Doomsday Warrior 17 - America’s Sword

by Ryder Stacy

  “Get those ’brids!” Rock shouted out, seeing the steeds loose. For even as the animals crashed through a mound of huge ivory bones, the things crumbled like they were made of chalk dust. In a flash the two animals were coated with the stuff. Probably would be hard to get the stuff off!

  “Who the hell didn’t keep an eye on those two?” Rock bellowed out in anger. It was exactly the kind of stupid mistake that would cost them in other, more treacherous situations. He was pissed off too at the destruction of something that had lasted for eons. But in a flash he saw that the hybrid horses were in far more trouble. Suddenly both of them stopped dead in their tracks. They both got looks of surprise on their furred faces and began trembling. At first it was mild, but within a few seconds they were vibrating and jumping up and down as if in an uncontrollable frenzy. Foam poured out from their opened mouths. And, within ten seconds, both had keeled over into the prairie.

  Blood poured from their mouths, eyes, ears, and every orifice of their bodies. The shaking grew wilder as they slid around the sand, staining it red. Within a minute they were dead.

  “Stay away from them!” Rockson screamed out, as some of the recruits started to dismount to see what had happened to the ’brids. “Don’t go another inch closer! Leave the supplies on them!”

  Rockson got them all the hell out of there fast, making a wide circle around the bone field. God only knew just what was inside the decomposing, prehistoric monsters. But he and his team weren’t going to be the ones to find out.

  He stopped them after going about half a mile on the other side, and gave the entire unit a stern lecture about being extra careful out here. They had seen first hand just what the fates held in store in the wastelands for anything, man or animal, that didn’t stay alert at all times.

  Seven

  The weather changed dramatically overnight. From bright glaring sun the day before, the sky was now overcast, looking like it was ready for a storm. It was going to be wet; even the ’brids could sense it, neighing nervously as the troopers saddled them up again and stowed all their gear. Rockson was glad to see that they were getting faster at packing than they had been the day before. The recruits were learning. Death is a quick teacher.

  “Freefighters ho!” Rockson shouted out, once he saw that everyone was up in the saddle. He held his right arm straight up and let it drop forward. There was no real need for that kind of stuff, the Doomsday Warrior knew, but men need symbols and a regimen. It gives them strength, makes them feel like a fighting unit.

  “What’s the plan, Rock?” Chen asked as he rode up alongside the Doomsday Warrior.

  “Plan is—we ride til we get there—then we stop.” Rockson replied with a twinkle in his mismatched aqua and violet eyes. “It won’t be that easy, to say the least. How are your men?”

  “Not bad—considering,” Chen replied, glancing around at Rock’s words to his eight charges, who rode yards behind, two abreast. They plodded through the increasingly hard-packed surface of the long prairie.

  “Considering what?” the Doomsday Warrior shot back as he took a swig of water from his canteen hanging on one side of Snorter’s saddle horn.

  “Considering that half this unit, make that three quarters, has never been on a real mission before. Most of them haven’t even been out of C.C. for more than a few days—meat gathering, repairs on external systems, but—nothing heavy duty.”

  “Well, keep a close eye on them,” Rock replied. “ ’Cause I have a feeling in my mutant guts that it’s going to get heavy real fast.”

  Chen returned back to the lead of his little group of charges. As if Rockson’s words had been heard by the very skies, the cloud line, which had grown thick and dark with shadows moving through them for miles, began dropping. Within minutes he could see the rain line about six miles ahead coming straight toward them. It was amazingly straight along the edge, probably the dividing line between two weather fronts, and it created a blanket of darkness as it swept forward at about twenty miles an hour.

  Rock had the force stop and put on the Shecter suits, which were multi-purpose for sun, rain, and snow. And again he was pleased to note that the recruits were moving faster, beginning to understand the need to execute Rock’s commands without hesitation.

