by Ryder Stacy
Suddenly everything had changed in just seconds. There were sounds outside the cabin, and as his father rushed to the window, he yelled to the family to hide.
“Reds,” his father had yelled out. Just that word, a single sound, but it still reverberated through all the years. There weren’t a hell of a lot of places to hide, but they all tried to find someplace, under a bed, inside a chest, as his father grabbed the family pump shotgun and stood inside the door, waiting. And they hadn’t had to wait long. A squad of Death Shirts, the dreaded KGB murderers who roamed the countryside, killing and mutilating survivors, came smashing in. His father fired and took out two of them. Then he was sliced to bits. From beneath the floorboards, the young Rockson watched, tears streaming down his face, knowing he couldn’t make a sound. Watched as his mother and sisters were raped, and then cut up like creatures for the slaughterhouse.
The image burned itself into his heart and mind as the tears coated his mouth and neck. His human heart wanted to leap up and attack them; he knew there was nothing he could do. He didn’t have a chance against the seven murderers who carried out their bloody crimes. So he watched and memorized their faces, his eyes peering up from the darkness, unseen by the invaders. When they were done, there was nothing left of what had been his family. All the dreams and idyllic talks with his father, the scents of stew, wiped out in a matter of minutes. And Rockson as well was changed in those dreadful bloody moments. He became harder inside. Something inside of him died, and something else, an iron determination to live, and to fight the oppressor, was born.
When the scum finally left, Rock waited several minutes and then crawled out of his hiding place. He couldn’t bear to look at what had happened to those he loved. But somehow, using the analytical side of his mutant nature, he overcame his fear. He wrapped each of his family up in sheets and buried them. It took almost a full day to do. Then he equipped himself with a few meager supplies, and a large hunting knife that had belonged to his father, and set the cabin on fire. He walked off without looking back.
Rockson’s eyes suddenly flew open. He was back in the dust and debris of Century City, and tears were welling up in his eyes, just as they had decades ago. Memories lived so long, it was as if it had all just happened the day before. If he lived to be a hundred he would remember it, a nightmare in bloody technicolor. It took seconds to readjust to the here and now, so intense had the past been. He listened and looked to see if help was on the way. But it was all the same, just dust floating everywhere.
Suddenly, he heard a sound, as if something was moving near him. For a moment his heart speeded up with hope, his eyes opened a little wider as they searched through the dimness. But he saw instead something that made his gut turn over. A rat. No, a whole stream of them. His mutant eyes, able to collect ten times as much light as the eyes of “normals,” were able to see the furry black shapes in the semidarkness as they scuttled around in the jagged debris of what had been his room. Rockson knew there had always been rats in Century City, but they had remained hidden away behind walls, down in their own secret labyrinths and tunnels. The city had always been kept clean with traps and cats. Until the walls came tumbling down.
“Shit,” the Doomsday Warrior muttered through clenched teeth, not able to stand the vision of the bastards eating away at him, while he couldn’t do a thing to stop them. He tried to pull back deeper under the bed as if that would hide him, which he knew even as he did so was a ridiculous gesture, as the rats could see better than he could in this light. There were hissing sounds as several of the vermin about three yards off sensed his motion and they stopped, staring hard. Their reddish eyes glowed like embers in the dust-fog, and Rockson gulped hard. How long would it take them to realize that he was unable to fight back?
Near panic, he felt something beneath his hip. Something hard, pushing against the bone. For a second he thought it was a piece of shattered concrete, but then realized as he brought his mind down to the spot, that the cold metal was his shotpistol. Somehow it had tumbled from the table beside his bed down with him when the whole world went crashing. Using every bit of strength and will he had, Rockson somehow managed to move his hand and shift his hip just a few inches. It took almost a minute to get it out. and gripped in his hands. He watched the rats slowly edge in closer, looking at his face like it was going to be the first thing on the plate of delicacies. Many yards off, he heard a scream and prayed that the huge tunnel rats hadn’t just taken a bite out of one of C.C.’s other citizens.
