by Ryder Stacy
Then the rats, the spiders began devouring his flesh. A voice boomed out over the loudspeaker, giving him commands, filling his mind with new thoughts, new orders.
“You are Russian soldiers now. Your obedience is to Mother Russia. Your American self is gone! You are Russian, you are a slave for the Motherland. You will do anything for her. You will kill for her. KILL! KILL! KILL!” The words combined with the pain in his skull and the melting sickening stench of human brain tissue. He was in a new universe, a dimension of pain and torture he had never dreamed existed. He felt himself falling over the edge of his reality like a man in a barrel going over a waterfall. He was falling, dropping, as his thoughts and being, his entire personality dropped away beneath him. There was nothing. NOTHING! He looked down, looked into the face of the purest pain and began the long descent down into the abyss of losing his mind.
Twelve
Where was he? Who was he? He ached all over. He was in the center of a darkness, a spiraling galaxy of black stars. He was falling up, falling into the light. It grew brighter, piercing! He moaned and opened his eyes. The burning sun smashed into his eyes and throbbing flesh. He was lying in a bed of dark brown grass. He was Rockson. Ted Rockson. He heard a noise and startled, swung his head around. A large furry face loomed large. In fear, Rock reached for his shotgun pistol—no, it was Snorter, trying to awaken him.
Suddenly he remembered. The thorns. The poison. So, he was still alive. The anti-venom had worked. And the Goddamned hybrid was stronger than he. It stood firm, looking down at its master who could barely move after the palomino had been revived for hours. Rock tried to stand himself and reached his knees, then collapsed back onto the cool ground. It was early in the morning. The sun was painting a smooth arc of red light above the purplish brown sky. How long had he been under? Twenty-four, forty-eight hours? It felt like an eternity. Every nerve, every fiber of his being ached and pulsated as if infected. His ears buzzed, his eyes stared straight ahead as he found it hard to focus on anything. But he was alive. He had survived once again.
Rock struggled to his feet and somehow made his way the few yards to the hybrid. He lifted the four quart canteen from the saddle and opened it. His throat was parched, his lips dry as sand. Rock brought it to his mouth and felt a wave of violent trembling sweep over him as the first drops of liquid touched his tongue. No, damn it! He was going under again. He felt himself falling, saw the ground rushing up like a fist and then a strange sensation of smacking face down into the dirt.
When he awoke again it was pitch black. He felt sick and weak, but even as he slowly opened his eyes he knew he was stronger. The hybrid stood several feet away grazing on the knee-high dark grass and wild wheat of the field. Rock again reached for the canteen. Empty! It had poured out when he fell. Shit! He got to his feet still wobbly, dizzy. He felt as weak as he had ever felt in his life. As if his cells had lost their charge, his flesh cold as ice. He needed warmth and food and water. But he knew he wasn’t in any condition to hunt. Rock dragged himself over to the ’brid and pulled himself agonizingly up into the saddle. The thick black and white hide of the hybrid felt warm beneath his thighs. He undid the blue blanket from his saddlebag and pulled it around his back and shoulders. Rock leaned forward so his chest and head were resting against the massive steed’s furry mane. He commanded it to move.
“Giddyup, pal. You’re going to have to take care of things for a little while.” Rock slumped forward but stopped himself from slipping back into the darkness. He would fall out of the saddle at this rate. He undid a rope from the saddlebag and tied it around his back, attaching the ends to the saddlepost. The hybrid moved carefully forward. It knew that its master was in danger, that it had to make decisions. The master leaned nearly all the way forward, his head bobbing up and down. The master was sleeping. The ’brid knew that it must go forward in the direction the master had commanded before he slept. The hybrid kept up a slow, even pace, mindful of its unconscious load. From time to time it turned its huge head around and its orange brown eyes took in the master who hung roped down to the creature’s back. The master was alive but he was hurt. The ’brid walked and walked, keeping its direction with its strong sense of smell which sensed moisture far ahead. It kept a dead course for the life-saving liquid.
