by Ryder Stacy
“Ted Rockson—I am the White Fan,” the elderly assassin said, addressing the Doomsday Warrior in polite almost conversational tones as he fanned himself with a white oriental fan with pictures of dragons and tigers in wild colors drawn on its surface. “I have no animosity toward you—you understand,” the killer went on. “I can see that you are a brave and accomplished fighter. But I have my duty to perform. So please prepare your thoughts for death. The others were tough—but I assure you that I am at an entirely different level.”
“Can’t we talk about all this?” Rock asked, his body begging him not to push it any further. “You seem like a civilized man, perhaps—”
“Save your breath—and your strength, Mr. Rockson. I cannot back down. Nor can you. Shall we proceed?” He walked toward the Doomsday Warrior with a simple slow gait, appearing to the untrained eye to be nothing more than an old and skinny man. But Rockson knew differently. The assassin moved with total relaxation, every muscle, every nerve in his body, moving together in perfect harmony. But it was the eyes that were the giveaway—pools of unfathomable green, absolute stillness, like the surface of the moon. Eyes that were a mirror—eyes of the True Master.
“Shit,” Rockson half muttered through a bloody lip. He just wasn’t in the mood for this. But death didn’t sent out calling cards R.S.V.P.—it had a habit of showing up on one’s doorstep unannounced, quickly bringing an end to the part of life. But he was in even less of a mood to die, so the Doomsday Warrior wearily lifted the bayonet blade and went into fighting stance, his legs half crouched for quick movement.
“Yes, you see I am the last of the real Masters,” the White Fan said, casually waving the fan in front of his face as if he were out on the veranda trying to create a cooling breeze. “The others—well—you shall see soon enough for yourself.” Seeing an opportunity as the assassin spoke, Rock lunged forward fast as a cobra, thrusting the long blade at the man’s stomach. But the fan simply dropped down in the most casual of motions and knocked his hand away.
“It is really quite pitiful, Mr. Rockson, for you see I can sense every motion you are going to make,” the aged, white-faced killer said, “and counter it.” Rock jumped to the side trying to flank the man. But even as he moved the White Fan spoke again.
“Now you are moving at a 45 degree angle to cut off my circular movement. Now you will thrust again.” And as Rockson shot out the blade in a sure death blow, the assassin once again merely batted it away as if hitting a fly. “You are fast—but not fast enough. I train with the wind, Rockson, with the animals of the field.” He was suddenly right up against the Doomsday Warrior, almost hugging his body, just inches away. The fan swung up suddenly folding closed and slammed Rockson in the face. It felt like a spear had ripped into him as a burning pain filled his skull.
“Like this and—” the White Fan said, dropping his fan to waist level and stabbing forward twice into Rockson’s stomach, “like this. There, you see how easy it all is.” Rock almost doubled over from the blow to his solar plexus, sucking in deep breaths. “Ah, sometimes I wish there was someone who could give me a real fight. It gets—boring.” The White Fan came at Rockson, spinning the now opened fan in front of him like a toreador’s cape, creating a dizzying blur of white. And again the Doomsday Warrior felt the seemingly harmless implement slam into him. Shots hit his face and throat and stomach in an unending barrage of blows sending Rock reeling backward as if he had been struck by a cannon shell. He fell down, landing on his back, not even able to soften the blow with his arms. He could feel his consciousness going out like a fading lightbulb. He had never felt so awkward, so humiliated. He couldn’t even touch the man. All his years of training, of fighting meant nil against one of the last living Masters. Rock tried to rise from a sitting position and found his body barely responding to his commands. Even flesh and muscle as toughened as Rockson’s had its limits. He wasn’t a superman—just a man—and a very mortal one at that.
The White Fan stood looking down at him from about 8 feet away in no apparent hurry to end it all. He smiled an almost pitying expression at the Doomsday Warrior.
“Have no shame, Mr. Rockson—none have ever beaten me. None ever will. At least die knowing that you have been destroyed by the best—the very best.” He started forward in that slow almost childlike gait toward Rockson, spreading the fan out and raising it for the slicing stroke that would cut through Rockson’s throat.
