by Ryder Stacy
The bison herds were right ahead of them. Vast blankets of brown and black. And for a while, as they trotted through the wastelands, Rock wondered whether they should go through the tens of thousands of the slowly moving, grazing creatures or search out some circuitous route. But they had already lost about thirty-six hours; he just couldn’t afford to lose any more. The citizenry of Century City were surely going through their own hell. The Freefighters couldn’t do any less.
“We’re going right through the center of that herd,” Rockson addressed the men, turning in his saddle but not slowing perceptibly. “I don’t think we should have any problems with them. They’re vegetable eaters and slow. They don’t even have the right teeth to chew on flesh. But keep your firepower handy. If something charges—take it out.”
“You got it, boss,” Chen responded as he held up a few star-knives, that suddenly just appeared from beneath his sleeve. The man was a proverbial magician when it came to fighting. For the thousandth time Rockson was grateful that the Chinese martial arts master was on their side and not the enemies’.
They rode on for another twenty minutes or so and the vast numbers of bisonlike creatures grew overwhelming. They just spread out across the plains like an army, each one standing nearly as tall as a full-grown hybrid. And yet Rockson knew that even this army was nothing. In the old days, before the Europeans had come into America, there had been herds a million strong that had spread over whole states. Early settlers had described the vast migrations as totally unimaginable unless seen with one’s own eyes. This bunch wasn’t doing too shabbily now, Rockson noted with a certain satisfaction. The bison had, after all, been left basically alone for over a hundred years.
As he reached the outer edge of the nearest band of bison, Rockson saw what they were eating: a hardly visible coating of a whitish brown weed that virtually covered the prairie, but only for an inch’s depth or two. You could hardly see the foodstuff, unless you were just a few feet from it. The grain, or whatever the hell it was, must have been highly nutritious as all these animals were surviving, even growing fat off it.
A few of the great horned mammals looked dully up as Rock had his team slow down. They blinked a few times with their mug-sized eyes and then dropped their immense heads back down to important things like chewing. But as Rock slowed his team down and led them right through the herd, the buffalo hardly even deigned to look up. In the animal world, only quick motions caused reactions. Predatory movements, things coming in fast. That would sure as hell set this bunch going.
“No fast movements,” Rock shouted out to the team behind him. “These animals aren’t going to bother us unless we startle them in some way.”
Most of the bison didn’t lift their huge heads, being too busy pursuing the next little pieces of grain and the stalks beneath them. And as they moved slowly along, the bison let out big loads of steaming fecal waste.
“Rock, do you notice something funny about the sky ahead?” Chen asked as he rode up alongside the Doomsday Warrior. “Almost straight north,” the Chinese-American Freefighter pointed, holding his combat binoculars in his hand as they moved at slow gait through the blanket of bison.
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Rock said as he stared through his own binocs. He got a worried look on his face. The northern horizon was getting dark, very dark. Even as he watched, it was as if someone were pulling a set of curtains as thick as iron over the whole stretch of sky. “It looks like a cloudburst—only it’s too dark,” the Doomsday Warrior added nervously. “And it’s coming fast.”
“I hate to say what I think it is,” Chen said as he scanned the area again with his glasses. “A dust storm—and it’s coming like a freight train.” He looked around him and saw that the buffalo were starting to look up at the sky themselves, getting their own anxious reactions. There were bleating sounds everywhere, as the herd began picking up speed, heading due east. Animals didn’t need mechanical devices to know what the hell was going on around them. And this bunch knew they were about to be blasted with gritty sand, coming in hard and fast.
Rock looked at the fast-approaching darkness. The swirling cloud of sand was coming right at them, with minutes at most to escape it. He scanned his binocs the other way, searching for the slightest bit of cover. About a half mile to the left, he saw a large mound of something. Shelter of some sort, a windbreak at least.
“Come on, men!” the Doomsday Warrior yelled out over the increasingly hard-driven hooves of the bison, which headed by them on all sides. “We got a dust storm moving in,” Rock went on. “Our only chance is to make that mound of junk over there.”
