by Ryder Stacy
“Open them up,” Rock shouted across to the two guards with submachine guns around their shoulders who stood on each side of the wide steel doors built into the side of the mountain. This was just one of a dozen such exits hidden around the base of the mountain, though this one was the largest as it was the main hybrid egress. The guards pulled at a large lever and the thing began chugging away, pulling the doors to each side. The dawn light filled a tunnel ahead that ran for about fifty feet. It was camouflaged, made to look like a bat-and-slime-encrusted cave. He soon reached the weed-and-leaf-woven camouflage netting. Rock slowed his ’brid and swept the netting aside in the middle with his arm so the creature could get his head through. It was all pretty crude, but from even a few yards away it looked pretty good.
They rode into the dawn, as the radioactive skies brightened by the minute. Far above, the undulating magnetic lines of purple and green ringed the earth, filled with high radiation death, fallout from the twentieth century still releasing its poisons in flakes, rays, and God knew what all. The Northern Lights atomic-style. And yet it was beautiful as well. A radioactive rainbow in the dawn. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, that was for damned sure. And if this was his world, then Rockson was sure as hell going to have to take beauty where he found it. Whether it be in the pearl-lustered shell of a snapping roach, or the oddly twisted black horns of the unicorn rams that were replacing normal mountain rams in the Rockies as the years went on. Rock was a mutant human himself. Who was he to judge the worth of other creatures? Whatever God gave them—that was their existence. For better, for worse, in ugliness, and in grandeur.
But such aesthetic thoughts passed quickly as the dawn sun rose higher, pulling its red face up into the sky like some bloated drunk who had slept one off in the gutter.
It was going to be a scorcher, Rock could see that after just an hour of riding. The sky, which was generally filled with odd-colored clouds or rings of one thing or another high above, things which often blocked out many of the direct rays of old Sol, had today decided to be perfectly clear. As the sun rose higher over the fir trees that surrounded them on the Rocky Mountains slopes, the sky above turned a crystal blue, the blue of expensive chandeliers in Soviet palaces.
The sun beat down on them like a searchlight searing at them with its gamma and ultraviolet and X-rays. Rock had them stop when he started feeling funny himself. No man, not even a mutant, could take the full, unfiltered rays of a twenty-first century crystal-sun. But Dr. Shecter had provided for this several years before, with one of his devices that really did work.
“Take out the reflector blankets,” Rock said, reaching around his back. The packs that were tied around the rear of the saddles and over the broad back of the ’brids had been worked out years before with Rock’s assistance. He and the other men knew just where to reach for their gear. Within seconds they held what looked basically like thick pieces of aluminum foil, and were unfolding them. Based on the “Space Blankets” of the twentieth century, these were the advanced models, virtually unrippable and capable of reflecting back nearly ninety percent of the sun’s rays and heat. Within a minute they were all draped with the things, looking like foil-wrapped potatoes ready to pop into the oven. Chen’s, Rock’s, and Sheransky’s fit fine. Archer had a special reflector—two of them glued together. And even then he was barely able to get it around himself, and to snap the velcro seals closed. It would have to do.
It was always somewhat slow going the first few hours out on any mission. It didn’t make sense to push it. The men’s bodies, the ’brids, everything had to fall into the right rhythm. Rock knew it would happen, and he let the animals get used to being out, let them find their own natural gait. The first few hours were hard anyway because of the steep slopes of the age-old Rocky Mountains. They rode up and down through forests of firs, across hillsides of wild purple and orange and blue mountain flowers bursting with fragrance so that they were almost covered with hordes of bees searching for early morning nectar. It was, in spite of the searing sun, an awesomely beautiful day. The men could see for miles when they reached the summit of each high hill, the Rockies stretching off in every direction as if they covered the entire earth.
They traveled half the day, not even stopping to eat. Rock’s men knew he wasn’t one to stop for a pleasant little picnic. They ate on the move, throwing feedbags down over the ’brid’s faces as the animals were capable of eating and moving at the same time. High in the saddle, the Freefighters took out their own concentrated energy packets and chugged from water jugs.