The Doomsday Warrior suddenly realized that his left hand was resting on something hard and glanced over—one of the spiked brass knuckles from the Goju Master. He slid his hand around the smooth grip and tightened his fingers around it. Though God knew what good it would do against a man whose defenses were totally impenetrable. As he backed off, Rockson felt a small button at the thumb of the knucks. The weapon obviously had another level of operation set into motion by pushing the almost invisible button. But whether it would blow him or the other guy away, Rockson had no way of testing. He had nothing to lose—that was for damned sure.
He whipped the hand up and around as the White Fan descended with his death blow, and pushed the button. Rock’s hand shook as if resting on a bazooka as all four of the three-inch long steel spikes shot out of the knuckles like bullets. They streaked through the air reaching the White Fan, who was only a foot away, in a thousandth of a second. All four steel shafts buried themselves deep in the assassin’s chest, inches apart, sinking in so only the last half inch of their bottoms poked out. The White Fan’s hand stopped in mid-air as if hitting a slab of steel and he looked quite surprised as four streams of blood began flowing messily down the front of his spotless white robe. Then he looked at Rockson again.
The White Fan’s legs suddenly turned to rubber and he staggered back, a tiny step at a time. The thinnest of smiles arched across his narrow mouth as if even in death he felt a perverse joy at having finally fought a worthy adversary. Then he crumpled to the ground, nothing more than another corpse which littered the cavern floor.
Rock rose to his feet, his face throbbing and beginning to swell up from the thunderous blows he had taken from the Master. His right knee seemed to have been hurt somewhere along the line and he limped slightly as he started toward the center of the cavern where the fighting was still going on.
There were just two assassins left—one a young bull of a fighter holding a pair of steel-tipped nunchuks in each hand, spinning them in a blurring flash around in front of him. The other, an older Chinese, dressed entirely in black, who stood crouched in a strange scissor leg type motion, his body turned sharply at the waist, hands out front—a style that Rockson recognized as Pa Kua. The rest of the Freefighters were surrounding them as the two drew close together suddenly realizing that their “sure victory” over Ted Rockson had turned into a disaster of ultimate proportions.
The young bull, Duk Sung, a Korean, started at Rockson who was approaching, swinging the deadly nunchuks toward the Freefighter’s throat. But a whistling star-knife stopped him in his tracks as it arched into his throat, burying the 5-pointed blade a good four inches into the thick flesh. The Korean gagged as both of his sticks dropped from his suddenly paralyzed hands. Then he spat out a violent spray of blood that filled the air in front of him and fell straight over onto his face, nose just inches from Rockson’s foot.
“No sense in any more of us getting hurt,” Chen said, walking over, holding one of the star killers in his other hand. “You all right Rock?” the Oriental fighter asked, noticing blood splattered over Rock’s face and chest and the limp in his leg.
“I’m still here,” the Doomsday Warrior said tiredly. “That’s more than the guys I fought can say.” The two of them turned simultaneously toward the final remaining assassin who continued to circle in front of them, kicking one leg out at the knee, stepping forward, then placing the other in what looked like an awkward motion. But the off balance walk, Rockson knew, was part of perhaps the most efficient martial art ever devised. This fighter could well be the most dange
rous of them all.
“There’s no need to fight me,” the man suddenly said in almost perfect English as he stopped his defensive posturings and rose to a normal standing position. “I am Yi—Master of the Scissor Kick and the Iron Fist Systems. We have lost—you have won. It is clear. To the victor goes life—to the vanquished, death. This is as it has always been and always shall be. I ask only that you permit me to die by my own hand—as a warrior so that I may join my ancestors and my Master.”
Rock and Chen looked at each other as Archer and the surviving technician stood behind them.
“What the hell,” Chen said, “if he wants to—let him.”
“I don’t feel like doing any more killing today,” Rockson said, putting a hand onto Chen’s shoulder for support as his knee filled with a shooting electric stab of pain. The Pa Kua Master immediately knelt and bowed to all four points of the compass. Then he took out a small but razor sharp blade and opening the top of his black jacket, pressed the knife right up to his flesh just two inches below his bellybutton. He pulled in as hard as he could and began slicing around in all directions. Suddenly his neck stiffened and his head arched up as his intestines slopped out onto the cave floor. His eyes nearly bursting in their sockets he fell forward into the bloody pool of his own guts.