They tore in that direction as the cloud came shooting in. Now it was a roar like a hundred freight trains on the rails of hell, all racing straight at them. Suddenly it was upon them, and in a flash Rock couldn’t see or hear the others.
“Chen, Detroit—anyone there,” he shouted above the winds as he had to half-shut his eyes to avoid being blinded by the hurricane force dirt-particles. Someone’s voice came shouting back but he couldn’t even hear the words. This whole prairie crossing had turned from a snap into a disaster in about the time it took to sneeze.
Rockson cursed himself, as he didn’t know what the hell was going to happen to them now. And suddenly, a gust of sand came in with the power of a Mack truck. It ripped right at him and the ’brid, sending them flying right off the ground. And as if a dream, the Doomsday Warrior was being lifted off the prairie and up into the air where there was no gravity or light. Just sand flying everywhere. And then everything went black.
Fifteen
It was like being a toy top, just spinning around and around, not knowing where sky began or ended, where the ground itself was. Then suddenly, Rockson slammed with his ’brid into the ground, tumbling for what seemed like hours. He could hear the screaming sandstorm as it whistled by all around and could hear Snorter braying hysterically.
Then they were up again, over the storm-wracked prairie. The Doomsday Warrior couldn’t see even a foot in front of him; he felt them both hit ground again, and then roll down a slope like a nonsymmetrical ball. Somehow he hung on to the sturdy ’brid which kept trying to find its balance, to figure out what the hell was going on. Its secondary eyelids surely had shut tightly to protect its eyes. It could see through them, though it was like looking through distorted plastic.
They seemed to turn over dozens of times, rolling down the slope. Rockson had somehow always thought of sand as basically a soft substance. But these grainy bullets, millions of them hitting his face and hands, were more like little pieces of glass. Whenever they made contact with flesh, they tore into him, leaving little hot stings on his body. The sound seemed to grow ever louder, as if a fleet of StratoBombers were landing all around him. For all he knew, Rock could have been fifty feet in the air, sucked up in a tornado.
But suddenly, still gripping the ’brid’s thick mane like a jockey coming in just inches ahead of his nearest opponent, they reached the bottom of the long slope and slammed into the prairie. Hard. This time, Rockson went flying off Snorter as if he were a bowling ball that had been released down a sand-covered bowling alley. He hit the ground rolling over and over, keeping his eyes and face shielded from the swirling dust beneath and all around him. At last he came to a completed stop and lay there for a few seconds, trying to get his bearings and making sure nothing had been broken.
He still seemed whole. He sat up, hardly able to withstand the rushing sand-filled wind, and tried to brace himself, looking around for Snorter who he hoped hadn’t broken a leg. The ’brid had been with him for years—and he sure as hell didn’t want to shoot the son-of-a-bitch. On the other hand, they probably both were going to die out here, killed and dissolved automatically by the sand—so why worry about it? Rockson let out a cynical laugh.
He stood up, crouched up anyway, as he saw that he couldn’t take the force of the winds blasting around him. The sand must have been blowing in gusts up to 80 mph, even a 100, a veri
table hurricane of dust. He started walking around on deeply crouched knees, like a Sumo wrestler.
Where the hell were the others? Had he led them right into their demise? The entire unit must have been taken down into the sand, buried ten, twenty feet down. “Oh, shut up!” Rockson screamed out to his own brain. “Get a hold of yourself!” he shouted in the wind. And got a sandy tongue.
He heard a sound like an elephant coughing and pulled out his .12-gauge. But as he walked on a few more yards, Rock saw that it was the ’brid, half-buried in a pit of sand. It was nearly flat on its back like some immense turtle that had got turned over and couldn’t quite get up again. Ordinarily the ’brid wouldn’t have found it all that much trouble. But being hysterical and unable to get good footing on the sand, Snorter just sort of rolled around madly. Rockson reholstered the blaster, and taking the reins, helped pull and guide the hybrid up to its feet again.