“Fucking back off, you slime-buckets,” Rock yelled as one suddenly came charging in. The scream startled it, and it stopped and hissed, its fur rising up. Rock gripped the shotpistol and pulled it out from beneath him, causing excruciating pain to ripple down his body as he had to press against jagged pieces of cement everywhere. He got the thing firmly in grasp and aimed it in front of him. His scream had startled them, but now that they saw there was nothing to back it up, a whole horde of the toothy creatures came down the slabs of shattered ceiling while lay everywhere.
Rock pointed the pistol straight ahead, not even caring whether the shot ricocheted back onto him. If he was going to go, let it be from his own pistol, rather than from a thousand gnawing teeth. He pulled the trigger and there was a roaring boom that deafened him. By the light of the blast he could see there were hundreds of the wretched creatures spread out all around the debris. And they went flying as the shot poured into them. Furry bodies flew every which way like bloody ragdolls, heading into orbits, splattering on the collapsed walls, ramming into each other. Their squeals were deafening, then all was silent but for a few muted squeaks of pain.
Rock felt with his fingers around the side of the pistol. Two more shots left. Damn, why hadn’t he reloaded the fucking thing last night, when he could have? He knew there were shells in the room. A lot of good that would do him now. They could have been inches away, but it was like a million miles. He was lucky to have even gotten the pistol. Already the unharmed rats were closing in again, gnawing on the butchered bodies of their compatriots. But there were too many of them; they would want more to eat. They seemed to pour out of every crevice in the grayness. A bunch came toward him again.
He held the pistol hard in his hands, wondering whether he should use it on himself, rather than on them. Seeing them ripping at the dead didn’t exactly make him want to wait around to share the experience himself. And as they came in closer for the huge meal that awaited, Rockson’s mind reeled back and forth as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Three
Rockson fired—at the rats. He knew he could never take his own life. It wasn’t part of his soul. He’d go out fighting, biting at the little bastards as they did the same to him. Not that he didn’t have trepidations to say the least. The final shot blasted through the wall of squealing fur that was coming at him and sent a good fifty of the carnivores shooting off like bloody meteors through the dust-choked room, hurtling into the distance where he could hear them slam against the wall. And then there were more squeals of pain, and of hunger. But it hardly seemed to slow the advancing ranks down. They seemed to be losing their fear of the weapon, not that the meat-eaters had a whole lot of fear built into their natures.
One of them suddenly leaped at his face from out of the dimness and Rockson somehow managed to whip the front of the pistol up, catching the thing on the side of the head so that it whimpered and flew sideways. But there were more where he came from. An army more. Another jumped, then another. One of them got in on the side of his face and took a nice bite right out of his cheek. Rockson let out with an involuntary yelp and shook his head wildly trying to dislodge it, though he could only move inches from side to side.
Suddenly he thought he heard something. A voice, several voices. Then above the squealing all around the room, scraping. He was sure of it. Men. They were digging him out. God was good to him today. If he could hang on . . .
“Don’t fire at us,” a voice that sounded like Detroit’s scr
eamed out. “Who’s down there? We heard some shots. Is that you, Rock? Who’s there?” The voice sounded frightened, not for its owner, but for the fact that Rock might in fact be in there smashed to pulp beneath the fallen ceiling. He heard debris being frantically pulled about twenty feet off, shovels clanking cement and stone.
“Yeah, baby, it’s me,” the Doomsday Warrior screamed back as the rats hesitated from all the commotion. “And you better hurry, ’cause I got me some rats in here who are eyeing my face like they haven’t been fed since before the big war.”
“It’s Detroit, Chief,” the voice screamed back with real joy in the words. “Okay, man, we’re coming in,” the voice shouted through the fog of dust which still hung everywhere. “Just don’t fire. Hang in there. We’re sending in a little company while we try to reach you.” Rockson couldn’t figure out just what the hell kind of company that might be, since he couldn’t remember someone skinny as a pole who could fit in the crevices and little snaky tunnels that were all he could see around him.