“Well, I guess that’s just about—” Rock started to say but stopped in mid-sentence as he looked around. “Where’s Detroit?” His face grew pale at the thought that the black Freefighter might have bought it. They looked around frantically, searching through the bodies of the dead assassins.
“I’m over here,” a weak voice spoke out from the opposite end of the cavern. The Freefighters ran over and found him half-lying, half-sitting against a tree-sized stalagmite nearly three feet wide at the base.
“I got a little cut here,” the black warrior said with a grimace. In the flickering light of the bulbs yards away they suddenly saw that Detroit’s arm was gone, cut from the elbow down. “I wish they’d got the other one, cause this here’s my pitching arm.” He motioned with his eyes to the missing limb which lay covered in dust and blood near his feet.
“Pick him up,” Rock said to Archer who bent down and lifted the bulldog of a black Freefighter gently in his huge arms. The Doomsday Warrior reached down and picked up the hacked off limb, immediately cleaning it with water from a crevice stream a few feet away and then tied the open end closed with cord. He wrapped the arm in one of the silk jackets from a dead assassin. The team tore back to Century City, shooting down the tunnels they’d come through earlier, following Chen’s trail of nylon line, every man praying silently that Detroit would make it.
Behind them, the first of the rats, the large aggressive males, ventured forth from dank holes to sniff at the unmoving bodies that lay strewn around the cavern. They circled the corpses at first, for the lift scents were very strong. They had to be careful. But after several minutes, a foot-and-a-half long creature with curved ivory fangs inches long, rushed suddenly forward and sank its jaws into the face of the White Fan. It ripped out a bloody strip of the cheek and swallowed it down greedily. The others quickly joined it.
Twenty-Three
After Detroit had been delivered to the operating room in the Century City hospital, its systems all functioning now with the power restored, Rock headed step by dragging step down to his room. His mind was full with a storm of thoughts and emotions—primarily that Detroit would regain use of his arm. The head surgeon, Johnston, had told him that the black Freefighter would definitely survive—but whether or not he would be able to reattach the limb was another question. They had only been using the sophisticated micro-surgery techniques for a few years and had never put back an entire arm before. But Rock knew he was the best—if it could be done the surgical team would do it. And beneath his concern about Detroit, the realization that Century City’s defenses had been breached by the assassins. Had they been alone so that the secret of the free city’s location died with them or—he shuddered to even think of it—did the Reds now know where they were. He couldn’t face the prospect of another battle like the one he had just been through or 10,000 Red Army troops trying to battle their way inside.
But by the time he reached his room, his brain was too tired to think of anything as he fell in a heap on his bed. Within seconds he was in a deep sleep—a sleep that should have been dreamless for the exhausted seldom dream.
But his sleep wasn’t dreamless. There was a nightmare, a nightmare as chilling as anything Rockson had ever experienced. Rock’s door was locked from the inside—pickproof—with an alarm system. Yet in the dream, someone opened the door silently and entered. A dark figure—a blackness beneath a glowing skull that seemed to drift bodiless above the floor. The skull floated toward the fuse box, opened it and unscrewed the fuse from its socket. The skull slowly turned and approached the bed.
Rock mumbled in his sleep, “no, no,” tossing and turning as his exhausted mind tried to rid the dream of this horror. There was the sound of slow deep breathing, a sort of hiss above the Doomsday Warrior’s bed, as the skull floated toward him. Rock dreamed that he got up and was standing next to the bed, but his feet were stuck to the floor, his body paralyzed. He tried to move but the most titanic efforts only turned him around, his feet glued to the concrete floor as surely as if they had been cast in cement. He struggled for breath, trying to wake himself—for something inside told him it was all real.
But a voice spoke to him, a hypnotic voice, saying “Sleep, relax, you are sleeping. There is no danger.” The voice hissed a cold stream of air between its skull teeth.
Something was wrong. The dream was too controlled, too calculated. With an enormous effort of will, Rockson opened his eyes and saw the skull hanging over the bed, a death moon floating in black space. Or was he still dreaming? Dreaming that he had awakened. He tried to clear his foggy consciousness. Everything was spinning, reality, unreality, a fog of incomprehension. Rockson felt a deadly lethargy coming over him, descending like a blanketing cloud over his senses. And all the while, the mesmerizing, droning voice that seemed to reach into the very core of his nervous system, saying, “Relax, it’s just a dream. This is not real. Just a dream.”