  Only Chen, who had his own ninja-type outfit on, didn’t put the suit on. He just put on a wide-brimmed, weird-looking Chinese hat. Archer as well didn’t feel the need for a suit. Having lived most of his life in the mountains, before Rockson had rescued him from a quicksand pit, the giant had little need for such accessories. The man had run half-naked with the animals for twenty years.

  The rain hit them fast and hard, coming down in sheets of liquid silver and gray. The ’brids hardly noticed, merely snorting their big nostrils every once in a while to clear out any water that had found its way in. With their thick hides and huge manes, they were designed by evolution to withstand much worse than this. But it got pretty depressing for the men. Especially after an hour of the same intense gray downpour.

  Detroit began singing a marching song by himself at first. But within a few minutes, most of the team had joined in. It wasn’t an opera, to say the least.

  It was a dumb ditty, but the singing took their minds off the wet trek and put them all in a better mood.

  They rode for about three more hours straight across the flat prairie lands. Rock was concerned that the relatively hard-packed surface of the ground would saturate quickly and start a flash flood that would sweep across the plains. He had been trapped in a few floods in his time. But, apparently, just because the earth was so parched around the area, it just soaked it all down like a dry sponge desperate for water.

  And then just as quickly as it had begun, the rainstorm was past them and the skies brightened up again, as if the storm never existed. They broke for a quick lunch, Rockson wanting the ’brids as well as the men to dry out and get some rest. Slogging through the wet soil was hard even on the muscular steeds. And after some vegi-burgers mixed with vitapacks that McCaughlin had cooked up the night before and handed out, everyone seemed in much better spirits.

  They rode for another hour or so and then came to a long rise that stretched a good ten miles across their route. It was only about six hundred feet high and rose at an easily ridden grade. The whole unit followed Rockson up the side.

  As he reached the top and started across the plateau several hundred feet across, Rockson’s jaw dropped in amazement. For stretching out below him, extending at least twenty miles, was a vast jungle valley, filled with thick vegetation, towering trees, and mists.

  “What the hell?” Chen exclaimed, as he rode up alongside the Doomsday Warrior. The rest of the troop pulled alongside them. They all looked down, virtually speechless. It wasn’t just the size of the low mountain-ringed valley but the dramatic change in terrain. It was a different world in the space of perhaps a thousand feet from one side of the rise to the other. This wasn’t on last year’s survey maps.

  Rock took out his field binocs and swept the area slowly back and forth. The rest of the officer-team joined him, bringing their ’brids up alongside and doing the same, all of them looking, but none of them sure for exactly what.

  “How the fuck did something like this get created?” Detroit blurted out as he took in the rain forest below. “I mean in the middle of all this prairie?”

  “Probably the ring of hills around the whole damn thing,” McCaughlin piped up. “I saw something like this when I was down south about twenty years ago—before I came to Century City—and was a hell of a lot skinnier than I am now. The same configuration—a circle of mountains concealing a low valley. Affects the weather patterns dramatically, catching much more of the moisture of passing clouds than on the outside. Still,” he went on as he continued his own sweep with his glasses, “this one is a hell of a lot more steamy than the one I saw.”

  “What do you think, Cap?” Sheransky piped up, a few ’brids down from Rockson.

  “I think we head dow
n into Jungleland,” Rockson replied, putting his glasses back in their case. “I don’t even see the stinking end of it. It could add days to this trek to start trying to divert and find the flatlands again. It doesn’t look great down there—but I do see what look like some fairly passable trails.” He looked around at the other officers for their opinions, and all nodded in the affirmative. Rock was the boss. His mutant senses were something they had all learned to trust.

  “Okay, men, we’re heading down into the greenery. Be alert—because any maneater or whatever the hell’s down there waiting for us is going to have a lot more cover than what we’ve just been passing through.” There were nods throughout the team as the men checked their Liberator autofire rifles to make sure they were ready for action.