The rats sensed the newly arrived guests almost instantly. Even the little bastard with its teeth flared back ready for a quick bite at Rockson’s face. And as Rock saw the first of them coming out of the dust mist his face brightened as if the sun were shining through. Cats—big suckers, too! Cats that the rescue squads must have pulled up from the sub-levels where they had patrolled against rats and mice for years. The rats around Rockson, even though they outnumbered the prowling felines by hundreds to one, didn’t exactly fancy facing off with any of these extra large mutant creatures, which had been bred for decades for their size and fearlessness and for their claws the size of mountain cats’ claws!
There was hissing and snarling everywhere in the half-darkness that was lit fractionally here and there by beams from the lanterns. Men were digging through the hell zone toward him. A huge tom that looked more like a small dog than a feline came tearing straight at Rockson’s face.
“Nice kitty,” he announced, hoping the thing didn’t think he was an oversized rat. At the last instant the forty-pound ball of muscle and teeth and claws leaped right up so that its tail whipped over his nose. It grabbed the rat which had been again thinking of doing something nasty to Rockson’s cheek and snapped its neck. There was a cracking sound like a chicken bone breaking, then more of the snapping noises all around him, as the cats tore mercilessly through the ranks of would-be Rockson-eaters. The rats ran in every direction. Just survival was on their little minds.
“Where the hell are you, pal?” Detroit screamed out as Rockson heard sounds just a few yards off now and saw the lanterns, lights mounted on the crews’ hardhats, illuminating the area where Rockson was trapped.
“Here, baby, over here,” Rockson said, his face lit up like a Hawaiian sun at having survived. He slammed with the side of the pistol against a chunk of chair-sized concrete at the end of his outstretched arm. Rock could see the huge piece of smashed concrete right in front of him being lifted.
A bearded giant swung it around, and his eyes lit up to see what he’d uncovered.
“ROOCCKSSOON!” the huge near-mute bellowed out, dropping the concrete block to the side so the whole floor seemed to shake. Rock was never so glad to see an ugly, hairy face.
“Hey, easy pal,” Detroit said, coming up behind him. “You almost got me on that last load!”
Archer’s face couldn’t stop grinning as he reached down to help Rock.
“Careful!” Detroit chastised the giant, pulling Archer back by the shoulder. “We’ve got to move slow so that we don’t dislodge any of this junk piled atop him. Damn, mister, you’ve got a moving truck worth of jagged debris up here. How this bed frame held up I’ll never know. Don’t move.”
“I ain’t going nowhere,” Rock grunted back.
They carefully took the pieces off him. Even with the giant and the black man with one bionic arm, it was tough work. Still, within just minutes they had almost the whole bed uncovered, the debris thrown to the side. Then came the bed frame which Archer lifted by himself and threw several yards.
“You okay, man?” Detroit asked, leaning down on one knee and handing Rockson some water from a canteen and a wet compress for his eyes. Rockson sat up and took them both thankfully, drinking a few deep slugs to clear his throat of the grime and slunk. Then he flushed his eyes out and wiped his face clean. And he felt vaguely like something that was starting to resemble a man again.
“What the hell happened?” he asked as he handed the supplies back to Detroit and started to rise. “Was it a—?”
“Quake, huge one. Seven point three on the Richter scale; epicentered only twenty, maybe thirty miles from here. All things considered—we were lucky the whole damned place wasn’t 100 percent destroyed.”
“Damn,” Rockson fell back to the floor as his foot seemed to give out. Archer caught him in midflight.
“What’s wrong, Rock?” Detroit asked, anxiously, as he reached out an arm to support his field-commander.
“My fucking foot, I think it’s broken or something,” Rock said angrily.
“There’s an emergency med-unit about a hundred yards behind us in the junction. They can fix it.”
“How bad is it?” Rock asked as he hobbled along with Detroit’s arm supporting him on one side.
“It’s pretty damn bad,” Detroit replied, “But well, you’ll see.”
Rock looked around. Everything they passed was like his quarters—collapsed, covered in sheets of dust. Subbasement real estate that wasn’t worth diddly-shit any more.