When Rockson next came to it was late afternoon. He felt himself rocking slowly back and forth in the saddle and opened his eyes. They were moving through fields of bright, madly colored flowers like a rainbow of dayglo paints. Snorter had kept up the journey on his own. Damn smart animal, Rock thought, managing a thin grin even in the midst of his haze. His body felt stronger now, the poison must have nearly worked its way through, though he still felt quite peculiar. He sat up straight in the saddle and rubbed his eyes and face. The skin was coated with a greasy paste, which he wiped off with a bandanna from his pocket. He needed water. Bad. He hadn’t drunk for what seemed like days, and his lips and throat felt parched as a desert. But there was no water in sight. Suddenly Rock saw something that would do just as well.
He guided the palomino to the right. The hybrid gave over control of its movements to the master as soon as it felt the tug. It felt a kind of relief that it no longer had to decide things. It was meant for the master to rule. Rock halted the big ’brid near a grove of large plants, red stalks with yellow fruits covering them. Rock slid out of the saddle and landed on the ground, barely keeping his balance. He picked three of the gourd-shaped fruits from the plant and hacked one open with his bowie knife. He had learned many secrets of the land when young. This particular plant had been shown to him by a group of mountain men Rock had hunted bear with for several months when still a teenager. He cut the fruit near the narrower end, making a hole about three inches wide. He looked inside. It was full, filled with a supply of liquid that the plant stored within itself for droughts. Rock took a deep gulp of the sweet nectar. God, it tasted good. His mouth and tongue seemed to expand upon contact with the delicious juice, the cells soaking up the liquid and expanding back to their normal size.
Rock drank three of the fruit’s contents down and then fed the hybrid who took to them with great appetite. Then the Doomsday Warrior stripped down to nothing and washed his torn flesh with the cleansing pollen liquid. He looked over his bronze, muscled body, carved from iron. He must have been stabbed over a hundred times by the poison thorns. Little pinpricks still red and swollen blue and purple covered his entire frame. Several wounds were quite infected, puffed up as large as grapes poking grotesquely out from his skin. Rock cut these open with his knife and squeezed the pus and poison out. Then he washed them clean with the plant nectar. The sores burned like the dickens when the liquid touched them but then quickly became cool, soothed. The plant’s juices must have medicinal properties that even the mountain men hadn’t known about. He’d have to return someday and bring some of these back to Dr. Shecter.
Rock then scrubbed down the hybrid who reveled in his bath, whinnying in appreciation, flapping his long gold and white tail in excitement. When they were both in better shape Rock set up camp for the night and ate a meal of berries and fruits which were plentiful in the area. He fell asleep under the splashing diamond sea of the stars.
When he awoke the next morning he felt almost normal again. Jackdaws and crows were fighting madly in some nearby trees, pecking and cawing at one another with rage. Rockson laughed out loud at the commotion and rose to his feet.
“Come on fellows, we’re all fellow Americans. No need to get it on like this.” The birds squawked at Rock a few times and then flew off to a safer distance to resume their quarrel in peace. Rock got off to an early start, and Snorter quickly hit a good pace. They were days behind schedule and had a lot of ground to cover. Rockson felt almost totally normal now. Almost. His eyes continued to play tricks as he kept seeing shadows around him, things jumping from behind rocks, leaping down from trees. As they went through a dense pine forest, Rock kept going for his shotgun pistol, sure that things were attacking hi
m from above. Each time, he would quickly realize that nothing was there and return the powerful pistol to its holster, grateful that no one else was along to witness his hallucinations being acted out.
The next few days of travel were uneventful or as uneventful as the world of America, 2089 A.D. ever became. Rock found a large inland lake filled with fish and was able to catch a few catfish-type creatures, rows of needle teeth, and a large coxcomb, red as a rooster’s, hanging down from beneath their jaws. But they tasted like heaven. On the evening of the fourth day after his bout with the poison thorns, Rock came to a series of low mountains, very rocky and steep. He found a gully, an ancient dried up stream bed only slightly wider than the hybrid and moving slowly, they started through. He had scarcely gone more than a hundred yards along the primeval stream when he suddenly saw shapes ahead.