Still and all, they made fairly good time over the course of the day. By the time the sun was starting its slow descent to the west, like a kite that had run out of wind, they were already into some of the lower foothills. The southeast route they were taking was one Rock hadn’t been on for years. It was a route that headed straight for the nearest Russian airport, some hundred and fifty miles away. Compasses were virtually worthless in this neck of the woods because of strong rad-deflected magnetic fields. But the mapping teams of Century City were always out and bringing back updated information. Every hour or so Rock took out the plastipaper map that showed the five hundred miles east and south of C.C., checking on a particular mountain or some granite outcropping.
So far they were dead on target. He wanted to get up to a certain mountain pass before the sun completely dropped from sight, because it would mean easier travel the next day. According to the maps it was much smoother going on the far side. None of the men complained, though their butts felt like they were being ground down into what could have been sold for leather pocketbooks, if there had been such things anymore. Getting into the saddle always took a certain amount of readjustment, even for those who had been out numerous times before—like Chen and Archer. Sheransky had only had a few missions thus far, and he groaned and spat out soft little curses in Russian as the ’brid bounced up and down beneath him. But he didn’t say a word to the others.
They reached the mountain pass just as purple-pated Sol disappeared behind a far glacial mountain. Rock hesitated as they reached the start of a valley about a mile long. It looked a little treacherous because of the gravelly ground, but the ’brids’ hooves were as hard as steel. He made a decision and headed in. He was just starting to relax a little, after they’d gotten about halfway through the pass, when the shit hit the fan.
Actually it was bats that hit the fan of the rapidly darkening night air. It was as if they came out on cue the moment the sun fell completely behind the mountain, brought out by the darkness or the sudden cooling that hit once the warming sun had vanished. Whatever their reasons, the bats came out of small caves on each side of the mountain pass, by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. The flapping creatures flew out of their caverns like an army of leathery birds, and soared out with high-pitched squeals. The wrong kind of squeals for happy bats. These were blood-bats!
“Shit,” Rockson barely had time to mutter as he saw the hordes come shooting out. As a bunch of the ugly little faces came barreling straight at him, he saw as well that they weren’t the insect-eating variety. They were after something far meatier—men and hybrids. They weren’t large, that was one thing anyway. So even as the first few scouts snapped down at him, Rock was able to brush them off, waving his hands wildly in front of him. The Freefighters all still had on the Shecter blankets, which gave them a certain amount of protection and seemed to confuse the bats. But the teeth of the blood-drinkers snapped closed over the outerwear over and over, trying to break through trying to get to the good stuff inside.
They were ugly, hideously ugly, Rock saw as he caught one in his hand, squeezed hard, and threw it off dead to the ground. They were more like flying teeth than the insect-eating bats he had seen in the past. Definite mutations, with fangs a good two inches long and slime-coated black bodies with spiderwebs of red veins throbbing all over their surface.
“Get the hell out of here, boy,” he screamed into the ’brid’s ear, kicking it hard
in the flanks as it reeled around from side to side unsure where to go. But it let Rockson take over control, and the steed tore ahead as he loosened the reins. The other three hybrids followed quickly behind. The men were all shouting and waving their hands as the bats grew more organized and began making diving raids in groups of hundreds at a time. Some of them managed to snap their jaws shut right on the ’brids’ sides or flanks, searching for blood. As the steeds galloped along terrified, bellowing out whinnying sounds of sheer terror, a number of the blood-drinking bats managed to attach to their sides, flopping around from the motion of the animals. But they hung on as their teeth drew out the red liquid from beneath the thick outer hides like syringes.
As the cloud of twisting and turning bat-bodies grew ever thicker, Rock pulled out his shotpistol and aimed it straight ahead, where a huge group of the things seemed to have turned and were coming straight at him in a squadron, as if trying to stop the whole caravan so they could feast fully. Rock pumped the shotpistol and blew dozens of them away—and on the second shot dozens more. Behind him he heard more gunshots, and then saw some of Chen’s shuriken star-knives whizzing up into the air, taking out large groups as they exploded.