He felt himself going under the power of the dark energy, and rubbed his eyes, trying to keep them focused on the wavery apparition. From deep inside himself a voice cried out. “It is real; Danger! It has come to kill you! Wake up! Must wake up!”
“It’s real,” he shouted to himself, forcing his body to awaken from the dream that was also a reality. He jumped out of bed naked, throwing the billowing sheet toward the assassin. That broke the spell. The skull apparition ripped the floating sheet from the air, shredding it into tatters and with a single swipe of its clawed hand leapt forward toward where Rock had been lying, slashing the bed in half with a long glowing sword blade, nearly six feet long with a burning red stream of fire arching out from its tip. The bedding burst into flame, the mattress stuffing erupting in a hundred little tongues of fire.
Rockson dove forward and hit the floor the other side of his assailant, somersaulting across the room toward the closet where his .12 gauge shotpistol hung, a new one from the small arms depot. He grabbed it from a wire hook, turned and fired point blank at the skull faced killer. Nothing! The skull, which seemed to float in the darkness of the room lit only by the now smoldering mattress had a shadowy body beneath it, sleek as a leopard’s. The skull opened its bone jaws and laughed a deep echoing sound as if from the grave itself.
“Fool,” the skull spoke, “You cannot kill a ghost. You cannot destroy me—rather it is I who will destroy you.”
“Like hell you will,” Rock said, taking a star-knife from the back of the shotpistol’s holster and whirling it toward the deathly figure. He heard a howl and thought he saw a trickle of blood. The thing, whatever it was, apparently had some form of forcefield deflector for bullets—but not for the much slower alloy star-knives. At least he knew the thing could be hurt.
&n
bsp; The skull suddenly vanished into the very shadows. Then there was a scuffling, like a rat along the floor. Rockson was pulled from his feet before he had a chance to react. Only a snap roll to the side, throwing his entire body weight over, broke the skeletal grip around his left ankle. The glowing fire sword again sliced through the air at him, missing his chest by inches.
The eyes of the thing began throbbing with a green/red fire. Those eyes, the eyes—he was drawn to them like a moth to flame, unable to withstand the hypnotic pull. The wide empty orbs with pulsating red pupils in the center, pupils that drew Rock in like a whirlpool, sucking at his mind. He tried to break free of the eyes—but couldn’t. The voice began speaking again in a slow, irresistible monotone.
“You are me and I am you . . . If you kill me—you will die. If I feel pain you will feel it.” Rock felt his will slipping away. He took the other star-knife he had grabbed in his right hand, and straining as if he were lifting a truck, managed to raise it and jam it into his own right forearm. The sudden jolt of pain drove the dreamlike state from his head. There—your mind is clear, he thought in the first moment of clarity he had had since the nightmare began. Act now, now!
Rock threw the final circular blade. The spinning five-pointed knife hit the assassin just below the skull—and whizzed on into the darkness imbedding itself in the wall. How the hell did he do that? Its neck should have been there. The mad laughter that came back at him sent chills down his spine.
“Mortal, you think I am human? That you can kill me?” Suddenly three skulls appeared in the air, one right next to the other. “Which one of me is the reality? Which the illusion?” the skull laughed. “Give up, Rockson. There is no hope for you. None. Die peacefully. Go to the next world where there is eternal peace.”
But Rockson just didn’t feel like dying peacefully. If he had to go—it would be violently. He had to take a chance. One of the skulls coming in on him, one of the raised glowing sceptres was real. But which one? Which? His sixth sense told him to go for the center one. He lunged forward—and made contact with something solid. The ghost—or whatever the hell it was—wheezed out air, the breath knocked out of it. Rock wrapped his arms around the thing and wouldn’t let go—even when the huge electro-blade roared down through the air at him. He grabbed the wrist that held the sword and twisted it, making the boney flesh drop it. The blade fell to the floor, digging into the solid concrete, burning a hole, from which it stuck upright, swinging slightly back and forth. His clothes, lying on the floor next to the glowing weapon, suddenly caught fire and in the flash from the flames he could see the thing trying to kill him. It was a man—not a ghost, not a supernatural being. A magician of some sort wearing a skin tight black body suit, with the outline of a skeleton on it—but a man, a human, who could be killed.