A chorus of howls went up as the creatures saw him. Timber wolves, saber-toothed, their fur raised up on their backs, eyes lit up like slot machine windows at the sight of such a big fat dinner that Rockson and the hybrid would make. Rock had had a run-in with these mutant wolves before, but just one or two, never an entire pack. They edged forward, slinking on all fours, until they were about forty feet away. Their huge curved fangs protruded insanely from their jaws, nearly a foot long, glistening with the dripping saliva of their hunger.
Rock slowly eased his shotgun pistol out and unslung his Liberator rapid-fire rifle from beneath the saddle. He set it on automatic and held it cradled in his left arm, the shotgun pistol in his right. There were at least thirty of the large silver and black-haired predators, nearly twice as large as their pre-war ancestors. These stood nearly four feet high at the shoulder and weighed between two hundred and three hundred pounds. But their leader was even larger—a good four-and-a-half feet tall, with eyes as bright as fire, glowing red and orange in the setting sun. Its fur was a brilliant silver, shiny, almost metallic colored. It barred its teeth at the prey and let out a sharp doglike bark, obviously signaling the other members of the pack that this was their next meal. Snorter shifted his legs nervously and Rock patted the hybrid on the neck. “Easy boy, easy.” Although its instincts told it to run, its trust of Rockson was even stronger and the hybrid stood its ground.
The wolves came at Rock at a quick gait which changed to a charge at about twenty feet. Rock waited until he could see the saliva covering the leader’s immense jaws, the canine teeth shining like pearl-handled daggers in the last rays of the squashed setting sun for off on the radioactive purple horizon. The leader of the pack leaped into the air from nearly fifteen feet away, its powerful back legs propelling it into the air like some kind of immense spring. Rockson let loose with the shotgun pistol which unleashed a spray of .12 gauge shot in an x-shaped pattern. The lead volley flew only eight feet before it made contact with the silver neck of the wolf. It tore through the immense carnivore like a sword, nearly severing the creature’s head. The lifeless body of the two hundred and eighty-five pound leader fell to the stream bed like a rock and lay there, its still beating heart pumping out hot blood through myriad holes in its chest and throat. Its lifeless eyes were wide open staring straight up at the darkening sky.
Rockson disliked killing such a magnificent beast. If they hadn’t run into each other the wolf probably would have lived another twenty or thirty years, growing even larger. But when he was attacked, Rock had no choice but to survive. In the end that was what life was—the contest of many forces against one another—the strongest lived on.
The pack seemed confused by the death of their powerful leader. They, in their dim consciousnesses, must have thought that it was nearly immortal, having fought off every challenge from the other wolves for years. The next two most powerful members of the pack, nearly as big as the fallen leader, snarled viciously at Rockson, opening their foot long jaws to full extension. Their teeth stood out like tusks in the center of their snapping jaws. Both of the wolves, one a grayish color, the other jet black and shiny as velvet, charged at Rock. Snorter whinnied nervously but stood his ground, backing up slightly as the two killers came forward. The hybrid fought back its animal fears, knowing that its stillness would help the master destroy the predators.
The wolves got within about fifteen feet of their prey and leaped, literally flying up into the air, reaching a height of about eight feet above the ground. Their jaws opened wide; one went for Rockson’s throat, the other for the neck of the hybrid. Rock waited until they were a millisecond away and fired pointblank with the shotgun pistol. The gray-pelted wolf took the brunt of the shot, its skull disappearing in a sludge of red spray. It crashed into the hybrid’s chest and then fell to the ground nearly on top of the already dead silver-haired leader. But the black wolf only took the shot in the shoulder shielded by its companion. Its murderous leap continued and it slammed into Rockson’s chest, knocking him clear off the ’brid.