“It’s not this bad everywhere,” the black Freefighter went on. “The main science chambers and much of the hospital are okay. The archives and library are supposedly fixable. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
Rockson winced and asked, “How many dead?”
Detroit sounded like he didn’t want to answer. “A lot,” he whispered.
“The President, Kim, Rona . . .” Rockson suddenly blurted out, a look of open fear on his face.
“We’re looking man,” Detroit said. “Once we get you taken care of, we’ll be out again. Here we are,” he said, as the two half-stumbled into the makeshift emergency treatment center.
It looked bad, all right. Bodies were piled on one side of the large chamber where all the tunnel systems of that level met in the middle and ramps ran up and down to the other twenty levels of the subterranean “Freefighting city.” Many were not alive—crushed beyond recognition. Only the fact that all the citizenry were identifiable both from finger and DNA holographs as well as from dental charts would enable anyone to I.D. them later. Some were crushed to pulp, just pieces of hands and tongues sticking out of the bloody piles of human horror. But they would all be identified, every last poor bastard of them.
Rock could hardly stand the screams as they entered the chamber. M.D.’s and nurses were operating right on the cots in the chamber. IV tubes, penicillin shots, and oxygen were being given out at a frantic rate by whoever was hobbling around. Bones were broken everywhere, some men’s limbs hanging at grotesque angles. It was a mess, that was damn sure.
They somehow found Rock a cot and a doctor came rushing over, seeing who it was. Rank did have its privileges.
“Gonna split, man,” Detroit said as soon as he saw Rockson was in the right hands. “Don’t have time to talk when there’s so much—”
Rock waved him on, not even wanting to talk. Archer came grumbling on behind the black man as they headed out to search for more survivors.
“What’s up, Rock?” the doctor asked, as he stopped just in front of the Doomsday Warrior.
“My left foot, Doc. Think I might have mashed it up good in the collapse.”
“Well, let me take a look.” The doctor began removing the boot and Rockson winced in pain. “I’ll have to cut the boot off,” the doc said, taking out a small laser-saw, one of Shecter’s inventions. He sliced through the thick leather in an instant, not touching a hair on Rockson’s calf or leg. He removed the boot and look
ed down at the foot, then turned it slightly a few inches in each direction as Rock yelped.
“Yeah, it’s a break.” He took out a hypo-pad and stabbed the ankle and foot with it a few times.
“Multishot,” the doctor commented. “Has every antibiotic, vitamin, numbing and healing agent known to man. Should stop infection from setting in.” He sprayed all the wounds over with a thin layer of plastic medicine which hardened to a rubberlike texture. Then he made a small cast, taking what looked like a construction caulking gun. He squeezed the trigger and a thick, goopy mess came out over Rock’s foot. Before it hardened, the doc pulled Rock’s foot into proper position.
“Instant cast,” he said, looking down with a thin smile. Rock looked down at the doctor’s handiwork. It had already hardened before his eyes. But though Rockson was happy enough to still have his foot, he could see the injury was going to slow him down.
“How long before I can get up on it?” Rock asked.
“Maybe give it twenty minutes and it’ll reach max-strength. After that, you’ll have to keep it on at least two weeks. Then just cut it off. I’ll give you one of those laser-cutters; it will make it easy.”
“Have you heard anything about the President? Kim? Rona?” Rockson asked, anxious again.
“Nothing yet! But Rockson, the quake’s less than a few hours old. They’re still finding survivors. Depends on where—”
“Yeah, relax,” Rockson said with a sneer, though he knew the doctor meant well. “Thanks for the quick fix.”
The Doomsday Warrior jumped down from the cot, once he saw that the foot cast had hardened enough to take his weight. He felt a numb throbbing, but at least he could move.
He hobbled through streams of wounded. It was like another nuclear bomb had gone off. And Rockson felt even his spirit sag somewhere deep inside. So much destruction after so many years of labor and love spent to build it all up. It had been a beautiful city, the pride of all of America’s Freefighting hidden cities. And now . . . nothing but the broken, the dying and dead.