Rockson couldn’t quite decide whether to stay where he was or move around trying to find the others. After a minute’s deliberation he decided to move. It wasn’t going to get him anywhere just standing there like a statue in a park being eroded by the dust.
He took Snorter by the reins and trying to use his mutant senses to get his bearings, walked slowly into the sandstorm. He followed a tight circular pattern, slowly expanding it as he went, calling out for his men.
“Freefighters?! Freefighters! Anyone the hell out there?” the Doomsday Warrior shouted with a kind of desperation, knowing as he did so that it was unlikely anyone could hear him above the drone of the sand. But he had to try. He’d gone in circles for maybe six or eight minutes when he swore he heard sounds ahead. Men and beasts very close. He closed in on the noises and yelled out for whoever was there.
“Rock? Rockson, is that you?” What sounded like Detroit’s bellowing tones broke slightly through the sand symphony. He rushed toward the sound, dragging Snorter through the dunes below their feet. Suddenly there were figures in the gray, dusty mists. Two? Three? It was hard to tell.
“It’s Rockson!” the Doomsday Warrior screamed out.
“Oh shit, I thought that was it for you,” Detroit said, coming out of the curtains of blinding grit. “Thought we’d have to say some prayers over a plaque back at C.C., assuming we ever got there.”
“I’m pretty hard to kill,” the Doomsday Warrior said, slapping the black man on his outstretched hand.
“Rock!” Chen echoed up, squeezing Rock’s shoulder.
Then Archer came stumbling behind his ’brid with an ear-to-ear smile. If Rockson ever kicked off, he didn’t quite know what the mountain man would do. It wasn’t something he liked to think about. “RRROOOOCCKSSSSOON!” Archer groaned, like a bull-moose in rutting season. He rushed over the last few yards and slapped the Doomsday Warrior so hard on the back that he almost went flying over onto his face.
“Where are the rest of the men?” Rockson asked, as they came out of the fervor of their little reunion.
“Don’t know,” Chen replied.
The snapping sand still came at all of them like pellets shot out of a cannon. “We suddenly all got separated somehow,” Chen related. “McCaughlin’s with them. Sheransky too. Last time I saw them. I hope they’re able to stay together as a unit. The recruits won’t have a chance by themselves or even broken up into single units. Most of those men haven’t camped out on their own on crystal clear nights let alone going through a hell like this.”
“True!” Rock spat out the word. He’d really screwed up on this one. He took out his shotpistol in desperation and let loose with a few blasts, straight up into the air. He knew it was absurd and the ’brids all jumped back startled, wondering what the hell one of their riders was doing shooting at sand. They had a vague understanding of the workings of the minds of men—but this was beyond them. The pistol’s loud roar couldn’t have gone more than ten yards in the mess blowing all around them before it was totally absorbed in the deafening sand-void.
“I think it’s getting worse,” Detroit noted as he stood on the windward side of the ’brid, which was a hell of a lot better suited to take this kind of weather, its hide being nearly as thick as elephant skin. “I can feel the velocity of the particles picking up,” he said, addressing the other three as loudly as possible. Only Archer seemed not to particularly notice or care as he stood there listening to the others. For him, no doubt, it was all some sort of lark down to the beach, and he almost seemed to revel in the massaging particles which flew into him from every direction.
“We’ve got to find shelter,” Chen said. “It’s coming in too hard. Look down.” They stared down at their feet and saw that in the minutes they’d been talking, nearly six inches of sand had piled up around their boots. Stand around for another five—and they’d be human sand dunes, unable to move an inch. “We’ll search for the men as soon as this dragon storm dies down a little, as soon as we can see.”
They began walking slowly, pulling the’brids behind them. It was slow going and as they walked, sinking deep into the sand at each step, the wind definitely was picking up. They could hardly move sometimes as it pushed right into them. Even the ’brids were off-balance half the time. It was clear after another five minutes that they weren’t going to be able to keep this up too long. But, to say the least, there was nowhere to get shelter.