Masses of bloody fangs and broken wings flew around like wet shrapnel. But even as the blood-bats fell to the gravel-strewn ground of the mountain pass by the thousands, more came in. There were just too many. There was no way to fight them.
Rock felt two of them land on the base of his neck at the same time, one on each side, and had to tighten his legs around the saddle. He reached up with both hands and ripped the things free, squeezing as hard as he could, like a man bending a Bud after drinking it down. He could hear the bones crunch and the sharp squeals of the things as he tightened and then threw them to the dirt. He could feel the blood oozing down his neck as well. The little bastards had managed to break the skin. He prayed they didn’t inject a poison. But the ’brids still were galloping faster than ever and doubtless some of the first bites would have affected them by now if the bats were poisonous.
Still, as he fired the last of his shots and reached for another quick load, Rock could see they weren’t making a dent in the attacking waves. Somehow he wouldn’t have minded dying fighting Reds, or helping Rahallah battle Colonel Killov. But to go out here, on their first night of the mission, consumed by these ugly little dudes—please God let it not be so. He glanced up quickly at the darkening sky as if someone might be up there listening. And there was. But it wasn’t the Big Guy.
And even as his eyes came down again, there was a fiery roar about fifty feet ahead of him and perhaps twenty feet up, right where an approaching flock was the thickest. Flames shot out in every direction and Rockson was totally confused for a moment, even as he watched thousands of the blood-bats burst into flame and drop from the sky like burning leaves from a forest fire, the fiery wings etching crazy patterns in the dusk. Then another mini-explosion, and another, and bats were dropping like moths that had strayed too close to the flame.
Rock suddenly realized that it wasn’t lighting bolts from the blue—but Archer. They were arrows from his crossbow, tipped with phosphorous bombs, just one of many ingenious arrowheads that the huge Freefighter—with Shecter’s lab boys’ help—had rigged up. He turned in his saddle and saw the Freefighter fitting arrow after arrow into the groove of the thing, pulling them from the quick-fire quiver he had strapped beneath the crossbow. With its instant spring-controlled reload, he could shoot the arrows out every second or two. And he was doing so with a vengeance.
Bats fell like flies. And as more and more of the flaming arrows flew and burst through the curtains of the flying blood-drinking mammal, the bonfire of wings and teeth grew. Rock saw that the blood-bats were actually setting each other on fire as well. Wings touched other wings as they soared down from the air in pain-maddened squealing circles. And others hesitated to join the fiery party.
Suddenly the flock was too concerned with survival to worry about food and they pulled back, an immense cloud of them veering off away from the attack as they saw their blood-drinking comrades turned into overdone Bat-B-Q on the ground below. Rock didn’t slow down an inch, kicking his ’brid hard, not that the animal needed much prodding. And then they were through it, out of the pass and barreling down into a meadow of purple flowers, their heads bent over like monks in prayer as the night air fell. They didn’t stop for nearly ten minutes and when they did, both men and ’brids were breathing hard, eyes wild. It had been a few terrifying minutes none of them would ever forget.
As the Freefighters dismounted to give the heaving ’brids a chance to rest, and to quiet their own pounding hearts, Rock slapped Archer hard on the back. As the near-mute took the congrats of Rockson and the other fighters, a big smile etched across his broad-bearded face. He was so happy that he could contribute to the team. Rockson looked at Chen and Sheransky and spoke with a sigh as soft as the breezes that wafted up the mountain slopes. “Thank God the blood-bats are flammable.”
“This bunch is flammable,” Chen said, “but how about the next?”