He fell to the hard rocks of the stream bed, the rifle flying from his grasp, the shotgun pistol clattering loudly several feet away. Without a moment’s hesitation Rockson rolled over and over on the stream bed. The second he moved, the black shape, dark as midnight itself, its eyes focused on the fallen man, sprang at the spot where Rock had hit. It spun around as it missed the rolling man and again charged. The guns were out of reach, Rock knew that. He whipped out his Bowie knife and held it straight out in front of him up in the air. The black-pelted wolf flung itself on Rock and felt fifteen inches of cold steel rip into its chest. It continued to slash away with the huge incisors but felt itself weakening. What was wrong? Suddenly it had no strength. It got a grip on the prey’s arm but then felt itself falling into a spinning hole from which it could not rise. Rock ripped his arm free from the dead wolf’s jaws. The teeth had penetrated the flesh and muscle but hadn’t ripped away as the wolves liked to do, shredding their prey into hamburger before they ate.
About five yards away the palomino was rearing and kicking with its powerful hooves. The wolves were trying to circle it, wary of the power of the tremendous legs. One jumped from the ground and landed on the ’brid’s back, trying to get its jaws around the big steed’s neck for the kill. Rock saw the shotgun pistol half hidden under a rock and dove for it, firing from his stomach up at the wolf atop Snorter. The shot tore into the predator’s side, flinging it from the ’brid’s back as if it had been hit with a brick wall, its chest bones exposed and poking through the bloody hide. Rockson ran forward and reached the hybrid’s side. He took the reins and pulled the animal out of the line of fire as a group of the wolves gathered just ahead of them for another charge. There was no time for finesse. Rock knew that if they all charged it was all over. He had to scare them. He aimed at the lead wolves in the pack and pulled the trigger of the shotgun pistol again and again. He blasted away, firing the remaining four rounds of the .12 gauge pistol into the smoke and the bloody flesh, not even stopping to see what the results were. The moment he ran out of ammo he picked up the Liberator. He aimed into the pack, waiting a second for the smoke and floating fur to settle. But there was no need. The battle was over. The remaining wolves fled, their tails between their legs like a pack of frightened puppies. They had no stomach to fight the killing machine before them. On the stream bed were the bodies of five more of the ferocious carnivores. Four were dead, already stiffening in rigor mortis. A fifth yelped and tried to crawl away, its front two legs blasted to stumps, bloody bones poking through. Rock walked over to the creature and looked down at the terrified animal which stared up at him, its eyes watery and filled with pain. Rock raised the Liberator and pumped two slugs into the wolf’s head. It was still.
The Doomsday Warrior killed to survive but never to cause suffering. That was for the Reds. Calming Snorter down and treating his wounds with antiseptic and salve, Rock was soon moving forward again atop the hybrid, wary of every sound, every glowing eye in the immensity of the night. The bodies of the dead wolves lay like monuments to the power of man. The rising moon burned down on the corpses, lighting the red bloo
d with shimmering sheen as nature’s second line of predation moved in for their meals. Wild dogs, owls, blood spiders all dug into the warm flesh. Nothing was wasted, nothing was overlooked.
Thirteen
There it lay below him—Pavlov City—stretching off in every direction. Building after building, a maze of barracks in ever larger concentric circles, spreading out across the plains below. And at the outer edge of the largest circle of buildings, trucks, bulldozers, and workers building yet more structures. Rockson looked down from one of a group of low hills surrounding the plains on which Pavlov City stood. He took in the immensity of it. Whoever was building this city of sinister design had plans for it to be truly gargantuan. Sitting atop Snorter, Rock looked down for a long, long time, letting his senses digest it all. He had seen many Red fortress cities before but never one as large as this. Already, it stretched nearly three miles across, absolutely crammed with buildings. Most of the structures were fairly low to the ground, not more than two or three stories high, built in barracks-type design, the favorite of the imaginative Russian designers and architects. In the center of the city, dwarfing everything else, was a concrete windowless building some forty stories high and nearly five hundred feet in diameter. Just from the looks of it, Rockson knew it was where the Reds were performing their tricks. Truckloads of men kept driving up to the front entrance and unloading their cargos of American prisoners, Rock could see through his field glasses.