“We’ve got to find someplace to hide!” Rock shouted at them, his face now little streams of pencil-thick blood. “Maybe we’ll have to shoot two of the ’brids and—” The Doomsday Warrior hated even saying the words and he swore that Snorter whipped his huge head around and gave him the evil eye.
“SHHEELLLTER!” Archer suddenly bellowed out at the end of the trekking crew.
“Damn right, big fellow,” Detroit agreed. “We’d better find some fast or—” He slid his hand across his throat to show what would happen to all of them.
“MEEEE KNOOOOW WHEERRRE!” the huge ex-woodsman exclaimed with his booming voice. “FOLLLLLOOOOW!” Without another word he turned and headed to the left. The other three Freefighters looked hard at one another for a few seconds as if they might be taking their lives into their hands by following the giant.
“Got nothing to lose, that’s for damn sure,” Rockson said, shrugging his shoulders. The three of them followed, this time staying right behind each other so they wouldn’t get lost. Archer walked, standing tall, and with all his weight the battering winds hardly seemed to affect him. He seemed to know exactly where he was heading, as if he’d been out here a thousand times before.
They headed through the storm for perhaps five minutes and suddenly the intensity of the sand and wind seemed to drop dramatically. They could even see one another again. They were apparently being sheltered from the wind by a huge mound of rotting vegetation. Sheltering cacti, Rockson could see, as he came into the space.
“SEEEE!” the mountain man said with deep pride, slamming himself on the chest with force that would have taken out a tree or two.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” Detroit exlaimed with absolute amazement on his grit-impregnated face. It felt great to be able to breathe and they all breathed in and out hard, trying to clear their noses and mouths of the cutting particles. The ’brids made similar movements as well. As Rock looked around he saw that it was indeed a mound of cacti, about ten yards’ worth. There must have been a grove of them right in this spot. Somehow they all had died and fallen, but had stayed sort of interwoven together as they crumbled down on top of one another. They were somehow still in one piece, but all brown and hollow, with thorns covering everything. It was a mound a good twenty feet high and it extended maybe thirty feet from side to side. The wind blew hard on each side of them, but most of it wasn’t getting to them, probably duning up against the cacti on the far side.
“How the hell could he have known about this?” Detroit asked as he slid to his butt behind the thing and sat there, his ’brid looking at him curiously.
“Maybe he smelled it,” Rockson replied, following suit as his le
gs suddenly felt tired from the efforts of going through what had felt like quicksand. “He was from the mountains, didn’t know a hell of a lot of ‘civilization’s ways’ when I found him,” Rockson replied. “So maybe some of his more primitive ways haven’t been smashed in by society. Who the hell knows? Sense of smell, sound, a lot of things that we hardly experience—are the ways he relates to the whole world. Who cares?”
“Not I,” Detroit laughed, taking some water from his canteen.
The winds and sand roared by them on both sides, but here in the center of the protective covering hardly a particle reached them.
“Nor I,” Chen said with a grin, twisting his black mustache. “Mountain man or not, he saved our asses.”
As if he had heard and understood their every word, Archer came and stood looming over the three Freefighters, looking down at them as a mother might look at her kids as they played in beach sand. He shook his head slowly from side to side as if to say, “What the hell would these dumb bastards do without me?”
Sixteen
The sandstorm raged all around the rotten cactus windstop like an army, searching for the Freefighters. But try as it might, though a few particles here and there managed to get in their faces, it was nothing compared to what was happening on either side of them. It was strange actually, since they could see one another now that they were out of the actual storm. But right at the edges of the cacti mound, they couldn’t see a thing, other than a roaring curtain of gray and brown.
“Pretty nice setup,” Chen said with a bemused expression to the others as the four Freefighters sat side by side at the base of the cactus windbreak. “I wonder, though, if the cacti are edible.”