  Rock started down the far slope, moving very slowly as he always did when entering the unknown. Even as they headed down the five-hundred-foot gentle dropoff, they could feel the air temperature changing dramatically. It felt like it was getting a degree hotter every twenty or thirty feet. The air was moist and thick, and filled with a stench of rot and decay, as well as the aroma of countless plants and flowering species. It was the smell of rich and abundant life, a rare thing in a mostly devastated world.

  Once they reached the bottom of the long slope and started carefully in through the outer edges of the thick vegetation, they could see it really was jungle; with thick leaved trees, vines hanging down everywhere. Huge orchids and flowers, the likes of which none of them had ever seen, were everywhere. Bluish mists covered the lower portions of the ground, while bird and animal sounds emanated from every direction.

  “Watch out for the ground,” Rock yelled back to the men behind him, who passed the warning back. “It looks as soft as quicksand in some spots.” The trail they found slowly weaved its way through the trees and seemed safe enough. But around them, sometimes just yards away, the earth was soft enough to take a man or a whole ’brid down.

  Rockson suddenly heard a whole chorus of sharp sounds and looked up. Sitting in a tree all along a twenty-foot perch were hundreds of exotic birds. He had only seen such variation of plumage and beaks in picture books of the old pre-war world. Nothing like that should have even existed in this part of the country. The Doomsday Warrior thought he had seen it all in his day, but not this.

  “Check it out,” Detroit half-whispered, half-shouted up to Rock from about thirty feet behind as the whole troop plodded slowly through the misted terrain, their eyes wide in amazement and some fear. “Up at nine o’clock.”

  Rock looked up and saw another sight that made his jaw drop open. For scampering all around the branches and vines of the trees were monkeys. Several species he could see right away—from creatures hardly bigger than a cat to some large ones that looked like small gorillas. The creatures barked out warnings to one another but didn’t seem particularly terrified of the passing entourage below. They sat and watched, hanging by feet, tails, whatever.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Detroit piped in from the back. “There shouldn’t be anything like this in this part of the world.”

  “It’s here,” Rockson replied, turning his head around. “The evidence is before our eyes.” And as a dropping plopped right down on his shoulder, the evidence was more than just visual.

  “Man down!” a voice screamed out from near the end of the expeditionary force, and all eyes turned as one.

  It was like something out of man’s worst nightmare. Only this was real. The very last Freefighter on the line was being dragged right up off his hybrid into the trees by a snake. This was no ordinary snake; the thing was a good twenty, perhaps thirty feet long with a body as thick as a beer keg. The trooper’s head and chest had already disappeared inside the creature’s immense jaws and his legs kicked wildly as the beast pulled him right up into the vines and lower branches of the trees.

  Some of the troopers took out their Liberators and began firing until Chen ordered them to stop. The snake slithered through the vines and leaves about twenty feet above them all with amazing speed, shimmering gray and black coloration undulating like pieces of shined metal.

  The ’brids couldn’t follow where the thing was heading, as it was too thick with foliage, but Rockson, Chen, and Detroit leaped down from their mounts, yelling out for the rest to stay behind. They went tearing after it on foot.

  It was a difficult pursuit, as the three Freefighters could hardly see the thing through the trees above. It moved quickly, still holding and slowly swallowing the man. The Freefighters had to leap and jump from log to log, to avoid the thick dank pools of bog-tar that lay everywhere like traps waiting to take them down. The tropical forest seemed to grow wild with excitement, as monkeys howled and birds screamed out choruses of fear.

  It took the three of them nearly a quarter mile to catch up with the huge beast. It must have thought it had lost whoever was pursuing it for it stopped on an immense branch, wrapped its tail around it a few times and gulped down its meal for real. When Chen reached it, stopping about fifty feet away, all he could see was the unfortunate trooper’s feet sticking out.

  Rock pulled out his shotpistol, aiming up toward the head of the snake, but Chen told him not to shoot. He whipped out two star-knives, and eyeing the target, suddenly released both of them. One got the thing near the end of the tail, the other star-knife Chen threw hit about midsection of its fat serpentine body.

