realizing the danger.
There was only open, rolling terrain ahead, but hopefully they could reach the cliffs he could see miles ahead, find shelter before the storm hit. Worry about finding the museum later.
Within minutes, as the seven brave Freefighters whipped their half-wild teams to a frenzied pace, the storm overtook them. A thunderous howl of wind-blown snow obscured the way, and in that blown white snow appeared black specks—the dreaded black snow.
“Faster, we’ve got to go faster. Shine your flashlights ahead; use your compasses. Keep going west-south-west. We’ve got to find shelter.”
The sled he was riding started to shimmy in the wind; the dogs were howling, their voices an eerie cross between wolf howl and dogs’ growl. Lightning and thunder rent the air. The black specks increased. Rockson got the first hit on his lips. It burned. Acid snow, all right.
There appeared a dozen, then a hundred, smoking tiny holes in his snow suit. The acid flakes were eating into his clothing.
He pulled the hood down over his face—he couldn’t see ahead anyway, so he just kept the luminous compass in sight through the tiny hole he left to see through. “Faster, faster,” he yelled, whipping the howlers.
It was totally dark now, they were plunging ahead at breakneck speed, but they had no choice. The super-strong wolf-dogs were the one thing in their favor. Snow-wolf pelts were special—they were immune to acid snows, the result of a hundred years of genetic mutation after the nuke war. The dogs would keep going. But the acid snow, though it didn’t blind the teams, still stung their eyes. Therefore the howls of pain. The dogs wanted to stop and huddle together, protecting their eyes. But if they stopped, the humans they pulled would be burned to skeletons in a matter of ten minutes.
Only the whip kept them going.
Rock had to look ahead—he uncovered his eyes. It hurt, but he had to look. There. Through the swirling gray-blackness, Rock dimly saw a shape—the cliffs. “We’re almost there, keep behind me, I’m going to find a niche in the rocks for us to hole up in,” he shouted, the wind nearly drowning his words.
It didn’t take long once they reached the jagged jumbled rocks of the cliffs to find a deep rock overhang. In seconds they were out of the snow and wind. With their flashtorches lit, they unhooded and removed their outer clothing and applied ointment to their stung faces and eyes. Detroit had a space between his left glove and his coat, and the skin was badly burned there. But by some miracle that was the only injury. The parkas weren’t impervious to the acid snow, but they had some resistant quality. Schecter had synthesized the material the parkas were made of. Good old Schecter.
There were some small gnarled tree stumps in the rock shelter, “Joshua trees,” said Detroit. “Thousands of years old.”
Rock carefully unhitched the teams of dogs and tied them to the stumpy trees, then Chen and he applied ointment to the wolf-dogs’ big red saucer eyes.
They seemed to sense that they were being treated for their own good, and the salivating teeth-aplenty creatures docilely accepted the ministrations.
That accomplished. Rockson said, “Maybe we can get a fire burning—there’re lots of broken branches and some dried grass in clumps here and there.” It was a good idea, for the temperature still hovered around sixty below. In no time at all, wood and kindling had been gathered and a roaring fire lit. Rockson sat down close to the fire on the bare earth. Ah, this was better.
He felt something uncomfortable—maybe a root—under him.
He stood up to see what the offending object was, and picked up what looked like the femur bone of a human skeleton. “Hey, look at this—seems like we’re not the only ones to ever stop here . . .”
“Nor the unluckiest. I wonder what he died of.” Chen said.
Rona said, “Maybe we’d better have a look around . . .”
One of the bigger of the wolf-dogs, the one that Class Act seemed to always huddle with, began growling. His fierce red eyes, glowing in the campfire light, fixated on Rockson. The beast yowled and lunged forward, snapping his restraint, his salivating triple jaws heading straight for the Doomsday Warrior.
“Drop the bone,” Rona said, throwing her weight against Rockson, pushing him aside in the nick of time. Rockson rolled and came to a stand. He had dropped the bone, yet was preparing for another onslaught from the wild dog. But the dog just lost interest and sat down.
Chen put his exploding star-knife down. “I was just about to throw it at the damned animal. We would have been out one damned good dog,” he said. “Good thing it quieted down.”
“I wonder what upset it?” Rockson mused, carefully going over and retying the creature. It didn’t even growl. Then Rock went over to the bone again and started lifting it. Instantly the dog began growling. He dropped it.
“Looks like it isn’t you but the bone the dog doesn’t like,” Rona observed.
“Okay with me,” Rockson said. “I’ll leave the damned bone alone.” He walked to the fire. “McCaughlin, do you have that dried caribou meat? The dogs might be a bit hungry. Maybe that’s what’s bugging them.”
“I’ll get right to it. Rock. I’ll fix it up, roast it on a spit over this here fire. And I’ll fix us humans up some good grub too.
”
“Took the words right out of my mouth. Save the fatty parts for our dogs. They deserve some food. They sure are doing their job. Glad I thought to use them for this trek.” Rock shot a glance at Rona and winked.
In a matter of twenty minutes, they were all chomping on the delicious dried meat of the caribou. The howling winds were subsiding outside, and they were warm. The snow had become white, and the hissing acid death was being dissolved by pretty white snow-flake crystals.
Detroit took some of the gristle over to the dogs and fed them one at a time, in size order. That’s the way they ate in the wild. Biggest first. Feed them any other way and you’re a dead man.
Then he hesitated. There were some funny noises. And Detroit felt the ground under them tremble. It wasn’t an earthquake, it was—
“There’s something burrowing under us,” Detroit exclaimed.
They all stood, drawing their shotpistols. The ground exploded all around them. And out of the exploding gaps came hurtling snarling creatures. Red-eyed, fanged creatures. They moved so fast they looked like blurs.
One took a snap at Rock’s heels; he shot it with his pistol. “They’re some sort of gopher,” Rock said as another one jammed its jaws around his sleeve and tore off some material. Everyone had their hands full. The dogs thought it was great fun, for the creatures from the ground would bite at them, and then be slavered up by the big wolf-dogs, who didn’t even bother to chew the foot-long creatures.
Chen tossed a series of knives, catching three of the hell-gophers in midair. The rest of the Freefighters fired wildly, but to some effect. The ravenous invaders had inch-long fangs. One got poor Danik on the right wrist and hung on trying to tear his arm off. Rock pushed the Eden citizen to the ground and stomped the brains out of the thing that wouldn’t let go.
The humans weren’t doing too well, but the sled dogs had broken loose and were having a field day chasing down the creatures. They closed their triple rows of teeth around them and swallowed them whole. Then a snarling gopher lunged for Scheransky’s throat before he could fire, Class Act intervened. The intelligent female wolf-dog snapped the gopher out of midleap and digested it.