by Ryder Stacy
They looked at him with terror. They were used to being commanded, humiliated, beaten, but by the Russians or the Nazis, not by another slave. Yet this man had tremendous power; not one of them dared face him. Foster 236 watched from the far end of the room. So the new slave was vying for power. He had known the time would come. Well, one of them had to die. But not right now. He knew he couldn’t take on the mad slave one-on-one. He would need stealth; attack when he was defenseless. He felt the solid shaft of the large hammer he had stolen from his factory where he worked. Soon . . . soon. He looked at Joe with a thin smirk of secret knowledge—the man would die.
“Tonight,” Rockson screamed, “we start right now to change things. You want a boss, you like to be told what to do, okay. I’m the new boss. If you want to try to kill me, go ahead. Be my guest. Now or at any time. One at a time or all at once. But meanwhile you listen to me. You got that?” He screamed out at the grovelling slaves.
“I said do you got that?!” he bellowed so loud that those close by threw their hands over their ears in pain.
“We got that,” they answered back, not wanting the madman to start up again, hitting at them.
“Good, now we’re getting somewhere,” Rockson said, relaxing for a moment, glad to see that he was finally making some headway. A thin smile crossed his hard face. Maybe he could command them into being men, into freedom.
“First we’re going to clean this place. You know what this is? Clean?” he asked sarcastically. “No filth, no dust, no shit, no vomit, no spit, no piss, no nothing. Clean.”
He glared at them menacingly then added. “Clean. Now say it after me.”
“Clean,” they answered in a hesitant chorus.
“Good, excellent,” Rockson said, smiling at his unwilling pupils. “Now get your fucking asses out there, fill up those water buckets from the pump and wash this place down. Now!” He rushed toward the walls of the barracks where the men stood, forcing them all to run by him and out the door. Within a minute the place was emptied out and just the filth encrusted blankets and bits of clothing the men had left behind in their panic sat there, all covered with so many layers of grease and dirt that they were nearly stiff, objects set into rigor mortis.
Rockson walked outside and saw one of them slowly filling a bucket from one of the four pumps set in the ground. He went over and grabbed three other slaves by the shoulders thrusting them toward the pumps.
“You—you are the pumpers. You keep pumping until I tell you to stop. You,” he said, pointing to ten men standing in a group nearby. “You men go back inside, bring every bit of clothing, bedding, whatever, out here and wash it down. Nothing goes back inside until it’s been washed. Nothing. You,” he said gruffly, forming a long line of men, pushing them into place one after another. “You are the water brigade. When they hand you the buckets you pass them to one another, so that these men here,” he grabbed another five of them, “can flood the floor down. Now go.”
He stood back as the entire human machine went into operation. Everyone of them would gladly have seen Rockson dead at that moment, but their sheer fear of him made them move, first slowly, and as he glared at them, more quickly.
And it worked. The water was passed, the clothes were brought out, the place was flooded again and again with water and then mopped out two drainage holes on the floor, using pieces of cardboard, turned on their edge.
After the third washing Rock had them stop. He glanced inside. The place looked beautiful. Dilapidated, windowless, but it was clean. Little pools of clear water sparkling from the moon’s light stood every feet feet around the wide floor. The smell of shit was gone.
“Now,” Rockson said, clapping his fist into his palm. “It’s bath time. Whoever wants to sleep inside there tonight is going to take a bath under those pumps. You understand?”
“I ain’t taking no damned bath,” one particularly dirty piece of humanity said, shuffling from one foot to another. Without a word Rockson walked over to him and slammed the man in the chin with his fist. He crumpled to the ground like a wet leaf.
“Everyone takes a bath,” the Doomsday Warrior said, holding his fist up. “One way or another.”
He had them line up again, the men in front pushing the water pump for the next. Stripped naked of their clothes, one after another, they went under the cold water and for long minutes were forced to turn and scrub themselves with some stiff brushes Rockson dug up, until there wasn’t a trace of slime on them. Then they lined up again on the other side of the doorway holding their still wet clothes and bedding that had been drenched by the wash crew.