Seven
Once Rockson was absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent sure that no more of the bat-things were after them, he holstered his shotpistol. They had torn ass for a good three miles in the near darkness lit only by the swirling strontium clouds high above and the pinpoints of starlight that stabbed through here and there. Rock hoped they were someplace safe—and on the charts—but there were things to do first before checking on that. Rockson inspected his mount, and the others did as well. There were a few bats still hanging on to Sheransky’s and Chen’s hybrids, but they were pulled off and disposed of with knives and under boots. The men made faces as they dealt with the bloodsuckers. There was just something about mankind and bathood that never did and never would get along. Their demonic overtoothed faces didn’t help matters any. Underneath the ’brids, on their stomachs and flanks, their riders found numerous little bite marks still oozing traces of blood. None of them looked life-threatening, but they sure as hell had to be treated. You didn’t go around oozing the red stuff in postnuke America and expect to live very long. There were numerous carnivorous creatures out in those woods which would leap out at the very scent of blood. And most of them made the blood-bats look like mosquitoes.
So the Freefighters took antibiotic salve out of their med packs and slopped it on over the little gouges, checking every square inch of the ’brids, even around their hoofs, behind their ears, and under their manes. In fact Rock found a small bat hiding in Secretariat’s thick mane, and pulled it off with repulsion. Up close the little things were even more disgusting than from a few feet away. He broke its neck with a sharp crack of his hand, and threw it in a small bag so that he could take it back to Shecter. The mad doctor was happier than a kid with a new toy when exotic species were brought back from “the outside.” Rockson had never seen this particular brand of mini-hell before, so he assumed Shecter hadn’t either.
At last everything was salved, cleaned, and sealed up and they mounted the ’brids again. Rock debated whether they should pack it in for the night now, but figuring they were still close to the flying teeth, and admitting the fact that both men’s and animals’ heart rates were up to ramming speed from all the adrenaline that had been pumped inside their veins, he thought he might as well take advantage of it. They’d get a few more miles under their belt!
In fact, the sky started clearing nicely, as if apologizing for the nasty little incident before. The green strontium clouds far overhead diminished to mere wisps and the clear sky, a trillion stars, and a bright scythe moon gave them plenty of light over the meadows and fields.
So they rode on through a landscape disconcertingly peaceful, with only the sounds of hoot owls and an occasional howl of a snar-wolf in the distance for musical accompaniment to the clip-clop of their steeds’ steps. Rockson drove them until nearly midnight, and then found a piece of high ground which looked secure. They bivouacked, giving the
’brids all the chow and water they wanted. After doing the same for themselves, the humans—except for watchful Rockson—fell fast asleep, ready to awaken at the slightest disturbance. There were none, other than in their bloody dreams.
The morning sun broke like a sun of the old days, before the nuke war. There were birds chirping, sunbeams dancing, and mountain flowers waving energetically in the morning breezes. All of them awoke with smiles. Facing death and surviving can put a man in a good mood. And after some hydroponically grown coffee, why, they were feeling positively chipper. Camp was broken, the ’brids resaddled and bridled, and within twenty minutes of rising, they were off.
They made excellent time that whole day, hitting no real obstacles and not a single thing that tried to eat, claw, or mutilate them—other than some swarms of mosquitoes and black flies, which they rode through from time to time and which lingered for minutes and then headed off. They were basically in a barren no-man’s-land for the next seventy miles or so—a place where no Freefighters lived, and the Reds rarely ventured. Rock was unable to relax even though he knew it was extremely unlikely that they’d run into any spy drones which might relay their images back to some basement Red headquarters and precipitate a whole shitload of choppers coming out after them. In the mountains and forests it was easy enough to hide. But out here in the open with no real cover for miles in any direction they would be sitting ducks. But nothing happened. Just another day’s ride.
They bivouacked again for the night, just beneath a rocky overhang of a low hill, where they were virtually invisible from above. He let the others take sentry duties, splitting it up among themselves. He needed some Z’s bad, as he had done a double shift the previous night. He fell off fast, as if tripping down a cliff, and didn’t move an exhausted muscle for seven hours. When he awoke, the morning was overcast and the air smelled foul and dead, as if after a few days of nice weather the earth was going to spit up some of the poisons that man had shoveled down her throat. The other men were in foul tempers almost immediately upon awakening, their throats raw, eyes tearing from a sulphurous smell in the air. Even the ’brids, which generally didn’t pay much attention to air pollutants, were acting sluggish and kept snorting as if trying to spit something up.