  There were two muffled explosions as the plastique-filled star-knives ripped the thing open. The snake uncoiled like a worm on a hook and fell the forty feet to the ground. The Freefighters rushed over to it, and Rock jumped on top of the neck as blood spewed everywhere. He pulled out his Bowie knife and slammed the blade into the thing’s skull over and over, making sure he didn’t push it too deep, so as to avoid hurting the victim who had now disappeared completely inside. They could see the outline of the man in the first six feet or so of the snake.

  It continued its death throes, the lower half of the body just bloody shreds from Chen’s deadly toys.

  “Cut him open,” Rock exclaimed, as he started slicing from the mouth down while Chen started up from about eight feet below. It took them only a minute to cut through the thick, bloody guts and scaled skin. And both men, as much horror and death as they had seen, found it hard to keep from vomiting. For as they cut, the remains of the trooper came pouring out. The snake must have had a digestive system like pure acid.

  The Freefighter had only been inside its slimy gullet for several minutes at most—but there was nothing recognizable as human that poured out when they finished cutting. Just bones, and a bloody mud that oozed out, joining the snake’s own pulsing innards.

  The two Freefighters stood up, as Detroit stood a few yards back, his black face turning pale. He’d been covering with his rifle.

  “God,” Rockson said, looking down at the mess of human being and snake all mixed together. The three of them couldn’t tear their eyes away even as they wanted to run off. It was just about the most vile sight any of them had ever seen. Above them, crowds of monkeys and birds all stared down in noisy witness to the theater of death. And as the three Freefighters began walking away, their heads bowed, the animal army above descended to enjoy the feast.

  Eight

  “Mount up, men,” Rockson said as he and the unsuccessful rescuers returned to the other Freefighters. They all had looks of fear on their faces. Seeing one of their buddies ripped off like he was an insect had done something to them.

  “He’s dead all right,” Rock said, addressing the unit as they sat up on their ’brids in a semicircle around him. “He went out fast. That son-of-a-bitching snake had digestive fluids like acid. I’m sure he was dead within seconds.” The Doomsday Warrior lied, for he had seen that the poor bastard’s feet were still flailing around after several minutes.

  “Everyone face toward the jungle there, where he lies, and give a moment of silence for a fallen comrade. Even though Andrews didn’t get to engage in battle—this was his l
ast battle. He gave his life for his comrades, his city.” They all stared at the greenery. Ordinarily, it might have appeared beautiful with its lushness of fruits and flowers. But now it was a killer. A monster-in-green ready to take any of them out.

  The silence wasn’t long. “Amen,” Chen stated softly, after a bare ten seconds.

  “All right! Let’s get the hell out of here,” Rock shouted as he started forward. “Andrews is dead, let’s not allow ourselves to follow him. Look out, you hear me? Anything that moves, any shadows, shoot first and ask questions later.” He pushed Snorter forward, searching for the narrow trail which was a dry way through swampland on both sides of it.

  They rode for about half an hour, getting deeper into the wet greenland. The animal life was profuse. There were frogs, ducks, and the several species of monkeys, many of which followed along swinging through the trees in big groups, curious as to these new invaders into their domain.

  Rockson kept seeing snakes too, slithering, not appearing afraid of them. Here and there further off in the brush he saw just the edges of tails or long, flapping tongues that made him know there were other snakes bigger than the one that had gotten Andrews. He gulped hard and tried not to think a hell of a lot about it all.

  They had gone on a good hour when they came to a series of low, rolling hills covered with fields of fruit, nectarines, huge golden apples.

  “Jumping pack-meals,” McCaughlin laughed out from the line. “What do you think, Rock? Let me test a few for poisons, then we can load up. Fresh fruit’ll make the men damn happy over the next few days!”

  Rockson deliberated for a moment. They needed a rest for a few minutes anyway, the jungle trekking was hard work on the ’brids.