It was nearly four in the morning before Rockson allowed them to once again enter the barracks. They quickly found their previously owned territory, creating their own little squares out of coats, cardboard, pieces of woodland then they all lay back, sopping in their wet clothes. Rockson made his way over to his corner where he made a small bed for himself from his field jacket.
“These are the new rules,” Rockson said, addressing them in the dark. He could see the hundreds of eyes, peering back, shining in the moonlight like little silver daggers, every one of whom he knew wanted to kill him.
“We don’t shit or spit in here anymore. That’s all done in pits at least 50 feet upwind of here. We’ll dig holes tomorrow. We’ll have a thorough cleaning of the place, the inhabitants and their clothing, once a week. All bugs and rodents are to be killed the moment they are spotted. Once again, you are welcome to try and kill me. If you do—the rules, I would imagine, will no longer apply. Until then, they do apply.” Rockson let his head drop back and prepared to sleep.
“This is all great,” a voice spoke up nervously from the far corner of the room as the rest of the slaves sucked in their breath, anxious that the madman would get going again, just when they had been allowed back in their beds. “But, while you’re making us men, what the hell do we do with it? We’re all lost here. None of us will even be alive in a few months. Why? Why?”
Rockson sat up. The man sounded more intelligent than the others. Almost civilized.
“Who is that speaking?” the Doomsday Warrior asked through the moon slivered darkness, the rays dropping down in solid white shafts of light, like burning pins into a voodoo doll.
“I am Tony 57,” the voice said nervously, then added with a stronger voice. “Real name is John Lyons.”
“Well Mister Lyons,” Rockson said, lying back down into a comfortable position as he spoke, his tired eyes closed. “We do it because we are men. Because, whether we live or die, we must do it as men. When you let the invader take your mind and soul, then he has won. When he has only your body, he has a fire that may explode on him at any moment. Because I am a man, I know that inside of you, all of you, is a man also. Frightened, terrified, lost in pain and madness. Still, I know it’s there, and as a brother American I can’t stand by and let you live like this.”
“We’ll all die,” another voice yelled out.
“Better to not know we are men,” a second voice answered.
“Only Ted Rockson could save us,” a man near the Doomsday Warrior spat out like a bullet.
“Rockson?” Rock asked curiously. The name sent a shiver up his spine. “Who is Ted Rockson?”
The man sat up and spoke in a loud whisper as the others grew silent. Every one of them knew the legendary name. Only Rockson himself did not.
“Rockson is the one man the Russians, and the Nazis, fear,” the man said with some pride as if sharing in the Doomsday Warrior’s strength just by speaking of him. “He is a Freefighter and has done incredible damage to their armies. He’s the most wanted man in America. The Russians have his name and picture, only no one really knows for sure what he looks like, anyway. They have his description up in every military base in the country. Reward of 100,000 rubles for any man, Red or slave, who finds him and turns him in. He could save us,” the man said almost prayerfully, as he looked out the window through narrow tearful eyes at the burning moon above.
“He’s the only one who could. There are stories that he has even freed slaves and prisoners in many fortresses. But no one knows for sure. The Russians don’t speak of him. So it is all just told from stranger to stranger. But I know he is real,” the man went on, growing more and more quiet as the others listened attentively, their minds somehow more awakened by the events of the evening than they had been for a long, long time.
“I know he exists. And I know he will never come here, to this camp, to save us. Not here. We are the lost, the forgotten. The unknown dead.”
Eleven
She was kissing him. She was all over him, her naked long-limbed body squirming hard against his as she frantically sought for his manhood. Then he was in her. Her face was so familiar as he looked down at her ecstatic beauty. How incredible she looked, like a goddess. He stroked into her harder and harder. He searched for her name. What was her name? Damn it, why couldn’t he remember?
Suddenly voices were calling to him from everywhere. Her voice, multiplied 1,000 times. Her mouth opened again and again, calling his name. Calling his name. Her lips formed the words, but somehow no matter how close they came he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then a chorus of sensations shot through his entire body. They were talking to him. Their melodic voices, like a thousand minds telepathing at once, somehow linked into one pulsing harmonious being, spoke to him. Tried to reach him. He knew them, they were—The Glowers. Their name, he knew their name. They reached for his mind, sending out their telepathic signals from far off . . .
“Arise. Arise, now. Danger, danger is all around you . . .”
He felt a burning pain rip through his head and neck. The sensation was unbearable, as if his entire spinal cord was being severed. He opened his eyes. He had been sleeping, someone was above him. A weapon, a hammer. It descended with the swiftness of a guillotine for its second strike. But Rockson, even with the racking pain in his upper neck from the hammer’s first blow, was still alive—and fast. He rolled his body over, suddenly shifting his hips so that he snapped to the side just as the hammer came down. The 15-inch long, three-inch wide, heavy industrial iron-crafting hammer whizzed past its intended victim and into the floor, cracking the concrete into spider-web like fissures around the point of impact.
It was Foster 236, Rock could see as he jumped up from the floor, slamming one hand around his throbbing neck. No blood, but it hurt like hell. The fool must have missed his skull, and hit just on the muscular side of the neck . . . where he could absorb the blow. He was alive anyway. And something else. He suddenly realized—he knew who he was. The blow—it had made it all come back! I’m—I’m the Rockson. He almost laughed with joy even as the hulking attacker turned with a snarling contemptuous shriek, attacking with the dread hammer cocked treacherously overhead, threatening Rockson’s skull. But Rockson looked at him with his own brand of contempt. To the others the huge Foster 236 looked unstoppable, but Rockson had fought warriors many times stronger and deadlier. And had won every fight.
He waited until Foster was almost upon him, until the ugly scarred face was only inches away, and then he moved. Rockson swung his hips to the side, stepping in on the charging rhino of a man. The hammer swung just past his head, six inches in front of it, as Foster 236 once again cut thin air. Rockson slammed his hand against the shoulder blade of the attacker. At the same instant he kicked the man’s right leg out from under him. The huge body slammed forward and straight down to the concrete floor with all its huge momentum behind it. The man had no time to shield himself from the blow. His face ripped into the ground, smashing instantly into a pulp, as if he had just fallen head-first from a six story building. His teeth and nose ground back into the face. The cheekbones followed. The eyes were slapped back into their sockets as the bone containers around them cracked into pieces. The body twitched violently, shaking and jerking around the floor like a beached whale. The other slaves leaped out of the way, pulling their bedding with them. Then, it was still, as the brain’s nervous system stopped and the heart and lungs ceased functioning. The bloody dead thing lay in the center of the floor wet with thin stabbing streaks of blood.
Rock stood up to his full height and looked away from the meat slab on the floor. “I am Ted Rockson,” he said simply to the workers. “You were saying last night that he would never come to save you. Well I have come! I’m going to get you all out of here, every fucking one of you.”
They stared at him in disbelief. My God, he must be the Rockson to dispatch Foster so easily. The Rockson had come here for them—then they were worth something. The Rockson wouldn’t save worthless slime. His presence filled them with a magical sensation, an emotion they hadn’t experienced for as long as they had memories—joy. The emotion of joy.
“We’re going to fight them—starting right now. An hour or two before dawn—the best time to strike. I need you to help me. In return I’ll blow this whole damned dump to hell. You’ll live like men from now on.”
The slaves looked at him, their minds filled with fear and confusion. Men? They wanted to be men, but could they?
“I can’t promise any of you that you’ll live. But are you alive now? You’ll be striking a blow for every slave in this world. And if the others in this living hell see you, they’ll join in. And with all of us fighting at once, the Nazis will fall.”
He raised his heel and slammed it down into the concrete, making an exploding pistol-like sound.
“Yes, I come,” the intelligent one who had questioned him the night before, said. He stepped forward. Just a sprout of a man, still in his teens. Yet Rockson could see by his hard set eyes, his firm jaw, that he was someone to be trusted.
The Doomsday Warrior reached over and rested his hand on the teen’s shoulder for a second. “By the authority vested in me as Commanding Officer of the United States Free Fighting Army, I appoint you lieutenant—what’s your name again? Your real name?” Rockson asked with a grin.
“Lyons, sir. John Lyons.”
“Lieutenant Lyons. You’ll help me whip things in order.”
“Yes sir,” Lyons said, raising his hand in an awkward salute in Russian, not American style, as the Reds were the only people he had ever seen saluting.
“I guess I’ll come too,” another man spoke out. “My brain was dead, Mister Rockson. What you did to us last night, said to us. You woke me up. I don’t care if I die—I’ve been dead for the last seven years. I—I was a farmer before that,” he said, his eyes misting over for a second. Then he looked up with a fierceness in his eyes. “I’d like to have a chance to die fighting against these bastards. I’d like that a lot.”
He walked over and joined Rock and Lyons. Something was changing about them all now. It was almost as if the Rockson had made them see something about themselves. And once seen, it couldn’t be forgotten. He had offered them a road they had to travel now. The road toward being men. Another and then another stepped forward until within a minute 75 of the 150 man barracks had come over.
The rest, their minds still set in the ways of the rodent, the ways of the animal living in its own filth stared with fear and loathing at the group across the way. Slaves were not supposed to rebel. Let there be no trouble. We will be fed, we have a place to sleep, they thought.
Rockson led his group out, telling them to crouch low so as not to be spotted. They headed down one of the darker side streets rather than down the main truck thoroughfare through the middle of the slave sector. They managed to avoid guards for about two blocks. Then they rounded a corner and saw a German machine-gun post. Two of the three inside the sandbag enclosure were asleep. The third, nearly asleep himself as he read a German propaganda magazine.
Rockson motioned his mini-army of newly freed slaves to follow behind him, cautioning them to keep silent. They tried to carry out his whispered orders as he tried to get them to fan out and creep up on the objective. But they hadn’t moved like men for so long, it was difficult to remember the motions, and they were clumsy in their unpra
cticed deployment.
Rock crept right up to the reading German and rose up behind him. He grabbed over the sandbags at the helmet strap and pulled hard to the right at the same second his other hand slammed into the spinning face with a fist made of human steel. The man’s nose pancaked in and his eyes rolled up like egg whites. Rock jumped into the enclosure and slowly lowered the still breathing body to the ground as the team he had gathered around him dove on top of the other two, making quick if somewhat messy work of them.
They headed on as Rock searched for the balcony-ringed tower where he had seen Rona. That was her name. Rona! Beautiful Rona. He knew everything. Who he was, who she as. Where they were and what had happened. That last shell from the tank. It had just taken him right out of his head.
“Obviously, they weren’t aware of who he was, and had just put him to work with the other slaves!
Mutants luck!
And somehow the Nazis had gotten hold of Rona too. There was no time for subtlety. They’d just have to smash their way in and rescue Rona, then get the hell out of there.
He saw it, the tower, rising bizarrely above the other squat utilitarian cement buildings, ten stories into the air. There were guards at the entrance, but just a few. The Nazis were overconfident. They couldn’t imagine these humble slaves rebelling. So much the better. Again the rag-tag force swept forward, the slaves’ hearts starting to come alive as they felt their own power, their ability to destroy those who had destroyed them. They came into the five-guard post in a tidal wave of fists and feet, knives and slivers of glass. And within seconds five bloody bodies tumbled to the dusty ground, as dead as if they’d never been born.
Rockson ordered half the men to stay below as the slaves gathered up the weapons of the dead Nazis. Lyons took up a sawed-off Kalasnikov “autofire” in his hands and held it proudly. The others as well grabbed for guns. Men—they were becoming more like men by the second.